i’m shocked about piracy

This has probably already been stated, but as I've said before, I rarely read the comments before mine unless they have something interesting (no offense). . .

I don't think it's so much as the fanatics are downloading because they're poor or just refuse to buy the album, but rather that they're anticipating the said release so badly that they can't wait for it to be issued, so in the end, they try to download it in order to get a taste for the piece(s) - and I suppose you could say that the 30-second samples would be sufficient, but to be candid, they aren't. . . they just add to the eagerness.

I have started downloading OOP stuff - maybe if I get a decent enough collection one day I'll try and start up an FTP server with that sort of thing on... the only difficulty is finding lossless rips . It's still illegal if they're OOP but I couldn't buy them if I tried (except second hand, and that doesn't help the record label ), so I feel justified.

Also, I have some friends who listen to awful music, so I am willing to burn them copies of good CDs, just to try and civilize them! 

Lamia wrote: ... I just think its partly greed by the music industry and greed by the consumer that makes this so expensive.  However that doesn’t stop me having 5,869 songs on my computer, about 4,000 of which are from legit CD’s i.e. parents and friends and the rest are illegal downloads.

Remember that the songs from "legit CD's" are illegit copies unless they're from YOUR CDs...

*BUSTED!!!*

I do admit that I have committed several acts of aural piracy, but I’ve certainly bought a lot of albums since.  Up until 1999, I was never really into music much, didn't have any CD's at all, then I bought my first album, Toploader - Onka's Big Moka.  Surprisingly I can still look back on it and listen to it and appreciate it, at least it was half decent music and nothing too faddy.

But since 1999 I've amassed over 100 or so albums, and when you think of the average price that's going to be around £1000 at £10 a shot.  So actually on average I buy an album or so every month, although its more phase like, i.e. I won't buy music for a while and then get a load in.

However certainly without piracy in the form of Audio Galaxy, WinMX, Kazaa Lite, Limewire and now Bit Comet I wouldn't have gone out and bought many of the albums I have now.  However I do have a lot of copied music from friends, parents etc and I just don't see the point it buying the same thing over and over again if we all seem to have it.  For instance, although my parents are divorced, between us we each have a legitimate copy of Phil Collins - Testify, which is utterly ridiculous.

I do however understand that music is certainly very expensive and it comes at a premium, so recently I’ve started downloading music from www.allofmp3.com, and legit Russian website that charges for music downloads, but because of Russian copyright laws you can get an entire album for $1.5 dollars @192 kbps in mp3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis and several others.  Ok you don't get the album art, but at least you’re giving something back and technically it is legal.  With regards to this I've bought quite a few progressive albums since coming here.  And I'm glad, because despite being a big Genesis fan I bought both Archives’ 1969-1975 and 1976-1992 and on the first one the first 2 CD's were effectively a polished Lamb Lies Down, the third CD Genesis Live with a few others, and the last was some very early Genesis, with pretty damn poor studio recording quality.  I have since listed to the original CD's of this and for costing £40 the quality was not distinguishably better.

So there are reasons for piracy, but it is a double edged sword, I just think its partly greed by the music industry and greed by the consumer that makes this so expensive.  However that doesn’t stop me having 5,869 songs on my computer, about 4,000 of which are from legit CD’s i.e. parents and friends and the rest are illegal downloads.

gdub411 wrote:   Welcome back Paradox.

Thanks! It's been quite a while