The people who download scene-by-scene rips of their favorite movies, studios and stars in high resolution or even high-def 720p+ are quite certainly not the same crowd looking to get "a quick fix" of jerky, buffering, recompressed wmv shit. Sorry, but just superbly misdirected article.

Pr0n sites, at least those that I am talking about, will never have to fear a second of "competition" as in taking from them, as their offering simply caters to a wholly different need.
If you just need a 3 minute wank, then you can do whatever, google yourself 50 pics, go to a random picsite of the thousands out there or to any xxx tuber. But the pr0nateer that I know will have terabytes and terabytes of his stars and fuck flixx. That's just how it is, nigger.

So fuck all the propaganda bullshit.

For a 99 cent track, the labels collect 67 cents, out of which they pay the royalties to the recording artist, the composer, etc.. The other 32 cents is retained by Apple to cover operating costs, credit card processing fees (about 10 cents per transaction, which is why Apple would rather sell pre-paid $20 cards than individual tracks), marketing, etc., and to make a profit.

I don’t just don’t seem to care about 720p video with lossless audio when I’m masturbating.

It's not written in this article but the remaining 29c is split between the Artist and Apple. During the last threatened iTunes price increase it was the artists trying to get a larger share. Apple shot it down because raising prices could kill the paid download market. Apple can't decrease their share because all of it goes to maintaining the servers (they profit off the iPod not the music).

And the Labels? Were they willing to decrease their share so that artists can increase theirs? Wahaha! No.

The moral is: most artists get paid by being as close as possible to their audience. That means cutting the middle man as much as possible.

Please do not make up figures to support your argument. Making up facts renders your argument nothing more than a fictional self-justification. Now, how about your actually do a little research and provide us links with the actual profit breakdowns rather than making up stuff.

"Now it seems to me that their hurting more from apple than us."

What? So someone that pays some portion of money to them from a sale to a consumer is "hurting them" more than someone who pays nothing but still consumes the artists work? How? Because all I see is one consumer that the artist recieved money from and one consumer that the artist recieved nothing from Get a grip on reality dude…

It pisses me off when pirates actually try to say thay are "helping the artist". I dont pay a cent but I also dont delude myself that this is beneficial to the artist.

Your argument doesn't make sense: in the case of games, movies & music it has *always* been this model so why is it becoming worse – "more abysmal – neglected, uncared for". It isn't as though you are able to compare it to a time when this system wasn't in existence – and content was "better" because of it – because it always has been there.

Also, distribution companies are not interested in distributing content that people will not like (and then purchase)… this certainly IMHO leads to a great reluctance to take risks with new types of material and genres but I fail to see that entities involved in distribution are of the position of not "caring" about what they distribute. This also makes your argument of quality having something to do with who owns the rights rather silly as the distirbutors are most often not having anything to do with making the content they own.

Artists use this distibution system because they wish to get paid and they do get paid: if this is not the case why is it that with alternatives available – eg. p2p – artists are not moving away from this traditional distributiuon model. Please do not try to pretend you know something that artists do not beyond your own self-interest.

Also your argument fails to take into account the fact that most content, film-wise and a lot of other content is made completely independent of any distributor. Distributors pick up rights after content is made in this case, often competing with each other to obtain the rights: after all, your agument also fails to address why almost no artists and content producers seem to look anywhere else barring the current distibution system.

PureTNA and the likes should probably look into doing something similar. Once you see the porn industry doing that, the RIAA and MPAA will wake up and realize what's going on finally.

Oh, XnXX all the way for me :)

http://www.youporn.com

artists are not moving away from this traditional distributiuon model
FALSE

This also makes your argument of quality having something to do with who owns the rights rather silly as the distirbutors are most often not having anything to do with making the content they own
There is no need anymore for these middle-men. They only make the culture more abysmal. Now stop being a Nazi apologist.

Your argument doesn't make sense: in the case of games, movies & music it has *always* been this model so why is it becoming worse
It has always been becoming worse.

Here is a simple solution: extend the definition of fair use to include all non-commercial usage and non-commercial derivative works (effectively putting the usage of websites like The Pirate Bay into the category of "fair use"). If it makes sense to say that using The Pirate Bay is "fair use," then it is a doubtlessly a good policy to extend the definition of "fair use" in such a way that using The Pirate Bay shall fall into the category of "fair use."

Brilliantly said, Ernesto.