A worldwide boycott of Sony products would hurt the RIAA the most.

Obviously Bin Laden’s vendetta against the west must have been inspired by his disappointment over a badly cooked batch of pirated viagra bought over the internet. If we are to believe what Mr. Dodd would no doubt have to say.

Unless Dodd has been peddling bibles on the sly I doubt that “Copyright” is the breach of law involved there.

What you can be in control of – what human nature acknowledges – is the paternity right. The right to stand as creator. Creative commons, unlike most copyright implementations, actually works largely as intended.

Copyright law, since it’s inception, has only ever been a weapon for use by powerful institutions against single creators. A way to appropriate “ownership” over even that of the artist.

What you can do is be in control of your name and reputation. And that in turn is what gets you fans and an income. The rest is so much smoke and mirrors.

Let’s start by drawing the distinction between commercial piracy and noncommercial infringement shall we?
When it comes to culture and entertainment, every enthusiast prefers the original if it’s within a decent price range. That’s solidly established.

Commercial “Piracy” means someone takes a copy of your work and sells it, pretending to be representing you. Not only does this do harm to your brand name, it is also a clear case of fraud. You will find no “pirate” here who agrees that model should stand as legal.

“If the “piracy is good” or “piracy affects nobody” research is even slightly true, the hundreds of parties involved in music would spend smaller dollars to go in that direction. Doesn’t that seem more logical in capitalism?”

The research is very solid. But there is a good and valid reason why most labels and corporations don’t go in that direction.

First of all, through history you will find very very few corporations which adapted voluntarily to change. It has always been forced on them. The reasons are numerous but the simplest is that no CEO in a free market will ever voluntarily decide on a plan of action which results in the Gross Margin taking a hit for the time he has responsibility against the shareholders.

The normal CEO sits in that job for 3-5 years. After that, he gets a new job. During his time what he wants is a solid stream of revenue increasing each year by a certain percentage. If he fails to deliver, he personally loses out on his bonus and possibly has to leave with a black mark against him.

So it’s really only small startups which possess the necessary fiscal flexibility to adapt to new models. Every established actor will change only when forced to.

Now the problem is not and has never been about people distributing copies of works. The major labels already know the negligible impact this has on sales from experience with radio, cassette tapes, TV, and the VCR. What truly has them scared shitless is the fact that the internet robs most of the existing companies of their most profitable market niches in the same way the automobile rendered the coach driver largely redundant.

If artists become convinced piracy isn’t dangerous and a contract with a major label isn’t necessary, that precious gross margin of their takes a very solid double whammy.

I think they all know their model died recently and is only kept kicking by liberal application of voltage. But every CEO makes the rational decision that if it can be kept alive for just one more year it’s one more bonus in the bank for him/her.

This is nothing more than rational self-interest. The CEO couldn’t care less what happens to the label he currently works for once he’s left that job.

The entire open source sector disagrees with you. There are at any one time millions of people innovating and creating on their own time and expense. What this gives them is a solid reputation and a fat paycheck once their services are proven. Linus Torvald today writes his own paycheck.

Google gives us – for “free” – services we couldn’t even dream of five years ago. They’ve found giving away software and services lucrative enough, I should say.

Android went from nonexistant to the closest competitor to Apple’s iOS in a few measly years.

Honestly, If you invent the most insane robot ever and try to patent it, this is what happens.

1) Large corporation steals your invention.
2) You go to court.
3) Large corporation keeps you in court until you go bankrupt.

There was any amount of evidence that Microsoft was more or less extorting their vendors to carry their products and were using every ugly trick in the book to crush their competitors. It still took TEN YEARS to even get the case into a court. Only made possible by pooling massive resources and every other prosecutor in the US press-ganged into service.

The law is a weapon only in the hands of he who already has the cash for lawyers. Believing otherwise puts you straight in la-la land. Your inventions are yours to keep only provided they have small enough market value a corporation would hold no interest in it.

It’s strange that you should try telling us we’re communists for believing as we do since in that case you are also telling us that Thomas Jeffersson and a few other founding fathers were apparently communists.

Copyright law – and indeed, most Intellectual “property” legislation – is par tinformation control and part institutionalized monopoly. There is no room at all in classic capitalism for that model and even Milton Friedman had strong views on patents and copyright. That gentleman a communist visionary as well?

It’s the other way around. You want to see communism, take a good long look at IP law.

Commercial infringement and brand fraud is another matter – and here the greatest culprits are usually the major labels themselves.

When spotify started it promised to be a model which gave the musicians a direct backfeed. It was launched however, only with contract strings attached even more severe on the artists than the average slave contract. Leading, of course, to many artists feeling spotify got them even less than having their works indexed on TPB did.

And yet spotify in itself reduced music piracy by 25%. The only model ever to succeed in reducing noncommercial infringement.

I honestly don’t know what to say – artists attached to many labels have little choice. Their work, their public persona, their very image is owned for years ahead. And when they ask about the measly paycheck those same labels are quick to point out piracy – and not the fact that they grab 97% of the earnings – as the culprit.

It gives big labels a convenient scapegoat – piracy – and ensures they retain control over their golden geese.