The response for me has always been ‘yeah well that’s all well and true but your still stealing our music.’ I counter that I am simply redistributing my own music and the counterargument has generally been ‘yeah but who downloads YOUR music anyway? Everyone is stealing OUR music illegally instead.’ I counter of course that a 6 figure number has downloaded my music myself and I get a ‘that’s just anomolous and not normal. The reality is that people arn’t downloading your music.’

It’s funny how I have proof that it’s not about downloading copyrighted music in all cases yet the counterargument is to deny the solid evidence and general avoidance of my claim simply due to the fact that there really isn’t a counterargument against what I’m personally doing. Course I got a good amount of practice to keep a straight face at this point in time but on the inside I’m going ‘LOL!’.

My personal defense to filesharing is that you can’t blame the consumer for your shortcomings. No one would of flocked to P2P if the old system wasn’t flawed. It proved that when control is given to the consumer many would rather not pay for music. But instead of trying to working around this reality maybe lowering prices or giving people incentive to buy music they chose to keep with the model that revolved around control. Thankfully for consumers sadly for record labels the internet isn’t easy to censor. So instead of the overpriced cd’s of the past consumers are getting the free music. One could even go so far as to defend that before recording apparatus music was a performance art and that was how individuals were compensated. There is no reason why it cannot travel back to those roots. I mean you have artist like Celine Dion and Kanye West charging over 100$ a ticket for their shows if you look at the capacity of most arenas that’s allot of money. Also considering the way computers have simplified recording and removed much of the cost associated to music production their is no reason to charge the amounts or any amount for music anymore. There have even been studies done on the limitations of music and how the craft itself is simply the inspirational use of music we have already heard. So in essence music copies music so how does protecting that make sense? Part of me wonders just how much redundancy we have in music today. Because in the end music isn’t every possible sound imaginable its restricted to a climatically structure one that has a limit.

What about the whole concept of shutting down a service because it could circumvent DRM? The DVD Jukebox which only up until recently was not allowed to exist without costing an arm and a leg in royalty costs? Even if you are all for stopping bootleggers in third world countries I’m sure there is recognition for some that the control to innovate should be limited at worst. Right now that control is obsene and unecessary.

What about the Sony Rootkit fiasco? The actual whistleblower was technically breaking the anti-circumvention laws just to point out that the DRM would destabilize your computer and open yourself wide to hackers.

…just to name three more…