Filesharing isn't music's biggest foe

[p2p rules]

What did I find? Total spending has grown – but music spending is being squeezed. The games industry – hardware and software – has grown from £1.4bn in 1999 (the year Napster started, and the music business stood rabbit-transfixed) to £4.04bn in 2008. That's 12% annual compound growth. You'd kill for an endowment like that. Even DVD sales and rental take a £2.5bn bite out of consumers' available funds, double that of 1999.

So the music industry's deadliest enemy isn't filesharing – it's the likes of Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony, and a zillion games publishers. The BPI can argue, fairly, that it loses out badly because its product remains the easiest to steal (and filesharing is a form of theft; don't lie to yourself). But to claim that filesharing is the whole story really fools nobody who has had to choose between a £40 game that will give them weeks of enjoyment, or a Simon Cowell-inspired CD for £10 containing two good tracks and eight somewhat less inspiring efforts.

Guardian

[Trestor]

A good point made about where the real losses are, but the Guardian writer in saying, 'Don't lie to yourself', should in turn not tell a lie.

The blanket statement that 'file sharing is a form of theft' is untrue and misleading. There are many, and possibly a majority, of exceptions that demonstrate the assertion is a lie. The principle of file sharing is very legal.

File sharing is not, and never has been, illegal. At the very most it's only illegal if the owner of the copyright of the file has expressly refused permission for the sharing of the file. Even then it can be argued that the common law permitted the individual, once having purchased an item, to do as he pleased with it, so long as there was no profitable compensation in return at the expense of the person owning the rights to the original material. That the law says otherwise now is a result of the robber barons moving the goal posts of the law, not because of a moral certitude.

Making something illegal doesn't make it morally wrong.

[MinersLantern]

The music is 99.999% crappolla.
I wonder why people don't buy it?
Playback equipment is still stuck on 1960s technology, not the 'digital' part, but the 2 channel stereo part. Why not make car stereos do 5.1 dolby?
Better still, 12 channels?
This is the 21st century, its very simple to do.
Hell, even in 1973, car stereos could do 4 channel stereo just fine using bear skins and stone knives basically, with transistors that were only slightly more advanced than vacuum tubes.
They have talent, they have technology. They refuse to use either.
Screw them.

[White Stripes]

Why not make car stereos do 5.1 dolby?

dunno about you but id rather not have something thats not there sound like its coming up behind me....

not the 'digital' part, but the 2 channel stereo part.

er... last i checked we only have 2 ears.... besides.... perfect 'surround sound' effects can be produced with only two speakers and the auditory part of your brain that lets you 'know' where a sound is coming from....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording

it says its intended for headphones, and it does indeed work best with them, but if you set your stereos speakers to either side of you rather than in front of you (like how speakers in a car are in the doors facing directly inwards from the sides)..... the same effect is acheved tho granted to a lesser degree...