Instead of worrying about the 180,000 people sharing music I would find out who leaks the albums in the first place. Out of that number probably 179,900+ have no way to access the albums they only share them once they are leaked. The leakers have to be intimately involved in production, distribution or the media who have access to advance copies. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if some of the artists themselves had a hand in it to generate some buzz.
While I admit that piracy does do damage to the industry I take their loss figures with a huge container of salt. When they say that they lose 30 gazillion dollars a year to piracy they assume that the people downloading the music/movies/software/whatever would have actually bought the stuff had they not downloaded it for free. I say no way, 99.9% of the people would have just skipped it. If you could wave a magic wand and make all the sites disappear tomorrow I highly doubt you would see a sudden jump in sales to compensate for the loss of downloading sites. Just my opinion, take it for what it’s worth.
No argument there. My problem is with the idea that just because something is digital, it's free.
Yeah, really? WTF do people want to “fine” everyone? Geez.
Find the damned leakers. When someone leaks classified, go after them. When the newspapers print it, go after them too. Don’t go after the people that buy the papers. Geez
The ‘leakers’ are the main issue. Need to find them. I’ll bet they are the ones attacking P2P also. Check out this article - proves it’s not just all ‘little people’ out there trying to save a buck - it’s the labels and the government!: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070916-leaked-media-defender-e-mails-reveal-secret-government-project.html
Leaked Media Defender e-mails reveal secret government project