2008-03-09

Pay per pirate

Toronto Star: File-sharers should get ready to pay, say experts
"It's the ISPs who have to crack down, and they will, once they realize they can make money from the people who use the most bandwidth. The shift will be to subscription services costing (high bandwidth users) a fee, as much as $12 a month," Hughes predicts.

The U.S. music industry hasn't handed out a diamond award –for sales of 10 million – in the last four years because of peer-to-peer usage and other methods of free downloading.
- Chris Gillis, Internet piracy prevention company Mediadefender


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This rhetoric really becomes tiring after a while. Piracy certainly has something to do with the fact that the RIAA's products have been consistently worse and worse. The last album to be certified diamond in the states was Norah Jones' Come Away With Me. I'm not a big fan of Ms. Jones' music, but it would take some kind of dummy not to realize that a lot of people enjoy her music.

This guy's statement is patently false. The music industry has handed out diamond awards in the past few years. They just weren't released in the past four years. The Best of the Doors reached diamond last year. You put out a decent product, and people will pay for it, whether or not they can get it for free. And whether or not it came out in the last four years.

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