New bill targets youtube and torrent sites, threatens censorship of content

[jillfoster]

Of course, the MPAA and RIAA is for this... but luckily, Youtube, AOL, Google, and Facebook are vehemently against it. Hopefully the power of the tech giants will outweigh that of the hollywood money grubbers:

http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/16/technology/sopa/?source=cnn_bin

[soulster]

The way to fight piracy is to put out better product that people want to buy and own, and keep the price reasonably low for people in a bad economy can afford. The way to lose is to use the legislature and the courts to create and manipulate laws that work against the common good.

All these law and order schemes do is piss of the potential customers and drive the pirates deeper underground.

Piracy will never be stopped, so why try to fight it? Just give the consumer something they can't get by illegally downloading music and movies. Make it worth the consumer's while to buy the product.

My solution? Provide new and catalog music in LOSSLESS and/or hi-rez FLAC or AAC files with full artwork and liner notes at a price point people will like. And, quit compressing the shit out of the music!

The thing is that the labels want to return to the 90s when they would belch out a CD of mediocre music with only one good song on it and charge $18 for it. It can't happen again because the internet is a reality, and the market is too splintered. Never again will we see a massive hit album by a crossover artist. And, the worst thing the labels ever did was kill off the single. Why do they think original Napster was created in the first place? To get that one good song off of an otherwise lousy, over-priced album! History has shown us that the best albums, the ones that sell massively well, are full of potential hit singles. Madonna, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Bruce Springsteen...even Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Katy Perry have experienced great success by making these types of albums. Sure, today, people cherry-pick what songs they want from iTunes, but those singles add up! In some cases, it's more expensive to download the songs than it is to buy the CD or vinyl LP.

The labels are looking to kill off the CD from all I have been reading of late. I believe the idea is to return to DRM once downloads become the standard way to buy music. I sure hope they don't go back to that, because that would do nothing but anger people, and they would dig in deeper with the illegal downloading. The best course of action would be for the labels to just keep concentrating on releasing good music that people want to buy. It's as simple as that!