Proof that record companies are stealing from us

[KKiller]

Here is the proof: Link

If they steal from us via collusion and antitrust, then why is it wrong to "steal" from them via P2P?

I say its not. We, the consumer are just getting even.

Also note the sweathart deal they got from the US justice department. They have to donate 77 mil. in CD's which will cost them 0.02 dollars to make.. or basically a 1.5 million dollar loss. That is after ripping off consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.

I say "steal" on ATOT'ers. And let's "steal" with righteousness!

 

[eakers]

"an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind"

 

[Cyberian]

Originally posted by: KKiller
Here is the proof: Link

If they steal from us via collusion and antitrust, then why is it wrong to "steal" from them via P2P?

I say its not. We, the consumer are just getting even.

Also note the sweathart deal they got from the US justice department. They have to donate 77 mil. in CD's which will cost them 0.02 dollars to make.. or basically a 1.5 million dollar loss. That is after ripping off consumers hundreds of millions of dollars.

I say "steal" on ATOT'ers. And let's "steal" with righteousness!

There is also a cash settlement involved -

The settlement calls for $67.3 million cash to be distributed to the settling states .....

 

[KKiller]

but... God helps those who helps themselves.

 

[Kerouactivist]

they are getting what they deserve, the only people I feel bad for are good musicians.

 

[Kadarin]

67.3M is far less than a drop in a very large bucket. They got off easy, and things will not change.

 

[nachiketa1]

Originally posted by: eakers
"an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind"

who said that?

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: nachiketa1

Originally posted by: eakers
"an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind"

who said that?

eakers.... duh

j/k, wasn't it gandhi or something?

 

[CADsortaGUY]

Originally posted by: bthorny
they are getting what they deserve, the only people I feel bad for are good musicians.

Exactly:|

 

[tcsenter]

There is no comparison. No matter what sort of policy governs the cost of a CD, it is purely luxury. When you walk into a store and walk out with a CD, nobody forced you to, you didn't 'have to have to it'. We aren't talking about food or medicine.

When you looked at the price tag and paid the price, you did so because you freely decided the product WAS WORTH THE ASKING PRICE. If you didn't believe it was worth the asking price, you wouldn't have purchased it, period.

Edit: Unless you're faced with something that you truly need, such as the services of an attorney or life-saving medicine and so duress factors into the equation, you as the consumer have the ultimate power - the right NOT to purchase anything you do not fully agree is worth the asking price. I refuse to buy things all the time that I believe are not worth the asking price, every day.

 

[Red Dawn]

There is no comparison. No matter what sort of policy governs the cost of a CD, it is purely luxury. When you walk into a store and walk out with a CD, nobody forced you to, you didn't 'have to have to it'. We aren't talking about food or medicine.

Just like tea was back in 1763. It wasn't a necessity, it was a luxury too.

 

[mithrandir2001]

I wonder how much settlement cash I will receieve.

I must have bought at least 100 new CDs between 1995 and 2000 (and a few hundred used ones).

 

[tm37]

Originally posted by: tcsenter
There is no comparison. No matter what sort of policy governs the cost of a CD, it is purely luxury. When you walk into a store and walk out with a CD, nobody forced you to, you didn't 'have to have to it'. We aren't talking about food or medicine.

When you looked at the price tag and paid the price, you did so because you freely decided the product WAS WORTH THE ASKING PRICE. If you didn't believe it was worth the asking price, you wouldn't have purchased it, period.

Edit: Unless you're faced with something that you truly need, such as the services of an attorney or life-saving medicine and so duress factors into the equation, you as the consumer have the ultimate power - the right NOT to purchase anything you do not fully agree is worth the asking price. I refuse to buy things all the time that I believe are not worth the asking price, every day.

Sorry but in the eyes of most of your fellow ATOTers music is a right and a need and there for it is OK to steal it.

Of course they didn;t post this part.

"We deny any wrongdoing," Warner-Elektra-Atlantic said in a statement. "We have made a business decision to settle these matters and avoid continuing with expensive and protracted litigation. The settlement made sense to us from a business perspective, and enables WEA to put this matter behind us."

Put simply - It was cheaper to settle than to continue with the defence.

They made price agreements with retailers:Q

It's time to bring down the meat producers and general mills and kellogs, they also make deals with retailer to keep prices high.

Music is something that is easy to steal though, I doubt that many people will give it a second thought and continue their warped sense of justification to continue to steal.

 

[tm37]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

There is no comparison. No matter what sort of policy governs the cost of a CD, it is purely luxury. When you walk into a store and walk out with a CD, nobody forced you to, you didn't 'have to have to it'. We aren't talking about food or medicine.

Just like tea was back in 1763. It wasn't a necessity, it was a luxury too.

big difference BUT nice try Red,

First the tea was TAXED by the governement BEcause they knew people would continue to buy it regardless, the correct analogy would be cigerettes.

Second these are PRIVATE COMPANIES that are SELLING A NON essential product. NO one needs CD's and unless they can prove that these record companies all got together and planned this there is NOTHING illegal about making deals with retailer to keep the prices of products UP.


Please don't try and compare STEALING MUSIC for your only pleasure to a patriotic act, it is laziness at best and theivery at worst.

 

[WinkOsmosis]

The days of price gouging are over. Like that Dvorak guy said, $1.40 or die!

 

[tcsenter]

First the tea was TAXED by the governement BEcause they knew people would continue to buy it regardless, the correct analogy would be cigerettes.

That, and the Boston Tea Party wasn't JUST about the price of tea. It was a spilling over of frustrations stemming from a chain of increasingly overbearing and unreasonable taxation measures. Tea was merely the last straw.

 

[tm37]

Originally posted by: Jellomancer
The days of price gouging are over. Like that Dvorak guy said, $1.40 or die!

Never happen the companies willa dn should charge the highest price that will still allow the product to mive off the shelves. It's called the free market system.

You complain if things you want are priced too high and then when the price come down you complain that the production jobs got shipped overseas.

are you going to your boss offering to take a pay cut because you know they could higher someone cheaper in your job?

 

[Red Dawn]

Please don't try and compare STEALING MUSIC for your only pleasure to a patriotic act, it is laziness at best and theivery at worst.

Your unwillingness to even consider comparing the two is what is lazy at best. FYI, the Tea Party wasn't a Patriotic event at the time; it was an act of vandalism. Only history written by the winner was able to reclassify that act as a Patriotic.

Back then the Loyalist denigrated those who bucked the status quo just like those of you today who call those who buck the Status Quo thieves. Well you are wrong. It's not thievery, its copyright infringement and it's not the artist who lose out, it's those who rule over today?s music and distribution. When the Colonists dressed like Indians and dumped the tea overboard, it wasn't the people who grew the tea who lost out; it was the entity who ruled over the distribution which was the English Parliament. In both cases the prices were dictated by the distributor, not the going market and in both cases the people went against the Status Quo .

 

[kazeakuma]

Originally posted by: tm37

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

There is no comparison. No matter what sort of policy governs the cost of a CD, it is purely luxury. When you walk into a store and walk out with a CD, nobody forced you to, you didn't 'have to have to it'. We aren't talking about food or medicine.

Just like tea was back in 1763. It wasn't a necessity, it was a luxury too.

big difference BUT nice try Red,

First the tea was TAXED by the governement BEcause they knew people would continue to buy it regardless, the correct analogy would be cigerettes.

Second these are PRIVATE COMPANIES that are SELLING A NON essential product. NO one needs CD's and unless they can prove that these record companies all got together and planned this there is NOTHING illegal about making deals with retailer to keep the prices of products UP.


Please don't try and compare STEALING MUSIC for your only pleasure to a patriotic act, it is laziness at best and theivery at worst.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that price fixing which IS illegal?

 

[RU482]

Originally posted by: bthorny
they are getting what they deserve, the only people I feel bad for are good musicians.

...which are getting fewer and farther between every year

 

[KKiller]

Guys,

Are you even reading the article which this whole tread is about? If not, please read it.

IT PROVES CONCLUSIVELY THAT RECORD COMPANIES HAVE BEEN STEALING FROM US BY COLLUDING.

kkiller

 

[jjones]

Originally posted by: tm37

Originally posted by: tcsenter
There is no comparison. No matter what sort of policy governs the cost of a CD, it is purely luxury. When you walk into a store and walk out with a CD, nobody forced you to, you didn't 'have to have to it'. We aren't talking about food or medicine.

When you looked at the price tag and paid the price, you did so because you freely decided the product WAS WORTH THE ASKING PRICE. If you didn't believe it was worth the asking price, you wouldn't have purchased it, period.

Edit: Unless you're faced with something that you truly need, such as the services of an attorney or life-saving medicine and so duress factors into the equation, you as the consumer have the ultimate power - the right NOT to purchase anything you do not fully agree is worth the asking price. I refuse to buy things all the time that I believe are not worth the asking price, every day.

Sorry but in the eyes of most of your fellow ATOTers music is a right and a need and there for it is OK to steal it.

Of course they didn;t post this part.

"We deny any wrongdoing," Warner-Elektra-Atlantic said in a statement. "We have made a business decision to settle these matters and avoid continuing with expensive and protracted litigation. The settlement made sense to us from a business perspective, and enables WEA to put this matter behind us."

Put simply - It was cheaper to settle than to continue with the defence.

They made price agreements with retailers:Q

It's time to bring down the meat producers and general mills and kellogs, they also make deals with retailer to keep prices high.

Music is something that is easy to steal though, I doubt that many people will give it a second thought and continue their warped sense of justification to continue to steal.

What a bunch of crap. Music is a staple entertainment of modern society. Do you need it to live? No. But is it a highly desired product of everyday life? Yes. To say that nobody forced you to buy is justification for price fixing is absurd. What the music industry has done is collaborating to remove market options for the consumer, deliberately narrowing the possibilities of obtaining music from anyone but themselves at high prices they have conspired to set with retailers.

Oh, and they deny any wrongdoing? There's a surprise. The courts will allow this settlement and the music industry will never have to own up to any wrongdoing. And the settlement itself is the cheap way out for them. They avoid further legal costs and quite possibly a much higher court mandated fine.

And BTW, I don't steal music. I have less than a half dozen mp3's on my computer. Just a few legal free samples taken from one site or another. So I'm not offering this opinion to justify my stealing; I just happen to hate what the music industry has done to music production and distribution.

 

[Linflas]

From reading this and all the other threads on this subject it seems the one clear thing is that no one understands what stealing is. As Red and others have pointed out P2P may be considered copyright infringement but it is not stealing. Collusion by companies to fix prices is illegal and punishable under law but it is not stealing either. The fact that the RIAA/MPAA have people on both sides of the arguement using their "stealing" terminology worries me as much as the nonsense they are trying to push through congress.

 

[tm37]

Originally posted by: KKiller
Guys,

Are you even reading the article which this whole tread is about? If not, please read it.

IT PROVES CONCLUSIVELY THAT RECORD COMPANIES HAVE BEEN STEALING FROM US BY COLLUDING.

kkiller

The article proves nothing of the sort. IT PROVES CONCLUSIVELY THAT IT WAS MORE COST EFFECTIVE TO SETTLE THAN TO CONTINUE PAYING FOR THE DEFENCE. noithing more. You read ONLY the parts you wanted to read and you read Much more into it.

As far as PRICE FIXING goes it is only illegal if competitors decide together to set a price.

As a producer I can choose to enter into retail agreements that insure that my product retains a high value at the retail level, I can force retailers to sell at a set price, and stop selling to thoose who don't comply with my wishes. As a retailer I can choose to enter into this agreement or not. and here is the really big part, AS A CONSUMER I CAN CHOOSE TO BUY OR NOT:Q

 

[glenn1]

As a retailer I can choose to enter into this agreement or not. and here is the really big part, AS A CONSUMER I CAN CHOOSE TO BUY OR NOT

You miss the point. Consumers HAVE been exercising their option not to buy, that's why cd sales are down the toilet. But the companies of the RIAA have so divorced themselves from the reality feedback loop that they have convinced themselves that the reasons sales are down is strictly due to P2P.

In economics, prices are nothing more than a signal to all the market participants, it has at best a loose correlation to the intrisic value of the item, especially in items whose main value consists of the IP it contains. If one (or more) of the participants refuses to acknowledge the signals being sent, or deliberately deceive themselves as to what they mean, then the system breaks down.