Should filesharing be illegal?

The RIAA random selects people who share and download music files online. Do you feel that they are right to do this, or should people be allowed to share their own files with others, so long as there is no exchange of money?

I have mixed feelings about it. The people involved with the music do deserve to be paid. But at the same time they need to put out a better quality product. Usually there are a couple of good songs on an album & the rest is just trash filler. The fines are obscene. Hundreds of thousands for a couple songs is outrageous. The RIAA's claims that people do not own the CD but only the right to listen to it & that ripping from your CD to an mp3 player is illegal have gotten so absurd that it's hard for me to be sympathetic toward them. If they're having financial issues it's largely their own doing.

I'm not sure it's significantly different from libraries who lend books to be honest.

ITA with CeCe! I have mixed feelings, too, for the reasons stated. Besides, it's not so much the musicians as the companies that produce the music that are bent out of shape. It really is absurd. I supposed if I buy a car, I don't actually own the car, just the right to drive it? I can't share it with a friend? let smoeone else drive it? Ridiculous! I do agree that the artists deserve to be paid, but I'm also not going to buy a CD if there's just one song on it I like.

Nope. They should leave well enough alone. It ain't our fault the music industry sucks. In this day and age with all this technology and you have a problem with something as simple as file sharing?

To me filesharing is no different than when we were kids and we'd dub copies of cassettes and give them to friends. The industry probably didn't like that, but no one went hungry from it. Suing twelve year olds and college students because they downloaded something from whatever flavor of the month file share program is hot right now IMO is just a diversion tactic to take away from the fact that music has gotten so bad that people aren't willing to buy it.

TSJFan4Ever wrote:ITA with CeCe! I have mixed feelings, too, for the reasons stated. Besides, it's not so much the musicians as the companies that produce the music that are bent out of shape. It really is absurd. I supposed if I buy a car, I don't actually own the car, just the right to drive it? I can't share it with a friend? let smoeone else drive it? Ridiculous! I do agree that the artists deserve to be paid, but I'm also not going to buy a CD if there's just one song on it I like.

Well, that is what Amazon and iTunes are for. I don't mind paying one dollar for one song I like. What I hate is when record companies play games and make 3+ different versions of an album, each with different exclusive songs. I hate it when iTunes has special songs you can get ONLY if you fork over 12 bucks for an album. It's highway robbery.

I am against pirating music in theory, but I think it has valid cases and I really think that the record companies and their ridiculous ways have fueled the demand for it. Most people will gladly pay for music if you don't punish them for it.

I agree Forgiveness_Man. Illegal downloading became prominent after the downfall of the commercial single, when record labels would issue songs to radio, but not make them commercially available, because they wanted listeners to go out and buy the entire CD.

Chris wrote:I agree Forgiveness_Man. Illegal downloading became prominent after the downfall of the commercial single, when record labels would issue songs to radio, but not make them commercially available, because they wanted listeners to go out and buy the entire CD.

They got greedy and now have the nerve to bitch about people getting their music some other way.