Maff, you certainly have a good article there for the PRO’s of Music Piracy.

I’ll be doing another post soon in reply to the post over at http://amale.zibings.com/

One of the reasons I make the above suggestion is that answering your post with a single comment seems inadequate. The topic of music piracy is a very complicated and heated debate topic, as I think you and I have both had the pleasure of epitomizing. I am of course an advocate of piracy (to an extent) and believe it can be used as an additional marketing tool in an artist’s arsenal. There have been several studies done that show an average person who downloads doesn’t really buy any more or less albums than the average consumer who doesn’t download them illegally. The question becomes at that point, what is really behind the decline in album sales?

One of your other points, regarding the cost of venues to the artists, is one that is pretty important to consider. Just as artist incur costs for the production and distribution of an album, they do also incur a percentage of the cost of putting on a tour. I’ll do what I can to dig up the studies done on those average percentages from a few years ago, but I think we can both agree that anything which gets more people interested in seeing a band in person is a good thing generally. If there is one thing that music piracy can be good at, it is the viral side of making a band popular. The more popular a band, the more likely they are to pack them in at the venues, and therefore the more money they’re making on the real breadwinner of their career.

Another anti-piracy point you made was regarding sound quality. First and foremost (and this would apply to your comment on malware as well) you should know where you’re downloading from and take advantage of communities that make it a point to provide good content. They will aggressively self-moderate and watch for viruses and poor-quality content. I won’t disagree with you on the likes of Limewire however, as I think its one of the worst plagues on computer systems that has ever been created. Limewire…and BonziBUDDY.

Before I sum everything up and finish, I’ll make a quick note about your mention of being fined and/or ending up in jail. Its true that you could end up in jail or being heavily fined, no way to deny what has been happening. I think however you should not forget that no artist is seeing any portion of the fines being culled from the RIAA/MPAA lawsuits here in America. The labels have decided that -they- were the victims in this, and have set up the RIAA to collect damages for them. This isn’t about the artists, so lets not forget that in the end the artists are suffering really no matter what seems to happen.

In conclusion I’ll say that there are a lot of things I haven’t discussed that could be. Part of that is my hope you’ll be interested in turning this into a series of blog posts for and against piracy between our two sites, but the other part is that it is just far too much to discuss in one fell swoop from any perspective.

- Andy