http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/amp...ding-24-songs/

It's all I can say...wow. How do they track people like her down?! I think about that South Park episode where Stan pressed the download button, reluctantly, and as soon as he did, swat-teams busted through his window!

I mean, really. I'd say 80% of Americans have done what she is accused of. What, are they gonna track us ALL down?

she shared the songs, not downloaded them

Ohhh she shared them. What a horrible crime.

This is scapegoating pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less and will do nothing to stop the inevitable collapse of the record industry.

itunes has been around for a long time along with other online music stores. if you really want free music borrow a CD from the library and rip it. you have to be a moron to use any of the p2p out there since it's so easy to track

I never even heard of p2p, so I guess I'm safe. I'm a MP3 kind of guy.

Not into Mozart.

i've borrowed all kinds of music from post 1970's from the library. even stuff from Nickelback. few weeks ago i got some radiohead because they were supposed to be a big influence on Muse.


after a while i got tired of going around the different branches and just paid the $50 for a Slacker Plus subscription.

LOL @ being shocked that the Nickelback wasn't checked out.

NYC public library has online inventory so you don't waste time to go for a far off branch. only downside is they will deliver books to another branch, but not CD's/movies

I live in dinky Iowa and before our library was hit by the 2008 flood, we had a ton of new(er) stuff available.

What time is it in your world?

I mean, the fine is outrageous, but this lady is also pretty dumb. She was offered a comparatively reasonable price to settle and refused. If the law says what she is doing is illegal and she's violating copyrights, etc. then I don't see what her defense is.

But the RIAA can't win in all of this. It's terrible publicity, going after a mother who downloaded and/or shared some songs. But apparently it wasn't just a handful of songs, but was rather a ton, upwards of thousands; they just went after her for like 25 of them. They're smart though to say that this isn't about money, but to set a precedent and serve as an example for the rest of the people out there that illegally download music.

The argument that she should only have to pay the cost to download the songs seems valid, but that's ignoring punitive damages.

When I was in middle school I would download songs, but once I hit high school and college I started buying a lot more stuff on CD. I probably have about 1,000 (not including multi-disc albums, box sets, etc.) and can't even remember the last time I downloaded a song.

Still, I think the RIAA has been going about this all wrong from the start. CDs have been around for how long? And the price of catalog titles haven't changed at all. For every CD I own, there's 2 or 3 that I want to get but refuse to pay the $15.99 price. If the record industry would collectively agree to lower the price of catalog CDs to $9.99 or below, I'm sure they'd get a lot more sales. You can't tell me that the cost of producing a CD (including studio time, sample clearance, art design, pressing, shipping, etc.) hasn't decreased in the 15+ years I've been buying CDs.

Try .rapidshare files. They sound the best.

This is extraordinary.

Is it, really?

Microsoft has a team of scientists working on a .p2p --> .mp3 conversion program. In the labs, it takes about a week for the process to work, and the mp3 is full of pops and static. They hope to have it ready for consumers sometime in 2013, but expect it to be VERY EXPENSIVE.

Haven't bought music in a long time. Pandora is a wonderful thing.

WTF does Avatar have to do with this?

Or rip videos from youtube and convert to mp3. I'm amazed at how much music is out there on the site. Will the riaa be coming after people who listen to music on yt?