[BC] Arrested for just telling people where to find Copywrited material.

[Robert Orban]

At 02:46 PM 10/21/2007, you wrote:
> >>An old friend of mine was just laid off from Universal's marketing
>department in Los Angeles, along with his boss and 11 other staff
>members -- Universal nuked his whole department because the company's
>sales downturn made it economically impossible to continue running
>it. Mark had been working there for over 5 years. Don't delude
>yourself; file sharing *is* hurting real people and so far, digital
>downloads are not making up for lost CD sales ;-(<<
>
>Maybe they ought to spend more time worrying about having viable product
>to sell and less time running after children and 75-year-old
>grandmothers for $3000 settlement payments...while they simultaneously
>delude themselves into thinking that such actions will curtail illegal
>downloads.

They *do* have a viable product to sell. The fact that it is being 
illegally downloaded so much should tell you something. There seems 
to be a fantasy among subscribers to this list that the record 
companies don't make products that people want to buy just because 
the product doesn't much appeal to the 50+ crowd that hangs out here. 
If the record companies did not have compelling products, they 
wouldn't be stolen so much! But no matter how compelling your 
product, you can't compete with "free."

To make a not-so-strained analogy, suppose that radio advertisers in 
the last five years or so found a way of illegally getting their 
spots on the radio without paying for them and without the stations' 
consent. Would you then smugly say that "radio must find a new 
business model"? What would you say to the person who said that 
"radio advertising is no longer a viable product because it lacks 
appeal"? Sometimes changing business models is far easier said than done.