City of London Police Launch Intellectual Property Crime Unit

> I ask again: so what?

>> And I'm telling you that nobody gives a shit, because they just want to listen to music.

Sure, you Just Want to listen to music, but that doesn't mean musicians/producers/record-companies should then just give it to you for free. This is what you're still missing.

I Want to have sex with hot women, but that doesn't mean they should then just automatically stop and spread their legs at me where ever I go.

> Musicians don't need producers--in fact, this has been a role only recently filled in the 20th century. They don't need them to perform, they don't need them to record, they don't need them to make money. In fact, you can very easily find examples of producers doing more hard than good...just ask any fan of Streetlight Manifesto.

Sure, traditional record companies are increasingly unnecessary, but people still need to somehow become aware of an artist's music - otherwise no one will buy it. In other words, there's still a need for "awareness middlemen" and/or advertising, even if home studios have made record companies unnecessary on the production side.

But see, when you declare that you just Want Stuff For Free, you're not making a distinction between those evil record companies and their poor abused slaves, the artists.

You can download the shit out of an independent artist's music, but he too wants you to pay for it. Gracing someone's music with the attention of your ears doesn't actually put food on his table.

There are songs available for purchase. If you want a particular song, you should pay for it, because the song has value to you. If you download it for free, you get something of value, but the music producer gets nothing. That's simply not a fair trade. To be more exact, it's not even a trade. It's you by-passing the trade.

> Do you really think these companies are just going to get frustrated, pack up their toys and go home?

As I said, if the producers can't make a satisfactory profit, then they'll stop producing music. See, that would actually be the point where they'll just throw in the towel. If everyone thought that they're somehow entitled to receiving music for free, like the guy I responded to, then the only music you could get would be the musical equivalent of open-source.

> It's the same reason I don't buy into these "starving artist" sob stories: no one can escape market forces.

Oh believe me, I'm all for market forces. I'm not saying musicians should be entitled to making a living through music either.

> The fact of the matter is, that business landscape is extremely competitive and typically requires a large initial investment. It's always been this way. The one force that seems to be an equalizer is technology in general getting cheaper and cheaper, NOT the protectionism known as copyright.

Note that you're actually talking about business there. So am I.

I don't even support IP enforcement or patents etc, I'm just saying that if no one takes music producers up on their offer of voluntary exchanges of music for money, then all those who are producing it to make money will simply stop.

> No, I don't realize that. The overwhelming majority of music never makes any money because making money isn't the point.

I do realize that music is a passion for musicians, but record companies are in it for a profit. They're businesses, and they're what I was referring to.

You're free to seek out indie musicians on CDBaby or whatever and then download the shit out of their music, but even they'd at least prefer that you buy it. That's why their music can be found online.

> What I think you're missing is people don't believe them not paying for music causes harm.

I'm aware of that. But I don't think the guy I originally responded to thought even that far. That's why I responded. He's just completely oblivious to the fact that people putting music up for sale actually do expect others to pay for it.

I'm not well versed in the details, but I understand you can reclaim certain costs incurred in defending yourself in such cases.

Very little. If you've had professional legal representation then naturally the legal profession tends to look out for them, but the compensation to defendants personally (and to other parties involved in a case, such as witnesses and jurors) for their time and inconvenience is negligible.

What else are you going to do? Stop issuing penalties for motoring offences

It is sad that you dismiss that possibility without even considering it. Our structure for penalising poor driving in the UK is woefully unfit for purpose:

1. Its sanctions aren't an effective deterrent for the relatively small number of drivers whose behaviour really is habitually unacceptable and likely to cause significant problems for others.

2. It penalises many generally good drivers for breaking arbitrary rules without any evidence that what they did was actually dangerous, or even inconveniencing anyone else.

3. In some cases, it even gives drivers a despicable choice between driving safely and driving legally, because obeying those arbitrary rules when they are obviously inappropriate under the circumstances will antagonise and/or inconvenience other road users. Some of those other users will then do something more dangerous, such as performing a risky overtaking manoeuvre, and while the law may say that the other driver is then responsible for the resulting accident, that is of no comfort to the innocent and now dead third driver who was coming the other way and wound up in the head-on collision.

5. It penalises many generally good drivers for minor errors that everyone makes at some point, based essentially on luck. If everyone were actually prosecuted reliably and uniformly for these offences, so many drivers would lose their licence within a month that the law would be brought down or the government would be. Because prosecutions instead happen only intermittently and the law is inconsistently applied, it instead serves as an effective fund-raising tool, often with a glaring conflict of interest where effectively altering driver behaviour would reduce revenues so the incentives are aligned with catching people out rather than deterring undesired actions, and it breeds driver resentment.

In short, our system does not effectively defer serious bad behaviour, while simultaneously penalising behaviour that may not have caused any real problem at all and reducing general respect for the law among a very large proportion of the adult population.

With the rise of automated penalties where no review by a human with common sense need even be involved, man is now judged (often erroneously) by machine, and as I've been arguing, that means the system causes wildly disproportionate distress to a significant number of completely innocent people. I don't accept your claim that the people getting off on these appeals were almost always there and doing something wrong really and just got off on technicalities. I've never seen any data to support that position, in contrast to numerous reports that would indicate otherwise and demonstrate beyond any doubt that these kinds of automated enforcement systems are often fundamentally flawed.

(Just to be clear: I have been a driver for many years, and never had so much as a parking ticket. I have no personal axe to grind here. I just think obviously broken "justice" systems should be fixed, not defended as if making something the law automatically makes it right.)