SanChonino

Ok, I'll take the devil's advocate role here and ask those that are complaining just why someone that had a supposed preponderence of the evidence against them, creating an appearance of liability in a civil liability case, why that individual shouldn't be slapped hard to sharing music with other individuals?

Not that I like the record companies at all, and not that I don't think that the amount of damages that was awarded wasn't completely ridiculous, but sharing music with others -- short of giving them the CD, record or originally recorded tape you purchased -- is not permitted and does steal income that belongs to the artists (and, sadly enough, to the stupid record companies).

I agree that the record companies are evil, their view of customer rights to move music between formats for consumer convenience is absolutely crazy (see recent comments by Sony that say ripping music from a CD to put on an MP3 player is stealing.  IDIOTS! {record company, not consumers, readers here, etc.}), but anyone that is dumb enough to run Kazaa or similar software is thumbing their noses at record companies in a way that they shouldn't.

If you have hooked a computer up to the net and are sharing music files from it, then you are absolutely breaking the law, no matter how screwed up we think that the law is.  If you want the law changed, lobby the idiots and morons in Congress that were already bought and paid for by the record business and see if you can make them change the law.  Good luck with that though as it isn't bloodly likely to change.

Sorry, not true.

You can duplicate for YOUR OWN personal use, but not to give to another individual.  It could possibly even be a stretch that you would purchase a copy for your use and share with a family member, but I don't think the law really gets that specific, nor have the decisions regarding fair use (that I am aware of).  Fair use, though, as I understand it covers the personal use of the original licenser/purchaser of the product.  If you want to share with another individual (i.e., loan a book type thing), you must give away the original and any and all copies you have made as you may not keep copies.   At least that is how things have been seen so far and I really don't expect them to change.

You won't get any argument from me in that regard as I too think the way that music (and movies for that matter, since they follow the same scheme) is just wrong.  And lets not get into an argument how stupid software licensing is either, as I'm no fan of that crap either  (though I give props to Stardock for no-nonsense approaches to licensing their software and management of licenses for that software).

The whole thing is a mess, but it is a mess because too many people ignored the restrictions that were placed on things and kept spending their money supporting the record companies and movie studios and their restrictions.

If you want the rules changed, boycott the products and let the copyright holders suffer the economic impact of their stupid restrictions and rules.  When they can't sell their product, eventually they won't have enough money left to pay the legal fees needed to sue people into submission and we'll get new laws and rules that will make sense.

In the interim, as I've said before, the laws and protections favor the rights holder -- and that is the people that released the discs -- and not the customers and consumers.  Those rights holders (Sony, Disney, FOX, Viacom, Universal, etc., and their subsidiaries) bought and paid for the laws they have by paying millions into the coffers of politicians campaign funds.  They are high on the feeding list and they get what they want while the public was long since sold out by the politicians.  Just more of the corrupt political system (with equal blame to be placed on both Democrat and Republican pol's).

There are free places online to find the independent music and get it streamed to you quite legally.  Some places better than others, but there are stations legally streaming that offer up a wide variety of music.  You could also legally get paid subscription(s) to Sirius or XM, or enhanced subs to services like Rhapsody.  If you poke around a little, you can find the stuff out there where you need not worry about being in trouble for sharing the music in a non-legal means.

Of course what I'm saying doesn't change the fact that 'the man' runs, and has (basically) ruined commercial radio with too many repeated plays of absolute crap (Justin Timberlake, Timbaland and some other crap off the top 40 list currently is a fine example of same).  You will still find too much over-commercialized and over-produced and over-played crap on services like Sirius and XM, and Rhapsody, Windows Media site, etc.

Search around a little though, and you can start avoiding a lot of that crap and find more under promoted artists.

Try a google search like this one: independent artists streaming radio

and get results like this: http://www.vradio.com/ or this: http://www.radioaid.com/aboutus.php  or others.