I really don't give a damn what they try to do - they can't touch me, as everything i have on digital is safe, accounted for... licensed and legal in every sense.
I even got written permission for my analogue transfers - so they can't even hit me for those.
Not that i fileshare audio and video and anything copyright-to-someoneelse anyway.
However, like Exo puts it - examples of people who are literally trafficking material, such as Exo refers to, deserve what they get - hopefully the book thrown at them (if the book is the collected works of the Encylopedia Brittanica or similar, that's gonna hurt).
And if the bodies in question aint got the wotsits to make the real abusers suffer badly, well.. i guess i could always volunteer to solve their problem
:P
AndrewMel :-
I dunno what planet you live on, but here on planet Earth.. not everyone has nice convenient high-speed internet connections, some who do have internet connectivity do it by web tv boxes and other thin-client type access over dialup and equally not much better narrow broadband.
A huge amount of the music fan market is still using CD & cassette primarily - and they aint gonna be ditching everything in favour of ripped-off downloads if they aint got convenient ways to access it.
You honestly think the people with quality-first issues are gonna settle for commericial (be it indepently produced or big-label produced) 'seconds' grade audio when they could rightfully expect a proper uncompressed copy for their hard-earn't cash..??
Anyway - the simple reality of the 'post it, charge a small sum, cut out the middle man' comes down to this :-
BANDWIDTH and TRANSFER LEVELS - If you produced something really good and self-marketed it by the web, as sure as dung stinks, you'll find yourself playing a massive catch-up game to provide a decent grade of hosting for your goods - and that costs money, quite a bit of it, to allow for the on-demand impact that'll happen.
Again, i don't know which planet you exist on, but here on planet Earth.. it's only the been-there-done-it's (outfits like Marrilion and sucessful players in the music game) that totally bypassed the commericial big-league labels, as those kinda people can afford to take the chance on big-scale hosting. Ms or Mr Bloggs (the generic, 'i think i can sing.. and hey i look totally hot' no-hopers) of the pop idol wannabes world dont have that kinda money floating, and so they almost certainly end up in the hands of the big-league labels.
If it was as straightforward as you seem to think it is, the commericial big-players label setup would have died years ago due to independents.
Actually, i could think of better destinations for the 'pop idol' wannabees, but there's already enough selfish minded people in Hell already