The following is a comment after reading the article The Pirate Bay: Here to Stay?. The article deals with internet piracy, copyrights, intellectual property, freedom of information, and the efforts on both sides to hinder or help those efforts.

Stop ripping off consumers and media piracy will decline. We don’t live in the 80s anymore.

Music CDs should cost little more than it costs for the raw materials. Internet music should cost cents on the dollar. Prices should continue to fall with time. Tons of markets have seen decreases in prices because of technological increases, besides the music market, which is heavily influenced by technology.

The reality is that prices cant go this low, currently. But it could in the future...

CDs cost what, .25 cents in bulk at most, maybe 50% of the profit is going to the artist (thats a huge maybe). Media companies are getting nearly 45% of your money so that they can reinvest it into popular radio, tv, ads and their pockets.

Take the cheapest alternative. Online music. Popular rates are .99 USD a song. There is no physical cost. Paying for bandwidth is very minimal in mass amounts. Nearly free, say .05 USD. There may be some infrastructure costs, say at most .10 USD (over time, it would near 0, as the initial infrastructure would be the most). That leaves .85 cents per song for the distributor and artist. Say the average person has 10,000 songs, which is not uncommon these days. Multiply that out to discover how much money would be being sent to artists/distributors. $8500 USD PER PERSON. It would cost the end user around $10,000 USD. To me, that is unacceptable and no average person can afford that as a side hobby. For me personally, I would be willing to pay maybe $800 for that amount of music. And the biggest difference would be that I would no longer be pirating and mostly buying.

Media lovers on budgets are nearly forced to pirate.

In our current main stream media model, these types of price drops are not possible. A new model is needed. The middle man should be minisculed, if not removed. Artists should receive the money, NOT corporations or distributors in it for profit. If this new model happens, we will see drastic price cuts, artists receiving more percentage on sales, and a massive loss of jobs in the entertainment management industry. (Industries sometimes have to die, and it is unfortunate, but necessary.)

At the same time as price drops occur, and if the price drops are far enough, pirating users will decide that it is easier to purchase the music for the low price, than it is to pirate the music. Below is a lengthy comment that I posted after reading news about “The pirate bay: Here to Stay?”. The article It delves into the depths of current societies ideas on copyright, intellectual property, freedom of information, and big media conglomerates.

A problem now, is that pirates are vastly in the minority. Pirates that are willing to pay for the content only once it reaches a vastly lower price, are even more in the minority. Too many ppl are too technologically impaired to realize that they are getting ripped off at even $8 a CD.

When will stuff change drastically? Only once pirating becomes a majority occurance, or close to it, will drastic upheavel occur. Until then, major companies will ride on the coattails of the consumers who keep paying too much.

SO, inform your friends, family, etc that they are getting ripped off. Inform them of the piracy movements. Inform them that artists do deserve to get paid but NOT overpaid. Show your children and friends that there is a world of culture and music out there besides what western corporations serve to them on MTV. Show them the world, diversify in general, and we may someday solve this problem of unequality and corruptness in the media.

Look into things like AllOfMP3, the seemingly legit Russian bussiness that pays artists, offers songs DRM free, and does it CHEAP. Around .08 USD a song. It is not completly legal in most countries, but at least I feel better doing this than I do straight up pirating content. They are registered through Russian government organizations and have undergone scrutiny. It’s a step in the right direction.