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You can give your music away if you want but you also must respect the wishes of artist who depend on the income from sales by NOT stealing theirs.

Theift is theift and there is no difference. Your point of view does not give you the right to parse the rights of other musicians EVER.

Like I said , I already have paid for it in some form or another...so it's not strealing.

scottchristy wrote:Like I said , I already have paid for it in some form or another...so it's not strealing.

Rationalize it however you want, but you haven't paid for it in a form that's "legally recognized" by the owner of the work. You may think you've paid for it "in principle" but by law, you haven't.

You got me there.

well what we see here is actually an economic principle. File sharing has decreased the total deadweight loss by increasing total surplus.

The market of record labels is an oligopoly. Each of these companies with substantial market share try to sell like a monopoly. Copyrights and patents are a government induced barrier to other firms that are competing. No two firms can sell the same product. For example you wont have two major record labels selling the exact same album because one has created a barrier to the other in selling that album. Essentially, these "licenses" act against competition. And so prices are raised, and equilibrium is not reached. This increases deadweight loss. However when file sharing started out, there was a move towards equilibrium because the access to free music allowed the supply to increase. This means that we gained total surplus. File sharing makes profit making conditions much more difficult.

But we have to realize that in perfect competition there is a long term zero profit which is ideal. Record labels have always been positive profit firms. We're in an economic transitory state here. Yes, the artists deserve to be compnesated for their music, but through the business practices of record labels artists have been for the most part being taken advantage of.

average tootal costs to audio production and distribution are going down and therefore it is becoming profitable for more firms to enter. The more firms that enter the higher competition becomes and everyone loses market share (which again is ideal) and the market becomes a competitive market where everyone is a price taker. We are guided by the invisible hand to a natural equilibrium.

Basically I wrote this in 10 minutes so it may not be very organised but I'd like to end off with this:

Were leaving the days of the big record labels, and moving to the days of many many small firms sharing the production and selling the music. Since the price will go down naturally when the market becomes more competitive people will have less incentive to download and more incentive to just buy the music through legal channels.

Ideally would be to eliminate the record label from owning any licenses to produce because that is anti-competitive. However, the artist should still hold the rights and licenses.

Im talking about a complete reorganization of economic activity in this market.

For example artist A will make album B . Record label C and D will both buy the rights to distribute A. Neither C or D will be allowed to buy the rights to be the only distributor.

It's like a fish market.
Artist --> is the fisher
Record Company ---> fish seller. (sells the fish after buying it)

I guess you could say I think the music industry is going to become like the produce industry.

Sorry once again for anything that is incoherent. I'm off nite.