UK Record Companies Suing File Sharers

WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, the first lawsuits were filed in the UK against file sharers trading songs." These are the first suits, after many others settled out of court. From the article: "Music fans are increasingly tuning into legal download sites for the choice, value and convenience they offer...But we cannot let illegal file sharers off the hook. They are undermining the legal services, they are damaging music and they are breaking the law"

Damaging music?!?

[Locke2005]

How could file downloads be any more damaging to music than radio airplay, which the record companies appear to beleive increases record sales, otherwise they wouldn't spend so much money paying for airplay! Here these people are providing an equivalent service free of charge, and they are claiming it is "damaging music"? The only way it could damage music is if they use a compression scheme that is too lossy!

legality....

[rwven]

Legally, they're right to sue. Morally, i'm not so sure anyone should be charing for music in the first place... It's kinda like making a business selling air.... Something that has always been around and something that isn't ever going away and somewhere someone had an idea to make a profit selling something that should be free...

This is my opinion of course. :-)

It Isn't The Music That's Being Stolen

[Nom du Keyboard]

It isn't the music that's being stolen.

What's being stolen is the Public Domain. It is being stolen by ever increasing lengths of copyright durations that far exceed the -- in the USA at least -- expressed intent of encouraging the creation of the performing arts.

The moment something is created, the copyright in effect at that moment was clearly sufficient for its creation. Extending it afterwards only steals from the public at large to benefit -- not the individual artist to any great extent, who may already be dead -- but the giant publishing corporations who have sought to own all creative works in perpetuity for centuries now. The American Constitution specifies secure for a limited period exactly because European publishing houses of the time had been able to lock up copyrights forever.

Now we've become them!

Re:right...so thats were my money goes..

[Toby_Tyke]

At least democracy is still intact here.

Really? Which UK do you live in? Because I live in the one where the Labour party just won a 66 seat majority with only 35% of the vote. Thats right, 65% of the electorate voted against Labour, and they were still handed a comfortable win.

By contrast, the Conservatives got 33% of the vote, just 2% less than Labour, but won 198 seats to Labours 356.

Very fucking democratic.