End of an era?
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I can see all US websites with an international presence going the same way because of their nightmarish "security" laws. Followed closely by US tourism....you now have to give them your credit card number to get in FFS, so that they can sell it presumably.
Torrent sites in other nations with a septic cock in their ass will follow, but not those in free countries I'd say.
I would guess that actual file sharing sites represent a small amount of music piracy in this country. Anyone can copy a CD now, and a lot of people do whether for their mates or in some sort of paid capacity. How many people have someone in their office who hands round a list of cds and DVDs for sale?
The music companies are spending a load of money barking up the wrong tree here. They'll never stop illegal sharing of music which, let's face it, has been around since before the invention of the C90 cassette. Who remembers the music companies' ridiculous attempt to ban the C90 cassette because it was a length that made it suitable, and therefore encouraged, illegal LP copying?
Yesterday I bought a copy of the new Whip album which featured a free DVD of a gig and all for about £7. Now that's the spirit. Make it worth buying and people will buy it. Maybe not in the quantities the record companies would like, but certainly enough to keep the artists and execs in champagne and charlie.
But that would take more effort than just lobbying for the government to do something about it.
I do feel that American companies (as well as Japanese) companies are paranoid about the remote possibility of what they call 'piracy'. For example, it's interesting to note that Last FM allows users not from the UK to use their service but Pandora radio only allows those in the US to use their service. Also, on YouTube, there are official music videos put out by the record companies, yet some of them, when you click on them, say something like 'This video is unavailable in your country', and they always are by American companies or musicians. But then again, an artist having official music videos on YouTube supplied by the record company should be considered lucky compared to the Japanese record companies... Japanese record companies apparently think that the Internet by any means is evil----they don't even have Japanese record companies put up official videos of their musicians, yet they ask YouTube to delete en masse the videos, leaving little to no possibility of watching a music video by their artists online. Well, if the Japanese record companies had some common sense, they could put up an official, decent quality copy of their music video, so even if they delete the user uploaded ones that they deem as copyright infringement, there would still be a way to view the music video online. I can't believe no one in the Japanese music industry has the brains to think that. It's as if they have this hostility to the Internet as a medium of marketing.
Sorry if my opinion drifted from torrents....
El Jarvo wrote: Wonder if this is just the first domino to fall?
NOOOOOOO!:(
If you've got an itch Jeff, I'll scratch it for you 
As far as torrents are concerned, the companies are wasting their time - many torrents are for things that are unavailable elsewhere - if the companies who owned the rights to the material said that it would be released, any real fans would buy the hard copy regardless.
I think the copyright arguement is a load of crap. I have a very large 'properly' bought cassette album collection. Is it 'ok' by the record companies for me to download torrents to change over the cassettes to mp3 form.... I mean I bought the rights when I bought the cassette... somehow I bet they would still try to sue me outta house and home.... insisting that I have to purchase the cd as well.... and if that is the case, then can we really use iPods since they would state that transfering the music from one form to another is illegal?
The record companies wanted to charge waaaaay too much for albums, and the population answered them. Instead of hearing the masses and making albums affordable, they try to forcefully pull money outta every law-abiding citezen.... if you ask me, what the record companies are doing is against 'supply/demand' in economics and what they are doing should be considered illegal.
