Hah, finally a good reason to get female pictures to our site ;-)

Hey! What is my girlfriend's pic doing there? :o

Mega-millionaire Madonna trying to tell me that p2p systems are hurting her bottom line holds about as much credibility as screen doors on a submarine. Message to the RIAA and all those who they represent: Flush your mega-stars down the nearest toilet, get some serious independent artists, grow up, get a life, then call me in the morning. This whole ad campaign reeks of Nazi propaganda. -- Klingy --

In the bigger picture: a.) Yes, it is stealing, and specifically illegal b.) Yes, someone is losing some money, and i. The more prevelant it becomes, the more they lose ii. They have money to fight it politically c.) The sooner they can curb it from becoming mass-market activity, the sooner those of use who love it can not feel so threatened that it might get more official resistance. Face it, the mass market CANNOT make this the norm, and the more it looks and feels to the industry like this is common, the harder it will be for those of us who don't mind breaking that law... So screw the masses. I hope the ad campaign works so politicians can ignore it again. --aph

I haven't got a clue what you just said. "It" (peer-to-peer) is already mass-market; it IS the norm. Face *that*. Stealing from the mega-Madonnas and mega-Spears? Tuff Titt. Breaks my heart, it does. The industry has been stealing from us for years, and in particular, the smaller artists. The ad campaign is a crock of you-know-what. The only ones losing money are those that stole it from us in the first place. And they will continue to lose. Let's see how deep their pockets run. -- Mike --

The fact is that recording artists are required to sign up to "slave contracts" with labels in order to get _any_ promotion from the label. This causes some seriously **cked up things to the markets: -small artists pay for promotion that label does -small artists pay for their musicvideos label want them to do -small artists pay for management fees for labels -labels OWN all the music -- whether artist stays on the label or not, label can (and will) do whatever they want with the music Some nice ideas to chew: Pressplay pays something around $0.001 to each downloaded song for artist. Seriously. Think about it. You get a grass-roots following and distribute your music through legal, label-owned music service and _ONE MILLION PEOPLE_ download your single -- you get $1,000. And then label deducts the fees listed above. Best-known example of label-abuse was probably the bankruptcy of girl-band TLC back in '90s -- they sold tens of millions of albums, but actually owed money to label.

Ha Ha Ha this shows desparation in part of the RIAA to get us to STOP Downloading. Excuse me while I get the songs I wanted from Dreams So Real. Well folks it is election time again. I suppose you all know what that means. If you don't like what is going on, then be sure and vote Dommocrat. Republicans all screw people over. If you want P2P to survive, be sure not to vote for anyone claiming to be a Christian. Voodoohippi (Defender of FREE Cyberspace)

All of you act like the artist does not have a choice in the matter. My cousin signed with Dreamworks a short while ago and held out for a better contract. Eventually they gave in and gave the band more control over their own music, and less money owed to the label. The thing is most "independent" artists are so desperate to not be independent and be "signed" that they think they have to settle for whatever the label offers them for fear it will disappear. Remember, THEY SIGNED. So it is not the label that is screwing them, they are screwing themselves. And TLC??? Give me an f-ing break. Blaming the label for their stunning lifestyle? Burning down homes, flying first class to europe for lunch. Jesus Christ that is idiotic. I am not saying the labels are the good guys, what I am saying is that stealing from them to hurt the big ones like spears and madonna does not hurt those two, it hurts all the little guys you purport to adore because they have less say in the contracts they sign so in order to afford the big bitches, they tighten the screws on the little guys. Theft is theft, no matter how it is justified.