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Report Claims 95% of Music Downloads Are Illegal 331

Un pobre guey writes "The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) press release claims that 95% of music file downloads in 2008, an estimated 40 billion files, were illegal. Oddly enough, digital music sales are up: 'The digital music business internationally saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 per cent to US$3.7 billion in trade value. Digital platforms now account for around 20 per cent of recorded music sales, up from 15 per cent in 2007. Recorded music is at the forefront of the online and mobile revolution, generating more revenue in percentage terms through digital platforms than the newspaper (4%), magazine (1%) and film industries (4%) combined... Despite these developments, the music sector is still overshadowed by the huge amount of unlicensed music distributed online. Collating separate studies in 16 countries over a three-year period, IFPI estimates over 40 billion files were illegally file-shared in 2008, giving a piracy rate of around 95 per cent.'"
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Report Claims 95% of Music Downloads Are Illegal

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  • Inflation... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alain94040 ( 785132 ) * on Friday January 16, 2009 @06:57PM (#26491105) Homepage

    From the report:

    Music companiesâ(TM) digital revenues internationally grew by an estimated 25 per cent in 2008

    I can think of a long list of other industries that would love to have that kind of growth given the current economy.

    Using an inflammatory and inflated claim that "95% of all downloads are pirated" is just showing how greedy the music industry is. But we all knew that already.

    --
    FairSoftware.net [fairsoftware.net] -- where geeks are their own boss

    • Re:Inflation... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by a whoabot ( 706122 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:08PM (#26491225)

      The sole fact that their digital revenues have gone up does not tell you much about the growth of the industry.

      • Re:Inflation... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by moderatorrater ( 1095745 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:56PM (#26491757)
        The fact that the digital downloads grew from 25% and went from 20% of all sales to 25% of all sales says that overall sales remained the same (ie the digital downloads were direct cannibalization of physical purchases). The numbers themselves give that for a fact.

        Couple that with the economy right now and you could say that, since the rest of the economy has gone to shit, avoiding a decline was as good as they could have hoped for. In addition, you could say that since digital downloads make a la carte purchasing possible where physical sales require you to buy a whole cd, the popular songs are getting even more popular with digital downloads. I think that 4x the number of people downloading certain songs would be good overall for the music industry since concert sales are a big draw and everything else (generally) would remain even.

        That doesn't take into account the cost to produce a cd or the comparitive profit margins between the two. I don't know what those comparisons are and I'm not even going to guess at them since the rest of my post is based on things that are true and relatively simple extrapolations from that point, but I will say that I personally believe that the shift from physical to digital media isn't hurting their business, although it is definitely changing it. Let's call it a horizontal shift with opportunities to capitalize on the change.
        • Re:Inflation... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by commodore64_love ( 1445365 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @08:51PM (#26492305) Journal

          Actually I've seen a report over at highdefforum.com which said, even though digital media has increased, sales of CDs have decreased, thereby giving the record companies a net loss in revenue ($1 songs aren't as profitable as $12 CDs).

          Oh well.

          Cry me a river. What we're basically seeing is a return to the 1950s and 1960s when singles routinely outsold albums. The record companies survived that time period just fine, and they can survive its rebirth.

          • WTF? (Score:2, Interesting)

            by MarkusQ ( 450076 )

            Actually I've seen a report over at highdefforum.com which said, even though digital media has increased, sales of CDs have decreased, thereby giving the record companies a net loss in revenue ($1 songs aren't as profitable as $12 CDs).

            Huh? How in the heck could that be? There are costs associated with manufacturing, shipping, distributing and marketing the $12 CD that just aren't there for the $1 downloads. If you're sell a million dollars of $12 CDs vs. the same amount of $1 downloads, how could you p

            • by sowth ( 748135 )

              First off, it only costs $1(us) at most to manufacture and ship a CD. Probably more like $0.50 or less, perhaps even $0.25. So they are likely making $11 to $11.75 for each CD after the physical costs of creating and moving them.

              About marketing: it is a fixed cost which will be the same no matter how the song is distributed, so I don't see how it factors in. Are you saying putting a physical sign at the store is more expensive? I suppose this may be true, but is the cost significant?

              As for not making as

              • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                by shark72 ( 702619 )

                "First off, it only costs $1(us) at most to manufacture and ship a CD. Probably more like $0.50 or less, perhaps even $0.25. So they are likely making $11 to $11.75 for each CD after the physical costs of creating and moving them."

                Distributors and retailers get part of the money you spend when you buy a CD. Record companies typically sell CDs into distribution for $8, so if we're trying to break down the margin model for CD sales, it's best to start with $8, not $12.

                "Add to that the fact most people don't

            • Re:WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)

              by Lord Flipper ( 627481 ) * on Saturday January 17, 2009 @12:13AM (#26493811)

              If you're sell a million dollars of $12 CDs vs. the same amount of $1 downloads, how could you possibly make more profit on the CDs?

              That is correct, they couldn't possibly make as much off the physical CDs. I hate being boring "on purpose" but, manufacturing cost, shipment, advertising, returns policies, middleman (jobber) profit margins and last retail outlet margins cut into the list price something fierce.

              Sure they have some economies of scale, but not even remotely enough to negate the cost of incidentals.

              One thing though, about CDs, is that they are a lot easier for Artist management to enumerate, for purposes of figuring the artist share. And that "share" is usually subtracted from advances, given at the time of signing "For hire" contracts, and is the artist's only non-touring, non-merchandising income.

              Contracts almost always have a per unit rate (minus a percentage for breakage/returns) that is considered the artist share. There are exceptions, of course, and some artists have the wherewithal to initiate touring and merchandising business models that allow them to recoup a lot of the actual cash that was sacrificed when they signed away their publishing rights. But that is rare when we look at the industry and its "workers" as a whole.

              Things are stacked against the workers, in many of the same ways that are common all across the board in our work for hire system. But the cool thing is that, although the labels can make more money with less accountability, by using all-digital means of production, that same tech is available to musicians, and, if utilized, will put growing numbers of them in control of the "means of production."

              If that scenario were to gain the force of momentum and become the rule, rather than the "exception," we'd have a small revolution on our hands, at least in terms of workers' rights and fairness in that industry.

              It would be a rather classic case of a monopoly based on shared objectives, rather than negotiation or collective agreements, etc., with the "workers" on the dealing, rather than the receiving, end of the game.

          • You're right, I misread the figure in the summary. Since the digital downloads went from 15% to 20% (a 33% gain in proportion of their revenue) while only going up 25% over the previous year, their total revenues must have shrunk.

            That said, it's entirely possible that all of the shrinking has been due to the economy causing people to cut down on their entertainment spending, and I can see music being the first thing cut.

            And I agree with your assessment that they'll somehow be able to survive this tim
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Jurily ( 900488 )

            The record companies survived that time period just fine, and they can survive its rebirth.

            I hope not. I want good music :(

    • Re:Inflation... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:14PM (#26491279)

      so did the artists themselves see at 25% increase as well, or are they being screwed on all sides now?

      • Re:Inflation... (Score:5, Informative)

        by againjj ( 1132651 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @08:04PM (#26491861)
        Remember that the digital revenue increase is matched with a non-digital revenue decrease. That is, increased downloads come in part from people who used to buy CDs. So, total revenues are not up 25%.
      • "so did the artists themselves see at 25% increase as well, or are they being screwed on all sides now?"

        I sold $50 worth of CDs in 2008. I can't remember how much I sold in '07 (too much weed) but I'm sure it was at least a 25% increase.

        As for being screwed ... no my wife is pretty much doing it from the same side she always was.

      • Nope, it's the screwed one.

    • by calmofthestorm ( 1344385 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:33PM (#26491495)

      Funny, the RIAA reported the figure at over 9000%. Clearly we must be fair and balanced, and average both sides to reach a compromise.

      (>9000% + 95%) / 2 is >4547.5%

    • Re:Inflation... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pestilence669 ( 823950 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:36PM (#26491533)

      Using an inflammatory and inflated claim that "95% of all downloads are pirated" is just showing how greedy the music industry is. But we all knew that already.

      It may not be inflated. Remember what the music industry considers piracy: Copying your library to an MP3 player, burning a CD for your car, putting your library on a laptop, etc. The industry doesn't like the fair use provisions in copyright law, so they frequently pretend like they don't exist.

      It's not like the old days, where you buy an 8-track tape for the car and LP for the house... eventually replacing them with cassette tape and compact disc... sometimes more than once. Who's ever lost or broken an album?

      Now that people can make their own copies and backups, there's a lot less opportunity to sell the exact same product repeatedly with ever increasing costs. Digital downloads tend to result in only one sale. You can't "break" an MP3 like a scratched CD. Bummer. Time to bring back Vinyl.

      • Re:Inflation... (Score:4, Informative)

        by gbarules2999 ( 1440265 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @08:01PM (#26491833)
        "You can't "break" an MP3 like a scratched CD." Unless you're running an unpatched Windows 7 beta. http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/01/05/warning-windows-7-beta-could-corrupt-your-mp3s [neowin.net]
      • They're also going to see their numbers get skewed very quickly with services like ZunePass and Rhapsody.

        I had several gigs of pirated music and a dozen or so CDs ripped from over the last 10 years.

        In less than a month I've downloaded more music than the last 4 years pirated.

        I suspect a Zunepass would wildly inflate the number of legitimate downloads per person as well. This statistic won't stand up very long as the subscription model catches on.

    • I wonder how they know that the download is pirated.

      Do they know if the downloader has or not the music on CD?

      Spooky!

      • by Gerzel ( 240421 ) *

        If the downloader had the CD then why didn't the downloader simply rip from the CD?

        • by Jamu ( 852752 )
          Maybe because the CD is unreadable, or maybe because they can't find the CD, or maybe because it's easier than finding the CD.
        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Kent Recal ( 714863 )

          Well, I for one re-downloaded a few albums that I already own from piratebay simply because I was too lazy to rip them myself.
          Why go through the hassle of shuffling physical discs when one click of a button will do the same?

          Furthermore I occassionally got additional live-recordings, rare recordings, bootlegs, even documentaries bundled with the discographies that I downloaded - that's what I call added value.

        • If the downloader had the CD then why didn't the downloader simply rip from the CD?

          Nearly all my CDs are packed in a box and buried in a closet from when I moved. If I were to get a collection of my CDs onto a music player, it'd be far more convenient for me to just do a few searches and queue up a bunch of mp3s than it would be to go CD by CD and go through the rip. Honestly, even if my CDs weren't buried in the closet, I'd still rather just download them. I hate babysitting optical media.

      • >>>I wonder how they know that the download is pirated.
        >>>Do they know if the downloader has or not the music on CD?

        That's a good point. I recently downloaded a bittorrent called Billboard Hot 100 for 1980-2000, and approximately 3/4th of the songs I already own. I was probably counted in this survey as "pirating 2000 songs" even though in reality I only pirated around 500. The rest I legally purchased on CD.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by pipatron ( 966506 )
          Ok, you're excused by your username, but seriously, your taste in music must be really bad if you *own* the crap on the billboard toplist... :P
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      Why do you assume it's inflated? That's one in 20 songs that you download ends up being good enough to pay for. That sounds reasonable. Honestly, I think they're lucky to get 5%. 5% of a mind bogglingly huge number is nothing to sneeze at.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Report Claims 95% of Music Downloads Are Illegal

      My report claims that 95% of Music Industry Executives Are Illegal.

  • by Just Some Guy ( 3352 ) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:00PM (#26491123) Homepage Journal

    Advice to the RIAA: forget the piracy exists. You simply are not going to ever get money from those people - get over it. On the other hand, you're making more money than every from downloads and you should work to keep growing those figures. That's the only thing you can do, frankly. Fighting piracy is like punching marshmallows.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well I wouldn't say that they would never be able to market to some of the subset (ITMS?), namely the casual pirates. I agree, however, there is a core group of people that will never pay for the content and will engage in distribution of copyrighted material. You can woo those who occasionally use Limewire, etc by not treating people like criminals like they have done in the past. A lot of the time (this is true of movies/shows too) it is much easier for someone to fire up some p2p software and download so

    • by TFer_Atvar ( 857303 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:40PM (#26491585) Homepage

      Fighting piracy is like punching marshmallows.

      Man, making s'mores at your house must get interesting!

    • Pretty much (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @08:06PM (#26491897)

      Also if it really is that big and your sales are going up, well then what's the worry? Maybe it actually leads to MORE sales.

      The problem is they project this image, and indeed have this mentality, that copyright infringement is theft. No it isn't. The reason a retailer hates theft is because not only does it decrease sales, but it takes away an item they had for sale. That hurts the bottom line. If someone steals a bag of chips, I can't sell those chips to anyone else. So if I'm a retailer, I want to do everything I can to stop that (and even then retailers accept that some shrinkage is going to happen regardless).

      However if someone came in to my store, made a perfect copy of a bag of chips and then started handing out those copies for free. Well I'd be less miffed. Maybe I'm losing some sales now, but it isn't as though anything has been taken from me. Now suppose that when someone does that my sales don't go down, they in fact go up. People decide they want to come in and buy more chips, or other things I offer. Despite the free stuff being given away, I make more money. Well hell in this case I'd be happy. Let them hand out free stuff all day long if it makes me more money.

      They just have this unrealistic greedy idea that if there was a magical system that could stop all copyright infringement, they'd get 20x the sales and thus 20x the profits. Ummm no. At best, you'd probably stay the same (the only empirical study of this ever done by Harvard and UNC found copying has no statistically significant effect on sales) at worst your sales would go down. They need to stop living in a fantasy world and be ahppy with what they've got.

    • Although I tend to agree, I don't think that all "pirates" would be pirates if a better legal alternative was available. One thing that a high level of piracy suggests is that it's offering a better service overall. So concentrate on improving the legal services, get rid of DRM, offer lossless downloads, reduces prices, offer discounts for buying albums over tracks, provide supplementary materials such as artwork, band profiles etc - anything to make people think that a legal purchase isn't such a ripoff.
    • Actually it's more like punching poor people and students. Blood from a stone.
  • I call bullsh*t! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:03PM (#26491147)

    How can they be sure 95% of them are illegal? Isn't this the same group that's for years been trying to track down who is downloading what and suing them? I mean, studies like this go to the honesty of the other person. And if people will lie about something as trivial as how many sexual partners they've had, what are the odds of people telling the truth here? Besides, if 95% of music downloads were illegal, that's a pretty strong argument that downloading music should be legalized, especially considering how pervasive it is and how ineffective enforcement has been to date.

    There are three kinds of lies...

    • by CrackedButter ( 646746 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:16PM (#26491293) Homepage Journal
      The thing is, I can download illegal music and then purchase legal music, does this mean they counted the illegal music as a lost sale even though I also bought legitimate music? How can anybody know what I'm doing. As you said there are lies...
      • exactly. that's why i've been trying to convince my employer to take advantage of file sharing rather than fight it. viral marketing is the best kind of promotion one can have. statistically speaking, word of mouth has a higher success rate of drawing new fans and generating purchases than any other form of marketing or advertising. people will gloss right over a magazine ad that costs hundreds of dollars to put up or completely ignore radio commercials that cost thousands of dollars to air, but if their fr

    • Re:I call bullsh*t! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by slazzy ( 864185 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:18PM (#26491313) Homepage Journal
      I wonder if they take into account people downloading music for cds/albums/tapes which they own but are damaged or lost. I have a few friends who have to regularly re-download their music collection each time they get a new computer as they have no idea how to transfer files from one computer to another etc... these same people only seem to download the same 80's music that they already have cassette tapes for, but it's easier to download rather than digitize the music.
      • >>>they have no idea how to transfer files from one computer to another

        I can't believe people are actually that dumb? All you need is an external USB drive. You might even be able to squeeze all your songs into an Ipod and transfer them to your new PC that way. It's a piece-of-cake and obvious.

    • by mrsteveman1 ( 1010381 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:30PM (#26491441)

      How can they be sure 95% of them are illegal?

      This is what is going on here. The media companies decide, beforehand, how much money they should be making in a given period of time, based on voodoo bullshit as far as i can tell, then if they don't make that much money they bitch about the pirates and blame losses on them.

      So while their digital revenue and legal downloads have probably gone up, the RIAA and the companies they represent think it should be going up MORE, a lot more apparently. The problem is they are fucking wrong, and have no credibility to say anything in public anymore.

      • This is what is going on here. The media companies decide, beforehand, how much money they should be making in a given period of time, based on voodoo bullshit as far as i can tell, then if they don't make that much money they bitch about the pirates and blame losses on them.

        I tend to agree, with the exception that they'll blame the (ahem!) "pirates" anyway whether they exceed their projections or not.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gotzero ( 1177159 )
      This will turn out to be that 95% of music files downloaded were not downloaded legally from RIAA artists. There is a huge world world out there they are not looking at, both geographically and musically. There are massive amounts of unpaid but legal downloads from artists that allow D/Ls, international artists, and D/L services for pay or not that do not sell songs from RIAA artists, etc.
    • by timmarhy ( 659436 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:37PM (#26491547)
      they can't be sure, i suspect they have arrived at his figure by checking for pirated content on torrent sites. so really they should be saying "95% of music on torrents is pirated". Which i would have no issue with - i think they would be right.

      the problem is they then leap straight to this dream land where every download is a sale they missed out on. most of their shit isn't worth a download when it's free, let alone 15$.

    • .. to carry on your thought about bullsh*t, they assume that had 95% not been downloaded illegally, this naturally means that the entire 95% would have been purchased through normalized, legit means. Of that 95%, how many downloads were of people trying to check out a CD or album for free that they weren't sure if they would ever buy? If the music was not what was expected, then the statistic is biased assuming they would have purchased the album anyhow.

      I may like one Guns'n'Roses song on their new al
    • by Chabo ( 880571 )
      The other side of that statistic is also that it seems like most pirated music is either of poor encoding quality, or mislabeled, or otherwise bad (besides the obvious joke of all modern music being bad, even in studio-quality).

      Try to find a song, download it, find out it's mislabeled, download it again, it's a 22kHz MP3, download it again, it's at 96kbps, download it again, the audio is choppy...
    • by schon ( 31600 )

      This is the same group that came to Canada last year, and started telling everyone (especially politicians here) that Canada has the highest rate of illegally downloaded music in the world.

      I had to explain to several people that they were outright lying - and provably so... In reality the percentage of illeaglly downloaded music in Canada is *ZERO* (ie. it's legal to download here due to the copyright levy), so unless every other country in the world has a *negative* "piracy" rate, it's impossible for Canad

    • > How can they be sure 95% of them are illegal?

      Easy. Total storage on all ipods sold divided by the estimated storage requirements for all cds sold. Because as we all know, someone with a 40 gig ipod must be stealing music, because nobody could own that many cds.

  • by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:03PM (#26491149) Homepage Journal

    ... Tell the Artist to stop making illegal music.

  • by riceboy50 ( 631755 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:04PM (#26491161)
    If you provide customer-friendly channels for obtaining music legally online, your sales will increase. Quit yer bellyachin' already.
    • Small wonder why the iTunes Music Store and the Amazon MP3 download store are doing so well nowadays.

    • Not saying I agree with the RIAA, but it seems to me that it'd be hard for them to compete.

      Benefits provided by pirating from private torrent trackers:
      1. Free
      2. Huge selection, high quality
      3. Fast downloads

      Benefits provided by theoretical customer-friendly RIAA approved sites:
      1. Good selection, hopefully high quality
      2. Hopefully fast downloads

      Even if they can match the selection, quality, and download speed of the private torrent trackers, they can never compete with free. What other aspect can they provide

      • by riceboy50 ( 631755 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @08:18PM (#26492027)
        You are overlooking one crucial point. To the average user, buying a song from iTunes is easier than finding a reliable p2p service, installing the software (and possibly configuring it properly), and searching for the songs they want which may have several versions and different availability. Simply put, it's possible to make the legal channels much easier and friendly to use.
      • What they need to do is develop some sort of pricing model that achieves some level of market segmentation. Kids downloading songs off of limewire aren't going to pay $.99 per song, so if you give them the song for $.05 then you just made $.05 (minus the tiny infrastructure cost) that you otherwise wouldn't have. At the point where the infrastructure cost outweighs what you can charge them (kids don't all have credit cards), then let them pirate it, theres no profit to be had anyway and its just free publi
  • by PixelThis ( 690303 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:06PM (#26491193)
    95% of statistics are made up on the spot.
  • 95%? (Score:2, Interesting)

    And how many people have been successfully prosecuted for these "illegal" downloads?
  • Why don't we use BitTorrent to our advantage and do some creative sharing? I propose a system of sharing free(as in freely licensed, like creative commons) songs where once a person has seeded the song to a certain ratio, it is deleted and it is automatically downloaded again. With enough people helping, I'm sure we could have some fantastic fake statistics a year from now.

  • by tmosley ( 996283 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:17PM (#26491305)
    Are they including songs being played on MySpace pages? Unauthorized used on YouTube, etc?

    Sounds pretty stupid to me.
  • by spandex_panda ( 1168381 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:17PM (#26491309)
    I read that NiNs' freely available album was the highest selling digital music seller on Amazon [amazon.com] I just checked tpb [thepiratebay.org] and the fellow who created the torrent says the whole album is CC share alike!

    So this means that the album IS available for free to legally download via torrent AND it was the highest sale on Amazon. Remarkable eh!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Because it was cheap (only $5) and you could share it with your friends (CC). People like both. People buy both. Are the music labels even listening? It works!
  • Straight piracy numbers, even when they aren't pulled right out of the industry's ass, really aren't all that informative, given how incredibly easy it is to download massive quantities of stuff. The real question is, how many of the pirates could actually be converted to paying customers?

    Back in my highschool days(IRC, usenet, and earlish Napster, on dialup, eventually low-end DSL) I had a collection of ~80gigs. Given that most of it was 128kb mp3, that was a gigantic number of tracks. I doubt that I li
  • by kpainter ( 901021 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:19PM (#26491331)
    5% of all music downloads are overpriced.
  • Okay, now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by willoughby ( 1367773 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:20PM (#26491349)
    ...let's go through that list of "illegal" downloads & find what percentage are not available for "legal" purchase/download.

    In other words, how much of that music is not available from any "legal" source?
  • .. meaning doesn't make us as much money as we'd like.

    The only people who's opinions I respect in the music business are the artists and recording professionals. All the rest are spongers and leeches. If digital music connects the people who create music directly to the people who want to listen and pay them, then that's great. If it means that the business goes back to it's roots as a cottage industry and puts all the fat-cats out of work, then even better.

  • 100% (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nonillion ( 266505 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:29PM (#26491439)

    Sheesh, why not say it's 100%, or even 99.999% At least come up with some believable percentage for crying out loud..

  • 8 years ago... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by K_E_Morr ( 463022 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @07:30PM (#26491451)

    100% of music downloads were illegal. Sounds like the RIAA is making progress

  • Beacause I've paid for my right to legaly download all the music I can sice I paid levies on CD's I used to backup my photos.
  • In Canada, 100% of music downloads are legal. The law is clear: it is perfectly legal to download music without paying for it.
    • by Shados ( 741919 )

      No, the law isn't "clear". There is a legal precedent about it. The law didn't change, so if you get sued, your lawyer has to quote a precedent, not the law as written in the books.

  • Anyone else need to read that twice to read it correctly?
  • and a 50% chance they will ask for a federal bail out package

  • by Xelios ( 822510 ) on Friday January 16, 2009 @08:31PM (#26492135)
    "The top-selling digital single of 2008 was Lil Wayne's Lollipop with sales of 9.1 million units"

    I think my hope for the human race just died a little.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Actually, that just shows that no-one who listens to Lil Wayne was smart enough to go to TPB and download it for free.

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