How to defeat piracy:

1. Be a decent human being.
2. See 1.

You can only get away with disrespecting your clients and your customers if you are large enough to have limited/eliminated most/all competition. And even then you can do so for only so long, unless you have some sort of legal mandate than locks in your competitive advantage (which is what SOPA/PIPA, ACTA, and TPP are really all about), before competition builds enough momentum to displace you.

I think its hilarious that Mike has his own, special, dedicated Troll.

Mike, I hear that fire prevents trolls from regenerating. If you dump some lamp oil on them and then light them it will permanently kill them. At least that’s how it works in D&D

I see this and the only thing I see is vultures trying to eat each other.

That remodel was just completed. They ripped KR off years ago. Where did the $ come from to support (bribe) Senator Dodd while in office and then pay his (paltry, I’m sure) salary now?

I will respond to this troll comment within 4 years. Please check daily.

Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar.
You’re gonna go far, you’re gonna fly high,
You’re never gonna die, you’re gonna make it if you try;they’re gonna love you.
Well I’ve always had a deep respect, and I mean that most sincerely.
The band is just fantastic, that is really what I think.
Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?
And did we tell you the name of the game, boy
we call it Riding the Gravy Train.
We’re just knocked out.
We heard about the sell out.
You gotta get an album out,
You owe it to the people. We’re so happy we can hardly count.
Everybody else is just green, have you seen the chart?
It’s a helluva start, it could be made into a monster
if we all pull together as a team.
And did we tell you the name of the game, boy
we call it Riding the Gravy Trail.

Good to see that nothing has changed since 1975.

Obvious evidence? You mean like Viacom vs. Youtube?

And this is why I have no problem pirating stuff. Even if you did buy legit, the artist will STILL not get their money and I refuse to add to the RIMDOJ (RIAAICEMPAADOJ) “politician buying fund”. This type of behavior is not just limited to the recording industry. Until RIMDOJ creates a business model that is fair to both the consumer and the artist, they will not see a single dollar from me.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110912/13500315912/hollywood-accounting-darth-vader-not-getting-paid-because-return-jedi-still-isnt-profitable.shtml

On the one hand, labels screw over artists. They do this in an insane number of ways – controlled composition clauses that ensure they never have to pay artists the STATUTORY royalty rate and get free songs on every record if the artist puts more than ten songs on it, ensuring that they own the masters for the recordings typically forever, this kind of crap that breaks the contracts once they get signed… The list goes on. On the other hand, record labels are businesses that exist solely to make money and in an industry where that vast majority of products released fail to make a profit and where the smash hits aren’t generating nearly as much as they used to these companies are obviously going to try whatever they can to save their own bottom line at the expense of whoever they need to. Does that make it ok? Hell no. But we shouldn’t be surprised when they try this kind is stuff and act like it hasn’t been going on since the music industry began. Piracy is illegal. Ultimately it hurts the artists you love and makes it that much harder for them to do what they do. Not only because it takes money directly out of their royalties because it means that units don’t get silks, but that in turn forces record labels to do things like 360 deals (unthinkable a few decades ago) and to sign fewer artists and to give less support to those they do sign and to step up their money grubbing even further. But obviously that ship sailed a long time ago frankly through the industry’s failure to adapt to changing technology and market demands which has chronically afflicted the industry since the late 90s. Also, don’t think this kind of thing is limited to major labels. This crap also happens on Indie labels all the time but the majors do have a lot more leeway and legal clout. The ignorance of a lot of artists and assigning bad deals and not paying attention to business stuff like they should plays a big role as well. Its a complicated issue and the solution is definitely not pirate whatever the Hell you want. I don’t see many people out there saying “well since I pirated this album but I really like this artist but I object to their record label I’ll just send them money directly!” So the artist gets hit twice – first by you and then by the label. The system is set up to ensure that the last person to make money is the artist, which is usually pretty ugly thing, but the label takes the financial risk of putting up money for the artist to record their albums – money that in most cases they won’t get back from royalties they recoup. So yes, they screw over artists and its deplorable, but piracy doesn’t really solve that problem or help the artists. But the overall picture of what goes on is more complicated than that. Also, the free goods thing is because the free goods are promotional materials that get debt out usually to radio stations and aren’t counted as sales the artist can get royalties on