I’ve long agreed with David Levine’s perspective, Mike. What’s interesting is that he managed to convey many of the things I’ve had trouble bringing to the table myself.

But Perrsonally, I find it interesting that you published this, especially after your Scarce Goods post earlier in the week. Are you playing devil’s advocate on this one? I’m beside myself in the berevity of your commentary as well.

I thought the laws were set up so that anyone at any time had to be breaking some law no matter how obscure. I just thought that was how we have a police state masquerading as a free state, and no one is the wiser.

“The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.”
– Frank Zappa

200 Million Americans Can’t Be Felons, and a Billion Flies can’t be wrong either: Eat Shit.
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No, but he’s somehow right. People will not be coerced or forced into paying for content they are exposed to, and then have to go, run and pay for it. Anything of interest to poeple should be free to them in some form or another, and only the premium content, the high quality copy of a CD, with Manual, Glossy, Story, Lyrics and Packaging should be offered for sale. The crappy and scratchy 128k MP3’s online should be free and available for people of all financial means.
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If the Recording Industry Cartell would have let things alone, then we all would have a chance to find our Favorite Music, and the ones of us that like to pay for Premium Content, like to support our Artists, Like only ONE SONG of a otherwise Crappy CD, would have paid for that content. BUt now it’s all blow out of proportions. We are in a war again.

To the table, I bring the phenomenon known as “The Pussy Cat Dolls” for discussion. Here you have a group of women that were auditioned for their looks, dancing ability, voice, and, most importantly, their ability to take direction. They have spawned 5 hit singles. I will admit that I, who have listened to only independent music for my entire music loving life, shunning the radio for decades, actually like some of their songs, in all of their simple pop glory. They have achieved the goal of entertaining me. They did not however, achieve their main goal, and really the only reason for their creation, which is to sell me a CD. I have even watched an episode of their TV show, however embarrassing that may be to admit.
Consider me mildly entertained.
This is not, however, the creation of an artist, at least not the one on screen. This is the creation of a cunning and sharp business woman, and as a businessman, I deeply respect her abilities. As we all know, the primary goal of business is to make money, and she has done this well.
This is not music. Period. This is a corporation with a marketable product engineered by a highly skilled team. This is not some group of 21 year olds that have been playing in Bobby’s garage since grade school, perfecting their craft.
It is very tough for me to hand money over to something that only mildly entertains me, and even harder when I know it is more like buying stock than supporting an artist.
I buy artists records, regardless of label or origin, whenever i see fit.
I often ‘test drive’ said records on myspace, or youtube, having wasted $15-20 time and time again on albums that just didnt cut it.
There is a tremendous difference between artists and businesses masquerading as artists.
Artists have and always will make the vast majority of their money from touring. This is true from the local bar band to 50-cent.
Businesses will always make their money from record sales.
I will always support artists, because I am one.

k-12 schooling
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the problem takes care of itself. SAT score avgs on a state basis doesn’t mean anything.Some states like CA don’t require ALL students to take the SATs..only the ones looking to continue their education. I live in Georgia, consistently one of the lowest ranked states education wise according to the SAT score lineups. Georgia requires all of the students to take the SAT if they’re in public school. In my area there are 2 private HighSchools for every 1 public school. Cheapest ones run around 7-8k a year + books + summer reading books + lunch money. The most expensive one is at 11k a year now. The SAT scores from all these private schools are all kept..private. You may see a lot of numbers in the newspapers and on the tv screen but none of them mean anything unless you understand how they are calculated. The public school system across most of Georgia is TERRIBLE. Kids can’t read, write, or do algebra. It’s not their fault, it’s the fault of the state. Teachers of these private schools don’t make any more money than the public school teachers, there’s no tenure, and often times if they don’t hold the chair of their department they may make less money than if they went to the public school down the street. However, they don’t have to put up with ANY SHIT from ANY students. They can use physical force to remove you from a classroom, they can kick you the f*ck out of the school for any reason at all. You bet your a** the students behave and learn the material or else risk being kicked out, and have to put up with their parents breathing down their neck about it. It was funny, at the beginning of each semester in HS you knew which seniors didn’t make the grades that semester by who was driving their new car to school or by who was being dropped off my mommy and daddy. I made my grades and didn’t get to drive, but that was my parents being nazis. Either nazis are good parents. I’ll decide in 10 more years when I have a job, a car, house, wife, children, and a boat to take my son fishing on. If the public schools don’t provide what you want then there’s always the private sector. Don’t even argue but they cost money..cause I had many friends whose parents in all reality could not afford the school their child was at. A few would eat macaroni and cheese and pbjs a few nights out of the week. Cancel the cable tv, DSL, etc… They all made it and their children do as well as I do in school, a few even better.

Clinton was a bad president, no doubt about it.
Bush is a bad president, no doubt about that.

We the people of the United States of America are to blame for not investigating these people further.
Congress is to blame for giving those 2 dogs too much free roam on their leashes.
The media is to blame for sensationalizing everything that doesn’t matter and burying all the information that did matter. Blame goes in all directions and this is still a democratic-republic (we have a house AND senate, that’s a democratic-republic…nothing else but.) The USA still has many laws going all the way back to the 1600s..the blue laws…the origin of all the age limits on boozing (my fav’t past time). In some states out west it’s still illegal to steal horses and the punishment can be a good ol’ hanging. There are a lot of laws still in the books that need to be cleaned out. in Georgia it is illegal to have more than 1.75L of alcohol in your car at any given time…law goes back to AL Capone’s rum running business along I-95. Ever heard of anyone being hung for cattle rustling or going to jail for rum running, hell no.

I hate lawyers, I hate politicians, and I hate people who play the blame game (mostly lawyers and politicians). They ALL lie, cheat and steal on your tax dollar. With this new age of information I can pull up on google a ton of information on all of the candidates running in any election in less than 10 minutes of time. Weigh your sources for credibility, just cuz it was the intarweb doesn’t mean it was true.

Vote.

Our government and military grows and shrinks, we go from liberal to conservative like a pendalum swinging.

There’s no one answer, and time is on our side.

Everybody’s doing it so let’s make it legal.

Yeah. Great foundation on which to build a civil society.

A good portion of Americans have shoplifted. Why can’t we make that legal too? I want free stuff!!!!

As long as people want to be paid for their “intellectual property”, they will need a copyright system to govern it. Do you still think you own stuff? Good luck with that. This article is hardly even necessary.