So it seems that when (many) people talk about things (here), it’s simply an opinion of how they *wish* things would be instead of how they are for whatever reasons they wish. Perhaps selfish reasons.

And this is different from “the other side of the coin…” how, exactly?

Here are some facts that you may find inconvenient:
1. Most file sharing does not happen on the internet.
2. People who share files legally purchase much more music than people who do not.
3. Twenty years of increasingly draconian legal “solutions” has neither decreased piracy.
4. Legal purchases have increased in the last twenty years – not because companies “fought” piracy, but because they competed with it.

You can wish things were different, but they’re not. That is the market as it stands right now; and you can either wish it were different – and blame everyone else when it’s not – or you can adapt to the market. Guess which one is in your own best interest?

That’s fine, but my main point here is the attitude towards songwriters and musicians who perhaps have a different opinion. Because they, too, are entitled to their opinion.

Indeed they are. But musicians’ opinions do not deserve any more respect merely because they’re musicians. If they want their opinions to be respected, they have to have opinions that deserve respect.

Of course, most actual musicians and songwriters fall slightly more on my side of the “coin” than yours, so no worries there.

Laws on copyright aren’t a wish for them, they are a reality. And people infringing on that is a reality. For them, it is horribly unfair that people are putting their personal *wishes* over what the laws actually are.

Claiming copyright owners are more “law-abiding” than pirates is ridiculous. For one thing, you’re assuming that musicians themselves don’t pirate music, which is laughable. For another thing, the corporate “representatives” of musicians don’t pay attention to the law, either – whether it’s committing large-scale commercial infringement, or by ripping off artists directly, or getting the government to censor websites without notice, or break the law in order to shut down their competition.

When they can’t break the law outright, they’ll simply bribe Congress to get the laws passed in their favor. Whether that’s through back-room deals and secret agreements, or simply by sneaking language into a bill in the middle of the night. There’s a revolving door between the government and pro-copyright organizations, so those that do their bidding in Washington can become, say, Senior Executive Vice President of the RIAA, or CEO of the MPAA.

File sharers, in the meantime, are breaking laws that were clearly written for commercial infringement. Laws that, when applied to individuals, have been found to be unconstitutionally excessive – more than once (though this last ruling is being appealed).

Moreover, the industry-funded studies that show harm to copyright holders from file sharing have been found unreliable by the government itself. So most people, including many musicians and fans, don’t see any reason why they should follow the law.

When the law is so obviously one-sided and unfair, and disregarded even by those who it favors, then shouting “it’s illegal” is not going to convince anyone. If you want people to follow the law, then we need to have laws that the people believe are worth following. After all, laws in general (and copyright explicitly) exist to serve the public good, not the interests of copyright holders.

Not sure if I’m explaining this very well, but I think you all would have a better time making your case for your *wishes* if you lightened up and showed a little more understanding of the people who you *wish* would adapt to laws that don’t even exist the way you want.

Not “adapt to laws that don’t even exist,” but adapt to the market that exists right now.

And I’m not the one asking for people to change their behavior, or to create new laws. I’m simply advocating that artists themselves wake up and start acting in their own best interests. Luckily, most of them have.

This article is about one such musician, and I wholeheartedly applaud what he’s doing. Why do you need to paint those who support him as “anti-artist?” Are you so threatened by artists succeeding on their own terms, that you feel you need to bring up “piracy” every time it happens?

Seriously, it’s like a broken record at this point. Techdirt does tons of articles on successful artists and musicians. And every time that happens, some Anonymous Coward comes along, and starts shouting about The Pirate Bay, how everyone at Techdirt hates artists, and (most tellingly) how those successes were a fluke, and people had better get their heads out of the clouds and start supporting the traditional media industry’s business model. It’s pretty sad, frankly.

I’m not pointing all this at you, but the vibe of this site and a lot of Anonymous Cowards in general.

That you *wish* would stop bitching and moaning.

If they’re bitching and moaning at the exact people who are their best customers, then they’re not merely being annoying, they’re hurting themselves. And by claiming to represent artists in general, they’re hurting all the other artists, too. No wonder those of us who actually care about the well-being of artists want them to stop. (And especially to stop “bitching and moaning” in back-room sessions with high-level government officials.)

That you *wish* would work for minimum wage like you do.

Nobody here has ever “wished” that artists would work for minimum wage (and for the record, I don’t). Simply suggesting a wage model is not the same as “minimum wage.” Most of the people who do produce IP on a wage model – sound designers, orchestral performers, graphic artists, etc – earn much more than minimum wage. Nobody here has ever suggested that they shouldn’t.

And this is coming from someone who does not advocate a wage model as the sole means of income. Even I can see you’re lying.

That you “wish* weren’t represented by the music industry and the “MAFIIA”, and so on.

If the “MAFIAA” didn’t target the general public, most people wouldn’t have a problem with them.

Of course, I still would, because they don’t represent the best interests of artists. They represent record labels, in the case of the RIAA; and record labels have a long history of exploiting artists worse than pirate sites do. In the past, artists were forced to work with the major labels, because the major labels held a (collective) monopoly on the entire music industry: radio, live venues, music stores, etc. Getting rid of that monopoly is not only good for the public, it’s good for musicians too.

If getting rid of that monopoly means accepting piracy, then that’s a small price to pay. That’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of many artists – even among those that don’t approve of piracy, or are on major labels themselves.