ComputerUser: Steal This Column!

[ Thanks to Stephen
Hughes for this link. ]

“Like a lot of people, I have a vast collection of CDs, which
strains my entertainment center more than any of its components. I
plead the Fifth as far as what percentage of my discs were
purchased, as opposed to ‘archived’ copies. But, at the risk of
being sued for a billion dollars, I will admit that I have
occasionally burned a copy of a disc from the public library. I
don’t much care for burning MP3 tracks from the Internet. Why
download when you can burn a mix of tunes checked out from the
library? Still, the vast majority of my collection was purchased
after hearing it in some other venue. And I would never have bought
any of my discs if I hadn’t first heard them somewhere else
first.

“My experience with music is quite common. Yet for some reason,
the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has a problem
with it. You might think it absurd to sue me at all, let alone for
a billion dollars, but the RIAA is suing four college kids for $98
billion each because they’ve run file-sharing networks out of their
dorm rooms (according to a New York Times story). How the RIAA got
the $98 billion figure is beyond me–it certainly is not based on
the defendants’ abilities to pay…”

Complete
Story