Raise the Hammer

I am so frustrated by this sites divided line of thought, to where I have felt the need to comment, which I have never done before any where else on the web. A couple things first about the writer of the article and the commenters. The article itself is a piece of dung and, although had interesting information, was biased quite a bit. Apple owes all of its success really to Steve Jobs and his vision and Marketing savvy. His products “were” easy at one point but are basic items marked up so high and he can get away with it. But to compare Apple to an opensource project like OLPC just seems ludicrous they are not even on the same playing field.
The links posted by Ryan were more interesting than the article. Thank you,
But on the other hand the comment that stirred me to write about this was also one of Ryan's. His file sharing is “tedious and time-consuming. Pulling together enough decent quality songs to fill an album can easily take far longer than an hour; assuming $20 per hour, the opportunity cost of the time spent doing this is actually comparatively poor.” Now torrenting is another form of file sharing which has actually worked where, common sense providing, one can find those higher quality files for little time.
Now, as for myself, my budget and tastes lend me to take this route. I listen to Japanese music and would like to watch Japanese movies but finding quality on the store shelves is hard when I am inexperienced in as to what is out there. Now that is where Ryan's comment comes true in many cases, only that is directed to a “brick and mortar” store where finding a single quality product for their price point can be tedious. Torrenting has netted others quantity which can be sorted little by little to learn and find those quality pieces which can be transferred into buying similar items at stores. Its happened a lot that way.
Kinokunia bookstores is a mainstream store found in America where one can purchase Japanese items but due, music specific, Sony's record label is like the “Big Four” taking huge cuts from artists setting the price for their CD which in turn, through the channels of distribution, in which stores like Kinokunia take huge mark-ups to cover importing costs and store overhead. Japan is an expensive place and as such I am not surprised by their costs where a full album can cost eighty dollars and a singles CD will cost thirty-five.
DRM protection and Sony's style of protection found on their CD's will stay in place for a quite long time and until Record Studios realize the artists and public at large is fed up. I will continue to support bands like Nine inch Nails who's leader Trent Razor has stood up for not only himself and his music rights but for the public telling his fans to “Steal my music, torrent it freely, give it to your friends and family..” to where not only does he give away his albums on his website but will also make CD's at a lower cost since it is all his own profit not the Record Labels.
There are different ways of looking at so much and if either purchasing at a store or using electronic methods both are truly viable and both companies and web domains which provide content freely should learn to work together not wholly against each other. Companies could see this as a incident to change practices to advance and not continue outdated, stagnant business practices. But as we in America are Captailist's and money rules policy won't change. I cannot offer a solution to the problem but only an opinion and an insight to learn that there are other forms out there. Thanks for inciting me a lot “Raise the Hammer” and other commenters.