Originally Posted by goober

The difference is if you burn a CD and sell it to some who wanted to buy that music, that's copyright infringement in the classical sense. If you share your music with someone, that's sharing.
We used to tape records on cassette, and that was called fair use.
What the music and software industries are both sending boatloads of cash to lobbyists for is because they are both in the business of getting a lot of money for selling a small amount of packaged information.
They both dominate the existing marketing channels and are realizing monopoly profits. Now here comes the internet, a much better way to distribute information, and one with barriers to entry, on the internet, these companies have no advantage over anyone else.
So they try to discourage the use of the internet, by unrealistically pricing the internet product, to try to prop up the existing channels that they dominate.

The second thing that's going on is that the technology of sharing has improved. Sharing has gone from "come over and listen to this", to "here's a tape I made of that new record", to "here's the file", and over the internet you can share that file with a million people.

The old business model doesn't work, the new internet business model, is that a band will have it's own website, where people can buy t-shirts and hats, and even CDs. The Internet is all about cutting out the middleman and the Music Industry is the ultimate middle man.
But if the music goes over to the internet, then the talent interfaces directly with the public, and there is no room for the middleman, unless they construct this legal fiction, where they can charge the same for a file over the internet as they charge for a physical recording, that they produce, inventory, ship to a store, the store gets a markup, etc. How about drop all that cost structure, but still get the same money, it works in fantasy world, but not in reality.

Unenforceable laws are bad laws.