tom64ss

Right, but the law specifically states that the RIAA is to tax the medium for which the music is transfered, not the consumer. Blank Media- They already tax. ISPs & MP3 player manufacturers-Vague enough that it would take a long legal battle and those companies can afford corporate legal battles. The file-sharing software companies-Tried that with Napster, who went under when they tried to charge people, thus cutting off their new source of income. The newer companies were ready for the legal battle, during which time people would contiue to download. So what do they do? They sue the one group that they knew they could scare into paying without going to court. They knew the average uploader wouldn't know about how that law could protect them from the RIAA.

Oh, I agree that P2P isn't private. I just don't like it when people make up their own definition for a commonly used word so that the definition somehow fits into their arguement. Kazaa and Napster aren't/weren't private because any shmoe with a computer could get on it and use it, thus making it a "publically" accessable site. File-sharing in a Yahoo group is private, because they have to approve you before you can file-share, but it doesn't mean I know everybody I'm sharing with in that group. Look, I only used Morpheus a handful of times. Whether it or Kazaa or any of those sites survive, doesn't really concern me. What concerns me is that the RIAA keeps using the, "If you're file-sharing, your taking money away from the artist arguement" and gullible people eat it up. THAT STATEMENT IS COMPLETE AND UTTER BS! The only people who are going to see any economic change, if any, from an increase of CD sales are retail stores and the big music corporations. Personally, I don't think it will have any effect on the profits they generate. CD sales dropped in the last few years because people tightened up their wallets during our last economic slump and during that time the music industry has generated nothing but "cookie cutter" pop music, either blatantly (n'Sync, Britney) or cleverly packaged in "underground culture garb" (Creed, Sugar Ray, Dave Matthews). They've sold out every scene and now don't understand why people are sick of it. They give you these figures saying that, "Our profits have dropped from blah blah billion in the early to mid 90's to blah blah billion in 2000." Well what about the CD sales before the early 90's????? Remember when the last Bush was in office??? Anyone remember the economic climate before Clinton took office???? How come they never give you sales figure from during that last recession???? In case you forgot, that's around the same time the market for comic books came crashing down. Why? Because they give you the year of their highest sales and compare it to recently when it's been at an all time low, and those same gullible people sit there and go, "You know what? That is a lot of money." Well whose to say that when CD sale were at their highest wasn't the freak occurance??? As sad as it is to say, before Nirvana hit it big, music sales were slumping too. Could that be blamed on P2P??? Obviously not. People just got sick of listening to Poison and New Kids and the economy was not looking good. Fortunately for them, MTV started pushing "underground music" like it was the second coming of Christ. When grunge died out, punk had its surge, and slowly, one by one, MTV and corporate music has played out every trend and decade of music to the point where the 80's and boybands are back. Only this time, when the public started to lose interest in the crap they generate, they had nowhere to turn anymore so P2Ps are being used as a scapegoat. Online music is the evolution of music distribution. Period. The old bastards are just afraid of the impending "changing of the guard".

Private usually means with people you know. P2P on Kazaa or Napster is with a bunch of unknown people. You have no idea who the person is you are dealing with. PRIVATE: Privacy has nothing to do with familiarity.

Mods, please don't delete this until tomorrow. Johnny Cash, one of the most influential singer/songwriters of the past 5 decades, passed away today. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...en_mu/obit_cash His wife, June Carter Cash died in May and as sad as I am to see him go, I'm glad he didn't have to live long without June, whom he loved dearly.

I just found out about Johnny Cash.

Anyone know the going rate on the SHE 1/100 variable kits and fastpack kits if sold all together?

Oh well, so much for the "quote". BTW >EXO<, nice avatar. I can't believe it's been two years already. Seem like just yesterday when I was standing on the roof of my ex-girlfiends apartment watching in horror as it all happened. It's extra quiet in the city today.

Nice job, the grey color scheme looks great.

Couldn't you also just put a space between the "B" and the ")"?

That's really cool of you yellowlightman. I went over there last night and it looks really good. Everyone should go and check it out. Nice job.

That looks great. The face is dead-on.

Ahh, but she was twice the drug addict.

Being a musician you should understand more than the rest of us. The more people download your songs, the less CDs are sold and less money goes into your wallet. If your contract does not pay you beyond your initial check, then less sales of your music could result in less $$$ for your when you make another CD. If you fail to bring in a certain amount, why would a record company pay you the same fee? THe suit is not just trying to make people pay fines. They are trying to stop people from downloading songs illegally. The simple threat of them possibly suing you will deter somepeople. They are going after the big offenders now since they have such a selection. Also, people are complaining of them looking at people's computers. They are not actually going into people's computers. If you remember, Napster (and other programs) allow users to view all the files someone has to share. Once a downloaded song is not in the the person's directory that they gave viewing access to, then the songs are not able to be viewed. Also, I'm sure programs have the ability to record how much activity a user has. Either downloading or people downloading from them. You're obviously NOT a musician. 1) Real music fans buy music regardless of whether they can get it for free. Hell, sometimes I buy records of CDs I already have. I've only downloaded a handful of songs ever (about 15), and all of those were either ones I knew were on an album that sucked, or a song or two off an album I was thinking about buying. People who have thousands of songs on their PC, obviously don't listen to all of them. They do it for bragging rights. Most bands could care less about people like that. I'll let them download my whole CD is they want, because I know they wouldn't buy it even if file sharing was never invented. I see it as a cost free way of getting my music out there. Ask any smaller label and they will tell you flat out that the difference in their sales before and after file sharing is minimal. For some labels like Side1/Dummy, sales actually went up. 2) My band and I (mostly me) did all the work, from begining to end, to put out our CD together. In the end, with a print run of less than 1,000 and no service contract with the CD pressing company, the recording studio, or the graphic designer (any of those would GREATLY reduce the overall cost of pressing a CD) we were still able to put it out at a cost of $2.05 per CD (that's with the cost of every aspect calculated in, except distribution, which we get for free). Major music companies press CD for pennies, literally. With all possible costs factored into making a CD with a 500,000-1,000,000 print run, it works out to costing less than $0.25 to make one. So why aren't Madonna or Britney's CD's cheaper? Tapes are one and a half time as expensive to make and records are almost double, and yet they both cost you less at the record store, so why are CDs so expensive? How is it that I can buy a CD from FAT records or Dischord with a embedded video file and a 12 page booklet for $8, but the new Metallica album will cost me $18? Why? Because the RIAA and major labels are money grubbing scumbags. 3) Like I said in point one, I'm a musician, and I will gladly let anyone download our CD. Hell, I give away the CDs most of the time anyways. I give people boxes of 25 for them to give away too. No true musician honestly believes that making music will put food on the table or pay the bills. When it does, it's just a pleasent surprise. If you had any idea of how a major label contract worked, you'd realize the only people who make money of the actual CD is the company. The bands make less than $1 (edit: far less, it's around $0.10-$0.15 for a new band.) on each CD sold. The people who work on it only add up to a couple cents when dealing with that kind of volume. (you do the same amount of work for a CD with a 10,000 print run as you do for a CD with a print run in the millions). The retail store makes about 35%, though I can't figure out why, and the other 60 some odd percent goes back to a multi-national conglomerate's board of directors that turns around and uses it for child labor in foreign countries, paying off politicians so ridiculous lawsuit like this can happen without them batting an eye, and funding other ways to screw the masses out of their hard earned cash. Think what you want, but I've had more than enough friends whove worked for companies like Sony and Geffen as well as those who have owned or worked for companies like Side1/Dummy and FAT. I've heard about the f*cked up things major labels have done to bands and how different it is when dealing with a label with an owner instead of a board of directors. Half those people couldn't tell you the difference between Billy Idol and Billie Holliday. For them, it's just about $$$$$. Screw over the bands, who cares? Screw over the fans, who cares? As long as they turn a bigger profit, that's all they care about. The way I see it, sales for major labels have gone down because the buying public's tastes have changed. Maybe if bigger labels stop churning out crap, stop putting out albums that only have one good song, and stop slapping a big price tag on it, they would see sales go up again. BOYCOTT all RIAA affiliated labels!!!!!

You guys really need to calm down when going through the "How to Transform" instruction booklet. There's a "booklet"????!!!!

My sentiments exactly. I wouldn't watch a Macross series that didn't have at least one piece of variable mecha. I'm not saying no one would, but I think they'd certainly lose a large part of their viewing audience.

I see six Monsters (2 rows of 3).

I say boycott. http://www.boycott-riaa.com/

Okay, I don't even know how to explain this wihtout showing pictures. Did you make sure the backpack hatch is DEPRESSED underneath the 2 small locking tabs ? If the hatch is just lying flat to the back, then you've got it wrong. There's 2 little tab like fins on the back. One is part of the hatch, and one is on that little swinging piece of plastic. Make sure the swinging one is all the way down and not poking through the hole in the backpatch hatch, then depress the hatch PAST the level of the rest of the back and lock it into place underneat the two tabs on the right and left sides. I never knew my 1/48's could do that.......cool. Thanks imode

People who don't want to pay for music still won't pay for music. They can burn copies from their friends. Those who downloaded and still bought CD's will still buy the same number of CDs. This doesn't stop anyone, just makes it more difficult. The music industry is really dating itself by not embracing new technologies. They're on the ropes, swinging at anything by this point. The end is near.

Another vote for Mr. Popularity

rocco-77 You're right about most of what you're saying, except the "touring with the big boys" thing. All the people I know that have toured with major label band at big venues have gotten $100/show for the whole band for their trouble, while the headliner makes about $10,000-$17,000 per show (I know first hand, that Social Distortion, who you'd imagine are decent people, are one of these bands that screw their opening bands like that. In fact, even newer members of the band get screwed over when it comes to money.) $100 A NIGHT???!!! That's chicken feed in my book. So, yes, the major labels have the hook-up, but it still might no be in your best interest. If you really want to take control and DIY it, there's a book/magazine called "Book Your own F*cking Life" put out by Maximum Rock'n Roll every year. Inside you'll find Band, Clubs, Promoters, and Radio Stations broken down by City, State, and Country (yes, it has listings for outside of the U.S.) It's a lot of work, but not impossible. Link: http://www.byofl.org/ The other way to do it is to hire a booking agent. They can be found independant of record labels and are the ones that do the real work anyways.

There are still lots of other ways to pirate corporate music. Any idiot can still record off the radio or burn a CD copy so this lawsuit is just plain dumb. Back in the 70's and 80's, they tried to campaign against people copying the records and CD they bought onto tapes. That didn't work either. For seveal years now, I've always tried to either buy major label releases out of "used" bins or copy them from a friend. I said it once and I'll say it again. Screw corporate owned music, but don't forget to support independent labels (they don't treat their artists like crap). Oh, and as far as bands like Metallica are concerned, their slump in sales is due to a crappy new album, not music sharing. It's quite possibly one of the worst sounding albums ever. You'd think with all that money they could've at least got a decent production. Anyways, the reason they don't like music sharing because: BEFORE: -Metallica puts out a crappy album. -No music sharing so people would have to buy the album or hear a copy someone else bought before they realized it sucks. NOW: -Metallica puts out a crappy album. -Now people can download it for free, listen to it, realize it blows, and save their money for a decent album. Don't they realize that if their album was any good, people would've shelled out the cash for it anyways? People who don't want to pay for music, never will, and people who don't mind, would pay for music sharing. The RIAA are just a bunch of money grubbing a-holes.

This thread from the old boards should answer everyone's questions, since it does have replies from Captain America (John) himself. http://www.macrossworld.com/cgi-bin/mwf/ik...4784;hl=legioss

This way----> http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...ct=ST&f=3&t=595

Wow, that does look like a real cockpit. He was a truely gifted artist.