Evening Debate: Downloading

SO. Good evening to all of you. So it's the holiday season and there are some rumors/some news floating around the net that the RIAA is now no longer on a blood hunt for your souls... Just your ISPs. Exciting, isn't it? Now you don't have the constant threat of the big bad RIAA coming and taking all your money, car, house, and life away... Your ISP will just fine you instead or shut off your service jawn (Yes, I said jawn, I live in Philadelphia. If you don't know what it means, check Urbandictionary. Great source). Anyways, so, here's the deal.

Is downloading kosher? For those who aren't up to date on jewish expressions..... IS DOWNLOADING OKAY WITH YOU AND THE MUSIC INDUSTRY?

I think a lot of bands these days would beg to differ, seeing as how bands like Fall Out Boy had their demo distributed directly by them on MySpace and Limewire. And look at them now... A bunch of rich sell outs. But personal opinions aside.... Panic! At The Disco (Or whatever version they go by now) had the same effect. They were a band for 9 months when Pete Wentz found them on a random ass blog. And bands like You, Me, and Everyone We Know have given away TWO EP's now through Absolutepunk.net and done fairly well for themselves. So clearly bands are not all entirely against downloading and that a lot of artsits see a great following for that. This also stems from the great debate about labels and whether or not they're even needed anymore. For example, the Artic Monkeys got their start without a label and signed to one for whatever perks they were recieving. And now with LiveNation doing a lot of grunt work for acts like Madonna, they don't need to worry about being stuck with the wrong producer or dealing with making sales quotas for labels.

So, let me hear what you have to think.


Yes, it's evening debate but posted at 1:30 in the afternoon, i started it last night.