P2P Users - Let's win this battle (fairly and legally)!

The time is now to organize against the RIAA, MPAA and others!

With a new "copy protection" technology, which seriously limits our listening habits, are being invented every week, and with governments willing to give out our rights to the entertainment industry, it's time for us, the paying consumers, to take a stand.

I beleive that as long as it is so expensive and complicated to get that one song that I like (I have to go to a store and purchase all the songs in the album for that one song) , I should be able to freely download songs from the web. Yep, for free.

OK, It's nice that I have my beleif, you say. But the RIAA believes otherwise, right?
Well, they can beleive whatever they want. But if we all organize, they wouldn't be able to DO whatever they want. How?

You might think of others who tried this before. But no one succeeded in organizing all of us together for the cause. And the cause itself wasn't that good - I saw many website calling to boycott the RIAA, but how would that help? Not buying CDs only proves the RIAAs argument, that we are all thieves who don't buy CDs.

So what should we do? Our plan should be to engage people into buying CDs of artists or bands they like after they checked them out through freeP2P networks (in order to make the authorities to see that we're not just thieves), engage in the politics (gain congressmen support?) and take legal actions (when financially posiible).

Some of our points might be:

• In order to purchase my favorite song, I have to buy a whole album, which might contain songs that I don't like at all. In some countries, as far as I know, it is illegal to force someone to buy two or more products together just to get one of them. If we say that each song is an individual product, we might get somewhere.
• Unlike other products that can be purchased, music is addictive. This isn't true for other "information" products like books or movies (might be somewhat true for computer games). The record industry is pushing a song through all entertainment channels,just to make us ADDICTED to it. This is how people just have some kind of an urge to hear a song that they don't have. And if they need it immediately, their best option is to download it off the net. I find this a very intersting point that I thought of lately, and if we can truly prove that songs and music are addictive, I think the RIAA would be forced to consider this.
• There are many independent unsigned artists who gain a lot of publicity through free P2P networks. Eliminating those networks may eliminate the last effective distribution channel which isn't controlled by the entertainment industry's media giants.
• Copy-Protecting our legally purchased CDs is truly too much. I like hearing songs on my PC while I work! Why can't I do that? I payed lots of money for that right! And what if I don't have a stereo and my only CD-capable device is my PC?

I have many ideas, some of them might be better than those listed here (ahhm... I might have also forgot some... I'll try to remember... )

So how do we gain power to get our voice heard? First step is to promote through websites like Zeropaid, Slyck, Napjunk and UTC (if it comes back online). This will get us in contact with most of the hard-core P2P fans. I do hope that those websites would help us with that, most have shown good will to many pro-P2P ideas. The people that come to our organization's website would be able to contribute ideas and hopefully donate some money (if they want to, of course). Generally my plan is to let the community which will form in that website decide the organization's directions and actions.

The next step would be to get the support of the big P2P networks. In return, well, we might be able to make their networks legitmate, or at least help them some way in their legal affairs.
If we get promoted through P2P clients, most of the P2P users will get to hear about us.

Members of our newly created community could contribute their legal advices or programming code, for example.

Another thing that could be done is to contact artists and ask them to allow us to make quicklinks (links that intiate a dowload thruogh P2P clients) of their songs through our website. Of course we would only do that if the artist is allowed to do that by his\her contract, or if the artist is unsigned\independent. I would like to develop a program that would rip MP3s from CDs, but only CDs that were allowed by the artists to be ripped thruogh us, and then automatically create quicklinks that would be submitted to our website.
The artists would gain in return more popularity for helping our cause, and more exposure to a crowd that does buy CDs of artists they like.

Together we have the power to win this battle over free P2P. I have chosen the name "FairP2P" for this organization and website, but this is open for suggestions.

I think that's it for now. Please post your comments!
If you wish to offer help, or get any additional information, please contact me by e-mail: fairp2p@yahoo.cm or simply post here.