but glittering prizes
and endless compromises
shatter the illusion of integrity"
yes, I quoted a Rush lyric. It's from "The Spirit Of Radio", off of their 1980 album Permanent Waves.
The reason why I quoted it is to make a reference to the downfall of music distribution. Thanks to the ongoing efforts by the RIAA to apply pressure to media outlets, it seems highly unlikely that you will be able to access websites allowing users to download tracks shared by other users.
One example is esnips.com, a file sharing/storage site where users can upload music, videos, documents, pictures, etc. and share them with the online community.
The sharing of music, however, is being phased out, and I quote, "partly as a response to your requests, and partly because some signed artists have opened eSnips profiles and asked to prevent downloads of their work." Now users who upload music can choose whether or not the file can be shared. I've checked; pretty much every music file on there is unavailable for download.
The site claims that certain users and musical artists are protesting the fact that their music is being shared with those who would like to hear it. Ha. That's got to be a cover they're using.
I'll bet you that they, along with many other sites offering the same services, have been threatened by the RIAA or other artists' groups to outlaw music downloading, or face legal action.
And hey, even if that's not the case, it still promotes the agenda set forth by the RIAA: stop everyone from sharing music illegally and sue whoever they want in order to 'end' file sharing.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about an industry that has betrayed the consumers, the very people that have kept the falling significance of digital media afloat over the last couple of years...and now the RIAA sues all kinds of suspected lawbreakers, from pre-teens to middle-aged housewives to college students and...hell, why not...THE DECEASED.
The latter, of course, was a mistake by the RIAA; they tried to sue an 83-year old named Gertrude Walton in January, but it was revealed she died a month earlier. Dumbasses.
The RIAA is seemingly incapable of thinking before acting. They believe the answer to their problems is 'sue, sue, sue'. It's all about MONEY.
Honestly, I find it tougher and tougher to feed "the beast" as time goes by, because the beast is hungry for something the RIAA calls 'justice' but I call 'cruel and unusual punishment'. Besides, I buy most of my music from pawn shops, the Marketplace on amazon.com, etc., so I might not buy a new CD from a music store ever again...
so much for biting the hand that feeds. Somehow that hand is biting us now.
I skimmed through your post, and I can only say the operators of that site are extremely naive.
Any sound that can be listened to on a computer can be recorded with a minimum of fuss. On a Mac it's as simple as getting a program like WireTap to do it. On a PC, any sound program can do it if you use the "What-U-Hear" as the input.
Piss easy. I used that method on the entire Mojo Pin site of rare Jeff Buckley bootlegs, so that I wouldn't be constantly eating up my bandwidth everytime I wanted to hear 'I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain' from 1991.
So - good move, fellas... making a track 'unavailable' for download isn't stopping anyone who has a few minutes to spare learning how to use extremely basic audio software.
At least some artists are on our side rather than on RIAA's side.
Franz Ferdinand wrote earlier this year on their website about a new track they had recorded, a David Bowie cover, and in the end of the article they wrote something like "Go to Limewire and grab it now".