What’s Carl Yankowski doing these days? I believe he was hand picked by Akio Morita to run the company.

Seeing he’s not there, I won’t support Sony.

“The future of media likely a registration model. There is no chance that media companies will continue in the long run to produce content that they cannot profit from. You make a single blu-ray disk, hand it to TPB guys, and everyone and their dog has a copy tomorrow for free. That isn’t a supportable business model.”

Prove this is what will happen.

Also, I am not saying that these collection agencies shouldn’t exist whatsoever, just that it should be up to artists to decide whether or not they want these collection agencies (like the RIAA) representing them. If an artist wants to give away his music for free without having some unnecessary third party profiting from it (ie: some random artist making music on his computer or whatever) he should have that right. If he wants to allow restaurants to play his music without a license or without paying some third party some royalties, that should be his right. If an artist wants a collection to help him collect money, that’s fine too. But don’t ask the government to hold the RIAA’s hand and force artists to fund them if they don’t want to.

“Without a real viable business model (and no, miniputt and t-shirts are NOT an option here), the content producers will quite simply leave the business.”

Please provide evidence that this will eliminate all content producers. And, “oh, there is one content producer that’s not making it” doesn’t cut it. Even before file sharing many content producers still didn’t make it. Some musicians are big one day and their music gets old the next. People get tired of them. This has been happening long before music sharing. Peoples tastes change. What you need to prove is not anecdotal nonsense that one artist is having a hard time (for one thing that could be due to a number of factors; the economy, people are getting tired of his music, this happens without file sharing programs. One person is a big hit one day and forgotten the next only to be replaced by someone else. For another, who’s to say that one artist represents the entire industry? Even if one artist does suffer as a result of file sharing that’s not to say there aren’t other artists replacing him).

Now I am not here advocating downloading songs illegally. What I am saying is that artists should have the freedom to give their work away for free if they choose to (without having some unnecessary third party profit from it). They should have the freedom to allow others to copy it all they want if the artists choose to (again, without having some unnecessary third party profit from it). They should have the freedom to have their work played on radio (both broadcast and online) and television stations without these third parties being paid royalties if that’s what the artist wants. They should have the right to have some restaurant play their music without paying for any license or without paying some third party royalties if that’s what the artist wants. If the artist does want to charge for his music he absolutely has that right. If he wants to prevent his work from being played on radio (online and broadcast) and television stations or to prevent them from being played in restaurants without someone paying him royalties, then I’m fine with that. If he wants to hire a collection agency to go after pirates of his music, I’m even cool with that too. I have no problems with that. My point is if he doesn’t want all that, if he doesn’t want some unnecessary third party to profit from his work, he should have that option. That’s ALL I’m saying.

Perhaps he wants to work a deal with a restaurant where the restaurant pays him for a license to play his music without involving some unnecessary collection agency (of course he would have to pay the normal taxes on his profits, just like anyone else who buys anything). Maybe he’s not happy if someone pirates his music but he wants to handle it himself, he doesn’t want some collection agency to handle it. He wants to independently sue or hire his own lawyers. Or, if he wants to delegate the work to a collection agency, that’s fine too. But what we don’t need is for these collection agencies to lobby congress to pass laws to extort money away from artists against their will.

Some very good comments by people who appear to be computer savvy. Just imagine, however, the honest tech simple consumer. He or she has been used to simply putting any CD they own in the drive and having it easily copied – DRM Free – to their PC (which automatically sync’s it with their portable device. Next year, whenever Blu-ray managed copy kicks in, they put a disc in. If it’s the small percent that can’t be copied – frustration. If it’s one from a company that just says type in your email address so we can spam you – probably not much of a problem. But what will be the reaction when the message is – pay us another $5 to make a copy? Not to mention some of the potential technical glitches noted above. While I would never violate the DMCA by pointing people to illegal solutions, I have a feeling even the average consumer might be driven to those solutions, which, as one commenter noted, already exist.