RIAA staff member detected

...Weapons online... Targeting... Target acquired... Open fire!

Mr Leamon, I, and most other consumers, are in fact quite willing to support artists. The fact that you think we don't is part of the "consumers are criminals" mentality you and your ilk espouse. For my part, I'd be more than happy to pay, even a dollar a song, except that:

1) I do not tolerate being treated as a criminal when I am not.

2) I do not tolerate your efforts to take control of MY computer. DRM is exactly that; you are trying to control what I can do with the data on my machine.

3) I do not tolerate the further use of DRM to create "pay-per-listen" type schemes where I can only listen to a song a few times before having to pay for it again and again.

4) I do not tolerate the further use of DRM to limit the number of copies I can make. If I burn a CD to use in the car, and it melts on a hot day, I want to be able to burn another. If my machine dies or I have to upgrade, I want to copy my music collection to the new machine and still be able to play it.

5) I do not tolerate being forced to watch copyright propaganda every time I want to see a a movie. When I press a button on my remote, the machine does what I want it to, NOT what YOU want it to.

6) I do not tolerate your pressuring our democratic governments into passing obscene copyright laws allowing you and your kind to milk money for over a century from a few weeks' work by an artist and production team.

7) I do not tolerate the oppressive and brutal measures you and your kind take to enforce your obscene copyright laws.

8) I do not tolerate the lies and propaganda you and your kind spread about filesharing being linked to terrorism, about how filesharing is the same as stealing, about how you support the artists when you don't even pay them dick from the billions you make, and about how many billions you are losing when your profits are going through the roof.

So WHEN you stop portraying ordinary people as criminals, WHEN you stop trying to control everybody's computers, WHEN you stop greedily seeking ways of milking more money from us by imposing artificial constraints, WHEN you stop destroying our freedom by perverting democracy, WHEN you stop persecuting filesharers, WHEN you stop your endless lying and propaganda, THEN I will pay a fair price for music.

Until then, I and most of the rest of the world will stand against you and fight this war for ever if need be. You will not win. In 30 years of copy protection not one DRM scheme has ever escaped being cracked, and it only needs one person to crack it and upload the file and your scheme is useless. We outnumber you millions to one and for every scheme you come up with we have an absolute counter. Is that clear?

Solution: Boycott music

Don't buy *any* music. Don't listen to Internet radio (the netcasters pay a royalty to the labels). Don't go to live concerts. Make exceptions *ONLY* for musicians who sell their works directly to the consumer.

One year of the loss of, say, 60% of gross revenues, and the RIAA will be out of business. Then we can discuss a fair distribution of the purchase price of music - with at least 80% of it going to the artists.

Happy to pay.. but

I am a happy user of Napster; I pay my £15 a month. I download as much music as I want. Some months I might not see anything I fancy, some months I might have 20 albums.

I'd like to be able to burn tracks to CD, but it's not essential, I'd rather a company built a car stereo, I could plug in and download tracks to.

As my 3 kids get older and want mp3 players of their own then the device limit may be a pain, hopefully they'll introduce a family plan.

For DVD's I use lovefilm.com, again £15 notes a month to rent as many DVD’s as I can get through, limited only by the post.

I'd love to download movies or TV on a subscription basis; I'd happily pay for the convenience, of a one-stop shop where I can download digital media.

What the record and movie industries should realise is that if they make it easily available at a reasonable cost then there will be little piracy as most people want to be law abiding. It's their intransigence and continual blocking the way that leading to more people being involved in piracy.

A legal version of bittorrent with all the TV, movie and music content for a reasonable monthly fee (I’m big on the subscription model) is the way forward.