Gene Simmons hates you

If you download music. So, probably, he hates you.

http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=uri:2007-11-14T183959Z_01_N14187018_RTRIDST_0_ENTERTAINMENT-KISS-COL.XML&pageNumber=0&summit=

I understand how a musician like Gene Simmons, who might actually own the rights to some of his music, would be upset at the current downloading phenomenom.

But, I'd say he's the exception rather than the rule (and given his logic, we should therefore ignore him as an abberation). Maybe one in a thousand musicians have been directly hurt by downloading. The other 999 might actually benefit, or have benefited, from the loosening of the RIAA's borderline unconstitutional, retroactively implemented copyright stranglehold.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I cannot believe that thirty, forty, fifty, sixty year old songs by long dead musicians have had their copyrights retroactively extended to benefit a few record labels. And these ridiculous copyright laws end up affecting the rights to every song, not just the few valuable ones that led to the recording industry's lobbying efforts in the first place. The vast majority of affected music then just sits around collecting dust, unreleased and unusable, to protect the monopoly rights of a few holding companies who really only care about a handful of songs, anyway.

With a system that broken, I understand why people just say "screw the whole thing, I'm downloading whatever I want."

**CDs are a broken delivery mechanism, but that's not nearly as justifiable a reason for piracy.

***I don't mind retroactive copyright extensions for works of art owned by a living creator