Re: [microsound] a billion counterfeit CDs

[Bill Ashline <williamlashline@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 7/11/03 5:42 AM, "dkl37@xxxxxxxx" <dkl37@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hello? Could this be because in most of these countries, there are a lot
> of economically challenged people who can't afford (imported) major label
> CD prices?

Absolutely Dale.  I've been saying this for years and I'm glad you're
joining my refrain.  The music business shows no interest in these countries
in lowering prices to a level affordable to average people, so they do what
comes naturally--they pirate the goods.  And I'm happy for them.  If the
industry wants to combat piracy in these countries, "law and order" isn't
going to work.  They need to cut prices to levels comparable with what
people pay for local music.  But as usual, they exhibit that particular
handicap that comes with wealth--a lack of comprehension about how the rest
of the people in the world live--usually hand to mouth.

-- 
What to the American slave is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals
to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and
cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a
sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness,
swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your
denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty
and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and
thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him,
mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover
up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on
the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people
of the United States, at this very hour.  Fellow citizens! The existence of
slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity
as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral
power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation
of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a byword to a mocking earth.
It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that
seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is
the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it
breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the
earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet
anchor of all your hopes.--Frederick Douglass 

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