Should someone from a foreign country be allowed to download music from the country of origin and face punishment if the records/cd's are not released in the US and therefore not obtainable without special ordering them (for over $50 a pop) or being told to forget it as nobody will carry "crap like that"?!
Example: My wife is Indian, I am German. We both live in the US and are unable to obtain the music we like legally, P2P is the only way to get our hand on it.... Should we face punishment if we were to download music from any P2P network?

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Yes.

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

I am surprised. If the market has made it difficult to obtain the recordings, is that a valid reason to steal it?

You people downloading stuff that doesn't belong to you disgust me. ;)

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The best daily political cartoons can be found here:

http://www.csmonitor.com/commentary/index.html

It is a theoretical question. However, with a real problem behind it. It is not difficult to obtain certain culturally specific music pieces but rather completely impossible. The market has no desire to feed minority needs. "Stealing" is the only way to obtain something that you can't buy. Wait... is it really stealing if, even if you try to purchase it, yu can't as it is not offered? Does that mean the RIAA can determine that I can only listen to the US charts rather than my own cultures music pieces? If your answer is yes, where, when and who allowed them to determine what I am allowed to listen to:???

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If I understand fatboy correctly, he said that it should be punishable

Afaik, the RIAA can't sue you for downloading music that doesn't fall under their "protection"

Sorry, I should've posted the question I was answering. He should expect to face punishment if he downloads music that he can't obtain legally.
Nuclear weapons aren't offered where I live, but I expect the government to throw me in jail if I try to steal one.
It's not the RIAA that's determining what music you can listen to - it's the rest of us. We're not demanding the music you listen to so there is no market. You can still get the music, it would just take more effort on your part (travel to India and buy it there, enlist a broker from India to buy it for you, you could demand to pay the artist directly by sending a check to them when you download the music).

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

Ok. Thanks for the clarification.

Nuclear weapons are nowhere comparable with music but thanks for this completely outlandish comparison. :stupid:

Oh yeah.... So now someone like you (that has no idea about German or Indian music) will dictate what can be sold or not! Someone stop this stupidity.

Because I listen to something that the majority doesn't listen to, I get punished for your ignorance, dislike of one kind of music.

Actually, I have spent close to $50 per CD by enlisting a broker (respectively family) to ship it or hand deliver it. There is no way to obtain it in a reasonable time frame and at a reasonable cost. A Cd mass produced costs less than $1, the cost is $15 in the store (and more in Europe), shipping etc. are outrageous on top of that and take forever.
You can not send money to an artist directly as you would potentially have cut the record company out of the deal, leaving them without their Lions share.
I guess my point is that as long as it is not reasonably obtainable, it should not be punishable to download...
But then again... dial up sucks for downloading so I mustn't worry about too much of that... :thumbsup:

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Un-fucking-believable. I post a completely innocuous reply to a request for opinion and this is what I get. What a fucking waste of time this forum has become.

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In this country, we don't need reasons to make things legal; we need reasons to make things illegal. - Startup

I'm thankful that downloading music from the internet is legal where I live.

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Should they be legally allowed to download music for those reasons? No comment. I would say yes, download the music (especially if $50 a disc) but it wouldn't matter because I am not the law.

In New York I've gone through areas where there are a lot of Indian music and movies being sold but I guess that doesn't exist everywhere. For German music, you can buy from Amazon.de right? In any case, I don't know what kind of music you want anyway, maybe it's not that easy to find...

I hate the RIAA and the record labels. CD prices are almost as high as DVD prices, and DVDs are much harder to distribute over the net and have many more added features. The recording industry has had years to try to adapt by adding features or lowering prices but what have they done? Universal lowered the prices a bit but that's about all. The RIAA insists that the labels need to keep the prices high because of marketing costs. Well, I don't feel like paying $15 for something that should be more like $4-$5 just because they spend millions to promote Britney, Justin, and all the other crap they want you to buy. They even insisted on their site that we should be happy that CD prices have been stable over the years (when everything else is getting cheaper). Rant over, sorry.