There Be Pirates On The Internet - Bittorrent Insanity

I've been doing a lot of reading about internet piracy and copyright infringement. As a musical artist these kind of things interest me. There are really good arguments for and against policing the net for said pirates.

I was reading about the legal battle that The Pirate Bay is currently involved in. They're a Swedish group of individuals that have a bittorrent website where you can find all kinds of copyrighted material that is free to download. Well .... it was there that I found an article about author Paulo Coelho aka Pirate Coelho.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Coelho

He claims that posting his works on the internet for everyone to download actual increased his book sales from 3000 to one million in three years. Can this really be true? Well, if you read the wiki article he's no small fry. This guy knows his stuff and it's given me a lot of food for thought.

I believe that copyright is important in order to protect an artists property but at the same time the enforcement methods that are being used aren't working. YOU CAN'T STOP THE PIRACY!!! I strongly believe that to be true - that's why I typed it in all caps. Just as soon as they stop one website another one pops up. Suing an individual for millions of dollars doesn't impress anyone and the new method of trying to get the isp to do something isn't effective either.

What is the solution? Here's an idea for you - stop spending all your money on thwarting piracy and divert that money towards creating a great product that people will actually want to buy. Seems that these pirate sites are free publicity for these businesses and they are trying to shut them down. I believe that the majority of people on the internet aren't pirates. You have to have a lot of computer know-how to be a good internet pirate and most people don't have that knowledge. The small group of pirates downloads a ripped-off version and then tells all their non-pirate friends how great the book/movie/album is. WORD OF MOUTH. The pirate might try to explain to the non-pirate how to get it for free but the non-pirate is confused by all this tech talk and just downloads the book/movie/album from a legitimate site like iTunes. Looky there - they just made a sale. Funny how that works. Free friggin' advertising!!!!

This has led me to wonder if we should just post Euphonic Dissonance's music on a bittorrent site for free download. It worked well for Paulo - why can't it work for ED. If Euphonic Dissonance was more popular someone would rip our cd and put it out there anyway so why not beat them to the punch.

I really want to hear more opinions on this matter. Do you think that posting our songs for free would boost our sales? Has anyone heard of other success stories similar to Mr. Paulo Coelho?

New Tech Messiah Song That's Totally Unfinished

Just want to give the fans a little taste of the upcoming Tech Messiah album. Here's a little ditty (just a single verse and chorus) of something I started working on a couple days ago. We have a new laptop and it gives me the ability to write songs on the go. Gotta love that. Let me know what you think of this track thus far.

NEW CRUNKIN' SONG THAT'S NOT FINISHED AND MAY NEVER BE USED

I'll probably be throwing bones like these to our more rabid fans out there and I'll probably only do this in the blogs - SO PAY ATTENTION!!!! All eyes on me.

Oh... here's a little graphic I've been working on for the album. Do you likey?

[caption id="attachment_133" align="alignnone" width="196" caption="Tech Messiah on his cross"][/caption]

Well.....that's all for now little ones. Come back soon to see more.