Why Switchfoot Is Cool

[beautyofevening]

They'll probably get into a whole heap of troulbe for it, but they're still cool:
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/09/19/0343251.shtml?tid=141&tid=17

Comments

[anonymous]

Morons. On the one hand, they'd be allowing infringement on their own copyright to the actual music. So that's fine. But they're blatantly urging consumers to bit the label that feeds them. To whit: a disturbingly small number of cds are bought, ripped, Switchfoot fans find out, never buy the album, the record company is out TONS of money on sales.

All this after investing money into Switchfoot by giving them a contract and allowing them to use their recording and mixing facilities. The label invests time and money so that the band can record the best possible versions and arrangements of their songs. They have a right to expect compensation in terms of a cut of the sales. And the band just turns around and screws them. Switchfoot is a pack of ungrateful assholes urging criminal behavior.

[beautyofevening]

Switchfoot fans have been ripping their CDs since they started releasing CDs (this is their fifth major-label CD) and no one's noticed any lackluster sales yet. Notice he wasn't encouraging people to do anything illegal -- just using music from CDs they bought on iPods they also bought.

I'd be a little more worried if I thought you meant that last paragraph. :)

[anonymous]

Oh, goodie, a debate

[anonymous]

The reason copy protections exist and why they're legal is BECAUSE files are so easy to pirate. By telling consumers how to hack that, you can therefore reasonably expect that pirating -- illegal distributing -- will be the result. Therefore, Switchfoot could very well be breaching their contractual duty by effectively giving others the right to distribute illegally.