[PublicAnimalNo9]

RUEZ RUEZ:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Like owning guns sans registry?

Or making it illegal to download a song the radio stations play for free anyway.

Yeah, the CPC has been working on some very important legislation.

Interesting. First of all he said nothing about the government, only that there were more important things in life than smoking weed. I agree, If I were to spend as much time advocating drinking alcohol as some do for smoking weed, I'd probably be accused of having a drinking problem. Secondly, don't you think singers and songwriters should be compensated for their work?

First off, nobody is advocating smoking weed. They are advocating for their right to be able to smoke it themselves. Nobody here has suggested everyone should try it.
Secondly, yes I do. But, I have a sneaking suspicion you don't quite get how the music industry works. Outside of the real rock genre, most performers do not write their own music. The industry retains professional song writers that are paid a one time amount for each song they write. Whether that song becomes a #1 hit or fails to make the top 40, the writer has already been paid and receives no further royalties.
For those that do write their own music, they (and the former group too) make the vast bulk of their money through concerts and merchandising. The artist that sits around hoping to get rich from CD sales alone is going to be sorely disappointed.
Believe it or not, artists do NOT recieve royalties for radio airplay. In fact, at one time in the not too distant past, recording companies were still paying radio stations to play their singles, despite the fact it was and still is illegal. So, whether I listen to a song on the radio, or d/l it for listening, the artist makes the same amount, $0.
Add to that the numerous artists that were and still are against the DMCA that claim more access to music means more overall CD sales. I have a few CDs by pretty much unknown groups that I've purchased because I downloaded one or two of their songs to check them out. Those are sales they never would have had.
So in fact, quite the opposite happnened. D/ling a couple of songs for free resulted in the sale of entire CDs. Pretty much the same scenario as buying a CD based on a single or two you hear on the radio n'est ce pas? Only in this case, artists not "lucky" enough to have contracts with a big recording company can still potentially reach a huge audience.
The only group the DMCA protects is the recording industry. The same industry that as I mentioned, illegally paid radio stations to play their music. The same industry that sold CDs with rootkits on them that installed themselves on your hard drive whether you ripped the CD or not. The same industry that thought $150 per damaged/destroyed computer was reasonable but expects 10s of thousands of dollars for "illegally" d/ling one song.

The only place I agree with any part of the DMCA where music is involved is the d/ling of entire CDs.

So, to summarize: immediate financial gain/loss to artists when I listen to a song on the radio-$0
Immediate financial gain/loss to artists when I d/l a song from the internet-$0

[Curtman]

RUEZ RUEZ:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Like owning guns sans registry?

Or making it illegal to download a song the radio stations play for free anyway.

Yeah, the CPC has been working on some very important legislation.

Interesting. First of all he said nothing about the government, only that there were more important things in life than smoking weed. I agree, If I were to spend as much time advocating drinking alcohol as some do for smoking weed, I'd probably be accused of having a drinking problem. Secondly, don't you think singers and songwriters should be compensated for their work?

The mistake you and the others make is, most people advocating marijuana legalization aren't advocating smoking weed at all. They are denouncing the harmful prohibition laws that do more harm than good without achieving any of the good they were promised to do.

Do you see anything at all whatsoever in the news article that you believe is advocacy?

[Curtman]

Regina Regina:

19 people do not speak for a country.

$1:

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version of this story said the Health Officer's Council has 19 members, when in fact it has 90.

90 people still don't speak for a country, but they speak for the front line health care workers who have to deal with the effects of prohibition every day. They say prohibition is worse than the drugs themselves. They are one of many groups endorsing the efforts of the Stop The Violence to bring this to people's attention.

B.C. medical health officers join call to legalize pot

$1:

"The more money that we pump into anti-cannabis law enforcement does not have any kind of effect on rates of use and price of cannabis has gone down quite dramatically," he said. "The government's own data show that Canada's prohibition has failed."

A new report from the Stop the Violence BC coalition says billions of dollars have been spent in the hopes of stemming the drug trade — but marijuana is cheaper, more potent and more available than ever.

$1:

Arrests and cannabis seizures soared when anti-drug funding jumped, according to available data presented in the report, but none of the other anticipated impacts materialized.
Since 2007, the majority of at least $260 million in funding against drugs from Ottawa has been allocated to policing. Between 1990 to 2009, arrests have increased by 70 per cent.
Meanwhile, the parallel U.S. budget has increased from $1.5 billion in 1981 to $18 billion in 2002.
Arrests jumped there by 160 per cent between 1990 and 2009, while pot seizures more than quadrupled.
But at the same time, prevalence of cannabis use rose.
The Canadian Alcohol and Drug Use Monitoring Survey showed 27 per cent of B.C. youth between 15 and 24 smoked weed at least once in the previous year.
In Ontario, the number of high school students using pot doubled from fewer than 10 per cent in 1991 to more than 20 per cent in 2009.
In the U.S., use climbed about eight per cent among Grade 12 students.

[Lemmy]

RUEZ RUEZ:

Don't you think singers and songwriters should be compensated for their work?

Musicians have never had it so good. Before file-sharing, musicians got a fraction of record/cassette/cd sales. A pittance. Big name, stadium concert tickets cost $20, $30. Now, there are no CD sales and concert tickets cost upwards of $100 (I paid $278 for a Roger Waters ticket last September). So what's changed? The record companies have been cut out of the equation and the musicians are making fortunes on concerts. The middleman's been removed from the equation. And even if they weren't, you can't suppress technology. The world has changed. Jack is out of the box. CD sales are a thing of the past, just like the horse-drawn carriage, stovetop coffee percolator and every other product that died as technology changed.

[Unsound]

I miss my carriage.

[Gunnair]

jeff744 jeff744:

andyt andyt:

Regina Regina:

19 people do not speak for a country.

How about 50%?

$1:

Half of Canadians (50%) support the legalization of marijuana, while 44 per cent are opposed. Respondents in Manitoba and Saskatchewan (61%), British Columbia (54%) and Ontario (51%) are all in favour of legalizing marijuana, while the lowest level of support is seen in Alberta (45%).

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/43593/h ... marijuana/

Albertans don't speak for the country.

Albertans usually say the opposite of everyone else.

Quebecers with cowboy hates and petro dollars!