The scene I would like to analyze is at 50m 42s.
Here Rick Cairns, a music industry lobbyist, is shown lecturing a group of adolescents about intellectual property; the property of somebody’s mind. Rick threatens these kids with big words and large numbers in an attempt to discourage them from downloading music off of the internet.
Its to no surprise that when the camera pans onto the kids’ faces that they are scowling. Its widely known that nearly EVERYONE downloads songs without paying, I know I certainly do.
But I do agree with the fact that stealing an artists’ work provides solid ground for an argument. The video goes on to show several people who all have lost large sums of money in lawsuits for this very reason. During the compilation of faces telling their story, we hear that up to $150,000 can be charged PER song, while not a single penny reaches the hands of the artists being defended.
Here enlies the biggest problem, that the music industry is run by money hungry record labels. I think we can all agree that successful artists aren’t hurting for their money. Most venues make an artist upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars. This leaves .99 cent songs on iTunes a pretty petty contribution to an artist, when they only receive about %9 of these earnings.
How in the world can a $10 compilation of songs turn into a $200,000 lawsuit?
This isn’t a just response. A fair penalty would be paying what the songs are worth.
Cody 
I like how you focus on the question of worth here. Who determines the worth of these things, and how is this worth determined? Clearly people should be compensated for the work they do and the product they produce, but I agree that the movie frames the music industry as money-hungry, only interested in milking the last penny out of everything that comes out of it. Should music be treated as a public good and artists make their money off of recording and concerts?
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I know what scene you’re talking about. None of the kids were honest about how they illegally download music except for one of them. I definitely agree that these individuals are money hungry and nothing else. Without the artists they have no money. Some artists are upset that people download their music, but are these the people to blame? Seems more logical that the record companies who make all of the money should be the ones who should be targeted for a hand out by artists.
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I liked your approach on the subject. Everyone knows that downloading songs from the internet and not paying for them is wrong, but everyone still does it anyway. But to sue someone thousands of dollars for a song worth a couple of dollars, at most, is ridiculous! Not to mention it’s also greedy. It’s understandable that an artist will be upset that people aren’t actually buying their song they worked hard on, but it’s not understandable that a stupid kid is now costing his family so much money because of it! I liked your final thoughts, that a person should have to pay what the song is worth instead of the lawsuit amount. That sounds much more reasonable, and not to mention, sensible. No one should have to pay $150,000 dollars for a song.
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I completely agree with your argument here. Regardless of how many people were caught illegally downloading music, it seems to me that the musicians are living theirs life in a very luxurious manner and are not suffering one bit. The majority of this battle is labels trying to get as much money as possible from people, they feel the need to own this property and feel that if that property is used in any which way that they deserve some type of royalty payment which is they way music, film and art should be going. It should all be shared with recognition of where the previous art came from.
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