Please, those 'agreements' were put together by the best shyster lawyers to put artists in debt even if they were successful.
> How can people on your side, in one argument say it isn't stealing to copy music, but it is stealing to enter into an agreement whereby one party exchanges something (music) for something else (money) and all parties freely choose to do so?
Because 'just because it is written on a piece of paper and has a signature under it' doesn't make it right.
The music industry had turned fraud in to an art form.
Arists that don't get paid royalties, artists that are signed to a label only to find out there is no intention to produce, artists that are screwed in to being in major debt just because of some fine print clause that you'd have to be another shyster lawyer to spot and so on. The list is endless.
And then we're not yet talking about price fixing, the war on fair use (especially sampling) and so on.
And don't get me started on stupidity like the 'happy birthday' thing and Mickey Mouse and copyright.
Really. If you want to be the champion of something find a group or a cause that is worthy of it, the major labels are not, and plenty of the smaller ones are not much better.
If A list artists have a problem you can bet your life that it is worse at the lower rungs of the ladder.
At a friends (who is an artist, and a fairly famous one here in NL, several major hits and an enormous repertoire of songs for third parties) invitation I went to a local BUMA/STEMRA meeting a year ago, it was unbelievable how strong the disconnect is between the rights organizations, the labels and the artists.
This world needs shaking up, badly.