quote:
1. You can argue to the RIAA that buying a CD is like buying a plane ticket.
Why would anyone argue that? When you buy a plane ticket you're still paying for a service that's limited by how many seats the plane has, how many planes are flying etc. "Limited" is the key word. Thus the amount of money an airline receives from ticket sales is proportional to their outgoing costs (fuel, staff, planes etc).
quote:
You're paying for the contents of the cd, not the actual plastic disc.
Actually, technically you're paying for neither. As you say, you're not really paying for the physical disc (the cost of that is negligible). You're not paying in order to compensate the seller (artist, record label) for the cost you're causing them to incur, as (physical distribution cost aside) they still do the same amount of work whether they sell 10 or 10000 units.
It's like if I build a road and then charge everyone a toll when they drive down it, even continuing to do so after I've got back my money and made a nice profit. You can't argue that the drivers are paying me for any tangible thing - I'm charging them simply because I can.
[ February 28, 2004: Message edited by: flap ]
