I honestly doubt that music being included in videos as well as handbags being allowed will be restricted from use. All it takes is one person who happens to enjoy using them in politics to remove a lot of restrictions.

As Just Me says, sharing/loaning out our items to friends is what allows people to sell more products. Sure, ITunes for instance is doing well because of their $0.99-$1.50 price for music, but you still can’t get the full experience without hearing the song in its entirety to know if you want it.

This same concept applies to handbags. You are much more likely to go and buy something if you hear someone show and talk about their experience than you are to read about it online or just see a picture. You don’t know anything about that product really without someone demonstrating it.

Before you open the handbag, you’d have to read some text warning you of all the things you cannot do. Then you would have to listen to a cow and see an ad for company that made the strap. Then you’d get a whole load of ads for other handbags made by the same company. The outside of the handbag would say “Pretentious Pratt productions, in association with Third World Sweatshops and Blind Child Stitching, present A Child Molesting Weirdo handbag.”

It might not be as good quality, but you’ll still want to make your own copy that can be opened immediately. Particularly if you want to send it as a gift to someone in another country.

Basically, I believe that any song I have purchased via vinyl records, cassette tapes, 8 track tapes and compact disks belong to me. I purchased the right to have them and to listen to them as I choose–completely alone or in a room of 500 people. I think it is wrong for the media people to make such a big stink about it. We already pay for our internet service providers. So, we should be able to access each others’ media should we so choose. We’re allowed to access each others’ information and data by visiting web pages and reading blogs–etc. It seems like common sense to expect a sharing of other types of information as well.

One last note: In my youth, it was a COMMON practice to loan your friends a “new record” that you had just gotten or to borrow one that they had just gotten!! If the record was well received, we each wanted our own copy!! So, it was actually an ADVERTISEMENT FOR the performer/group/record company to do that. I can’t even begin to fathom someone showing up at my door wanting to charge me $0.50 or something for every time I let someone listen to my records!! Gee Whiz, Folks, where’s it all going to end???

I see it the other way though – the problem isn’t that we’re not “getting it” when it comes to instant/free copying, it’s the industry trying to sell digital content as if it’s a physical item. Benefiting from the near-zero distribution costs but also trying to create scarcity to keep prices equivalent to old style media.

The creators still need to get paid for their efforts, but high prices per copy doesn’t make sense when copies can be made freely and easily.

After all, it is the lawmakers that WE elected who are treating trade associations, like RIAA and MPAA, like branches of government.