Ian MacKaye Quotes

People think that it's their sovereign right to download music and not have to pay for it.

I'm all for sharing music, but when people can download a whole record and pay nothing for it and then they share it with 100,000 other people, it's breaking down the whole business.

I have no problem with people illegally downloading stuff. I'm not going to drive hard into 'You should buy my stuff,' because really, it's inevitable. If you like a song, you're going to download it for free. I have no problem with that.

I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I’m concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!

The day that music is taken for free by the majority is the day that the phrase "sell out" doesn't exist any more.

The only people who are afraid of file sharing are the people whose albums are so dull presentation-wise that nobody cares about owning the actual finished product, and the people who have so little connection to their listeners that said listeners have no reason to care whether the artists they like are getting reimbursed for their efforts.

When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.

I'm happy if my music is being downloaded, whether it's legally or illegally.

Books are so cheap and easy to get that people don't bother stealing them, which is the essential rule of piracy that the music business learned much too late.

I hope that the movie industry will learn from the experiences of the music industry and will be much more constructive in their approach to P2P.

Napster was predicating its business model on violation of copyright.

I don't believe every download is a lost sale.

I've never supported this concept of going after Napster. I think the rock bands who fought this were wrong.

Until the governments don't have a clear law against piracy and the digital downloads are not working worldwide properly, the record industry will keep on suffering.

I think we need to stop looking at the file-sharing community with disgust and instead ask ourselves what we can learn from them.

Sharing music is not a crime. It shouldn't be. There should be a deeper meaning to making music than just selling downloads.

Singer/songwriters spend two or three years making an album, and then it goes up for sale and everybody pirates it and you don't make any money. Whereas, writing a film score you still get presented with a paycheck.

I think music should be free. I think all communication should be free. I think people should respect artists, and there should be a certain respect for artists who give their music away for free. If your music winds up on Napster and you approve of it, then the person downloading your music should at least go to your concert, should at least purchase your songs.

It's the big boys, the Googles of this world, that are already benefiting from piracy and not paying the artists a dime.

Megaupload was a dual-use technology. You can use it for good things, and you can use it for bad things. If someone sends something illegal in an envelope through your postal service, you don't shut down the post office. If someone speeds with the car he just bought, you don't go to the car manufacturer and say, 'Hey, we're shutting you down.'

With Napster and the sharing of music, of course, there are going to be people who exploit it. Greed has no end. But there's a lot of good that could happen. We shouldn't let the economic concerns of the major labels infringe on our freedom to share music.

I think Sean Parker damaged the music business with Napster.

It is piracy, not overt online music stores, which is our main competitor.

Some ISPs are blocking all BitTorrent traffic, because BitTorrent can be used to share files in a piratical way. Hollywood lobbying groups are trying to pass laws which would force ISPs to block or degrade BitTorrent traffic, too. Personally, I think this is like closing down freeways because a bank robber could use them to get away.

One of the things that drives me crazy is the belief in Hollywood that bittorrent exists solely for stealing things.