Illegal Downloads

[gqgk]

Ok so what is your opinion on illegal downloads... there are two arguments that i accept for both sides.

1) People who download illegally prolly wouldnt buy the full version because they can afford it. for example why pay $700 (may be wrong there 😛 ) on Photoshop when you can buy gimp which has plugins for most photoshop features. so therefore if you d/l photoshop illegally then you prolly would just get gimp if you couldnt d/l it. make sense? haha also if people that usually wouldnt get it end up getting it, its like advertisement for the product so other ppl see it and do buy it.

2) Programmers put in a lot of work and if you cant afford it then dont use it. Plain and simple.

so what does everyone think?

i dont like illegal downloads however music is very expensive for a college student so its tough to not want to get stuff free lol

 

[katy perry is hot]

So what if music is expensive for a college student.. too bad, suck it up. Get a job.

You're stealing from people by illegally downloading things.

 

[Gimgak]

For music downloads, I really don't care if it is done legally or not. I mean the artist gets almost nothing from it anyway, its all the big record label. I just download things from playlist.com -razz-

 

[Howard_Crane]

I'm for complete abolition of copyrights that infringe upon proliferation. And by that I mean, I respect people for doing the things they do, but in the interest of evolution, I'll take it off you and make something of it.

We're talking about something on a micro level when we start thinking about buzz words like "rights" and shit. We also need to take care of the macro level. The human race must evolve soon to cope with the changes that have occured in our climate (not WEATHER climate). And without the complete openness and sharing of ideas, technology, science, and music we wont be able to meet the mark.

I owe a lot of what I have to piracy.
My mind is very capable of certain things. And so I needed certain tools to help me excell at my craft. With the help of the Internet, that's what I got. And I certainly did excell at my craft.

If someone is arrogant enough to demand that we all line their pockets for something they didn't even create (and I'm talking about Record Labels, software corporations etc), and prevent us from obtaining and learning from something someone else made, then they deserve to by gypt.
Look at Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails; now a Free Agent, he asks for a small fee for you to download music from his site. And encourages people to share online.

This is where I think Ayn Rand needs to take a holiday... this is the new economy. The economy of love. Achievement through doing what you feel is right for you. Without economic concerns.

 

[gqgk]

So what if music is expensive for a college student.. too bad, suck it up. Get a job.

You're stealing from people by illegally downloading things.

you do realize most jobs for college students dont pay for tuition right? my college is about $30,000 a yr plus food plus gas plus car insurance. plus social things plus apartment plus girlfriend plus books (my average book price is around $75-200 per book and its not like high school where its one book per class). so on average i spend around $50,000 a yr. the average pay for a job out of high school is $25,000 plus you cant even work full time cause of school. lucky for me i work for a company that pays me more than i spend, but honestly, do you really think a college student can afford music? they cant afford tuition. i'm not saying illegal download is good, but i'm just saying that telling someone to get a job just doesnt work like that. its called the real world and ppl learn about it when they don spend each night with mommy or daddy. and lots of kids cant handle it. because of it your credit sucks when you graduate so you cant get a house loan or a car loan and you start out with a crappy job on the corporate ladder. so "getting a job" doesnt cut it for ppl 18-22 in the US

 

[katy perry is hot]

So what if music is expensive for a college student.. too bad, suck it up. Get a job.

You're stealing from people by illegally downloading things.

you do realize most jobs for college students dont pay for tuition right? my college is about $30,000 a yr plus food plus gas plus car insurance. plus social things plus apartment plus girlfriend plus books (my average book price is around $75-200 per book and its not like high school where its one book per class). so on average i spend around $50,000 a yr. the average pay for a job out of high school is $25,000 plus you cant even work full time cause of school. lucky for me i work for a company that pays me more than i spend, but honestly, do you really think a college student can afford music? they cant afford tuition. i'm not saying illegal download is good, but i'm just saying that telling someone to get a job just doesnt work like that. its called the real world and ppl learn about it when they don spend each night with mommy or daddy. and lots of kids cant handle it. because of it your credit sucks when you graduate so you cant get a house loan or a car loan and you start out with a crappy job on the corporate ladder. so "getting a job" doesnt cut it for ppl 18-22 in the US

Doesn't matter.

That's like saying " Oh well I'm in college and I don't make enough money, so I guess I'll steal this computer from Best Buy "

 

[Mr. Money]

Woah everyone...its not illegal until you get caught!

 

[ℓєσ gнσѕт]

@Howard_Crane
You are god... ~eeeek~

@Irviding
It is NOT stealing. The very simple Apple model shows this to us. There is 1 apple, if I take it from you I have stole it. If I make a copy of it and take the copy, I have not stolen anything. When you download anything online you are getting a copy, not the original, thus you are not stealing like you would a computer. No data was lost in your copy (like a computer would be gone from Best Buy), if anything you've created a copy which is usually preferred (rather than stealing a copy) ~wink~

There are MILLIONS of artists and movie makers who make great stuff. What you don't know is, most of these release their stuff free. Only a select few get picked by labels and Hollywood to work for them, leaving the rest to find better ways of getting noticed. These people understand you can make decent money off free music, and have fun doing it.

The fact of the matter is, and you CANNOT give any evidence to disprove this (I will rip anything you say apart with the truth);
Copyrights are limiting creative freedoms that will better advance the human race in development.

So I ask you, why are we allowing ourselves to be limited? ~cool~

 

[katy perry is hot]

While you have a point, I don't think you'll be able to rip apart the fact that since these certain songs being downloaded illegally are given a price, it is technically stealing.

 

[gqgk]

While you have a point, I don't think you'll be able to rip apart the fact that since these certain songs being downloaded illegally are given a price, it is technically stealing.

i agree with you. if there are two cd's at bestbuy and i steal one there are still two cd's. just one is with me and one is in the store. if i make more there are more cd's. but i still stole the one. when you download from iTunes money goes to the artist (you pay for the song) but when you d/l from piratebay.org no money goes there meaning you got something that costs for free. and the whole creative freedom stuff is BS. you werent creative enough to think the song up for yourself therefore it isnt yours. So its still stealing. anyway you look at it. i can steal a computer from bestbuy and more will be made to make up for the one i took. but it still had a price that i didnt pay. but me not having the computer is not creative freedom. yeah i cant make gfx on photoshop w/o it. but it still wasnt mind. i didnt make that computer so i wasnt creative in the first place. so everyone with the creative freedoms excuse it wont work...

 

[katy perry is hot]

Exactly. There are copies of books at stores for example, if I just grab a book and walk out does that mean I'm not stealing because it's a copy of an original?

 

[Howard_Crane]

Jeeze. About time someone noticed who I am.


Irviding: You're right. It is stealing from the perspective of this person has choosen to put a price on their music/software/thoughts.
But who gives a crap?

You know that all affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense?

 

[ℓєσ gнσѕт]

The creative freedoms is not bullsh*t. Our society was built upon people *improving* other's work. Copyrights LIMIT this natural improvement and thus limit the society overall, allowing only a select few to hold the power of change. If you think it's correct to have a few major companies control every part of our daily life, from our music taste to our movies, then sorry, but I have to say I highly disagree with your outlook on life.

I'll give you credit for that counter apple scenario, I hadn't heard of anything that could beat it yet, so congrats and +rep for that (can't be a debate if it's easy for a single side to win ~razz~ )

This next bit is how I personally look at music;
In the old days, music was only paid for when you saw it performed. You didn't have to pay for it either, as most of the time it was street performers who simply asked for donations. The theory of paying for music was a "one time" thing, if you liked it enough to go back and see the show again, or walk down the same lane, you could pay to see it done again. Keep in mind though, it was never exactly the same, you were paying for a slightly different performance. Music today is done in a sound booth, and then released as a single .mp3 file on company servers. When someone buys it, they copy that single performance thousands of times, one for each buyer. Why? Shouldn't one person pay the fee for the performance and then be able to share it whenever with who ever? If they want to charge for each song file then each song file should be a difference performance. That's why concerts still make money afterall. I think that music files should be free of charge, and artists should make money from their shows, like music was designed to be (afterall, music was around before methods of paying for it were) ~wink~

 

[Howard_Crane]

I like your style. Thinking outside the box. Actually looking at what we're talking about (music) instead of just attempting to justify a pre-designated stance.

 

[katy perry is hot]

This next bit is how I personally look at music;
In the old days, music was only paid for when you saw it performed. You didn't have to pay for it either, as most of the time it was street performers who simply asked for donations. The theory of paying for music was a "one time" thing, if you liked it enough to go back and see the show again, or walk down the same lane, you could pay to see it done again. Keep in mind though, it was never exactly the same, you were paying for a slightly different performance. Music today is done in a sound booth, and then released as a single .mp3 file on company servers. When someone buys it, they copy that single performance thousands of times, one for each buyer. Why? Shouldn't one person pay the fee for the performance and then be able to share it whenever with who ever? If they want to charge for each song file then each song file should be a difference performance. That's why concerts still make money afterall. I think that music files should be free of charge, and artists should make money from their shows, like music was designed to be (afterall, music was around before methods of paying for it were) ~wink~

Yes, you could see the music on the road for yourself. Nowadays you purchase the music so you can listen to it at anytime you want, to possess YOUR OWN copy of that song, it's only fair you pay loyalties to buy it..

 

[Howard_Crane]

Yes, you could see the music on the road for yourself. Nowadays you purchase the music so you can listen to it at anytime you want, to possess YOUR OWN copy of that song, it's only fair you pay loyalties to buy it..

My question is then, where did this morality come out of? What leads you to the conclusion that it's only fair?
Because they expected it?

The way I see it is, copyright is there to protect people from having their WORK stolen. And by that, it means to protect their work from being used for someone elses profit or from being claimed by that person. I'm listening to the Pixies discography... am I making a profit off The Pixies? No. Am I claiming I performed these songs? No. That would be theft.
So we really need to question where we got the morality from that we aught not have a piece of media because some guy a few months/decades ago performed a song for a corporation, and isn't even receiving royalties for it, and this corporation wants to sell it.

 

[ℓєσ gнσѕт]

@Irviding
Your point is misguided, because you never pay for copies, ever. Even when buying copies of a piece of paper you pay for the service, not the copy itself. Would you pay a person to sit around and copy and paste on a computer all day? Because that's what the payment would be for in this case, you'd pay for the server to copy the file. Products may be massed produced, but your item is never the exact same (or a "copy") of another. Each will be slightly different. I'd love to see you think up a scenario when a person pays for a copy (and not the service to copy), because I can't right now ~razz~

@Howard_Crane
I think it's because to this day a proper court has never took a stance on what it truly is. When you get caught, are you tried as a criminal? No... you're sued... for breaking copyrights. If you stole it, you'd be tried the same as someone who stole a computer from Best Buy. Since no court has really found a name for it, I think that people fall for the anti-pirates' marketing too easy. They see the "You wouldn't steal..." commercials (although honestly, I would steal a car, best joy ride ever) and think that they're right, before they look at the facts (probably because they're too lazy).

It ticks me off that people don't understand how the laws that "protect rights" and such actually work before they go off trying to tell people other things. I have been interested in copyright law for the past few years and have even translated things from Sweden and other EU languages into English to read and understand.

 

[Howard_Crane]

wow.. someone who actually does stuff!

We should work together.
My interest is law and legislation. I'm wanting to go to work on Ireland's Public Order Acts, put them into a legible form that people can read, online. Things of that nature are my thing.

It really depends upon people getting the facts, there I agree with you. 🙂

 

[ℓєσ gнσѕт]

I've had thoughts about going into the law field as my career path, my grandma does contracts for major companies and my dad was almost a lawyer. I would want to work based in Europe, because it's the most developing in the Internet laws, and I from everything i've been told it would suit my tastes better than the USA can in terms of the climate and everyday life.

That is of course, assuming that my web based network of sites doesn't take off (which is centered toward open source development in a way), or I don't choose to go into graphics as a career.

I'd want to help translate some of the laws as well, the only issue there is the wording. You really have to be extremely careful or you can be sued for misrepresenting the laws and other junk. Not the best of times ~lol~

As for working together, my msn address is in my profile and i'm always a PM away. If I have some free time and think I can help with stuff, i'd be more than happy to ~smile~

 

[katy perry is hot]

@Irviding
Your point is misguided, because you never pay for copies, ever. Even when buying copies of a piece of paper you pay for the service, not the copy itself. Would you pay a person to sit around and copy and paste on a computer all day? Because that's what the payment would be for in this case, you'd pay for the server to copy the file. Products may be massed produced, but your item is never the exact same (or a "copy") of another. Each will be slightly different. I'd love to see you think up a scenario when a person pays for a copy (and not the service to copy), because I can't right now ~razz~

Yes, I would pay someone to do that.

That is work to copy and paste something on a computer all day, a lot of grueling, boring work.

Basically you're saying that people do this type of work don't deserve to be paid? I don't understand exactly.

Perhaps I should elaborate my stance a bit more.. If a band just releases a song for free and doesn't do it through iTune then frankly I don't care, but a band releasing songs out there expecting a dollar for each of them are getting screwed over by people who download songs illegally. the fact is these things are assigned a price for a reason, because they cost that much. Downloading it IS stealing no matter how you look at it, now the laws in my view do need to be relaxed, that I will give you, but downloading illegal music should still be an arrestable offense as it is stealing.