Piracy and Illegal Downloads

[cookie]

I'd be more willing to buy music if record companies didn't treat their customers like idiots. The last CD I bought was Nightwish's most recent album; upon buying it I later realised that the Japanese version had bonus songs that I had to pirate anyway. The alternative is buying the CD again or downloading the specific track. Fuck you. I don't care if the Japanese versions need extras on their CDs to persuade them to buy them because of CD prices there, that really doesn't concern me. If I still have to break the law to get the whole album why should I play £10 like a chump?

It turns out that bands don't even make that much money from CD sales so my incentive for buying them to support the artist is moot anyway. The music industry needs a sharp dose of reality: they can whine all they want but until they disincentivise pirating properly they have to realise that charging sometimes £10-£15 for something that you can get for free isn't going to work. Supply and demand, bitches.

 

[MrIndigo]

I'd be more willing to buy music if record companies didn't treat their customers like idiots. The last CD I bought was Nightwish's most recent album; upon buying it I later realised that the Japanese version had bonus songs that I had to pirate anyway. The alternative is buying the CD again or downloading the specific track. Fuck you. I don't care if the Japanese versions need extras on their CDs to persuade them to buy them because of CD prices there, that really doesn't concern me. If I still have to break the law to get the whole album why should I play £10 like a chump?

It turns out that bands don't even make that much money from CD sales so my incentive for buying them to support the artist is moot anyway. The music industry needs a sharp dose of reality: they can whine all they want but until they disincentivise pirating properly they have to realise that charging sometimes £10-£15 for something that you can get for free isn't going to work. Supply and demand, bitches.

This is even worse in Australia. Unlike trademark goods, copyright includes the ability to restrict sale or import into particular countries for the purpose of forcing price differentiation. Thus region-locked DVD players etc.

It's bullshit in a globalised economy of international copyright recognition, and it's only encouraging piracy. In that respect, they only have themselves to blame.

EDIT: It's also true that the primary philosophical justification for copyright, e.g. incentivises artists to create, is contradicted by empirical evidence.

 

[His Eminence Lord Poppington II]

90% of the shit you try and buy in China is pirated anyway, lol. therefore, i'll just pirate it for free. I do occasionally buy CDs when i venture out of this country, mostly for collection value, heaven forbid I actually stumble anything good that I haven't heard of before in the record stores I visit. Oh, yeah, and some games require buying, etc. that I have no problem with, bought SC II, WC III, intend on buying DotA II.

 

[CaptKirby]

Piracy is not about prices, about apathy, about...whatever. You can take something you want with no repercussions, so it would be silly not to do so. cookie your point about various releases and the bloat/greed is just a side note, and certainly does not justify piracy.

For every medium, there are various benefits and downsides to owning. Music is easy - it is a million times easier to control your music library if it is not all on discs, not just in terms of access, but also being able to recognize your songs, artists, et cetera. Discs are scratched easily. You can support bands through shirts, attending their concerts, whatever.

Games are more complex. There can be a lot of problems with trying to emulate various systems, so owning can definitely be worth it. Video game companies are better at implementing anti-piracy measures, so they can actually punish you. Also, paying $50 on a piece of SHIT game is incredibly frustrating. Granted, it could be viewed as stupidity due to being too lazy to rent, but when you get saddled with an auto $20 loss (assuming you can resell for $30 right away) buying NiGHTS 2 since the original was a blast, it is a little upsetting.

Movies are simple. Modern film fucking sucks. See it in the theater with friends or pirate it.

In the end, there is a lot you can say and I am not really interested in arguing this for the 235492347th time, but my policy is to pay for what I like and fuck everything else. The right logic is absolutely that it is not the same as physical theft, so nothing IS lost over this. The reaction of most people to having to pay was to listen to less, watch less, play less video games (play them more with friends :P)...something like Netflix can be worth the money, because pirating movies in good quality can be REALLY hard, but pirating is still nice so that you can watch them at your own pace. Will piracy hurt everything down the road? I do not know. I think that it will cause people to want more and pay for it in various ways, however this all shakes out.

Also, I know that people laugh it off, but it really is an effort of love to seed well. People who take piracy seriously have my respect ^_^

 

[cookie]

Piracy is not about prices, about apathy, about...whatever. You can take something you want with no repercussions, so it would be silly not to do so. cookie your point about various releases and the bloat/greed is just a side note, and certainly does not justify piracy.

It doesn't justify piracy but since I'm forced to commit it in both cases I'll pick the option which doesn't involve paying money, because I want to listen to all the songs on the album, so if I want to do so I am going to have to break the law. So while it doesn't make piracy right, it's going to happen anyway because of the music industry's marketing strategies, for people like me.

Technically you're breaking the law but the law is arbitrary and the risk of getting prosecuted atm is negligible, and in principle the loss of sales disincentivises record companies from backing bands and giving them lots of exposure and a chance to become big stars. The question is whether the latter is important. Even if it is, if artists want exposure they ultimately need to cater to their audience: if their audience wants their music for free, then it's rather egocentric for them to expect that the audience should bend to the musicians' will, when the audience far outnumber the musicians. In this day and age the internet is a pretty effective and valid way of accomplishing this. The bands can make their money through gigs or merchandise if they so want, even if CD sales did significantly contribute to their earnings.

For every medium, there are various benefits and downsides to owning. Music is easy - it is a million times easier to control your music library if it is not all on discs, not just in terms of access, but also being able to recognize your songs, artists, et cetera. Discs are scratched easily.

How is this even relevant? You rip the CDs you own onto computer anyway. The only benefit of owning CDs is if you just like collecting things and/or like the physical quality of the product (say if you like the album art). You can easily make backups of pirated media much more conveniently: compare shoving all your music onto a USB drive to having to store hundreds of CDs. CDs are nothing more than nice ornaments because their use for storage is obsolete.

 

[Fishin]

The only thing I don't pirate atm is games, and even that has exceptions; I don't buy import stuff or DS games after my DS died on me.

I'd kinda like to start buying more stuff to support things I like but other expenses take priority right now.

 

[Fake Sketch]

I do a lot of piracy, its very very common in my country, we dont buy anything lol, unless we cant get a pirat copy.

 

[Mountain Dewgong]

In my opinion there are two defining points in the piracy arguments:

Can it be defined as stealing if there is no one tangible copy? You steal someone's car and it's gone; but if you 'steal' digital music it has just been reproduced.

If you 'illegally' download something who says you would have actually paid money for it in the first place? I download music and games that I am not sure about simply to try them and don't want to pay 20 bucks for something I'm not entirely sure I'll like.

 

[Triggz]

Movies Music and Software, i pirate it all

Not to say that I wont buy a CD or a Movie if its worth the money, but most movies i just watch once and never again. Software is just too expensive to be buying on my budget and even when I can afford it I dont see myself paying $700 for the latest photoshop. Artists make less than a dollar of an album, most of their money comes from endorsements and concerts so no I dont feel bad about "stealing" any of them.

Video games though i always buy legit.. maybe its just my form of OCD but i like to have the case with the booklet and the cool looking disc/cart.

 

[mtr]

I pirate shit all the time,especially music, without any shame.

I don't really pirate computer games because it's too much of a hassle to get them working, and you have to wade through a bunch of crappy, malware-ridden torrents before you get the goods.

 

[FlareBlitz]

In my opinion there are two defining points in the piracy arguments:

Can it be defined as stealing if there is no one tangible copy? You steal someone's car and it's gone; but if you 'steal' digital music it has just been reproduced.

Yes, it can. Theft is obtaining a product which someone is selling without paying for it and without their consent. Whether the product is intangible or easily reproducible is not really germane to the issue, especially considering that intellectual property is every bit as important as physical property (of course, our current IP system is screwy beyond belief, but that's another discussion).
Imagine that you write a short story and leave it laying around on your desk. Your friend comes over, reads the story, and then writes and publishes the same exact story later, making a bunch of money. Would you not consider that a theft of your ideas and seek legal recourse?

If you 'illegally' download something who says you would have actually paid money for it in the first place? I download music and games that I am not sure about simply to try them and don't want to pay 20 bucks for something I'm not entirely sure I'll like.

I'm not sure why this matters? The key issue here is the matter of consent. If you use someone's property without asking, then it doesn't really matter what your motivations were for doing so, and it doesn't even matter if it has no impact on their total sales. What if someone steals your car and, when caught, says "hey man I would have refueled the gas and performed basic maintenance and returned it before you even noticed it was gone"? Do you think such arguments should be entertained?
Now, if you're referring to the standard practice of multiplying total pirated copies times sales price to get damages, then I agree that this is an inaccurate measure. But it's not really a justification for piracy.


In case you guys haven't figured it out yet, I am against piracy on a moral level. I also believe that if appropriate legal structures were in place (read: not what we have right now) piracy should also be prosecuted at a civil level. As things are, however, I think there should be a sharp de-emphasis on prosecuting alleged copyright infringement, as the entire system is now very very shady - it runs more like an extortion racket than a legitimate attempt by business to recoup losses.

 

[Mekkah]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_download_this_song

Yankovic's own views on filesharing are less clear-cut:
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!!!!!
—"Weird Al" Yankovic, "Ask Al" Q&As for July 5, 2003

 

[Tolan]

I download music and ROMs. I have yet to find a good site to download movies, TV shows, etc.

 

[mingot]

Dear Pirates:

If you pirate you're an asshole. Just admit that, be comfortable with it, and move on with life. Don't try to make a bunch of ridiculous arguments about how you are justified. You're not. It's just something that easy to get away with and has no real downsides (for you), plain and simple.

Not telling you the stop doing it. Don't care if you do. Just quit with the justification and/or entitlement bullshit. It's asinine.

 

[sbc]

I download music (and stream sports/tv shows).

I don't really care though because I wouldn't buy them if I couldn't get it illegally. Every gigabyte of music costs roughly £200 so why I would I buy it at that value? And similarly I'm not going to pay £30-40 a month for Sky Sports packages.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Certainly some piracy is completely unjustified, but in a lot of cases it just isnt.

Copyright laws are completely farcical. I just dont agree at all that breaking these laws in some instances is even remotely immoral or assholish.

For instance, anything that has had a copyright extension retroactively applied to it has been taken from the public domain without anything in return. You should own this material, but you dont because the american government caved to business and every other government caved to america.

If there is something you cannot legally obtain due to copyright law, and you pirate it this is the very definition of a victimless crime. Neither situation makes the slightest difference to the copyright owners, the only difference is on your end.

Have a nice day.

 

[mingot]

Certainly 99.99% of the piracy that takes place is completely unjustified, but in a very small number of cases it just isnt.

Ok, Hip, I agree with you.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Can I rephrase it to remove the word completely. Its hyperbole.

Then we are good.

Have a nice day.

 

[mingot]

Hip, you are a supermod and can edit that post as you see fit! It's on of the benefits of your position!

Seriously, I see your point, though. It's just painful for me to listen to people try to justify the other cases when it's really just a matter of it a) being free and b) there being no downside to infringing. Now I'm going to run along, buy Portal 2, and have that nice day you keep talking about.

 

[cookie]

yeah, the lack of repercussions comes into this big time. That wouldn't be enough to explain it but the crime in question isn't like assault or theft where the damage to someone is 1. immediately apparent, 2. guilt is induced or 3. the damage is substantial in that one instance.
1. The effect comes long after the cause (applies to #2 as well).
2. You're behind a computer screen, you can't see the artists, and the effect isn't something that we immediately associate with hurting another person.
3. One person pirating makes fuck all difference; 3 million people might do.

One thing that nobody has mentioned is that the effect of piracy on music is very ambiguous. On one hand, you can take the simplistic model of a person pirating music instead of buying a CD. But this isn't the whole story: there is a lot of music people pirate that they wouldn't otherwise buy, because it's a bit mediocre. How many much music in your library is stuff you like enough to buy?

Now consider this: say you've gone and pirated Radiohead's latest album because you wondered what it would sound like but didn't feel like risking shelling out the money for the whole album just in case you didn't like it. If you never pirated you would never have bought the album at all. However, having pirated it you *might* enjoy it and you *might* buy the album. That's relatively unlikely but what is more likely is that if you get into the band enough you might go to their gigs or buy their merchandise. Radiohead has gained a new fan and more monies. Don't try telling me this is bullshit, because I know it's true for me at least - pirating music has gotten me into bands I would have never otherwise. I'm sure some people would prefer using a stupid marketing campaign strewn with only the positive reviews and snippets from the only good songs on their album, but that's a horribly underhanded way of doing it (as nearly all marketing is). What the fuck is wrong with music getting exposure by people actually listening to it?

It should be also noted that if CDs were cheaper people might not mind buying an album that they don't know is any good. "Try before you buy" is a concept that the software industry has quite effectively adopted; for music unfortunately there is no such simple solution but pirating isn't a bad approximation by any means.

This argument is moot in the UK and other European countries since we have Spotify so we can listen to whole albums if we want, which is another good solution to piracy but it seems other countries are too fucking stubborn to get with the times and insist on telling people bullshit like "PIRACY IS THEFT".

Again, this doesn't make piracy "right" but it can damn fucking well benefit artists so whether it's right or legal doesn't really come into this if it's a potentially win-win situation.

 

[Chou Toshio]

porn
you guys are all lying to yourselves if this is the first mention of the word "porn" in this thread...

 

[Yaridovich]

Imagine that you write a short story and leave it laying around on your desk. Your friend comes over, reads the story, and then writes and publishes the same exact story later, making a bunch of money. Would you not consider that a theft of your ideas and seek legal recourse?

I would consider this a theft of my ideas and seek legal recourse, but I feel like this example is far more malicious than pirating music. This example was probably geared to be like that to drive in the point of intellectual property, but I think that pirating is significantly less douchey, to the point where I can justify doing it on occasion. In this example, the author gets no intellectual credit or recognition for their work and is robbed of all the money they could possibly make from the short story. It's like what happened to Frankie Muniz in Big Fat Liar before he took down Marty Wolf.

In pirating music the artists receives the intellectual credit for their work. Their name is on it, if I download a Radiohead album I'm not mistaking them for Lady Gaga or giving her the credit. Likewise, as Cookie argued it's probably not hurting the band financially a lot. Unfortunately, probably is a big word. I've had similar experiences though, there's tons of concerts I've gone to that I wouldn't have thought about unless I discovered the bands through pirating. I'd be really interested if someone could find a financial-ish analysis similar to what Cookie described. The only arguments against pirating I have been able to see as valid are moral, and I guess I'm selfish and lazy enough that I can justify it to myself. I can't in quite a few cases too. There are definitely bands I'm more willing to pirate from than others and whatnot. I've never pirated games or movies before, but I can't say I won't.

Mingot is pretty much on the money from an individual's perspective. When I pirate I don't think primarily about the overarching economic/moral impacts of what I'm doing. Although I wouldn't do it if I felt it was seriously hurting somebody I'm mostly thinking "score, I'm getting this stuff for free!"

 

[lati0s]

Imagine that you write a short story and leave it laying around on your desk. Your friend comes over, reads the story, and then writes and publishes the same exact story later, making a bunch of money. Would you not consider that a theft of your ideas and seek legal recourse?

that's a bad analogy, that would only work if you pirated music and then sold it. Imagine you left the short story on your desk and then your friend read it and then when you published it he didn't buy the book because he had already read it, that's more like piracy.

The way I see it is that piracy can never be worse than choosing to not listen to music as the effect on everyone besides yourself is exactly the same.

 

[Xaqwais]

that's a bad analogy, that would only work if you pirated music and then sold it. Imagine you left the short story on your desk and then your friend read it and then when you published it he didn't buy the book because he had already read it, that's more like piracy.

It wasn't an analogy for piracy but whether theft can be classified as theft if nothing physical was stolen.

Now consider this: say you've gone and pirated Radiohead's latest album because you wondered what it would sound like but didn't feel like risking shelling out the money for the whole album just in case you didn't like it. If you never pirated you would never have bought the album at all. However, having pirated it you *might* enjoy it and you *might* buy the album. That's relatively unlikely but what is more likely is that if you get into the band enough you might go to their gigs or buy their merchandise. Radiohead has gained a new fan and more monies. Don't try telling me this is bullshit, because I know it's true for me at least - pirating music has gotten me into bands I would have never otherwise. I'm sure some people would prefer using a stupid marketing campaign strewn with only the positive reviews and snippets from the only good songs on their album, but that's a horribly underhanded way of doing it (as nearly all marketing is). What the fuck is wrong with music getting exposure by people actually listening to it?

Quite a few bands/artists are using Youtube to debunk this argument completely. It's completely legal (and very easy) to go on Youtube, load up their official channel and listen to their new album or single there. They profit in the process and you hear their song.

I know many smaller artists (and even some big ones) haven't done as such but let's say a band you get a bit interested in does this. Do you still think you're justified to download their stuff and put it on your MP3 player opposed to going to Youtube on your computer and going through their means?

It's still more inconvenient but I'm wondering what you're angle is on these cases.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Actually I am not entirely sure it is completely legal to go on youtube.. Like, downloading copyrighted material that was uploaded by someone without the rights to, even through youtube may be illegal. It definitely used to be, I am unsure if this has been changed.

At least in some parts of the world.

Have a nice day.