Piracy is just the nature of the business. Until they come up with more solutions to fix it, I don't see the big deal. I have never bought music in my entire life. If your struggling to sell records play more concerts or do other things to make money. Im sure most of the money that the artist these days get come from the record companies, Not the cd's. I don't see a reason to spend 14 dollars for a cd that I can get for free without punishment. Especially with gas prices going over 4 bucks. Im not stupid to use limewire or frostwire anymore but i have other easier means off of youtube.
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Piracy and Illegal Downloads
- Thread starter Xaqwais
- Start date
What came first the chicken or the egg?
Its all about advertisements these days. Who really buys cds? Its all online.
Pirating does not make you an asshole. Pirating and being a generally tightfisted person would make you an asshole. Pirating and being a generous person makes you a great human (as long as you make sure to generally seed to 1:1!!).
your justification is arbitrary if you ignore the consequences of it, which you do if you think that it's still wrong to do something that can actually benefit everyone involved (except lol the record companies).
many cars have mp3 capability now. I don't really know what you mean by "owning" anyway: do you mean owning the CD you bought or just having it on a CD format? Because you can just as easily burn music onto a CD if your car only has a CD player. The only reason to have bought the original CD is because it's a nice thing.
It is a lot fuzzier than that. Imagine that you own a clever device called a "copy chamber". You put some object in the chamber, close the door, press a button, and when you look inside, you now have two rigorously identical copies of the object.
Now, imagine that I have a Ferrari, which I bought for myself. Certainly, this is my property. I legitimately own the Ferrari. When you see it, you ask me if it would be okay to copy it with your device. I say, sure, why not - you get a Ferrari, and I lose nothing. So, you get a free Ferrari, with the consent of its owner (me). Is that not legitimate? Don't you legitimately own a Ferrari now? What if you use your copy chamber to make dozens of Ferraris, which you give to all your friends?
This is essentially what piracy is. Some people buy music, which means that they "legitimately own" it, and then they copy their property many times, and give away the copies to whoever wants them. The crime has nothing to do with "ownership" - it is an infringement of the "exclusive right" the creator of something has to copy it. But that right is not natural, it is artificial. I mean, when you buy something, copying it only involves you and your property. There isn't really any obvious reason why you should not be allowed to do it, unless you sign an agreement saying that you won't - and even then, it is not theft, it is a breach of contract. Piracy is the result of the fact that it is illegal to copy the things you own, coupled with the virtually nonexistent cost of copying digital goods.
If you translate this to the Ferrari example, what you are saying is that this is an example of you taking a car from its rightful owner - the Ferrari company - against their will. But that's not true. You did not take it from anyone, you copied it. And even then, the car did not belong to Ferrari anymore - it belonged to me. And I gave you permission! So whatever happened there cannot have been theft: it was simply that even though I owned the car, I had no right to copy it.
Should we have the right to copy anything we own? There are pragmatic arguments that we shouldn't, so that the investment of creation is properly compensated. On the other hand, as far as digital goods are concerned, this is so completely unenforceable that it isn't really worth it.
Bottom line is, I don't think this issue has anything to do with morality. Copyright is a pragmatic/legal issue, to which better alternatives might exist.
Eventually I can see CDs becoming obsolete and digital downloads becoming the major form of purchasing music (I can't see vinyl totally dying out because of its unique sound quality and collector value). I think it would benefit artists and people alike if record companies could basically be cut out of the picture and artists could self-release their own music digitally. Music could probably be offered cheaper and in a variety of formats/qualities and piracy would probably be a smaller issue because of that, the accessibility of the music and that it won't be affecting the record companies whose company depends on music sales. The fact that I'd be directly paying people involved in making the music would also appeal to me more; people will always pay for good music. It's not that record companies don't deserve my money, it's just not a motivating factor to pay people for something that someone else is responsible for. I can see problems with arriving to a point where artists solely self-release their music but it seems like a logical conclusion.
cookie how is it arbitrary? you want something and there are no immediate short term negatives (no damage to any parties); arbitrary is to say that something like "greed" of other parties makes it okay, which is batshit
The cd thing I am saying the only reason to ever buy a cd, vinyl, whatever is because you want to play it on a record player, in your car, whatever...I actually have no idea what the fuck you are attacking me for on this, my original point was that downloading an album is easier than burning it - what is the point of buying a disc that you have to keep around if all you do is put its data on your computer? You are attacking a point I never made.
The cd thing I am saying the only reason to ever buy a cd, vinyl, whatever is because you want to play it on a record player, in your car, whatever...I actually have no idea what the fuck you are attacking me for on this, my original point was that downloading an album is easier than burning it - what is the point of buying a disc that you have to keep around if all you do is put its data on your computer? You are attacking a point I never made.
I generally stay away from pirating but can't deny that I have pirated things in the past. I often feel (mostly irrationally) scared that I'll get in trouble if I do pirate things and that is why I stay away most of the time. I can't say the same for the other members of my family though, they download like crazy.
-Artist/company owns the music, rights to distribute it, etc..
-Artist/company doesn't want you to copy it
-You copy it
It's pretty black and white that you did something wrong dude. It's that simple.
-I own a car.
-I explicitly tell you not to kiss my car.
-You kiss my car.
It's pretty black and white that you did something wrong dude. It's that simple.
I don't give a fuck that you didn't damage my car-- I explicitly told you not to kiss it, and you did. That's obviously something wrong.
since you're infringing on someone else's rights over their property it's wrong. whether or not you see it as wrong or not is irrelevant.
@chou
You are missing the point. If you sell a car to someone, you do not own it anymore. It might be wrong for someone to kiss your car, if you own it, but if you sell the car to me, why can't I let others kiss it? Similarly, if you sell me music, why can't I copy it and distribute it to whomever I please? I paid for it, why are you saying it is not mine?
The point is that the "exclusive right to copy your creation" is an artificial legal construct. There is no inherent reason why a creator should have this right, except for the original copy. Obviously, piracy is wrong on a legal standpoint, but if you want to look at it morally, it's a lot fuzzier. Copyright has not always existed, and authors have not always assumed that when they sold you their book, you could not copy and redistribute it. Copyright is not "I am licking your car against your will", it is more like "I am licking your car with your consent, but against the car manufacturer's will".
What I am arguing is that copyright is an artificial good. And as all artificial goods, we have to wonder whether its existence is justified or not. As it stands, copyright is abused by corporations, systemically violated and impossible to enforce. So the question is: shouldn't we get rid of it? And what should we replace it with? A tax, distributed according to some estimate of market penetration? A system where artists get paid upfront for the original production? It is not clear to me what should be done, but frankly, the problem is not with pirates, the problem is that the copyright system is completely broken.
You are missing the point. If you sell a car to someone, you do not own it anymore. It might be wrong for someone to kiss your car, if you own it, but if you sell the car to me, why can't I let others kiss it? Similarly, if you sell me music, why can't I copy it and distribute it to whomever I please? I paid for it, why are you saying it is not mine?
The point is that the "exclusive right to copy your creation" is an artificial legal construct. There is no inherent reason why a creator should have this right, except for the original copy. Obviously, piracy is wrong on a legal standpoint, but if you want to look at it morally, it's a lot fuzzier. Copyright has not always existed, and authors have not always assumed that when they sold you their book, you could not copy and redistribute it. Copyright is not "I am licking your car against your will", it is more like "I am licking your car with your consent, but against the car manufacturer's will".
What I am arguing is that copyright is an artificial good. And as all artificial goods, we have to wonder whether its existence is justified or not. As it stands, copyright is abused by corporations, systemically violated and impossible to enforce. So the question is: shouldn't we get rid of it? And what should we replace it with? A tax, distributed according to some estimate of market penetration? A system where artists get paid upfront for the original production? It is not clear to me what should be done, but frankly, the problem is not with pirates, the problem is that the copyright system is completely broken.
this justification is no better than using my reasoning as justification that both options available to you require an act of piracy, therefore choosing the one that costs less for you is the better one. of course, this doesn't apply to other albums that have all the songs on the disc but then it just pisses me off that they can do this and still have the cheek to bang on about how piracy is like downloading communism. what record companies are essentially doing is trying to control the music market by expecting us not to pirate, with disregard to simple economic principles like supply and demand. you want that other song? go pay another £10 for it! they're artificially driving up the price and i don't see why I should buy into the bollocks so I would rather not buy any CDs from them at all since they're being such underhanded bastards. Does it justify it? For me, it could be; it depends on whether you're following your own arbitary morals more by pirating than by buying CDs (i.e. controlling a free market is worse than copyright infringement).
This argument is aside the one that pirating can actually benefit all parties except record companies, and as I've said before musicians can do away with signing big contracts with record labels now that we have the internet. They can't earn millions for a contract? Boo-fucking-hoo. The ability of them to make music hasn't diminished, and those millions ultimately will come from paying for an overpriced product. Ultimately, everything is worth what the purchaser will pay for. Paying for music is dumb, and when the only people who benefit from an artificially inflated price are a small minority that don't give two squirts of piss about their customers, I say let them go find another way of making money. I guess artists would benefit too from having lots of money, but at this point we're saying CD sales are just filling their coffers and I don't see any need for an artist to have millions of dollars. They want it? So would I, doesn't mean it should happen though. They can make easily enough money from gigs/merchandise.
if you want to play it in your car then burn it, which takes all of five minutes. it's marginally harder than downloading an album but seriously, the extra iota of effort is far less worth the money you'd pay for the original CD, if you want it to play in a car. the point i am attacking is your point that "owning" a CD actually has any advantages. it doesn't, unless "owning a nice thing" is one of them.
I'm the only one who actually buy CDs here? :<
Ok not many but when an album is super giga mega hyper awesome for me (like number of the beast, appetite for destruction, back in black ,etc.) i buy them, i like to see my cds, books and games all together, i just like "owning nice things" and they'll look awesome in my future graphic design studio
Ok not many but when an album is super giga mega hyper awesome for me (like number of the beast, appetite for destruction, back in black ,etc.) i buy them, i like to see my cds, books and games all together, i just like "owning nice things" and they'll look awesome in my future graphic design studio
I think you're missing the point.
-I sell you the right to listen to my music at your leisure, maybe put it on your computer and and iPod.
-I DON'T sell you the right to copy it and distribute it to others so they can do the same.
-In fact, I explicitly tell you not to copy it and give it to others.
-I explicitly tell others not to take copies offered to them without my permission.
-You copy it and share/distribute it around
-Others take the copies offered to them without my permission
I'm sorry, but it's that simple-- you have blatantly and obviously wronged me, by doing with my property/creation exactly what I told you not to. :(
You must be joking that this is real basis of argument.
-The point is that "exclusive rights to personal space of my own body" is an artificial legal construct. There is no inherent reason why you should not be able to forcibly violate my body and rape me at your pleasure.
-The point is that "freedom of speech" is an artificial legal construct. There's no inherent reason why you shouldn't be able to censer me and lock down my statements or hold me captive and imprison me for defaming you with words.
-The point is that "human right to life" is an artificial legal construct. There is no inherent reason why you should not be able to murder me in cold blood.
-The point is that "the right to privacy" is an artificial legal construct. There is no inherent reason why the IRS shouldn't mass copy your personal information and distribute it at will to whoever will have it. After all, you still own the original!
ALL ethics is derived from essentially non-logical, non-inherent, non-fundamental concepts of "common understanding". You "should inherently know" why murdering someone is wrong. You "should inherently know" why theft is wrong. You "should inherently know" why copying my music and distributing it when I haven't given you permission to do so is wrong.
Surely you appreciate, not only the consequences of the actions, but also the wrong doing derived due to the act of violating the will/rights of a human being over his own person and possessions.
To deny this is to go into bullshit physics about whether or not ethics even exists-- which I'm not about to argue about here.
Keep in mind again, I'm not accusing anyone of any heinous act. I am simply saying that denying that doing it is wrong is ridiculous. If I pirate, I know I'm doing something wrong, and I'd admit it. I just don't think "it's that bad." That said, logically, it's ridiculous to say "it's not wrong"-- it certainly is!
yeah, you actually can't do this. these people never entered into an agreement with you!
anyway, as a +1 for the "piracy isn't all bad for the artists" side, i just watched a pirated pulp fiction and then immediately went out and bought it! when something really impresses me, i tend to feel i "owe it" to the creator to buy their stuff...
It entirely depends for me. Most of the stuff that I listen to (classical music et al) tends to not have many torrents, so I am almost forced to buy some form of CD, or at least borrow it for a while from a friend.
If it's an artist whose music I'm not hugely a fan of but like to have anyway, I'll just torrent it.
If it's an artist who I do support and want to see continue in their career, I'll go out and buy the CD.
Plus, I have no shame in torrenting, for a few reasons. Firstly, they make plenty of money as artists anyway, if they're pop or rock musicians, who I tend to torrent. So it's not too much of a loss for them to lose a few bucks. Secondly, if it were entirely illegal and people were worried about it that much, the government / music agencies could shut the whole thing down; it's just a matter of effort. (But on the item of a CD, there's just some novelty to having a CD case in your car full of legit CDs you've bought over the years.)
If it's an artist whose music I'm not hugely a fan of but like to have anyway, I'll just torrent it.
If it's an artist who I do support and want to see continue in their career, I'll go out and buy the CD.
Plus, I have no shame in torrenting, for a few reasons. Firstly, they make plenty of money as artists anyway, if they're pop or rock musicians, who I tend to torrent. So it's not too much of a loss for them to lose a few bucks. Secondly, if it were entirely illegal and people were worried about it that much, the government / music agencies could shut the whole thing down; it's just a matter of effort. (But on the item of a CD, there's just some novelty to having a CD case in your car full of legit CDs you've bought over the years.)
That is not how it works. If I write something, hand you a copy and tell you "there you go, it's yours", you can't copy it, even though I never explicitly told you anything. When you buy an album or a movie, there is no explicit agreement that you cannot copy it. You sign nothing, you do not click on "I agree", there is no verbal agreement of any sort, everything is completely implicit. When I am about to take a copy of your work, I do not necessarily know who holds the actual copyright (is it you? the record company? which record company?), nor do I know what they have to say about it (in fact, they don't even have to say anything). There is nothing "explicit" about copyright.
But that is the whole point, I shouldn't inherently know why copying your music and distributing it without your permission is wrong, because it is not clear cut whether it is reasonable for you to have this right or not.
Imagine that we removed copyright and replaced it by the requirement that X% of any profit made from the sale of an item must be distributed among the original creators (if the item is given for free, X% of 0 is 0). Any digital good would then be downloadable for free, and anybody could distribute anything as long as profits, including of course ad revenue, are properly distributed. In theory, that would be a fair system. Pirates would still be doing exactly what they have been doing until now, but it wouldn't be "wrong".
Surely you can see that I am questioning the existence of the right itself. Copyright is unsustainable. Violating a right that you think is justified is one thing. Violating a right that you do not think someone should have is another. I am not making a moral judgement whether piracy is right or wrong, I am pointing out that saying piracy is wrong hinges on the implicit assumption that copyright is a justified right. If you see copyright as unjustified, then you would be hard pressed to see piracy as a wrongdoing. Similarly, if you think nobody has a right to live, you would probably not see murder as being "wrong", but the difference between the two is that there are reasonable arguments against copyright (i.e. the fact that it is systemically violated, impossible to enforce, abused by corporations at the expense of creators, a hindrance to derivative works, and that alternatives are conceivable).
A broken system leads to broken behavior. No matter what you say about it, piracy is here to stay and as a distribution system, it is head and shoulders above everything else. The solution to piracy is not "it is wrong, therefore don't do it" - it is "it is unstoppable, therefore make it right". You should view my argument not as a justification of piracy, but more as an observation that piracy won't be wrong forever. The transition to it being a fully acceptable behavior has already started and is only hindered by how sluggish the system is at adapting to it.
tl;dr piracy might be wrong right now, but it can't keep being wrong for very long
I pirate, and I know that it's wrong. Though I don't feel bad about it.
Yes they did? When you buy a product you implicitly agree to certain common law rules regarding that product - in this case, rules around intellectual property. You can't walk into a restaurant, order a nice meal, eat it, and then say "hey I never signed a contract that said I would pay for this meal".
Not only that, a lot of the time it is explicitly specified - load up a (non-pirated) DVD and the first minute of your time will be spent being reminded of basic copyright law and penalties for breaking it.
See my response to UD.
You should, actually, and you probably do. Humans have an intuitive grasp of intellectual property, and you can see this all over the internet. If someone uploads a home-made video to youtube which becomes very popular and another party re-uploads it, you will have tons of commentators state "hey you stole this video from x!" even if, by your logic, it is "harmless duplication". And the reason we have an intuitive grasp of intellectual property is because of the same reason we have an intuitive grasp of physical property: it is a representation of a person's effort and we as a society deem that people should be able to profit from the fruits of their labor. This is why IP deserves some (though not all) the protections extended to physical property.
This would not be a fair system. This would be like someone saying "okay, anyone can sleep in your house, but if they run a business out of it they have to pay you a percent of profits" - the fact that your property is still being used without your consent doesn't change.
That said, an entity can release its product under GPL or CC and essentially do exactly what you just described above...but it would have be to that entity's choice.
You are free to question the existence of IP law, and in fact everyone should certainly question the existence of IP law as it stands right now because it really sucks, for some reasons you mention in this post and more. However, I would not want to live in a society without intellectual property, because I am aware of the economic consequences. IP law is the only reason companies invest in highly expensive R&D - if you spend several billion dollars developing cutting edge software and then Wal-Mart could sell the same thing for the cost of printing it on a CD, what's the point? And even if you consider a system where the profit would have to be split, what about all the users that would simply download it for free? You get no return on your investment, so there's no reason to make an investment. A large sector of our economy simply breaks down without IP law or some comparable structure.
While I agree with your analysis, I do not agree with your underlying logic. All crimes are "unstoppable" and "unenforceable", from a certain point of view. We cannot prevent all murders, rapes, or thefts (of physical property). That does not mean we should change our legal structure to make those actions okay. Piracy should still be illegal, because it is essentially theft. Prosecution of pirates, however, should go way down - IP records are simply not enough evidence, and as it is the music/film industry's way of dealing with pirates borders on extortion. That said, yes, piracy is more or less unstoppable if we want to maintain even a modicum of due process in our legal system.
In my opinion, one of two things will happen within the next decade:
1) We will increasingly lean towards digital distribution models, which will begin to compete with the most common medium of piracy (torrents). It is obviously impossible to beat torrents on price, so companies will have to think of others ways. One of the ways we're seeing is post-sales support. The videogame industry has embraced this in the form of frequent DLC or free updates, and it works very well at deterring pirates (who have to scramble to avoid the updates, lest it render their cracked copy invalid) while actually benefiting paying customers. This way, the company only needs to authenticate the product infrequently (and it can be slipped into the process of updating) and pirates can still pirate, they'll just be getting an incomplete product and have to go through a lot more hassle.
This system is also open for abuse (lol activision) but it's a hell of a lot better than DRM. And while there will always be pirates who manage to find ways around any system, the idea is that this will reduce the convenience factor by enough that they'll just fork over the money.
2) The entertainment industries continue to be subsidized by customers who actually buy their products and pirates continue to run rampant until eventually everyone's freedom on the internet is sharply curtailed by a series of corporate-written laws that impose vast restrictions on the web. Because make no mistake...if business cannot reconcile piracy with their business model, they will not hesitate to pull the strings on their puppets in Washington. This will obviously be very bad for all of us, so I'm hoping we manage to figure out a solution before it inevitably happens. You could say "but our system is so corrupt and it's all due to IP law" but, really, it's due to corporatism, which isn't something we can fix at this point in the game.
yes it is a better justification; doing what I want with negligible harm is better than anything acting like piracy is morally positive, although it sure is fun...I still, to reiterate, do not get why you are being so belligerent toward me about all this - I totally agree that we need to move forward and come up with better solutions, so it is more like we are arguing at each other than really arguing
your whole extra track thing is mildly irrelevant anyway, most extra tracks and bonus tracks are extremely bad (they are throw ins for a reason)
owning a cd has advantages. just not very large ones...I made it extremely clear that I felt like it had the least advantages of any of the mediums you could pirate in, so again, no idea why you are so intent on belligerence
I pirate everything. I am not going to do some bullshit justification like I try it then buy it if I like it, or that they don't deserve my money. I am not going to buy it if it is available for free. I am finding that I end up pirating things less and less anyway. I use Debian instead of Windows (Even though I had already pirated 7 prior so that is kind of moot), most of the music I listen to is available for free on the producer's website/my local radio/pandora/youtube, and I find myself playing video games less and less, so I haven't downloaded anything in a while.
I only pirates games that have not been released in my region, and games that have been discontinued several years ago or cost and arm and a leg to get used (Golden Sun is an example of the latter). Basically games that the copyright holder doesn't care enough about to continue distributing them/distribute them in my region.
The people most hurt by this are used game dealers (I guess import sites too), who the video game industry doesn't like terribly much anyways.
I don't pirate music because I don't really listen to any music anyways.
The people most hurt by this are used game dealers (I guess import sites too), who the video game industry doesn't like terribly much anyways.
I don't pirate music because I don't really listen to any music anyways.
Only pirate obscure OSTs and some anime in the spring 2011 season. Really, its stuff that is not available anywhere else.