Illegal Downloading
| Author | Message |
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| tabitha Bleeding on the Floor  Age: 45 Gender: Female Posts: 1831 | If you have $5, and the box of cereal is $20, you can't get the entire box of cereal. It's an imperfect analogy because no cereal costs $20, but it was the first thing that popped into my head, so let's just for the sake of argument pretend that there is an extremely expensive cereal out there that costs $20. No store is going to sell you a partial box of cereal -- but you can buy a smaller box, or get a couple of the single serving boxes, and you still have some cereal, just the amount you can afford, not the family size box. You can go on sites like iTunes and buy $5 worth of music. You don't have to spend $20 on the CD, you can buy the 5 songs you like best. You paid fairly for the items you receive. You didn't steal, you got what you were able to buy. STEALING IS WRONG. Whether it's a box of cereal of an album worth of music, it belongs to someone else until the time you give that person enough money to transfer the ownership of the item to you. If you steal it, you are breaking the law. You all seem to think that it's okay because it's *only* a couple of songs, or because it should "all be about the music", or "I buy enough merch to support the band, but I download their hard work, their artistry, their love for free, but it's okay because I bought the tee-shirt." STEALING. IS. WRONG. Let's try another analogy. You go to your job, you work for 8 hours and you get paid $10 an hour, so you expect to get paid $80 for your 8 hours of work. Your boss says he's only going to pay you $40, but it's okay, because at least he's paying you *part* of what you worked for. You would be wicked pissed, and rightfully so, and demand to get paid for all of the hours that you worked. You would argue that you gave up 8 hours of your life with the understanding that you would be compensated $10 for each of the hours that you work, not 4. Your boss thinks, well, at least I'm giving you *some* money, so what does it matter? You're still getting money, just not what you expected to get. This is what you are doing to the bands you love. You are telling them that the time that they spend writing and recording their music is not worth anything, that by only paying for the merch and concert tickets you are only paying them for half the amount of work they performed, and in fact, you expect to get the thing that they worked the hardest on for free. Hopefully this clears up my argument and clarifies the analogies that I chose to help corporealize a conceptual idea. |
| questionable content Always Born a Crime  Age: 28 Gender: Female Posts: 5604 | Utada Hikaru: The difference I was trying to emphasize is that with downloads, one can make an unlimited number of copies. So it isn't anything physical that's stolen. But if someone stole the physical record, they would also lose the amount it cost to produce that one CD. I agree with you though, the band IS still losing out because of the lost sale. |
| Go fuck yourself Devil's Got Your Number  Age: 30 Gender: Female Posts: 37823 | tabitha: I'm not trying to attack you, but like your logic, what about libraries? Libraries purchase books then lend those books out to everyone so that way people don't have to go out and buy them, so should libraries be outlawed? For me personaly if that were to happen, cause I read alot, I wouldn't be able to read over three quarters of the books I do and enjoy. I realise that musicians depend on the money they get and so do the hundreds of people who work with them but how many cds could some kid like me afford? I have to buy all my clothes etc. so I would be able to afford, what maybe a cd a month if I don't eat lunch twice a week. Most rock music listeners and I'm not trying to generalize but they don't have the money to go out and buy cds when they need it for more important stuff, like I have to save up for collage cause my collage fund was all in stocks and those are all gone so... |
| ageha. Bulletproof Heart  Age: 30 Gender: Female Posts: 25049 | tabitha: yes. fine. stealing is wrong. but at the end of the day, i'm 15. i'm in the middle of finishing a school programme. i don't have enough hours in the day to go to school, finish all my schoolwork, and get a job. so where on earth do you think i'm going to find the money to pay for albums and singles? there are so many artists that i listen to, that there are releases by an artist that i like almost daily. my family is in enough finiancial problems already, i'm not going to ask them for 30-50 dollars each day. |
| Mindfuck Always Born a Crime  Age: - Gender: Female Posts: 5614 | My Dear Delirious:Authors give permission for the works to be used in a library, as far as I'm concerned. They know their book(s) are in libraries. Music artists, unless they give CDs away or put it up themselves for free download on the Internet, do not give people permission to illegally download their music. Libraries are also institutions which exist to provide important information to the public - not just books. Also, you can borrow CDs from libraries as well  My Dear Delirious:Then don't buy CDs. People need to get their priorities right: what's more important, eating or buying a CD? People do not need music to function; for the average person, getting a CD and putting it on your iPod and listening to it is what we call a "want"; a "luxury", almost, because it is not necessary. Download illegally, I'm not going to stop you - but don't say things like "but some people can't afford to buy them" because that's crap. If people cannot afford to buy a CD, then that's their problem. They need to learn to get their priorities right in their life, and learn that music is not a must. It's a want. If they need to save up for something like college, as you say, then that should take priority if they really want it. karyu.: What 15 year old needs 30-50 dollars a day to buy music? No, scratch that: what person needs 30-50 dollars a day to buy music? That's ridiculous, imo. |
| Kaede Bleeding on the Floor  Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 1359 | ^I agree. Its wrong to steal music, just like it is for downloading movies etc I come from a low income family too, I don't have a job and neither does my mother because she's too ill to work.. I try saving up the money I recieve on my birthdays and other celebrations to buy my cds from my fav bands. I could never afford buying tickets to a concert but the best thing I can to do to support a band is by buying their cd. I listen to a band's music by going on their myspace or purevolume page and listen there or listening to them on radio, so why download? Being poor does not give me the right to steal from someone and neither should any of you. |
| AdamLambert Really Not Okay  Age: 29 Gender: Female Posts: 614 | I only illegily download to see if i should buy the album eg. The Used I Downloaded Liar Liar (Burn In Hell) and I loved it and i downloaded pretty handsome awkward and also loved it so i went out and bought the cd. Therefore they got money they wouldnt have if didnt download it. I do it all the time and end up buying half of the albums of the bands i download who i had no intention of bying before i downloaded the freaking song so give eachother a break ppl. |
| tabitha Bleeding on the Floor Age: 45 Gender: Female Posts: 1831 | 1) What Mindfuck said. She took the words right out of my mouth. An author of a book signs a release letting their book be put in a library for public access. Part of the reason for this is that is much more necessary for people to be literate than it is for teens to be able to listen to their favorite band. Without knowing how to read, you can't really function. Libraries are intended to build and keep an interest in reading and so that average people can have access to the great literary works of the world. 2) Kaede also makes a good point. Thank you for your honesty. I too grew up extremely poor and had to make do with what I had. More on that in a minute. 3) always: When a band records a song, the song is considered an "intellectual property" purely because there is not a physical manifestation of the song. Just because it doesn't come shrink-wrapped in a little package, it doesn't make it any less "property of the band" than any physical object. 4) When I was a kid (here comes the walk to school uphill both ways in the snow in my underpants rant) WE DIDN'T HAVE THE INTERNET. If we wanted to listen to music, WE LISTENED TO THE RADIO and hoped they played our favorite song. Or we saved up our money and went and bought the tape, yes CASSETTE TAPE, and listened to it until we broke the damn thing, then we went out and bought it again. If we didn't have the money to buy the tape, we were stuck with waiting for it to be aired on the radio. Last time I checked, the radio is still operational, and free -- and for a fee it comes with HD and Satellite capabilities, which are two upgrades we never knew. Rather than illegally downloading, it is possible to listen to a song or band to see if you like it. You just have to get out of thinking ihavetohaveeverythingiwantrightthissecond. Music in all its many forms is recorded onto copy-protected media, obviously because they don't want it copied or downloaded. If the artist or record company didn't care, they would put it onto a copyable format and/or distribute it for free. Since they don't, it *should* logically follow that they don't want you stealing their music. Obviously you guys are going to come up with whatever excuse makes you feel like stealing your favorite artist's music is acceptable behavior. Justify it all you want, but if you are ever caught and get brought up in front of a judge, don't expect those excuses to get you out of trouble, because what you are doing is wrong, illegal (hence the term illegal downloading) and breaks the law. I don't understand the entitlement mentality of people today that gives them the idea that they deserve everything without working or paying for it. I work my ass off for what I have and live within my means, and I appreciate the hard work of others and would never feel comfortable taking it without asking or paying for it. Maybe when you guys realize what a hard day's work is you might change your thinking. |
| Jenny. Moderator  Age: 30 Gender: Female Posts: 19720 | jorgialuvsmcr: That's still stealing. It's like saying it's okay to take one flower from the flourist to see if you'd like the rest of them, and THEN MAYBE going back to buy the bunch. Or taking one piece of chicken. Or one bar of chocolate from a wholesale stock. It's the same thing, even if you ARE going to buy it eventually. Watch your chatspeak, please. |
| t'lema Salute You in Your Grave  Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 2109 | tabitha: Okay, first off I love all your arguments so far. Also I want to support the idea you can listen to music without illegally downloading it or buying it. Purevolume, last.fm, youtube is actually good (if you ignore crappy videos made by 9 year olds to awesome songs) You can listen to clips on itunes or hmv websites, and get the radio online. It is accessible without stealing. And especially for people who say they owe their life (as is often the case with MCR) to a band, you don't want to support them by spending £15 on a cd? Stealing is bad, children, and yes you can get caught out. If your family can't afford 30-50 dollars a day (which seems a ridiculous amount honestly) for your music habits, would they be able to support you in a court case if the labels tried to get the money you owe them? It does happen. Eyeball records almost sued a website for illegally distributing Pencey Prep's album. Think before you download. EDIT: Also, it isn't just abou tthe artists. Think about independent record stores. They are often the ones with great selections, rare CDs and Vvinyl and people ignore them for illegal downloads and they go out of business. Two independent record shops in my home town closed down last year, and all I was left with was HMV, which is more expensive and, lets face it soulless. |
| John St. John Shotgun Sinner  Age: 31 Gender: Male Posts: 7145 | For anyone who says they download to see if they like the songs. Bands have myspace's and often websites were they upload songs or at the very least, parts of there songs. Theres also radio and music channels and many other ways to listen to there material. Even music shops like Zavvi have machines that let you scan the CD barcodes and listen to it through headphones. And best of all. These ways are all Legal. Thats the bottom line, no matter why you download, wether your poor or you have no CD player and absolutly cant function with out music, So what? That doesn't put you above the law. It's still illegal. |
| fabulous killjoy. Moderator  Age: 31 Gender: Female Posts: 46256 | So everyone in here who are saying that illegal downloading is wrong: May I ask you how many burned CDs you have? Mindfuck:That's only 3-5 CDs. I'm not saying you need it every day, but 50 bucks for such a small amount of CDs is way expensive, especially if you have numerous different bands you like and CDs you want to listen to at that moment in time. Like I said, myspaces and purevolumes don't always have the songs you're looking for, and when people put music up on myspaces, the songs you want are never from the artists themselves. It's just as illegal for other people to upload music by bands onto a myspace for public listening as it is for people to download. Same with youtube videos. If the songs are up there and not on the musician's official account, it's illegal as well. Face it, who wants to stand in a music store listening to CDs all day? |
| tabitha Bleeding on the Floor Age: 45 Gender: Female Posts: 1831 | ^^ The burned CDs that I own are copies made of legally purchased CDs. I make a copy for my own private use, to keep in my car so that the originals don't get scratched or destroyed. |
| samantha connolly In The Murder Scene  Age: 32 Gender: Female Posts: 24519 | I'd just like to point out statements like "it's wrong" hold really no validity. What's wrong for you may be fine for me. What's wrong to me may be fine for you. And what the law says is right or wrong is no better an implication of something's rightness or wrongness. I mean, especially with something like "stealing", like this . . I just noticed a lot of "it's wrong" statements and thought I'd maybe try to divert that just because it's so perceptual. But if you feel like saying it, be my guest. I was just pointing it out to maybe further the discussion. |
| Mindfuck Always Born a Crime Age: - Gender: Female Posts: 5614 | gnihsams snikpmup.:What I said was every day. I don't know anyone who wants or needs to buy that many a day. One must be very bored if they feel they need to do that. |
| fabulous killjoy. Moderator Age: 31 Gender: Female Posts: 46256 | Mindfuck:And I said I'm not saying you need it every day. Your point being? How does buying CDs qualify as being bored? And if you're referring to people downloading, what if they are indeed bored? What's wrong with being bored and what does that have to do with people buying music? I fail to see why being bored affects anything on the matter. |
| fancy pirouettes. Awake and Unafraid  Age: 32 Gender: - Posts: 13762 | I download almost every cd that is on my ipod. I have a job but I don't have the money to buy every cd by every artist that I want. I would be spending over a $1000 a month. I do not have that kind of money and I don't know of any 16 year old that does. Downloading is more convenient. Yeah whatever, it's wrong. The artist doesn't get the profit from it. But I would rather be spending my money on merch or a concert than on a cd. And until the music industry figures out a way to fix this problem I will not stop downloading. With the release of cd burners came the burning of cds which gave music out without giving profit the artist. With the release of mp3 players and .mp3s came the downloading of music without giving profit to the artist. It was bound to happen. The selling of most music is targeted at that teens who really don't have the kind of money to buy every cd. Not to mention the countless cds that you can't buy anymore or are very hard to find, which then I resort to downloading it. That does not mean I take illegal downloading lightly because I don't. I know it is wrong and I make the effort to buy the cds I don't have or go to a show or something. I don't want to buy a cd then listen to it and not like it. At least with downloading I can hear the whole album before I buy it and if I like it enough I will make the effort to buy it (and no, crappy 30 seconds clips are not enough to actually like the songs/album for me at least). I'm not going to spend 20-30 dollars on a cd that only has 2 songs I like on it. And I don't like buying songs online. I like the actual physical thing in my hands. So if I only like two songs, it's not worth buying, imo. Oh and you can get cds from the library. You can pop the cd into the computer, import and bam you have a copy and you just return the cd to the library. Without paying. And I don't know any teens paying taxes yet. So what should we do to the libraries? Charge them every time a cd is lent out? That is beyond ridiculous because that defeats the point of it being a library. In some cases it helps the artist out. People put their music to download, then people will download it and some will find that they actually like it and will make the effort to probably buy the cd, go to a show, buy merch or whatever. There are artist that are fine with it and many have gotten big from it. It is not entirely a bad thing. |
| Mindfuck Always Born a Crime Age: - Gender: Female Posts: 5614 | gnihsams snikpmup.:The point I was trying to make was - why did you even quote me if you were going to disregard what I said? I specifically pointed out that I meant "every day". If you buy a couple of CDs every month, for example, I don't personally see a problem, but that's not what I was talking about originally. But the person was talking about asking for $50 a day. And the boredom thing - in my opinion, you must be bored with your actual life if you feel as though you need to buy several CDs a day. What are you doing with your time? Sitting around listening to music all day? Spending all your time in CD stores? Online music stores? This is a general statement not directed at any individual. You may not agree with that last point, but that's personally how I see it. I guess I'm just not as obsessed with music as a lot of people seem to be. But I still don't see music as a necessity. A lot of people for illegal downloading seem to use the excuse, "but I can't afford CDs". Don't buy 'em if you can't afford 'em. I can't afford every single pair of shoes I want; I can't afford getting every single magazine I want weekly; I can't afford every single PS3 game that I want. But that doesn't mean i'm going to steal them just on the basis of "I can't afford them". |
| tabitha Bleeding on the Floor Age: 45 Gender: Female Posts: 1831 | samantha connolly: But it is exactly because of the grey areas in ethics that a law exists. Laws are meant to protect life and property. We elect governmental officials to make the laws and we expect the justice system to uphold them. If the law says that downloading a song without paying for it is illegal, the grey area is gone. It's illegal. If you are found out, you will receive a punishment for your crime. I don't know of anyone who thinks stealing is okay. We can all agree that someone else's property and items in a store are not ours and we would not take them without paying for them. I don't see how a song is any different. Mindfuck: Exactly. It's called budgeting, or living within your means. Food and clothing come before entertainment. When we were first starting out together we had enough for food, and sometimes we had enough for CDs or to go out to a movie; if we didn't, we did without. A CD is a luxury item, it is not necessary to sustain life. Me, I'm into comics the way a lot of you are into music. There are some pretty pricey comics out there that I would love to have in my collection. So I either save up for them until I can afford them, or look yearningly at them when I am at the comic book store buying the cheaper, newer releases from my sub. I don't just take it because I want it because that is stealing! I don't understand how you can't make the mental leap from a physical item to an abstract one. If you are a teenager and your excuse is you don't have a job, or you're in school saving for college, then here's a wake-up call to the real world: Just because you want something doesn't mean you can have it. You have to work and earn money to buy what you want, and your "wants" have to come after your "needs." |
| Thug Life. Bleeding on the Floor  Age: 33 Gender: Male Posts: 1315 | rad yeah stealing is wrong ect But on a sort of similar note, you do realise that according to most copyright laws its actually illegal to lend cds or dvds to friends. Under Australian copytight laws technically its pretty much against the law to lend a dvd to someone unless your blockbuster ... so in that sense if you have ever borrowed a cd or a dvd you can consider yourself a criminal ... because stealing is wrong ..... |
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