Evasion of music industry's lawsuits

Off Topic
21

DAN C:

Exactly. Even in the face of music downloads and decreased demand from the economy, the record industry has refused to lower prices on and outrageously priced product. They got used to making so much money that its hard to give up now. The best thing for consumers right now are the “fly-by-night” production companies. The best thing to do right now is to start supporting the smaller labels to create so much competition for the major labels to force them to lower prices. We need to get rid of the huge media conglomerates like Clear Channel and reintroduce the world to diversity. Competition is the only thing that works in a free-enterprise system.

22

Chardawg, I agree with a lot of your points. And if I had a lot of disposable income, I might be happy to pay retail to help keep my favorite artists in business.

Given that, I don’t consider “stealing” songs to be on the same level as stealing a tangible good like food or supps. I’m not depriving another person of having it because I make a copy. And I’m not depriving the company of sales, because my alternative to pirating music would be to do without.

I don’t trust the internet for music. But burning copies of CD’s from friends and from the public library is cool. They have a lot of good music at the public library that I never would have taken a chance on in a store.

23

kazaa lite that blocks riaa ip addresses. I have it.

24

The question isn’t of depriving someone else of something. The point is that you’re getting something - something that a lot of people all along the chain have spent time and money putting together - for free. You are getting something; the people who made that something are not getting anything.

If you want to do without, fine. I have no problem there. If you want to get the record (and pay for it), fine again. But I don’t think that there’s any way to really justify having some sort of commercialized pleasure, something that is normally bought and paid for, provided to you for free.

I don’t know what the library situation is. If the library has some sort of deal with the record company that they get a copy and are free to distribute it to their patrons for copying, then fine. But I suspect that if you check you’ll find that making copies of a tape or album is prohibited. Just like checking out a book and copying it in its entirety would be prohibited. Also, you’re either paying a fee to use the library, or else it’s publically or privately funded. So somewhere, somehow, money is changing hands, and (ideally, at least) the proper people are getting paid for their work.

That last point is what it’s all about, really. Who wants to do a job and then not get paid for it? If your work is shitty, fine. You get fired, or maybe you don’t get paid at all. Just like having a shitty album that no one likes or will buy. But if you do good work, if people like your work, then you should receive some monetary or other reward for it.

If you think about any other profession, the moral imperative is, I think, very clear. If I paint something nice and sell it to someone, does that person then have the right to xerox the painting and give copies to their friends so that the friends can also hang it on their walls? Of course not. But somehow, with music, people think that there’s an exception to be made or something. “Music belongs to everyone, man…”

Sorry, I don’t agree. If you borrow an album from a friend and listen to it, one of two things should happen. Either you don’t like the album (or don’t like it enough to listen to it again), and you give it back without copying it. Or, you like it and think that you will listen to it again. In the second case, you should go out and buy a copy for yourself. If you copy it without paying for it, then make no mistake, you are stealing it - and no quotation marks are necessary.