If it's one of my favorite bands or movies EVAR, then I'll pay for the CD because I want them to have the money.
Otherwise, I steal everything else. And yes, I call it stealing in regular conversation. Why sugarcoat it? I know it's stealing, but I really don't care.
Most of what I download is music and porn anyway. When I download a movie, it's something that I can't find to rent or is otherwise going to be a hassle for me to get a hold of. I sometimes have a hard time finding a torrent for that stuff, anyway. And I'm certainly not going to fork over $50 or $100 or more just to get a copy of a movie that I can't find anywhere else, when I'm probably only ever going to watch it one time.
__________________ ~ The moon looks down on a diseased world. There is no cure for the disease; an entire race vaults mindlessly into destruction. Not even a man of colossal power would be able to prevent the inevitable. ~
The artist isn't losing money, because for the most part I wasn't a target for the product in the first place thanks to money issues.
How is the artist not losing money? Just because you aren't the target audience doesn't mean the artist isn't losing money. Every copy out there that hasn't been paid for is money the artist didn't make.
its not really theft, because if the product is only being copied and not physically stolen.
Wow. Just wow.
Let's live the dream here for a moment. Imagine this:
Awesome_Frog writes a potential super massive hit. Every copy sells and makes you money. Millions of copies are sold. Awesome_Frog becomes a multi-millionnaire. Life is sweet
Reality in Awesome_Frog's world: Awesome_Frog writes a potential super massive hit. A few copies are sold but people don't buy it because they can copy it. It's not theft. Awesome_Frog is left flipping burgers. Life sucks.
__________________ Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer - Voltaire
For me -- for pretty much every writer -- the big problem isn't piracy, it's obscurity (thanks to Tim O'Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy. Mega-hit best-sellers in science fiction sell half a million copies -- in a world where 175,000 attend the San Diego Comic Con alone, you've got to figure that most of the people who "like science fiction" (and related geeky stuff like comics, games, Linux, and so on) just don't really buy books. I'm more interested in getting more of that wider audience into the tent than making sure that everyone who's in the tent bought a ticket to be there.
...
So ebooks sell print books. Every writer I've heard of who's tried giving away ebooks to promote paper books has come back to do it again. That's the commercial case for doing free ebooks.
Now, onto the artistic case. It's the twenty-first century. Copying stuff is never, ever going to get any harder than it is today (or if it does, it'll be because civilization has collapsed, at which point we'll have other problems). Hard drives aren't going to get bulkier, more expensive, or less capacious. Networks won't get slower or harder to access. If you're not making art with the intention of having it copied, you're not really making art for the twenty-first century. There's something charming about making work you don't want to be copied, in the same way that it's nice to go to a Pioneer Village and see the olde-timey blacksmith shoeing a horse at his traditional forge. But it's hardly, you know, contemporary. I'm a science fiction writer. It's my job to write about the future (on a good day) or at least the present. Art that's not supposed to be copied is from the past.
Finally, let's look at the moral case. Copying stuff is natural. It's how we learn (copying our parents and the people around us). My first story, written when I was six, was an excited re-telling of Star Wars, which I'd just seen in the theater. Now that the Internet -- the world's most efficient copying machine -- is pretty much everywhere, our copying instinct is just going to play out more and more. There's no way I can stop my readers, and if I tried, I'd be a hypocrite: when I was 17, I was making mix-tapes, photocopying stories, and generally copying in every way I could imagine. If the Internet had been around then, I'd have been using it to copy as much as I possibly could.
There's no way to stop it, and the people who try end up doing more harm than piracy ever did. The record industry's ridiculous holy war against file-sharers (more than 20,000 music fans sued and counting!) exemplifies the absurdity of trying to get the food-coloring out of the swimming pool. If the choice is between allowing copying or being a frothing bully lashing out at anything he can reach, I choose the former.
__________________ Thank you for your time,
--
DataPacRat
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What are you talking about? Are you trying to say that if I steal a car from a lot and then decide to buy one because I liked the way it drove that's fine because it's advertising? What rubbish. Theft is theft.
Wow. Way to completely, utterly miss the point.
A song is not a car. A car is a physical object that has value in and of itself, and when a car is stolen the owner actually loses that value and is deprived of the use of the car. A song is composed of information with no intrinsic value. When a song is downloaded, nobody loses anything. And my post specifically addressed the flaws of the argument that the owner loses income- no, the owner does NOT always lose income. That was the whole point of my post.
Again, what are you talking about? How is the owner not losing? You just stole something! No matter what or how you steal something somebody still loses money. Theft is theft. If I steal a television that I can't afford (and therefore wouldn't buy) that's OK because I wouldn't have bought it under normal circumstances? What rubbish! Who wouldn't take a television if it were being offered free?
Again, you completely and utterly missed the point of my post. A television is not a song. A television is a physical object that has value in and of itself, and when a television is stolen the owner actually loses that value and is deprived of the use of the television. When a song is downloaded, nobody loses anything. Any my post specifically addressed the flaws of the argument that the owner loses income- no, the owner does NOT always lose income. That was the whole point of my post.
In both cases it is stealing. Look it up in the dictionary.
No, YOU should look it up in the dictionary. First of all there is no such crime as "stealing". Instead there is larceny, burglary and robbery. Downloading music is none of the above.
Thanks for all the good replies. I see that this really is a gray area and not so black and white and I thought it would be. I guess if you want answers on something it never hurts to ask.
How is the artist not losing money? Just because you aren't the target audience doesn't mean the artist isn't losing money. Every copy out there that hasn't been paid for is money the artist didn't make.
Wow. Just wow.
Let's live the dream here for a moment. Imagine this:
Awesome_Frog writes a potential super massive hit. Every copy sells and makes you money. Millions of copies are sold. Awesome_Frog becomes a multi-millionnaire. Life is sweet
Reality in Awesome_Frog's world: Awesome_Frog writes a potential super massive hit. A few copies are sold but people don't buy it because they can copy it. It's not theft. Awesome_Frog is left flipping burgers. Life sucks.
Awesome_Frog writes a massive hit. Bungle_Bear writes an even better one. People don't buy Awesome_Frog's because they all bought Bungle_Bear's instead. If causing sells to not occur is a form of theft, then Bungle_Bear is in trouble.
In the end, causing sells to not occur is not a form of theft. There is a different crime, copyright infringement, but it is not theft.
__________________
Jeremiah 1:5
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you"
That is BEFORE, not WHEN.
Life starts before conception. Supporting a woman's right to choose to not fertilize an egg, giving her the ability to choose to let a life die, is pro-choice, not pro-life.
I stopped file sharing because:
A: It seems to me that whoever is selling the product has the right to sell it.
B: Entertainment items are luxury items.
C: If I won't steal bread when I'm hungry, why would I steal a luxury that I can afford?
D: Thou shall not steal.
E: If you can't trust me for a dollar, you can't trust me.
__________________ "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."
I know artists and writers that make stuff to copy, but that is to get their name out. Most of the time I try and buy the music I listen to and the books I read because I know the artist and authors are not getting that much anyway. I am not going to steal from them for their hard work (and it is hard work).
An interesting aside to this is webcomics. Most of these are free and are only supported by donations and/or selling of books and product. If there was a way to do that with music and books I would support it. But until there is I will support the artist.
__________________ Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop. Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them for their own good. -- Robert A. Heinlein
It is all well and good to oppose file sharing of copyrighted material, but please to everyone who does oppose it - stop labelling it as theft. It is not. If I enter a shop with a cloning device, pick up an apple, clone it and then walk off with it I have not stolen anything. The original apple is still there.
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