The Glade 4.0

Most artists like piracy because they make next to no money off CD sales. The typical contract gives the record company 50% of every CD sold AND the group has to pay for all production and advertising costs out of the other 50% before they get a dime. First-time bands often end up in debt despite having a gold album because they don't recoup these costs from their half. Most bands make all their money from touring and selling other merchandise like t-shirts. They love piracy because it attracts more people to these venues, and they don't give a **** about CD sales being affected because they don't see any of that money anyway.

Only the really, really successful bands like Metallica dislike piracy because they have enough clout to get the recording company to write them a contract that's not blatantly exploitative and actually see profits from selling CDs.

The funny thing is.. Metallica was one of the bands that would not have been discovered when they were had it not been for people bootlegging their music

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

The music industry **** over new bands harder than any pirates could. I only listen to whales mating nowadays.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I agree that the current recording model is obsolete and should die in the face, but we've been arguing that for all this board's existance, and so far their strangle hold around the neck of music hasn't slipped that much.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Thievery is theivery, regardless of whether or not a theif agrees it's theivery.

You need to establish first that the thief is, in fact, a thief and is stealing.

I don't see how this qualifies as stealing. This reminds me of a case in the Corps of Cadets where, during the Caldwell March (annual event the VT Corps of Cadets does; I'll leave it to those interested to look it up) picked up a walking stick along a portion of the march that passed through someone's land.

Some other cadets that disliked this guy charged him before the Honor Court with Stealing, claiming he didn't have permission from the landowner to take the stick.

The problem, of course, is that in order to be stealing, you must take something of value to the owner. There's no good reason to think the landowner was going to attach any value to a random banch in the woods. In the same manner, people downloading music they wouldn't pay for aren't depriving the company of any money it would have made anyhow.

There's also common lore about VMI and The Citadel where they "test" people's adherence to the Honor Code by leaving a few coins ont he sidewalk then having someone watch to see if anyone picks it up. If they do they're charged with stealing since it isn't theirs and the owner could theoretically come back and get it. Of course, taking abandoned property isn't considered stealing anywhere else, so the assertion that this is stealing is really just an excuse to nail people for the sake of nailing them.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The law and courts do not agree that it is thievery.

For example:



See, theft requires taking something away from somebody else. Copyright infringement never does that.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

FACE.

I buy used CDs on Amazon a lot - often you can get them for $0.01 to $4.00, and about $3.00 s/h.

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

Copyright infringement is no better than theft. Pirates know they are theives, despite all the justifications they spew.

Common language usage, and the law itself, would disagree with you. Even with the DMCA crackdown on copyright infringement, it is generally not a criminal act, in most countries (including the USA). It has always been, and remains, a civil matter alone, except in exceptional circumstances. You are stating a personal opinion that has no relation to established reality. Effectively, you've bought into the RIAA/MPAA's propaganda -- hook, line and sinker.

The entire concept of "intellectual property" is a joke, anyway. You cannot own, police, and charge for the use of thought, which is what IP rights attempts to do. I refuse to accept that you can own the sounds you make once they've been made public by letting the airwaves carry them to listeners. In my opinion, there is no such thing as intellectual property.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I agree that I am stating opinion. However, having never read or listened to any RIAA/MPAA propaganda, you are mistaken on that last bit.

There are things that are quite obviously wrong, despite people's crying about it.

Well, Civil law would agree with you, at least somewhat.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

There is also the fact that it is not obviously wrong, despite tautological claims to the contrary. The downloading of an mp3 over the internet is fundamentally no different than recording a song off of the radio. The claims that downloading music are obviously wrong are no more than the following:

1) Fear of technology
2) Unwillingness to adapt your market
3) Self-righteous bollox
4) A push to end Fair Use

It has never been decisively determined that downloading an mp3 constitutes theft. The worst anyone has ever been able to slap on it is copyright infringement, which is not the same as theft. Copyright infringement is supposed to involve the offender profiting off of someone else's intellectual property without the owner's consent. Music downloaders do not, by and large, generate revenue from the music they download. Furthermore, they suffer a net economic loss in terms of internet bandwidth, data storage, and electricity. While the label of copyright infringement has been legally applied to the activity, it really was done so mistakenly. The only reason it stuck was because the RIAA and MPAA threw millions of dollars at the courts. They were able to bribe their way into labeling internet filesharing as copyright infringement, but interestingly enough, were not able to pay their way into having it labeled as theft.

Since the 800lb gorilla that is the recording industry was ultimately unable to buy off the courts and have internet filesharing defined as theft, the claim that filesharing is "obviously wrong" is laughable at best.

You see, there is another aspect of copyright law that everyone overlooks in their zeal to paint filesharers as immoral (or amoral, depending) thieves. This would be the legal concept of Fair Use. Copyright law exists to protect the progenitors of an idea and ensure that they would receive a proper amount of compensation and prestige for their work, but it also exists to prevent anyone from monopolizing ideas. After a certain amount of time (which was originally supposed to be well before the progenitor's death, until Disney threw enough money around), ideas were to return to the public domain. One of the cornerstones of human advancement, not just technologically but also culturally, is that ideas can be expanded upon. Ideas can be improved. Your idea, that you deserve credit for, and that you deserve to profit from, is more than just your cash cow. Your idea is the launchpad for someone else to have a new idea.

Music is an idea. Filesharing gives people access to those ideas. It does indeed allow people to acquire for free the hot new music that is raking in tons of cash, this depriving those artists of a few extra dollars (and record companies a few million extra dollars). It also allows people access to a host of music for which the copyrights expired long before the downloader was born, because no one was seeking to renew those copyrights. Filesharing itself is not obviously anything at all, other than a tool for the spread of ideas. On the other hand, efforts to stamp out filesharing inhibit cultural and technological growth, needlessly harassed innocent citizens, cost those same citizens unknown amounts of money in court fees, and illegally invaded the private lives of paying customers.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

/\ What he said.

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Holy shitsnacks!

A recording is a product.