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Originally Posted by kane
You sound like someone who is trying to spin a web that is tight enough and filled with enough bullshit that it obscures reality and makes you feel better about what you are doing.
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What I'm doing? I'm trying to remove tendentious wordings from this debate. I don't see how I would have reason to feel bad about that.
As for copyright infringement, I actually don't do that. I have unlimited memberships to both the video store and the cinema, so I have no reason to pirate movies. Music I listen to on the radio, and when I like a particular band I buy the cd.
So you can take your ad hominem and shove it up your ass.
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Originally Posted by kane
Is downloading copyrighted music and movies without paying for them illegal? Yes.
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Actually, not necessarily. I happen to live in a country where downloading copyrighted materials isn't illegal - just uploading.
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Originally Posted by kane
Is it theft? Yes.
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Simply asserting that something is the case doesn't make it so.
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Originally Posted by kane
Is copyright infringement and theft essentially the same thing when it comes to the download of music and movies? Yes.
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Do you have regularly have sex with your mother? Yes.
See why that line of argumentation isn't a particularly strong one?
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Originally Posted by kane
Here is why the argument that you aren't hurting them if you would have never bought it in the first place doesn't hold any water. Say for example a band releases a record. I have never heard of the band, but hear their song on the radio and I like it. I'm not the kind of guy who buys a record after hearing just one song so I would never actually go out and buy the CD. I jump on my favorite torrent site and download the CD. I just broke the copyright laws and I stole from the band. How though? I was never going to buy it so it's not like they are out any money. Simple. I have a copy of their product that I didn't pay for. They don't get paid. The record company doesn't get paid. Any producers/musicians/writers that worked on it don't get paid. But I still have it. That is theft.
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You actually did not prove in any way, shape or form that it does hurt them, or that the argument that it doesn't hurt them "doesn't hold any water".
You made it clear that now you have the album without paying for it, yes, but how does that hurt the people who created the content? If they aren't losing a sale, aren't losing labor, aren't losing materials, and aren't losing money because of your action, how does it hurt them?
Let's compare it to something else.
Books. Many people regularly lend out books. In effect, this causes people who did not pay for the books to get the valuable part of the content - the experience of reading it. Of course, you could argue that this is different, since the actual book is eventually returned to the owner, instead of being duplicated. However, books are bought and sold based on their content, rather than their physical properties, and someone who buys a book actually pays for the experience of reading it.
Is it theft to borrow books from your friends? You gain the knowledge, thoughts and stories contained in the book, without paying the creator.
If this is different, and is not a problem, surely the same goes for borrowing DVDs.
However, then you get the odd situation that lending out a DVD to a friend is ok, while sending that same friend a digital copy of that DVD which he watches and then deletes to free up HD space is not ok. In both cases, the result is exactly the same: someone who did not pay for it watched the movie.
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Originally Posted by kane
The idea is simple. If a band records a record and you want it, you pay an agreed upon price and you get the songs. You now have the songs in your possession and you didn't pay for them. That is stealing. The fact that you would have never purchased the CD in the first place is just semantics.
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What about recording songs you hear on the radio with an audio cassette? What about recording a movie with your TIVO? What about saving a (professionally produced) picture a friend emailed you? What about retelling a story you read in a book?
This issue is by no means clear. Copyright laws were originally intended to stop people from selling works they did not create or pay for. They were not intended to stop consumers from sharing content or information, because that was not an issue.
These days, it is an issue, because consumers now have the means to share content among each other. Since this is the first time in human history that this issue even exists, simply parroting the lines of the RIAA and the MPAA - organizations with a vested interest in one of the possible outcomes of the debate - and pretending this is a cut-and-dry issue is intensely stupid.