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Originally Posted by Libertine
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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So I misjudged you and assumed you were someone that did a lot of illegal downloading. I appears I am wrong.
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Actually, not necessarily. I happen to live in a country where downloading copyrighted materials isn't illegal - just uploading.
Simply asserting that something is the case doesn't make it so.
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I assume then that this means you are not in the US. If that is the case then it might be true by downloading a copyrighted material you are not breaking any of your country's laws, but it is still breaking the law of the country of origin. However, there is probably little recourse the actual copyright owner has in enforcing that law.
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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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I'm not really sure where this comes from. It makes no sense and proves no point.
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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?
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It hurts them because you now have a copy of their work and you didn't pay for it. That is a damaging to them. It doesn't matter how much the band might be worth. If they are a new band and are struggling to get noticed then it could be damaging to them and they would notice the loss of income. If they are a well established act they may not notice it a bit and it won't change their lifestyle at all, but that doesn't mean the damage doesn't exist. It is simple. You have a copy of their work and you didn't pay for it. Whether you would have purchased it or not doesn't matter, you have it, you didn't pay for it, damage done.
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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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It is different you make that point yourself. If I lend you a DVD or book (or even give you the DVD or book) you now have it and I don't. It is a gift. It is no different really than if I bought them for you for you as birthday gift. Sure we both have watched or read it, but there is still only one copy of it between us.
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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?
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Songs on the radio are meant as give aways. Yes they sell them as singles and often make a lot of money off them but many bands give them away on their websites and on Itunes and places like that. They want that single to get heard so you will go out and buy the CD. If a show is played on TV and you TIVO it they gave it away. The do so understanding that there are some people out there that will fast forward through the commercials, but they still gave it away to you TIVOing it isn't the same as you ripping a copy of the DVD and sharing via torrent with 10,000 different people. Most TV shows can now be watched on the networks website with very few commercials.
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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.
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It is a complex issue and this is a new world and something that many companies and people were not prepared for. To me the difference is pretty simple and I understand why the media companies are upset. When I was a kid in the 80's If I bought a band's tape and a friend liked it I could make a copy for them. The quality of the copy was typically not as good as the original, and it still cost us a few dollars for the blank tape. And I made a single copy for a friend or a few copies for a few friends. Now I can rip the CD and put CD quality MP3s up on a torrent site and 20,000 people can download them from me. Before my actions may have spawned a few copies in the hands of a few people, now in less time I can get it out to the entire globe and anyone around the world can get a copy. To me this is damaging on several fronts. First the artists/owners of the material have lost control of how and where it gets distributed and second it could be damaging to them. Many of the people that download a CD or DVD may have never bought it, but that doesn't change that fact that some of them would have, but now they get it for free and those who wouldn't have paid still own it and haven't paid for it.
It seems in the modern age there is no such thing as copyright anymore. As soon as you put something online it seems like the prevailing attitude is that it now belongs to the world. We see it everyday in our business. How many celeb sites are out there that run using copyrighted material they haven't paid for? Many of the tube sites have gotten huge using content they haven't paid for and everyone seems to want to hide behind technicalities in the law. To some it is a great revolutionary step forward, to me it is sad.