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Originally Posted by kane
I'm not really sure where this comes from. It makes no sense and proves no point.
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It was merely meant to make clear why your original formulation of "Is X the case? Yes." wasn't a particularly good one, and didn't actually strengthen your case.
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Originally Posted by kane
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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I still fail to see why me having a copy damages them if it didn't actually result in them losing a potential sale.
There is no loss of income if they didn't lose a potential sale. There is only loss of income if the downloader would have bought the content had he not downloaded it.
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Originally Posted by kane
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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Oh, but it is very different from a gift. If you had bought them as a gift, there would be another sale. Instead, now, there only is a single sale.
The thing about there only being a single copy when something gets borrowed only really makes sense if you consider the physical item to be the important part, rather than the intellectual content. But physical copies aren't usually what people are paying for - they pay for the intellectual content.
With things like books and movies, which people often only read or watch once, borrowing a copy has the same possibility of preventing a potential sale from happening as downloading a copy does.
A good example is a certain site I know, which arranges for people to trade their DVDs. This allows people to watch tons of movies for the price of one or a few DVDs, since they just keep trading out the ones they have already seen for new ones.
The only fundamental differences with downloading movies here are that a physical content bearer is coupled with the content, and that only 1 person at a time will be using the content - but with possibly dozens of people eventually using a single paid copy of the content.
Imagine two students in a dorm. One has a DVD that the other wants to watch. Is walking over to the other's room and handing him the DVD that much different from sending a digital copy?
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Originally Posted by kane
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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I think you will find that many content producers disagree with you on the idea that songs on the radio or shows on television are meant as gifts. In fact, a number of content producers have been taking action against exactly these things.
This has caused many countries to impose a kind of "content tax" on writable media (cds, dvds, tapes, etc), the proceeds of which go to the content industry. Ironically, that's given a pretty strong justification to downloaders - they pay the content industry whenever they buy writable media, so why should they not be allowed to take the product they're already paying for?
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Originally Posted by kane
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.
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I think you've hit the real problem at the heart of all this here: the problem isn't so much one of principle, as it is one of scale.
Before, sharing was limited by technical means, meaning it could not have any serious impact on the content creation industry. These days, technology enables people to share content with a virtually unlimited amount of people, causing it to have a much bigger impact on the content creation industry.
The question is whether this development can be stopped without arbitrary, draconian laws being imposed, though. Remember, laws that stop the spreading of content can usually also be used to stop the spreading of information.
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Originally Posted by kane
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.
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A new balance between content creation, consumers and laws will have to be found. Ineffective laws can only be arbitrarily applied for so long, but eventually, something serious will need to change.