lol your only annoyed cos its got harder to steal for a short while
(not judging whether the charges of music is morally right, or the laws on copywright and filesharing but..)
end of the day, what your doing when you download copywrighted material is theft
if its ok to steal from a record label, is it ok for me to steal your car? your girlfriend?
theft is theft - regardless of who its from
The day the torrents died
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GroovyCarrot
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<anarchist>
Property is theft.
</anarchist>
Yep, legally it is theft to download copyrighted material. However, it is not physical theft as actually stealing a CD would be, you're not stealing something they've paid for, you're stealing information, which, at the end of the day, is a sequence of binary digits, 1's and 0's..
I'm not going to say it's morally right to be involved in filesharing, but I know that I've discovered a lot of new bands through filesharing networks and have proceeded to buy their CDs, go to their concerts etc - if I like what I've found, I'll support the artist. I won't just blindly spend £15 on a £0.03 bit of plastic unless I know I like what's on it...
Property is theft.
</anarchist>
Yep, legally it is theft to download copyrighted material. However, it is not physical theft as actually stealing a CD would be, you're not stealing something they've paid for, you're stealing information, which, at the end of the day, is a sequence of binary digits, 1's and 0's..
I'm not going to say it's morally right to be involved in filesharing, but I know that I've discovered a lot of new bands through filesharing networks and have proceeded to buy their CDs, go to their concerts etc - if I like what I've found, I'll support the artist. I won't just blindly spend £15 on a £0.03 bit of plastic unless I know I like what's on it...
Reminds me of a red vs blue "Internet vs Real Life" PSA I downloaded recently, to quote:13twelve wrote:end of the day, what your doing when you download copywrighted material is theft
"That's [sharing music] illegal!"
"No it isn't. I don't want it to be illegal, therefore it isn't. Now give it to me!"
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fishtoasty
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i think you all might like to note this link 
http://www.emule-help.com/verified.htm
and growing!!!
Ross
http://www.emule-help.com/verified.htm
and growing!!!
Ross
lol copywrighted 0's and 1's 
you can listen to clips of cds on artist websites/amazon etc.
why do you need to have the whole album or a whole track?
once you've downloaded an mp3 and liked it, do you always buy it?
nah course you dont, no one does.
lol you probably only buy a cd as a gift for someone else or cos you cant find all of it online
very rare do people actually buy the phsyical thing
theres something nice about owning the physical thing - you gotta admit
i think its very hard to justify the file sharing of illegal files in any other way than "free stuff" from the net.
anything else is like post rationalisation - the reason people get into it, is "free stuff" from the net.
people do, though, seem to think its ok to commit theft in this way and seem outraged that someone might try and stop you doing it.
bit like speeding i suppose, how everyone does it and everyone thinks its ok to do it - except those do gooders that insist on more speed cameras etc.
i'm just offering a counter opinion to the ultra popular pro-filesharing opinion. again - i'm not arsed by the moral issues - frankly i dont care. do what-ever-the-heck you like innit. i do.
there have been documented cases where filesharing systems, such as kazaa tracked the geographic region of downloads and fed this information back to record labels which would then more promote whatever wherever as appropriate - of course on the hush hush
now for marketing purposes that makes sense - but it is a bit like biting the hand that feeds you - only perhaps in reverse lol
you can listen to clips of cds on artist websites/amazon etc.
why do you need to have the whole album or a whole track?
once you've downloaded an mp3 and liked it, do you always buy it?
nah course you dont, no one does.
lol you probably only buy a cd as a gift for someone else or cos you cant find all of it online
very rare do people actually buy the phsyical thing
theres something nice about owning the physical thing - you gotta admit
i think its very hard to justify the file sharing of illegal files in any other way than "free stuff" from the net.
anything else is like post rationalisation - the reason people get into it, is "free stuff" from the net.
people do, though, seem to think its ok to commit theft in this way and seem outraged that someone might try and stop you doing it.
bit like speeding i suppose, how everyone does it and everyone thinks its ok to do it - except those do gooders that insist on more speed cameras etc.
i'm just offering a counter opinion to the ultra popular pro-filesharing opinion. again - i'm not arsed by the moral issues - frankly i dont care. do what-ever-the-heck you like innit. i do.
there have been documented cases where filesharing systems, such as kazaa tracked the geographic region of downloads and fed this information back to record labels which would then more promote whatever wherever as appropriate - of course on the hush hush
now for marketing purposes that makes sense - but it is a bit like biting the hand that feeds you - only perhaps in reverse lol
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GroovyCarrot
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Kazaa is handing the bite that feeds it?
Nah, I do know exactly what you mean, and what you say makes sense. The vast majority of people use filesharing software because they don't want to pay, and a lot of them don't pay for the actual CD after they've got the mp3s, but then an awful lot do.. I don't pretend I've bought every track that I've ever liked and kept, but I have bought an awful lot more of them than I would have done otherwise, and the stuff I buy tends to be small artists who almost certainly wouldn't have found half their audience if it wasn't for filesharing rather than the big artists who can probably just about get by with the millions they're being paid anyway. Not that I think this is good enough to justify stealing from them, but I don't have much money and I'd rather what I do have goes to someone who needs support to make an impact on the industry so their music has a chance of taking off.
In an ideal, logical world where everyone was entirely moral and everything made sense, I'd say the way forward is free samples and CDs that didn't have a 5000% markup on them, and a music industry that was based around music rather than commercial gain so that small artists stood a chance.. but I don't see the music industry doing that any day soon, so it seems that this system will be here to stay, for a while yet anyway..
Nah, I do know exactly what you mean, and what you say makes sense. The vast majority of people use filesharing software because they don't want to pay, and a lot of them don't pay for the actual CD after they've got the mp3s, but then an awful lot do.. I don't pretend I've bought every track that I've ever liked and kept, but I have bought an awful lot more of them than I would have done otherwise, and the stuff I buy tends to be small artists who almost certainly wouldn't have found half their audience if it wasn't for filesharing rather than the big artists who can probably just about get by with the millions they're being paid anyway. Not that I think this is good enough to justify stealing from them, but I don't have much money and I'd rather what I do have goes to someone who needs support to make an impact on the industry so their music has a chance of taking off.
In an ideal, logical world where everyone was entirely moral and everything made sense, I'd say the way forward is free samples and CDs that didn't have a 5000% markup on them, and a music industry that was based around music rather than commercial gain so that small artists stood a chance.. but I don't see the music industry doing that any day soon, so it seems that this system will be here to stay, for a while yet anyway..
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Tahrey1043
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funny, some of my fave cds are things that i first heard off of downloads or used in other technically illegal ways (such as a music video put together with a certain song as the backing, and even if the visuals were rubbish, the file stayed because of the music). several bands i would never have heard of otherwise. and there's a few more i'm planning on going for once all the 8-day confusion of xmas and my birthday pass.
corrolary to that, a vast majority of the mp3s i have are either 1/ cds i have bought (check the desktop thread - you see that cd rack? they all came from a shop) and ripped (only at 128k, for sharing but not out and out piracy), 2/ stuff that's unobtainable, or 3/ things i either havent listened to and havent got to yet, or have listened to, dont like, and will either give a second chance or delete when i get round to it.
The good stuff that can be got eventually gets the cash (because my ears are quite intolerant of mp3 distortion, and my honesty bone starts telling me "these artists deserve to eat"), the bad stuff fades.
On the other hand a small proportion of my cd rack consists of discs that are, for want of a better word, sh1te, that i either bought "blind" off the packaging or by word of mouth, through loyalty to a band (that proved to be betrayed), or were bought for me. Been played maybe once or twice on first arrival, and perhaps as many times again out of sympathy or as a reminder of how poor they are. But just you try taking them back to the shop, or selling them on for anything other than stupid money...
I think the fear of the record corps is that those purchases won't be made... and innovative bands (such as the cuban boys disc that i hold dear.. ultra rare as EMI pulled it after about a fortnight) that dont fit their pop norm or fashion factory will be shunned as people won't be browbeat into liking it by relentless airplay - who needs radio when you have the net and an mp3 capable computer?
Feh.
Yeah I know it's a bit of a highbrow argument, that maybe such activity is the preserve of very few internetters. That the vast majority of bit torrent users are e-chavs who just want to take the latest churned out hollywood blockbuster or pop sh1te album and be entertained without having to put in for it... similar to nicking the door mirrors off every car on the estate and then being surprised and indignant when they end up in the nick. My hope is also that most of them are pretty young with little expendable income, all of which goes on console games instead, and they'll grow out of it when they get decent jobs. Maybe.
Then again there's still a roaring trade in copied DVDs amongst the drinks staff and door supervisors at the bar.. oh, wait.. DECENT jobs
but... well......
nads to it, i'm pissed off that the bureau of mindless mass theivery has once again spoiled a valuable resource of rare, fresh and exciting stuff for the small number of us who like such things.
and how in the balls am i supposed to get hold of those cities of gold premium digitally remastered MPG-2 streams now, until some bright tosspot realises that it needs to follow dogtanian and ulysses 31 onto DVD (...along with the other 50% of the dogtanian episodes..)
feh again and thrice feh.
i'm hopping on to DC++ to find some Joan Baez (actually pretty damn elusive in the shops as it happens) and Lamar (well, maybe i WILL buy his cd as a present instead of burning it - he's quite good) before it all disappears.
/stream of selfrightonciousness
PS..... *spits from a height on the current pay-download sites* ... 99p a track? what the hell? when i can get most of that crap on a 40-track double album for £11.99? GET A MOTHERF***ING CLUE! No wonder people are heading down the piracy route when those are the only options! If twere 25p a track i'd be a hell of a lot more interested (or even 50p, as there's the make-your-own privelege and a 14 track album is now competitive with a professionally pressed product) and your sales would probably gross *more*.
to say nothing of the main meat of the problem being factories in korea and china churning out thousands if not millions of copies of big name movies daily and selling them for a few quid each both locally and far afield (hint: check ebay)... most internet sharers don't got burning their stuff for to sell for profit, and those that do are pretty easy to catch and put out of business without having quite such a level of organisation... but those selfsame internetters are soft targets as they dont represent a substantial company in a foreign country with a high violent organised criminal contingent, and tend not to very well know their "comrades" on the other end of the line in person and can be taken out one by one without a collective uproar happening - as might happen at, say, a street protest (now illegal in the uk pretty much!).
ok done now
corrolary to that, a vast majority of the mp3s i have are either 1/ cds i have bought (check the desktop thread - you see that cd rack? they all came from a shop) and ripped (only at 128k, for sharing but not out and out piracy), 2/ stuff that's unobtainable, or 3/ things i either havent listened to and havent got to yet, or have listened to, dont like, and will either give a second chance or delete when i get round to it.
The good stuff that can be got eventually gets the cash (because my ears are quite intolerant of mp3 distortion, and my honesty bone starts telling me "these artists deserve to eat"), the bad stuff fades.
On the other hand a small proportion of my cd rack consists of discs that are, for want of a better word, sh1te, that i either bought "blind" off the packaging or by word of mouth, through loyalty to a band (that proved to be betrayed), or were bought for me. Been played maybe once or twice on first arrival, and perhaps as many times again out of sympathy or as a reminder of how poor they are. But just you try taking them back to the shop, or selling them on for anything other than stupid money...
I think the fear of the record corps is that those purchases won't be made... and innovative bands (such as the cuban boys disc that i hold dear.. ultra rare as EMI pulled it after about a fortnight) that dont fit their pop norm or fashion factory will be shunned as people won't be browbeat into liking it by relentless airplay - who needs radio when you have the net and an mp3 capable computer?
Feh.
Yeah I know it's a bit of a highbrow argument, that maybe such activity is the preserve of very few internetters. That the vast majority of bit torrent users are e-chavs who just want to take the latest churned out hollywood blockbuster or pop sh1te album and be entertained without having to put in for it... similar to nicking the door mirrors off every car on the estate and then being surprised and indignant when they end up in the nick. My hope is also that most of them are pretty young with little expendable income, all of which goes on console games instead, and they'll grow out of it when they get decent jobs. Maybe.
Then again there's still a roaring trade in copied DVDs amongst the drinks staff and door supervisors at the bar.. oh, wait.. DECENT jobs
but... well......
nads to it, i'm pissed off that the bureau of mindless mass theivery has once again spoiled a valuable resource of rare, fresh and exciting stuff for the small number of us who like such things.
and how in the balls am i supposed to get hold of those cities of gold premium digitally remastered MPG-2 streams now, until some bright tosspot realises that it needs to follow dogtanian and ulysses 31 onto DVD (...along with the other 50% of the dogtanian episodes..)
feh again and thrice feh.
i'm hopping on to DC++ to find some Joan Baez (actually pretty damn elusive in the shops as it happens) and Lamar (well, maybe i WILL buy his cd as a present instead of burning it - he's quite good) before it all disappears.
/stream of selfrightonciousness
PS..... *spits from a height on the current pay-download sites* ... 99p a track? what the hell? when i can get most of that crap on a 40-track double album for £11.99? GET A MOTHERF***ING CLUE! No wonder people are heading down the piracy route when those are the only options! If twere 25p a track i'd be a hell of a lot more interested (or even 50p, as there's the make-your-own privelege and a 14 track album is now competitive with a professionally pressed product) and your sales would probably gross *more*.
to say nothing of the main meat of the problem being factories in korea and china churning out thousands if not millions of copies of big name movies daily and selling them for a few quid each both locally and far afield (hint: check ebay)... most internet sharers don't got burning their stuff for to sell for profit, and those that do are pretty easy to catch and put out of business without having quite such a level of organisation... but those selfsame internetters are soft targets as they dont represent a substantial company in a foreign country with a high violent organised criminal contingent, and tend not to very well know their "comrades" on the other end of the line in person and can be taken out one by one without a collective uproar happening - as might happen at, say, a street protest (now illegal in the uk pretty much!).
ok done now
yeah it's theft at the end of the day. when you pay for a CD you aren't paying for the box, cover & CD itself, those things cost literally pence. you're paying for the data contained within the CD or DVD. The amount of work that goes into making that string of 1s & 0s sound like they do when played through a CD player is what costs, not producing the physical object you buy.
Downloading pirate material from the Internet is totally illegal & will never stop being. It's no different to how people used to get such things in the 80s & early 90s on car boot sales on copied tapes & videos.
sites like Napster or Suprnova being shut down causes me inconvience as it means I either have to find somewhere else to get films & music from or (god forbid) pay for it. but I can't really complain because I knew it was illegal & bound to have been stopped at some point right from the start.
Downloading pirate material from the Internet is totally illegal & will never stop being. It's no different to how people used to get such things in the 80s & early 90s on car boot sales on copied tapes & videos.
sites like Napster or Suprnova being shut down causes me inconvience as it means I either have to find somewhere else to get films & music from or (god forbid) pay for it. but I can't really complain because I knew it was illegal & bound to have been stopped at some point right from the start.
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Tahrey1043
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odd though isnt it
it would have been totally illegal in the former soviet states (before the fall of communism) for it to have been the other way round.
intellectual property more or less had no value, unlike physical stuff that was almost priceless
edit: @ dan ---- i have a lot to say on the subject, the attitude of some people on both sides pisses me right off (though, mostly the "official" side - as if the people leeching would likely be paying for that stuff if the sharing networks didnt exist? get real). if you dont want to read/assimilate/think around what im saying then just bleep it..
ive managed to keep most of my rambling down of late (well.. i think??) but occasionally its good to just go off on one and let it spill. be thankful i dont blog.
it would have been totally illegal in the former soviet states (before the fall of communism) for it to have been the other way round.
intellectual property more or less had no value, unlike physical stuff that was almost priceless
edit: @ dan ---- i have a lot to say on the subject, the attitude of some people on both sides pisses me right off (though, mostly the "official" side - as if the people leeching would likely be paying for that stuff if the sharing networks didnt exist? get real). if you dont want to read/assimilate/think around what im saying then just bleep it..
ive managed to keep most of my rambling down of late (well.. i think??) but occasionally its good to just go off on one and let it spill. be thankful i dont blog.
ai no worries Tahery, I was just surprised just how much writing you could do. But I compltely agree, maybe the record companies will eventually recognise that file sharing is going to occur when the price is so damn high.
And like GC said I found my favourite artist through file sharing, if it wasn't through firstly copyin my m8's CD then goin on some file sharin prog (can't remeber which one) and searchin for him I wouldn't have bought his DVD last year and gone to his concert this yeah at the NIA, heck I might not have started playin guitar again. Might just have given it up...again
And like GC said I found my favourite artist through file sharing, if it wasn't through firstly copyin my m8's CD then goin on some file sharin prog (can't remeber which one) and searchin for him I wouldn't have bought his DVD last year and gone to his concert this yeah at the NIA, heck I might not have started playin guitar again. Might just have given it up...again
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Tahrey1043
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i thought iTunes and similar sites were a fantastic answer to all the fileshare piracy - and then i saw the prices and damn near fell off my chair.
a new idea i had in the pub earlier with a mate, as a new business venture for him (had two heroic failures, third time's the charm) - a bit torrent alternative where you pay a penny (or ten?) into a communal pot for the record companies and a named charity per track, rather than a pound. it would be awesome and make his fortune.
a new idea i had in the pub earlier with a mate, as a new business venture for him (had two heroic failures, third time's the charm) - a bit torrent alternative where you pay a penny (or ten?) into a communal pot for the record companies and a named charity per track, rather than a pound. it would be awesome and make his fortune.
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Josh_PoloGTi
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80's and early 90's... You wanted an album, but were skint, you found a mate that had it, you took a TDK C90 down his house, and robbed it that way.
Very late 90's and post-millenium... You want an album, but are still skint. You get on the internet and rob it on mp3...
Same old sh1t, just a different day.
If you feel you need to pay for your music, but you're skint, try www.allofmp3.com ... They'll charge you less than a quid for an album, the downloads are proper rapid and the quality is amazing. This is using a loophole in the russian legal system, but IT IS LEGAL.
Balls... I used to use BT/SN et al for downloading radio mixes and TV Shows on the whole anyway.
And I'm with Tarahahhahahahahay on the ID Card issue. I've got nothing to hide, but I still don't want some SS-Style cop saying "SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS" whenever they feel like it.
/rant off
Very late 90's and post-millenium... You want an album, but are still skint. You get on the internet and rob it on mp3...
Same old sh1t, just a different day.
If you feel you need to pay for your music, but you're skint, try www.allofmp3.com ... They'll charge you less than a quid for an album, the downloads are proper rapid and the quality is amazing. This is using a loophole in the russian legal system, but IT IS LEGAL.
Balls... I used to use BT/SN et al for downloading radio mixes and TV Shows on the whole anyway.
And I'm with Tarahahhahahahahay on the ID Card issue. I've got nothing to hide, but I still don't want some SS-Style cop saying "SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS" whenever they feel like it.
/rant off
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Tahrey1043
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lol josh you just reminded me of how many tapes i have in the big box which i occasionally rotate "new" ones out of and into the car's carry case ..... that i dont have CDs for.. been meaning to legalise em for ages.
first off started getting them from the local music library (40p for a two week child loan and a similar amount for a cassette out of a bulk pack - can't argue).. then my school's library started getting them in from that same place on some kind of deal.. and we could borrow them for free!
Got plenty good things that way and took a chance on god only knows how many finding either that they were rubbish, or that some random band i'd never heard of were actually great - in fact following this reminder i might start using the service again (but, with CDRWs). And a whole lot of classical stuff too.
of course it still worked a similar way. Fully four of Pulp's albums (i reckon the librarian had a thing for them) cropped up at some point, copied all of them... loved all of them... bought all of them. and the same for many other bands, and for a great number of those copied from friends.
i really think it's sad that a few chav acts start selling things in bulk and it becomes a war on the hundreds of 'little guys' who, if this were drugs instead, would be guilty of possessing "small amounts for personal use" and occasionally passing the spliff around, rather than the possession of several kilos with intent to supply (i.e. dodgy dave and his transit van full of (badly!) copied DVDs down the market). record companies seem to be a little out of touch with how this is actually bringing people into contact with a lot of music they wouldn't otherwise have heard - certainly I would have been very late into the fray, if at all, with Pulp, Green Day, the Offspring (and.. ahem.. Bon Jovi* and Enigma**)
ok, someone IP ban me from this bloody thread already, i've got work to do!
* - well, keep the faith anyway, which is pretty much a 10/10 album for just ignoring the ludicrousness of it all and rocking out. moderately.
** - ordinarily a bit crap, but put it on the walkman on the beach and go to sleep. it's perfect.
..... that i dont have CDs for.. been meaning to legalise em for ages.first off started getting them from the local music library (40p for a two week child loan and a similar amount for a cassette out of a bulk pack - can't argue).. then my school's library started getting them in from that same place on some kind of deal.. and we could borrow them for free!
Got plenty good things that way and took a chance on god only knows how many finding either that they were rubbish, or that some random band i'd never heard of were actually great - in fact following this reminder i might start using the service again (but, with CDRWs). And a whole lot of classical stuff too.
of course it still worked a similar way. Fully four of Pulp's albums (i reckon the librarian had a thing for them) cropped up at some point, copied all of them... loved all of them... bought all of them. and the same for many other bands, and for a great number of those copied from friends.
i really think it's sad that a few chav acts start selling things in bulk and it becomes a war on the hundreds of 'little guys' who, if this were drugs instead, would be guilty of possessing "small amounts for personal use" and occasionally passing the spliff around, rather than the possession of several kilos with intent to supply (i.e. dodgy dave and his transit van full of (badly!) copied DVDs down the market). record companies seem to be a little out of touch with how this is actually bringing people into contact with a lot of music they wouldn't otherwise have heard - certainly I would have been very late into the fray, if at all, with Pulp, Green Day, the Offspring (and.. ahem.. Bon Jovi* and Enigma**
)ok, someone IP ban me from this bloody thread already, i've got work to do!
* - well, keep the faith anyway, which is pretty much a 10/10 album for just ignoring the ludicrousness of it all and rocking out. moderately.
** - ordinarily a bit crap, but put it on the walkman on the beach and go to sleep. it's perfect.