Really, the arguement that “I’m not stealing nothing” is REALLY getting old, especially when it cannot be defended with even the barest shred of validity.[/quote]

Copying = Ctrl+C
Stealing = Ctrl+X

As for your first argument. Transferring data over my internet cable does costs money, as does storing it on my harddrive.

This is however irrelevant, as economics has nothing to do with being able to charge money for things. Neither does economics have nothing about getting payed or paying for anything you do.

Economics is simply about the matching up the demands of the seller and buyer resulting in a possible trade if both parties agree, and no trade if the parties don’t agree. In many caes, such trade is done without money ever getting involved.

In the case of file sharing, the buyer thinks that the seller is charging too much for the distribution and instead chooses to trade with someone who is willing to distribute for free, although often with a hidden agreement that he should distribute it to someone else in exchange.

More advanced protocols such as bittorrent splits the information into pieces making it easier for both parties to ensure that the other party forfills his hidden agreement by conducting a more or less fair exchange of information.

As information is cheap to replicate, this works out great for both parties in the transaction. Of course, the original distributor that wanted to charge a lot of money for doing the same thing isn’t too happy about it.

The biggest misunderstanding that people have about economics is that Market Value is the same as the Real Value. This is a complete misunderstanding. It is actually the opposite.

The further apart the market value and the real value is, the better. Just look at air. You would spend a large part of your salary on air if you had to, but fortunally the market value is low (as in free) because of the great supply. This is a huge economic boon for society as a whole.

When market value and real value is close, it is usually because of either high production costs, low supply or both. In either case, society will profit if production costs goes down or supply increases.

Yes, it is more expensive to create a piece of information in the first place. This is why a goverment instituted distribution monopoly exists, which is pretty much the opposite of a market. However, a large percentage of the population disagree with it as they see the huge efficency losses it causes and are willing to illegally bypass it. Of course they are saving money on it also (which is how they recognize the inefficencies). Filesharing is a far better trade.

And no, stealing isn’t a trade since there aren’t two parties that are in agreement.[/quote]

Blabbity blah blah blah. All those words and not a lick of any relevant sense.

Warner Brothers produces a movie. They spend, let’s say, $30 million to make it. To earn back their investment, they sell theater tickets and DVD copies of the movie.

And you really want to see this movie! But you decide that the $10 to $20 price tag to watch it is just too high. The studio has provided a perfectly legal and equitable way for you to watch it. But no, you decide that $15 to watch a movie legally is too great a price, so you break the law and illegally download an illegally distributed copy that originally came from some other schlub that actually bought the DVD and illegally copied it.

Taking your arguments to an extreme, it would be perfectly ok in your world for one person to buy the DVD, copy it, and distribute it to the entire world. The studio would receive a total of $20 for their $30 million production, but that’s ok, to you that’s fair.

No, what is fair is for you to just not watch the movie. You do without. You wait for it to hit channel 13 and sit through the commercials instead. That’s the honest way. Sad but true. Anything short of that is stealing. As far as your “willing to distribute for free” nonsense, of course he is! He stole it, didn’t pay a dime for it! And even if he did, it is illegal to distribute a copy of the movie, song, book, etc, regardless of what percentage of the society disagrees. Start a grass roots movement to get the laws changed. Fight city hall, as it were. But do not try to “prove” that downloading a copy of a movie is not illegal by shoehorning the idea into a superficial analogy made up of Econ babble. You make yourself look deluded and irrational.

You can look at air all you want (I got enough of the hot kind out of your whimsical farce), but you can’t change the fact that all of these “advanced protocol” transactions originate with stealing, a situation where two parties (studio and thief) are not in agreement, as you pointed out. This little tidbit that you talked around until the last nullifies your entire charade. All you have is ill-gotten supply and greedy dishonorable demand.

TF is clearly pro file sharing. So why do I always see comments accusing file sharers of stealing? If these people hate file sharing so much, why did they visit a site like this? It’s clearly labeled as a pro file sharing community.

It’s obvious that the RIAA or some anti piracy group is paying people to post these comments. Why not do some investigation. Can you trace their ips? Or somehow trace them through their email? That would make a great article![/quote]

Hahaha! How naive of you Norm to think that everyone on this, or any website, is in total agreement with the content. To think that the only reason someone would disagree with you is because “the RIAA or some anti piracy group is paying people” is delusional.

I envy you Norm. It must be quite an exciting existence to see conspiracies and plots around every corner. Get fired from your job? It’s not your fault, the RIAA planned your downfall. It sounds like the plot to a two bit Hollywood thriller. Why not go steal one and keep telling yourself that it’s not illegal. You may actually believe it someday.

(Opinion not paid for by the RIAA, CIA, Boy Scouts of America, or Amway)

If they loose a few bucks, they’ll learn their lesson and it won’t kill them. I think about ANY other issue related to P2P is more important than this one. And I read this freaking article about 20 million times on here already. If you have nothing to talk about, it’s ok to shut up. Especially if you’re going to wrap yourself in your preacher cloth and bitch about monetizing from torrents when half of the posts here are just padding BS (like this very post) to keep the revenue stream coming in.

Hypocrites…[/quote]

Wow get the fuck off the site then idiot, if you dont like it then leave, nobody is holding a gun to your head.[/quote]

Wow, “love it or leave it”. Great rebuttal, Rycon, did you construct that counter-arguement all by yourself?[/quote]

I guess I have to clarify this again to another person who hasn’t really turned on there brain. That wasn’t a ‘Love it or leave it’ counter-argument, he was complaining about the site, and at that point when your calling the site owners ‘hypocrites’ you need the get off the site.. because you obviously don’t agree on the sites content. He could of proved his point without attacking the owners for simply posting news. So please.. read the entire post and think about it before barking off another pointless response.[/quote]

Whether Wack was complaining about the site or the posts, an offhanded “get the fuck off the site” without any indication as to why is still a very poor response. You didn’t offer any sort of rationale for your venom until you were called on it. Your opinion, justified or not, is irrelevant when you can’t or don’t even explain why you feel that way.

So next time please…think, and come up with a coherent criticism, before barking off a totally meaningless response.

The industry thinks of their customers as scum. Scum with money though. Unfortunately for the industry, people are not as stupid as they would like them to be. Eventually all their propaganda and lies will backfire. I can assure you, many people who have never used file-sharing at all and spent a lot of money on DVDs and CDs are sick and tired of the industry and boycott them silently. Industrial commercialization of art was of course a mistake in the first place. It worked for some time and it would have worked much longer if the industry wasn’t so inhumane, greedy and full of themselves. If a parasite becomes too selfish, it’s just killing itself.

TF is clearly pro file sharing. So why do I always see comments accusing file sharers of stealing? If these people hate file sharing so much, why did they visit a site like this? It’s clearly labeled as a pro file sharing community.

It’s obvious that the RIAA or some anti piracy group is paying people to post these comments. Why not do some investigation. Can you trace their ips? Or somehow trace them through their email? That would make a great article!

So illegal/immoral activities are fine with BitTorrent so long as they aren’t annoying to the users? That’s the line we don’t cross? Everything else is fair game?

Either way, if someone wants to go illegally download the latest Coldplay album and is too much of a moron to figure out that they downloaded a trojan instead, I do not have much sympathy. Learn to use a computer.[/quote]

Bit torrent isn’t illegal or immoral. Bit Torrent has many legitimate uses that don’t involve copyright infringement, and many of us consider even some forms of piracy moral.