Shame on you Torrentfreak…

I really enjoy ripping your arguments to pieces. The slightly depressing thing about it is that 4nd seems to be better at it than I am (respect 4nd, btw)

Ho hum, tag in…

[Quote]..that is, piracy is (a fact we can all agree) a civil infraction at the moment and not yet has it been made criminal. [/Quote]
Great. Could you stop calling it theft, stealing and pilfering in the meantime? It’s damn annoying.

[Quote]Not buying was the smart and sensible, legal way to change business methods and models if that was your goal.[/Quote]
I haven’t bought for years…

[Quote]If you think there is more honor in being a mouse who by definition must sneak around while breaking laws, take your best shot I suppose.[/Quote]
No.

I think there’s honour in tearing down a corrupt, immoral, malignant scurge on society. The media cartels have thoroughly deserved their immininant fate, and I consider it my moral and social duty to be among those that help deliver it.

[Quote]The landscape is littered with the Daniel Doves and the Jammie Thomas’s and Tenenbaum will be next; punitive actions are really only just now getting started in earnest.[/Quote]
Wow, they sure are taking their time… You’re able to name every high-profile ‘victory’ of the cartels so far. Chuck in a few thousand faceless victims of the lawyer intimidation policy and… no, still doesn’t represent a drop in the millions-of-downloads-per-day ocean of the filesharing community. Utter, unabashed, FUD-spreading rubbish.

[Quote]So instead of arguing theory, why not build a good case why the work of one particular industry (and so far only one) SHOULD be demonetized and decoupled from long standing purchase and licensing agreements. If you are Communist, that might be your basis. If you really do see merchandise as mere “zero’s and one’s” with no other intrinsic value and therefore not worthy of sale or license, explain why, because more and more will be digitized in our future.[/Quote]
There is no point in arguing this. Any industry whose products can be digitised will have to adapt. Period.

That’s not to say that those industries don’t add value, simply that it’s impossible to quantify that value based on unit sales. Any attempt to do so is anachronistic and doomed to fail.

[Quote]If you really believe artistic creation is unworthy and in fact songs or movies or books or games should not be paid for, offer a good and workable solution how their creators can earn a living.[/Quote]
Sorry to be blunt, but it’s not the job of consumers to establish how companies should make money. Give the market a tenable product and it will respond. You reject outright the idea of mechandise and live performances. I would argue that trying to scarcify something that is inherently universal is just plain stupid. The only realistic options are to bring the product back into the physical realm or impose some kind of levy.

My prediction? At some point, the media companies will realise they’re about to go to the wall. At that point, they’ll ‘settle’ for being a minor facilitator, rather than the profit-creaming gatekeepers they’ve gotten used to being.

And we’ll all be better off. Even Reasoned Mind\neostlyes.

Think about it: music can be marketed and distributed independantly online by anyone, and with todays technology it doesn’t take a million dollars (or even 10′s of thousands of dollars) to make an album. I’ve heard plenty of recordings done on laptops in garages that have sounded fantastic. So who needs these middlemen anymore? I swear that this whole exercise is less about pirating music and more about making it seem like the record label execs still perform a necessary function.

As new artists we have to say NO to the current system, and as consumers we have to say NO to the product of that system.

There seems to be quite a few well known artists who feel that the degree of this punishment is completely ridiculous and I agree. However they don’t seem to actually be doing anything aside from voicing their disdain.

What I would like to suggest is that they intervene and pay the cost of this poor woman’s recenlty acquired debt.

After all, actions speak louder than words. I doubt it would be as detrimental to the pockets of say moby and radiohead than it would be to this single mother.

Also it would begin a public rift between big record companies and big artists. Something I would personally like to see.

This is just my two cents.

the math involved is this:
Time+Creativity+Idea

simple as that
whoever put a PRICE on art should be shot to death

art is free
free is power
and NIN learned this early on and
you will learn it too eventually

rule#1
don’t feed the trolls

Maybe if they did not outsource all the tech jobs to India we would have money to BUY your products, but being I do not have money I have been taking this route for years.

We can’t help we are smart enough to figure this out and we will KEEP ON leeking info. You can’t stop an army of nerds. By the time you come up with some lawsuit, we are busy coming up with easier ways to file share.

Keep giving lawsuits..slow yourself down what do we care…

We have our heads sucked into coding while you are playing games with AIR.

You can’t sue the world.
There are more of US than YOU.

I hate to say it but Moby’s Tea place had what they call jewish lightening…a “sudden fire” to collect whatever insurance money he could get out of his business.

1.) moby sucks
2.) radiohead doesn’t
3.) there is a calculator program on every computer so no-one should be doing bad at math
4.) capitalism is…wal-mart

She should sue for being made the one out of many to be made an example of rather than being treated equally by the law.

….it only works if you believe in it…

Original post, which was huge, was cut down for tl;dr purposes.

He was talking about deleting your material. When you share a pencil with somoene, you have one less. When you “share” something with someoen using P2P, bittorrent, you aren’t depeliting any of your material, because you always have it on your computer. Real sharing requires a selfless act, which conflicts with the nature of piracy. At it’s core, piracy is just thinking about yourself.

Once again you’re comparing physical sharing with intangible sharing- another on your list of constant mistakes. Is the sharing of ideas selfish at its core as well? No, because that’s exactly how we as people learn. Do I commit a selfless act by sharing an idea? Yes, because although it might not significantly cost me anything, it can still be a selfless act if it benefits someone else. To be technical, I must take the time to share the idea. The same principles apply to digital files.

Indeed, if there was no music industry, there would be no artists to begin with.

Uh… there was music long before there was an industry for it. But oh, right, you can’t understand that because you see music as a commodity to profit from.

That would essentially cut the recording’s profits in half. Who are we to make that kind of decision for them?

Translation: Who are we to exercise our rights as human beings if it supposedly deprives commercial entities of their profits, according to those entities?

You keep on calling laws draconian. That’s asanine, considering that for the purpose of this discussion, all they are telling you to do is pay for your things. It sounds like you just have a problem with following rules in general.

If not, then please explain to me what is so mind boggling about actually paying for things?

And you keep generalizing and putting words in my mouth. Explanation coming up.

If we lived in a world where absolutely everything, even human life, had monetary value and could be bought and traded and sold, that world would be incredibly sad. What room is there for morals and true justice in such a world? Oh, I saved your life, so now you must pay me. If you do not, I’ll just kill you to “repossess” what I did. There’s nothing wrong with financially supporting those who you appreciate, but compelling people to do so in exchange for what is otherwise freely, and justly, available to the world’s people is asinine. No, it’s not that, it’s greed.

The “draconian” laws are those that deny people the privacy and freedom they are entitled to as humans.

There was a personal attack, but you shouldn’t side step the point. It feels like you’re cherrry picking when it comes to your responses. Anon was trying to say that you pirates only thing about yourself and that’s exactly it.

M’kay, you want me to reply to it? Fine.

what happened to “sharing” in the cost of development for the products you enjoy? is that the one kind of “sharing” you freetards don’t like?

In response, I has link:

http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/freeDistribution.html

It talks about why charging for digital copies is flawed. It applies to all things digital, not simply software.

Uhm, yeah.. Bittorrent spreads awareness by giving out the whole thing for free. At this point, the spoiled brat has what he wants.

Will you stop with the personal attacks?

The pirate has his music, hans’t paid a cent, and there for doesn’t care about anything anymore.

…and with the generalizing?

Im sorry, but your logic here is just aweful

Thank you! It’s nice to hear that my logic is grand enough to inspire awe in people. :D

When music is someone’s entire career, I don’t think “maybe I’ll get paid” is good enough to place all your trust in.

The problem is making music into a “career” because you turn music into a commercial commodity with monetary value. Music is a work of art, not a commodity.

Amongst all the talk of thew new information age, you should have realized that intagible propety still property, according to the law,

According to intellectual property laws, which I’ve established are themselves flawed. You can’t own ideas and you can’t own something you can’t hold in your hands.

and as evidenced by massive piracy losses.

What are massive piracy losses? Losses suffered by filesharers? I don’t get it, so I ran it through a BS filter and it told me that you’re talking about industry losses due to filesharing. Losses that are reported by trade groups that have a commercial interest in fighting filesharing and have been known to be less than honest with their reports and actions and therefore can’t be trusted. See where you’re wrong?

Even if you make copies, and leave the original, you are still harming people.

Who? The record labels who make the vast majority of the money from CD sales? Let’s see, I can help out the common man or I can help out rich corporate executives.

and tangibly speaking, i hope the next time you bring your car into the mechanic’s, he copies your keys and shares them with random people along with your address

One, music is not private information. You can’t compare someone’s music, which they have released to the public, with their address. Two, copying and distributing someone’s car key falls squarely into the category of “things that we are not, in fact, free to do because it directly harms someone else.” Nobody is going to have their car stolen or their house broken into if their music is shared. And preemptive strike against your counterargument: Filesharing does not directly harm anyone at all because: nothing is being taken, it betters humanity to share, and you can’t claim you lost what you never had.

The law authorities in several countries have committed millions of dollars to bringing down piracy (n addition to international efforts), so in retrospect, no. Whether you like it or not, piracy is a crime. Im sorry.

No, whether you like it or not, piracy is not a crime. I know, it sucks to have one of your buzzwords that you use as propaganda to fool people shot down, but I’m not really sympathetic about it. Law authorities in Iran are also committing to suppressing protests against the election; does this mean that protesting is a crime? Oh, and don’t forget the criminalization of homosexuality! Just because people spend money on fighting it doesn’t mean it’s a crime.

It’s how the music industry and the software industry experience million dollar losses every year thanks to you and your freetard friends.

Personal attack. You do NOT advance your cause by calling people names, you only piss them off.

But I just know that you’re going to be all “Even though there was a personal attack, the point still stands.” Actually, no it doesn’t. I can choose to ignore it because you backed it up with a personal attack. Rephrase your point without being a jerk about it and maybe I’ll consider it as a legit argument.

Why do you think it’s called, piracy dipshit? Is your head that far up your own ass that you can claim that something called piracy is legitimate? And if you’re going to try and allege that this title isn’t official, you need only look at the PIRATE party.

DUDE. What the hell are you trying to accomplish by throwing around swearing? This is yet another point I get to ignore because you won’t post in a civilized manner.

Even if I went with your claim, I can find no website to support it.

Then you fail at online research. Here’s proof, straight from the MPAA itself: http://mpaa.org/researchStatistics.asp

I seriously doubt that if this was the case, the government would just let this slip under the radar.

Politicians are paid off by the RIAA’s lobbyists. That’s why they aren’t prosecuted for any of the obviously evil crap they do.

Those all harm people. If anything pirates are the terrorist. They inflict huge losses on the industry while at the same time trying to change government policy in favor of the same ideology that causes those losses.

Do they really, now? One, how can you inflict a loss when you aren’t stealing from anyone and you aren’t depriving anyone of anything? Two, once again I remind you that anti-piracy figures come not from independent studies, but from organizations with commercial interests in fighting filesharing. They are dishonest and cannot be believed.

Wrong. Many torrent sites make huge amounts of money off of their advertsising, making ita criminal offense.

I’ve asked you to prove this before, and you’ve not done so.

PROVE IT.

Bootleggers make physical copies of copyrighted material and sell them for. Again, profit is involved which makes it a crime.

This is called guilt by association. It’s a logical fallacy. Basically you’re saying that because people who commercially profit from downloading and selling copyrighted material are criminals, the people who download said material are also criminals. You’ll find very few filesharers that support commercial downloading. Try again, please.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

WOW, that was a ton of crap I had to wade through! It boggles the mind that you continue to waste your time here by throwing around:

-Lies
-Swear words
-Personal attacks
-Logical fallacies
-Evidence of your complete ignorance regarding filesharing.

Why not benefit humanity as a whole and just leave?

I have tried to get you to explain how filesharing can somehow be stealing despite the fact that it involves no theft whatsoever.

Uh, you are taking something from someone else without their permission (permission in this case constitutes payment/compensation). We have already established that destruction of the original is not a requisite, so this suffices.

You’re unapologetic liar.

The law authorities in several countries have committed millions of dollars to bringing down piracy (n addition to international efforts), so in retrospect, no. Whether you like it or not, piracy is a crime. Im sorry.

For the millionth time, you brainless little choad, filesharers buy *more* content than the average consumer.

We both know that that is BS. Piracy’s effect on the industry is well known. It’s how it drew so much attention to itself. It’s how the music industry and the software industry experience million dollar losses every year thanks to you and your freetard friends.

Nothing I’ve seen from PIRATES suggests that they even care about the entertainment industry. ALL that I have seen is :
» How the RIAA is evil. Have you even been paying attention. They.. wait.. you call it the MAFIAA. Now, given that, do you really think they would have the slightest bit of respect for it.
» How copyright is evil. And how any kind of rule in general is “draconian.”

Jesus christ. You try to convince people that the entertainment industry is the anti christ and next you turn around and tell me that you support them. LOL! Can you try and be honest with yourself?

But I know, I know. That fact threatens to pop the delusional, reality-proof bubble you live in, so you have to carefully ignore it.

Talk about reality proof bubble. Why do you think it’s called, piracy dipshit? Is your head that far up your own ass that you can claim that something called piracy is legitimate? And if you’re going to try and allege that this title isn’t official, you need only look at the PIRATE party.

Much like the fact that 2008 was the most profitable year EVER for the movie industry, which singlehandedly debunks the idea that P2P is killing the industry. That’s another fact you have to carefully ignore.

Oh, my mistake. I didn’t realize that Moby was part of the movie industry.

Even if I went with your claim, I can find no website to support it.

If you are that delusional, that you really require proof that P2P is doing harm, well then stuff this in your pipe
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1027-996205.html
http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archives/en/2009/en-05202009-watchlist.aspx

Im sure they are calling it a WATCH list since piracy is ok, right?

What the hell did you expect? People are just grabbing whatever their spoiled little brat hearts desire off of the torrents.

@trollstyles, amoral MAFIAA knob polisher

Oh right, I see. You’re gonn have me believe that “pirates purchase more content than the average consumer” in support of a group, they so respectfully refer to as thr MAFIIA? You’re full of it. You are so full it.

Lying isn’t protected by freedom of speech. Pay attention, because that concerns you. Since rather than speak your mind, you lie through your teeth for a living.

Let me remind you. You’re the one claiming that piracy is legitimate. That’s like standing on the beach and yelling “See! The ocean is made out of beer!”

The irony of claiming that the RIAA isn’t a terrorist organization and then calling somebody *else* ignoring is hilarious. The RIAA is a terrorist organization by *definition*. If you think otherwise, then you have absolutely no clue whatsoever what a ‘terrorist’ is, and you need to crack open a dictionary ASAP.

I seriously doubt that if this was the case, the government would just let this slip under the radar. Do you even think about what you are claiming?

ter?ror?ist??[ter-er-ist]
–noun
1. a person, usually a member of a group, who uses or advocates terrorism.
2. a person who terrorizes or frightens others.
3. (formerly) a member of a political group in Russia aiming at the demoralization of the government by terror.
4. an agent or partisan of the revolutionary tribunal during the Reign of Terror in France.
–adjective
5. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of terrorism or terrorists: terrorist tactics.

LOL
Which part of this makes the RIAA a terrorist organisation. You’re starting to sound paranoid.

Before you answer, “BUT TERORIZMZ R VIOLENT LOL!!”, violence isn’t a prerequisite for terrorist activity. I.e, cyber terrorism, environmental terrorism, economic terrorism.

………….

Those all harm people. If anything pirates are the terrorist. They inflict huge losses on the industry while at the same time trying to change government policy in favor of the same ideology that causes those losses. Not really the definition of terrorism, but much clsoer.

What’s your moral basis for lying that filesharing is theft, Mr. Iraqi… Whoops, sorry… Mr. RIAA Information Minister?
Uhm, do I need one? It’s the truth, as explained above.

See? You just lied right there, and there’s no apology in sight. Copyright infringement is a civil offense, not criminal.

Wrong. Many torrent sites make huge amounts of money off of their advertsising, making ita criminal offense.

Since the article concerns the RIAA, they also are cooperate with foreign law enforcement to take down bootlgetting. Since im sure you don’t know that that is, let me educate you. Bootleggers make physical copies of copyrighted material and sell them for. Again, profit is involved which makes it a crime.

LOL

You dodged every single point I made and then changed the subject, hiding behind the the old, tired strawman “IF YOU HAS A POINT U WULDNT B NAMECAELLING!!”.

You called me a liar, “trollstyles”, “knob polisher”, and a “MAFIAA whote”. Your point? Oh wait, you don’t have one.

Neither link claims that filesharing is stealing. You can’t refute the reality that P2P isn’t theft, so you claimed that it was and then copy & pasted two links at random to back up your “point”, hoping that nobody would actually click on them and see that they do not, infact, back up your “point” at all. You tried to create the appearance of fact.

Neither link claims that filesharing is stealing. You can’t refute the reality that P2P isn’t theft, so you claimed that it was and then copy & pasted two links at random to back up your “point”, hoping that nobody would actually click on them and see that they do not, infact, back up your “point” at all. You tried to create the appearance of fact.

1 a: the act of stealing ; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b: an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property2obsolete : something stolen3: a stolen base in baseball

All those copies you make are the property of the respective copyright holders. That’s how non tangible property works.

By the way, it isn’t slander if it’s true. So when I call you a brainless little choad, I’m not namecalling. I’m being accurate :D

Considering you are here trying to rationalize taking things without paying for them, it’s more like confusing yourself with me.

I have to disagree. By seeding my torrents, I am still giving things up. I am giving up the chance to, for example, upload other things because I am giving up my bandwidth usage so that someone else might have what I do. And of course I’m running that risk of getting caught and thrown in jail, and I’m doing it because I believe that others should have the files I do. I don’t gain anything from seeding; it’s all for others. How’s that for a selfless act?

He was talking about deleting your material. When you share a pencil with somoene, you have one less. When you “share” something with someoen using P2P, bittorrent, you aren’t depeliting any of your material, because you always have it on your computer. Real sharing requires a selfless act, which conflicts with the nature of piracy. At it’s core, piracy is just thinking about yourself.

Pirates just repackaged their actives under the word “sharing” in order to imbue theft with kindness and generosity.

@247 : You make some very good points. Still, I am American and I am proud to pay for all my stuff.

Indeed, if there was no music industry, there would be no artists to begin with. There would be no mechanism in place to facilitate the sale of CDs or to handle touring. Contrary to what many people here think, without income the artists can’t exist, and with their two source of income gone, the artists also cease to exist.

You are enjoying your life at the expense of others.

I ought to point out that Malaysia is a very small country and obviously doesn’t have the industrial resources that a country like the US does. Ergo, you can’t really expect it to have a fantastically successful music industry.

Just because Malaysia’s music industry couldn’t be as big as the American music industry, doesn’t mean it couldn’t have one. It could have had a music industry, even not as big as the one inthe states. Pirates had no right to make that decision for malaysia.

so in hindsight, you americans should support the local industry by buying CDs and not abusing the freedom entitled to your purchase by sharing it with millions. 10 close friends is acceptable i would argue, but please do urge them to actually buy a legal copy if they like it.

That would essentially cut the recording’s profits in half. Who are we to make that kind of decision for them?

I actually agree with this. Good job. I agree because of the fact that you said “local.” It’s obvious that you don’t live in the US, so: In this country, local does not mean national corporate stores and such. Local means the nearby mom & pop grocer instead of Safeway. In terms of local, it would mean supporting artists that you personally know, or that live in your town, and aren’t big-name rockstars. And a lot of people are perfectly okay with doing that, myself included. We are also perfectly okay with supporting non-local artists that we like. What we are not okay with are draconian laws set by a commercial organization that prohibits sharing at all.

You keep on calling laws draconian. That’s asanine, considering that for the purpose of this discussion, all they are telling you to do is pay for your things. It sounds like you just have a problem with following rules in general.

If not, then please explain to me what is so mind boggling about actually paying for things?

Ignored for using a personal attack.

There was a personal attack, but you shouldn’t side step the point. It feels like you’re cherrry picking when it comes to your responses. Anon was trying to say that you pirates only thing about yourself and that’s exactly it.

In the paragraph below this one (which I left out for post length purposes), you talk about artists not receiving exposure without a music industry. While it is true that the record labels spend some serious coin to promote certain artists, it’s not the only way for people to get heard. Peer-to-peer networks, like BitTorrent, are extremely good ways of spreading awareness of something

Uhm, yeah.. Bittorrent spreads awareness by giving out the whole thing for free. At this point, the spoiled brat has what he wants. The pirate has his music, hans’t paid a cent, and there for doesn’t care about anything anymore.

This doesn’t happen. This is the biggest myth. Pirates enjoy their pilfered material, not use it to spread the word. Also, those who they spread the word too, will most likely be pirates, who will just follow the torrent link and NOT contribute to the artist like you are SUPPOSED to do.

Once you get the torrent uploaded and you start seeding your album, all you have to do is sit back and watch your popularity grow. The p2p network takes care of everything else for you. If your music is good, then more people will distribute it and more people will know about it. BT is great for building a fanbase, especially for those lesser-known artists that don’t get promoted by the record labels. One final thing: The artist can always set up a donation page and request that people donate so that he can continue producing his music. Since the money goes straight to the artist, and because of how much money the music industry takes from CD sales before giving to the artists, they might actually make more money this way. The corporate executives will certainly make less, and they’re too filthy rich anyway.

Im sorry, but your logic here is just aweful and only reflects the ingrained desire of someone who is opposed to paying even a cent out of their own pocket for things that they like.

OK, once the artist starts seeding thier work then what? Are they making money. You don’t seem to appreciate the value of that money. They deserve that money, because it IS their work. Not YOURS. Donations? When music is someone’s entire career, I don’t think “maybe I’ll get paid” is good enough to place all your trust in. When you commit your life to anything, you need guarantees, that it will pay off. Piracy is removing these.

Why are you speaking of tangible sharing, especially misguided tangible sharing, when filesharing, the primary topic here, is intangible? I think you’re just trying to muddle the issue by introducing irrelevant analogies. Next.

Amongst all the talk of thew new information age, you should have realized that intagible propety still property, according to the law, and as evidenced by massive piracy losses. Don’t ask me for proof. Go spend two minutes on google.

Nobody said that the sharing of data that directly compromises one person’s privacy and safety is okay. There’s a bit of a difference between torrenting a movie and torrenting a text file full of someone’s identity information. Ideas want to be shared (your use of ‘ripped off’ implies that people can own ideas, which is also fallacious), but passwords and credit card numbers and such are not “ideas.” Next.

You missed the point. As clarified above, intangible things can still affect the real world.

and tangibly speaking, i hope the next time you bring your car into the mechanic’s, he copies your keys and shares them with random people along with your address and if any of those people should happen to rob you, then of course you couldn’t blame the mechanic. he just pointed them to your house and gave them the keys to get inside against your will, he didn’t actually steal anything himself! only a fascist, orwellian prick would want to lock that poor mechanic up for doing nothing but “showing” the way. he was merely exerting his natural, god given right to share your keys and home address…

*****VERY WELL PUT******

This perfectly exposes the loopholes in the whole pirate “sharing” philosophy.

Even if you make copies, and leave the original, you are still harming people. With the intangible, though, diminishing, the original property seems nonapplical, as you can’t physically remove code from a computer, unless you hack into it, and somehow manage to delete it. But those are things that pirates are not into.

Pirates feed on the doctrine of non applicability for the law, but as we are seeing, they are very wrong.

i have paid for maybe 2 CDs in the past 3 years, and only because they are independent artists paying for the recording costs and everything and “publishing” via itunes. there is no reason a perfectly sane person would pay $20+ for one song on a CD when they can either pay $.99 via itunes or get it for free via torrents. i dont know about you, but im pretty sure the recording industry doesnt need anymore money in its already grossly bloated and inflated pockets.

support artists, pirate music.

Moby you stop the talking and start acting if he sees nothing wrong release all his work that he still controls if any under a copyright permissive license like the CC 3.0 that retains commercial interests and make it legal to copy and distribute it if not for commercial purposes.

Will he do it? I doubt this is just marketing.

I like the fact that you mostly remained civil while posting this. Kudos, despite the fact that I disagree with you and am going to respond to your points.

everything you posted about Malaysia

I ought to point out that Malaysia is a very small country and obviously doesn’t have the industrial resources that a country like the US does. Ergo, you can’t really expect it to have a fantastically successful music industry.

You would be foolish to expect anything aurally simulating from [American Idol].

lols, indeed.

so in hindsight, you americans should support the local industry by buying CDs and not abusing the freedom entitled to your purchase by sharing it with millions. 10 close friends is acceptable i would argue, but please do urge them to actually buy a legal copy if they like it.

I actually agree with this. Good job. I agree because of the fact that you said “local.” It’s obvious that you don’t live in the US, so: In this country, local does not mean national corporate stores and such. Local means the nearby mom & pop grocer instead of Safeway. In terms of local, it would mean supporting artists that you personally know, or that live in your town, and aren’t big-name rockstars. And a lot of people are perfectly okay with doing that, myself included. We are also perfectly okay with supporting non-local artists that we like. What we are not okay with are draconian laws set by a commercial organization that prohibits sharing at all.

on a tangent, lets imagine this scenario where there is this great band playing the local club. something that shatters the current genres of music, and seems instantly appealing to the audience.

In the paragraph below this one (which I left out for post length purposes), you talk about artists not receiving exposure without a music industry. While it is true that the record labels spend some serious coin to promote certain artists, it’s not the only way for people to get heard. Peer-to-peer networks, like BitTorrent, are extremely good ways of spreading awareness of something; I personally think BT is the best distribution model in the world. This is why: An artist can upload a torrent for their new CD on TPB or somewhere and that’s all they have to do. It doesn’t require huge technical expertise to create a torrent; more like a few minutes of time. Once you get the torrent uploaded and you start seeding your album, all you have to do is sit back and watch your popularity grow. The p2p network takes care of everything else for you. If your music is good, then more people will distribute it and more people will know about it. BT is great for building a fanbase, especially for those lesser-known artists that don’t get promoted by the record labels. One final thing: The artist can always set up a donation page and request that people donate so that he can continue producing his music. Since the money goes straight to the artist, and because of how much money the music industry takes from CD sales before giving to the artists, they might actually make more money this way. The corporate executives will certainly make less, and they’re too filthy rich anyway.

Bloody spoiled rich americans refusing to purchase a cheap CD to support the act they like. Don’t like the big labels? Buy the small ones then or don’t at all. This attitude is going to bite you in the ass later on in life.

Honestly, this is the part of your post that disappointed me. You were doing a great job with legitly presenting arguments, and then you had to go and do this. For one thing, not all Americans are bloody spoiled rich. In fact, few are. I, for example, basically live in poverty, and could never afford the music I’ve downloaded (in the hundreds of tracks). So it’d be good if you didn’t, like, generalize every American with a stereotype. Second, CDs here are not considered cheap. Many people complain about how CDs contain perhaps one or two tracks that are good, but the rest of the tracks aren’t. And yet they still pay full price and can’t get a refund. People feel cheated, and if the prices of CDs were lowered, sales would increase. Finally, people may be boycotting CDs for another reason entirely. I, for example, am not going to buy any CDs put forth by the Rich Idiots Abusing Artists (RIAA) because I think they are evil. This stands even if I love the artist. If I can afford it, perhaps I’ll donate some money directly to them, but the record labels are never seeing another penny from me again. I know that after the Jammie Thomas retrial last week, more people are pissed at the music industry and will start boycotting them- which is how you really hurt a business.

Lessee.

but to call it “sharing” and to equate that to REAL sharing of physical things where the sharer selflessly depletes his own stock for the benefit of someone else is disingenuous at best, and fox-news worthy at worst. coping a million files is not sharing. the “sharer” gives up nothing. hardly a selfless act. hardly equivalent to someone that gives someone else a portion of their food or money.

I have to disagree. By seeding my torrents, I am still giving things up. I am giving up the chance to, for example, upload other things because I am giving up my bandwidth usage so that someone else might have what I do. And of course I’m running that risk of getting caught and thrown in jail, and I’m doing it because I believe that others should have the files I do. I don’t gain anything from seeding; it’s all for others. How’s that for a selfless act?

first of all, films, music, videogames are not “ideas” anymore than you are an “atom”. trying to reduce complex, specific, artistic expressions into a singular “idea” is just another disingenuous code word for pirates use to try and sugar coat their actions…

Excellent job of misunderstanding me. Bravo. I never said that digital media are ideas. I said that digital media are intangible things, like ideas are. As such the same concept as sharing an idea applies to sharing digital files. You just wasted time writing a response to a post you didn’t properly read.

but anyway, if i’m understanding your correctly, what you’re saying is that, legitimately sharing a finite, tangible resource like food is EXACTLY THE SAME as copying an infinite, intangible resource?

No, once again, you’re misunderstanding me. You’re also putting words in my mouth. You can’t compare the sharing of tangible with the sharing of intangible- that’s the whole reason why every anti-piracy argument that involves such analogies as “You wouldn’t steal a car” is fallacious. It is far easier to share the intangible because of its infinite supply; I don’t eventually run out of this .mp3 I’m seeding. And if every person on Earth tapped into my connection and downloaded the .mp3 for himself, great. I just facilitated the distribution of art. If said distribution ends up somehow improving someone’s life or well-being, even in a small way, how can you call it wrong to share files?

what happened to “sharing” in the cost of development for the products you enjoy? is that the one kind of “sharing” you freetards don’t like?

Ignored for using a personal attack.

i hope someone “shares” your identity and passwords and banking info. i hope a hacker “shares” admin status of torrent freak and the federal reserve. after all, none of the above are tangible, it’s all just 1’s and 0’s. “ideas” as we all know, WANT to be ripped off.

Nobody said that the sharing of data that directly compromises one person’s privacy and safety is okay. There’s a bit of a difference between torrenting a movie and torrenting a text file full of someone’s identity information. Ideas want to be shared (your use of ‘ripped off’ implies that people can own ideas, which is also fallacious), but passwords and credit card numbers and such are not “ideas.” Next.

and tangibly speaking

Why are you speaking of tangible sharing, especially misguided tangible sharing, when filesharing, the primary topic here, is intangible? I think you’re just trying to muddle the issue by introducing irrelevant analogies. Next.

and if you happen to do a job that doesn’t involve making a physical PRODUCT then you are doing nothing tangible and your boss should have complete freedom not to pay you for the ethereal, meaningless portions of your workday when, lets face it, you’re not really working at all, more like having fun and being lazy…just selling things or answering phones or punching buttons on a register and you should be happy to do it for free too because otherwise you’re a greedy pig.

This one also contains a personal attack, but I’m going to respond to it anyway. Regardless of the fact that you’re working on a computer all day and perhaps distributing data or some such, you still get paid for your time. Duh. How could you have missed that…?

I don’t mind you coming here and starting arguments, but could you at least train a bit before the next one? Or actually study up on the claims you’re spouting?

We’re talking about the sharing of culture. If I tell you a story, you can re-tell it. If I play you a tune, you can re-play it. In aural traditions, there are no artefacts of culture to be stolen. Perversely, it’s technology that’s taking us backwards, from a business-driven culture to a community-driven one. And, as has been pointed out so many times, it’s that that scares the hell out of the record companies.

As you all know, seen one troll, seen them all…

endemic pirating had starved the music industry of any significant funds to promote any new and current artists, relegating the Malaysians to imported music. Local artists do not get their due publicity, expertise in production or quality music videos. Independent label are hard to come in CD stores and finding a respectable act between the numerous miniature labels is akin to winning the jackpot.

because of this, the industry is forced to concentrate on music shows similar to American Idol as their mainstream of income. You would be foolish to expect anything aurally simulating from this.

so in hindsight, you americans should support the local industry by buying CDs and not abusing the freedom entitled to your purchase by sharing it with millions. 10 close friends is acceptable i would argue, but please do urge them to actually buy a legal copy if they like it.

———————————–

on a tangent, lets imagine this scenario where there is this great band playing the local club. something that shatters the current genres of music, and seems instantly appealing to the audience.

if there is no music industry, as advocated by some of you , their outreach would had been very limited. A breakthrough of music would had been missed. You might argue an independent would had picked them up…but independants earn money through sales of music too. Do you expect them to rise through the ranks by playing the American band circuits in 2012? This aint the 70s and 80s. Blogs are extremely limited. Twitters as well. Imagine selling a new diet soda through blogs only. How many dedicated clients are you going to get? 100k , 200k? Same as a new band. 200k is the starting point. Without industry backing, how would you get the international exposure or 100 million? With this , it is impossible to imagine sold out concerts of 100ks with zero music sales.

I love my music. I want to hear new things. The industry is important. Share and charge with moderation.

———————————–

Bloody spoiled rich americans refusing to purchase a cheap CD to support the act they like. Don’t like the big labels? Buy the small ones then or don’t at all. This attitude is going to bite you in the ass later on in life.

Deminishing the original isn’t a prerequisite for sharing. Wow! You learn something new every day!

nice! you found a dictionary! do a little more perusing in that dictionary and do you know what you might find out?

perhaps that diminishing the original isn’t a prerequisite for stealing either! wow! you learn something new every day!

…although in your case, since your comment makes it clear there’s air where your brain is supposed to be, maybe you don’t :(

in the websters dictionary definition of “steal” there is no mention of the word “deprive” but there is this little quote: “STEAL may apply to any surreptitious taking of something and DIFFERS FROM THE OTHER TERMS BY COMMONLY APPLYING TO INTANGIBLES AS WELL AS MATERIAL THINGS”.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/steal

Both can be shared, so why isn’t filesharing actually sharing?

they can be copied, sure. but to call it “sharing” and to equate that to REAL sharing of physical things where the sharer selflessly depletes his own stock for the benefit of someone else is disingenuous at best, and fox-news worthy at worst. coping a million files is not sharing. the “sharer” gives up nothing. hardly a selfless act. hardly equivalent to someone that gives someone else a portion of their food or money.

Sharing applies to the intangible. You can share an idea. You cannot feel an idea, but when you share it, both people now have it.

first of all, films, music, videogames are not “ideas” anymore than you are an “atom”. trying to reduce complex, specific, artistic expressions into a singular “idea” is just another disingenuous code word for pirates use to try and sugar coat their actions…

but anyway, if i’m understanding your correctly, what you’re saying is that, legitimately sharing a finite, tangible resource like food is EXACTLY THE SAME as copying an infinite, intangible resource? these two scenarios are equal in your mind?

lol

what happened to “sharing” in the cost of development for the products you enjoy? is that the one kind of “sharing” you freetards don’t like?

i hope someone “shares” your identity and passwords and banking info. i hope a hacker “shares” admin status of torrent freak and the federal reserve. after all, none of the above are tangible, it’s all just 1′s and 0′s. “ideas” as we all know, WANT to be ripped off.

simple physics.

and tangibly speaking, i hope the next time you bring your car into the mechanic’s, he copies your keys and shares them with random people along with your address and if any of those people should happen to rob you, then of course you couldn’t blame the mechanic. he just pointed them to your house and gave them the keys to get inside against your will, he didn’t actually steal anything himself! only a fascist, orwellian prick would want to lock that poor mechanic up for doing nothing but “showing” the way. he was merely exerting his natural, god given right to share your keys and home address…

and if you happen to do a job that doesn’t involve making a physical PRODUCT then you are doing nothing tangible and your boss should have complete freedom not to pay you for the ethereal, meaningless portions of your workday when, lets face it, you’re not really working at all, more like having fun and being lazy…just selling things or answering phones or punching buttons on a register and you should be happy to do it for free too because otherwise you’re a greedy pig.

Get that straight meatheads before you accuse people of piracy!

Sharing applies to the intangible. You can share an idea. You cannot feel an idea, but when you share it, both people now have it.

Stealing does not. When you take from an infinite supply… inf – 1 = inf. No one is deprived of everything.

Ergo, your argument is broken. YOU ARE NOT USING LOGIC. LEARN LOGIC. It took me a while to even get what you were saying because of hiding behind bad phrasing and logic and bleh.

yeah.

if unauthorized, massive, digital distribution of protected works is not “stealing” then by the same logic it also not “sharing”.

to be more precise, IF digitally procuring an intangible MP3 against the owner’s will is not “stealing” because it’s not physical and the original file remains undiminished then “sharing” an intangible MP3 is not actually “sharing” for the exact same reasons.

Orly? We share ideas with others. After the process of sharing is complete, both people have the same idea. Ideas are intangible; digital files are intangible. Both can be shared, so why isn’t filesharing actually sharing?

Idiots!

share??[shair] noun, verb, shared, shar?ing.
–noun
1. the full or proper portion or part allotted or belonging to or contributed or owed by an individual or group.
2. one of the equal fractional parts into which the capital stock of a joint-stock company or a corporation is divided.

–verb (used with object)
3. to divide and distribute in shares; apportion.
4. to use, participate in, enjoy, receive, etc., jointly: The two chemists shared the Nobel prize.

Deminishing the original isn’t a prerequisite for sharing. Wow! You learn something new every day!

Although in your case, since your comment makes it clear there’s air where your brain is supposed to be, maybe you don’t :(

@Anonymous
“so where’s my apology, you unapologetic liar?”

Where’s your apology? Alright, here: I am sincerely sorry that you were born retarded.

@Anonymous
“there is a HUGE difference between “freedom fighter” and “freetard”.

you, are of course, the latter.”

Hahahahah.

When confronted with the truth, the only response you’re capable of is hollow mudslinging. You can’t argue with reality, so you just dodge the subject, insult me, and hope that nobody notices. Thanks for proving me correct. It’s rather amusing.

bye bye riaa, goodnight retarded mind…sleep tight.

2010 FTW