Do you download pirated music?

I download torrents of music. I am not repentant.

 

I don't understand people here paying $150 for t-shirts or ties and unwilling to drop a few bucks on an album. I just don't get that. Is it simply because it's easier to steal music than clothes that people continue to do the former and pay through the nose for the latter?

I haven't stolen music in probably 8 or 9 years. I buy CDs I like and pay a few bucks a month for unlimited access to all the music I can think of.

I download free music because it is cheaper than paying for it and the repercussions are virtually non-existent. Pretty self-explanatory, no?

 

Unfortunately, it is. The music you download is not free though.
At face value: Is it completely ethical? No. Am I financially hurting the bands I enjoy? Maybe, depends on the contract they signed. Am I financially hurting the record companies and music retailers? Yes. Is this unethical? Probably - but it does not feel as unethical as shoplifting, which I have never done. Why does this seemingly blatant form of thievery seem okay to a lot of people? Because intellectual/media property is tricky. After all, I could record all these songs off the radio legally and make a mix tape. I could borrow my friends CDs perfectly legally. There is a lot of gray area. I am not purchasing a good, I am purchasing a copy of a good that is free to replicate and costs nothing to the manufacturer. Do these ideas justify my downloading of music for free? No, it is unethical. Do I care? No - because I am not hurting anybody. I would not spend a lot of money on music regardless if I did not download. I would borrow my audiophile friend's CDs and records. Assuming this to be true, there is no hurt inflicted upon the record label, the retailer, or the band by me specifically downloading music. In fact, I would contend that it helps spread the name of the band to more people. My conscience is clean. Yours may not be.

It's also incredibly immature for someone who brags about his job and spending habits ad nauseum.
By "brag" you must mean lament, and by "ad nauseum", you must mean that you have obsessively been checking my replies to one thread?

 

You write a lot of retarded shit on this forum, but sometimes you just outdo yourself. <where's the clapping smiley?>

 

At face value:

Is it completely ethical? No.
Am I financially hurting the bands I enjoy? Maybe, depends on the contract they signed.
Am I financially hurting the record companies and music retailers? Yes.
Is this unethical? Probably - but it does not feel as unethical as shoplifting, which I have never done.

Why does this seemingly blatant form of thievery seem okay to a lot of people?

Because intellectual/media property is tricky. After all, I could record all these songs off the radio legally and make a mix tape. I could borrow my friends CDs perfectly legally. There is a lot of gray area. I am not purchasing a good, I am purchasing a copy of a good that is free to replicate and costs nothing to the manufacturer.

Do these ideas justify my downloading of music for free? No, it is unethical. Do I care? No - because I am not hurting anybody. I would not spend a lot of money on music regardless if I did not download. I would borrow my audiophile friend's CDs and records. Assuming this to be true, there is no hurt inflicted upon the record label, the retailer, or the band by me specifically downloading music. In fact, I would contend that it helps spread the name of the band to more people. My conscience is clean. Yours may not be.



By "brag" you must mean lament, and by "ad nauseum", you must mean that you have obsessively been checking my replies to one thread?

Some bad logic here.

Are you hurting the bands you enjoy? Since they are likely to get some revenue from licensed sales of their recordings, almost certainly yes, not 'maybe.'

Also, when you write 'I am not purchasing a good, I am purchasing a copy of a good that is free to replicate and costs nothing to the manufacturer,' you are ignoring that the right to copy is also protected by law. This is what copyright is. The manufacturer hurts in the loss of revenue from recorded music sales, and the artist hurts in that he or she or they lose royalty income.

The cultural fact is that people can get away with it. And so they do.

 

Some bad logic here.

The cultural fact is that people can get away with it. And so they do.

Yep, that's why I do it. Because I get away with it. And also - because like I said, I would not be purchasing all the music I download.

For example, I would never purchase a bunch of albums of bands I have never heard of but heard might be good. It's not like these bands are losing anything by me downloading them.

These are all tangential excuses though. What it comes down to is that I don't need to pay, so I do not.

 

I'm going to bat for Metro here. He's just saying what I guarantee you a vast majority of people do.

Hell I'm pretty passionate about music and supporting bands, but if I listened to that sort of radio pop more (I do like it, just interested in other stuff right now) I certainly wouldn't be paying 14 bucks an album so some fat asshole at Capitol can take his mistress to Per Se.

 

I'm going to bat for Metro here. He's just saying what I guarantee you a vast majority of people do.

Hell I'm pretty passionate about music and supporting bands, but if I listened to that sort of radio pop more (I do like it, just interested in other stuff right now) I certainly wouldn't be paying 14 bucks an album so some fat asshole at Capitol can take his mistress to Per Se.

It seems rather hypocritical to spend exorbitant amounts of money on luxury fashion on the one hand then turn around and say you don't want to enrich the recording industry fat cats. How are the fat cats in the music industry any different than those in fashion or any other industry? It's also a rather fallacious argument given that the major record labels have been on the decline for years while independent labels have been doing relatively better at their expense (at least prior to the current recession).

The essential problem as I see is that people want content but don't want to have to pay for it. That's true with music, films, and a number of other things. It's also the reason that the newspaper industry is collapsing. People need to face the facts that we can't expect those who work in our creative industries to work simply for nothing. People need livelihoods and it's rather unfortunate that so many people are too short-sighted to see that ultimately what they are doing has long term consequences.

 

It seems rather hypocritical to spend exorbitant amounts of money on luxury fashion on the one hand then turn around and say you don't want to enrich the recording industry fat cats. How are the fat cats in the music industry any different than those in fashion or any other industry? It's also a rather fallacious argument given that the major record labels have been on the decline for years while independent labels have been doing relatively better at their expense (at least prior to the current recession).

The essential problem as I see is that people want content but don't want to have to pay for it. That's true with music, films, and a number of other things. It's also the reason that the newspaper industry is collapsing. People need to face the facts that we can't expect those who work in our creative industries to work simply for nothing. People need livelihoods and it's rather unfortunate that so many people are too short-sighted to see that ultimately what they are doing has long term consequences.

I disagree. Industries always find a way to bounce back. It's the nature of free markets and capitalism. It will take creativity on the part of the industries themselves to survive. Fighting the inevitable is rather Sisyphusian.

Also in response to your first paragraph, no one is saying they want to enrich the fat cats in the fashion biz. It's just that it is a) a lot more difficult to shoplift than downloand, b) a completely different scale of "theft" - $1000s compared to $13, and c) the social taboo against shoplifting is much higher than against downloading music.