Filesharing: Inalienable right or punishable by death?

[zenten]

No more reprehensible than using a public library.

Only if you delete in within fairly short order.

Why? I can borrow from the library over and over again.

Yeah but while you have it, the library can't also lend it to other people without paying for more copies.

I'd say personal, noncommercial copyright infringement falls somewhere in between using a public library and pretty theft on the reprehensibility scale.

So? Every book or movie I borrow is potential revenue loss. It's the same thing, just a different scale.

Same as buying a used book or movie. Although that might actually be worse, as I don't tend to pay people for file sharing.

[Karrion]

personal, noncommercial copyright infringement

This whole concept is the invention of mafiaa lawyers. There's nothing illegal about personal copying inside your own home, and absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.

That depends on your jurisdiction. Here in Australia there are no fair use exceptions. It's technically illegal to copy anything even within your home; even recording broadcast TV on your VCR is illegal. So everyone just ignores it and does it anyway.

[zenten]

personal, noncommercial copyright infringement

This whole concept is the invention of mafiaa lawyers. There's nothing illegal about personal copying inside your own home, and absolutely nothing anyone can do about it.

That depends on your jurisdiction. Here in Australia there are no fair use exceptions. It's technically illegal to copy anything even within your home; even recording broadcast TV on your VCR is illegal. So everyone just ignores it and does it anyway.

So right now you're breaking the law by surfing the internet?

[Anpheus]

Just so you know this post is copyright mwa.

Moving those bits around is ILLEGAL! I'll sue!

[Karrion]

(IANAL, the following is my understanding but I could be wrong)

That depends on your jurisdiction. Here in Australia there are no fair use exceptions. It's technically illegal to copy anything even within your home; even recording broadcast TV on your VCR is illegal. So everyone just ignores it and does it anyway.

So right now you're breaking the law by surfing the internet?

Not quite, because I'm not making any persistant copy of any of the internet (the law does allow 'technical' transient buffering in memory, though the browser cache might be a bit more of a grey area...).

However if I start hitting "Save page" to save it to disk, then yes, I'm breaking copyright law (unless I have a licence to do so from the site in question, of course).

The situation is so weird because, prior to our Free Trade Agreement with the US, our copyright law was focussed on distribution rather than the act of copying - while making copies wasn't exactly legal, it wasn't exactly illegal either, until you started giving/showing those copies to other people. So there was implicit fair use, and then explicit 'fair dealing' for the exceptions to distributions.

Then we signed the FTA, and it required us to introduce DMCA-style laws, which were focussed on the act of copying, and made making copies illegal in itself. Problem is they didn't also include explicit fair use provisions, and effectively removed the implicit fair use we previously had.

None of this, of course, actually stops anyone downloading their TV shows over the net instead of waiting the usual six months for them to be shown on local TV*.


* in the last two months or so the TV networks have been making a big deal about screening shows only a few days after the US - big 'streamed directly from the US' slogans splashed across the screen - which should give an idea of how worried they are about people moving to watching on the internet directly.

[JayDee]

* in the last two months or so the TV networks have been making a big deal about screening shows only a few days after the US - big 'streamed directly from the US' slogans splashed across the screen - which should give an idea of how worried they are about people moving to watching on the internet directly.

And it's so perfectly timed, because they've now had to stop those shows due to the writers strike. If they'd kept to normal programming, it might have worked out that they wouldn't need to break mid-season. Poor TV networks - they can't win.

[Malice]

How can it be stealing if the thief takes away no currency or good and has no intention to buy the product anyway? Am I stealing if I download music available in the library, radio, or music videos? There's no net loss from these companies if I do these things.

My closet has a lot of crap in it. I'm sure there are plenty of things in there that I don't even remember. I never go in there. It acts as the repository for stuffs I don't need but don't want to throw away.

If you enter my house and my bedroom and my closet, take something, and go home, you're stealing, even if I would never notice (or care much if I did).

Arguments about what the act is are different from arguments on the effect of the act. You can argue that this act has no negative effect on the copyright holder; but you can't argue that the act itself isn't theft.
On a simple level, you are getting something for free which you should be paying for.

On a more complex level, you're... Well, I like the way Scott Adams puts it. It's as if someone snuck into your home while you were at work, took your underwear, wore it all day, washed it, and brought it back. What you're stealing when you download a movie or a song is really the creator's right to control the distribution of their creation. It's a violation of their rights; those rights are protected by the government; that violation is illegal.

[Hurduser]

On a simple level, you are getting something for free which you should be paying for.

That is not the definition of theft, theft is depriving someone of his property (in one of my conlangs, I invented the term "'xkemi" for this, which can be translated as "use ressources without the owner's consent"). and the underpants thief did this while the filesharer doesn't.

What you're stealing when you download a movie or a song is really the creator's right to control the distribution of their creation. It's a violation of their rights; those rights are protected by the government; that violation is illegal.

Well, rights can not be stolen anyways (they can be infringed on, but that is something different). Also you seem not to understand the question. it is not: 'does this right exist' (which it does) but 'should this right exist' (which IMHO, it shouldn't).

[zenten]

Arguments about what the act is are different from arguments on the effect of the act. You can argue that this act has no negative effect on the copyright holder; but you can't argue that the act itself isn't theft.
On a simple level, you are getting something for free which you should be paying for.

That's not theft. If I take your stuff, and then throw it out or destroy it, it is still theft. Keeping it has nothing to do with it.

[HappySmileMan]

Moving these bits around is ILLEGAL! I'll sue!

Just so you know there is a copyright on this post.

Am I stealing yet?

[Delbin]

My closet has a lot of crap in it. I'm sure there are plenty of things in there that I don't even remember. I never go in there. It acts as the repository for stuffs I don't need but don't want to throw away.

If you enter my house and my bedroom and my closet, take something, and go home, you're stealing, even if I would never notice (or care much if I did)

A better analogy would be if I copied your shirt fiber for fiber a thousand miles away without your knowledge. I'm not going into artist's homes and taking their master CDs. I'm not /taking/ anything. What I'm doing is not paying for something I wouldn't have bought anyway with nothing being taken away from the artist. Am I being clear?

The underwear analogy is very biased as well since it's implied that I'd be sullying an intimate item of clothing. That as well involves me actually grabbing something. Again, the analogy is simply copying the article of clothing and not paying the royalty for copying it. Why would I want an artist's underwear anyway?

[Hammer]

I'm not taking sides here, but I'm curious about your thoughts on something that keeps coming up. For those of you who believe that nothing is being taken from the artist:
Do you consider the potential demand for a product to have no value? You say that people who copy a song would not have bought the song if they were unable to get it for free. Why do you believe that to be the case? They might not buy every song they copy for free, but why do you believe they would not buy any of them? And can you say this applies to all file sharers?

What is being taken away from the artist (or whoever) is the unfulfilled desire of the consumer, which is what causes people to purchase things.

I see where giving a song to someone who truly would not buy it does no harm, but what about the song you like so much that it does have value for you and you would buy it if you couldn't get it for free?

[zenten]

I'm not taking sides here, but I'm curious about your thoughts on something that keeps coming up. For those of you who believe that nothing is being taken from the artist:
Do you consider the potential demand for a product to have no value? You say that people who copy a song would not have bought the song if they were unable to get it for free. Why do you believe that to be the case? They might not buy every song they copy for free, but why do you believe they would not buy any of them? And can you say this applies to all file sharers?

What is being taken away from the artist (or whoever) is the unfulfilled desire of the consumer, which is what causes people to purchase things.

I see where giving a song to someone who truly would not buy it does no harm, but what about the song you like so much that it does have value for you and you would buy it if you couldn't get it for free?

It does have value. And that value is also taken away by buying it used, or by convincing someone else to not buy it. It's also something that can't be easily quantified, especially on an individual level.

Also, that only applies if I *can* buy it. If I download a gaming book that is not in print anymore, and has either been dropped by the company years ago or the company itself went out of business, I'm clearly not making anyone lose any money, even though I'm clearly violating copyright.

[Rysto]

It does have value. And that value is also taken away by buying it used,

Can we stop it with this ridiculous comparison? When you buy it used, the person from whom you purchase it can no longer use the product. That is totally different from the situation where you get a copy of the good from him.

or by convincing someone else to not buy it.

...

Seriously, what the fuck? Nobody is obligated to purchase any product if they don't want to. But why should people have to right to get a product without paying for it?

[zenten]

It does have value. And that value is also taken away by buying it used,

Can we stop it with this ridiculous comparison? When you buy it used, the person from whom you purchase it can no longer use the product. That is totally different from the situation where you get a copy of the good from him.

or by convincing someone else to not buy it.

...

Seriously, what the fuck? Nobody is obligated to purchase any product if they don't want to. But why should people have to right to get a product without paying for it?

I am be serious. This is a serious argument. Please don't treat it like I'm joking, or whatnot. If you have a problem with the argument, please argue against it, not just dismissing it out of hand because you don't believe it.

Now, you're bringing up the notion of rights. I'm going to stick to moral rights here, instead of legal ones, as legal ones are a whole different kind of argument, and clearly vary by both geography and time.

I don't have the right to know everything. I don't for instance have the right to invade your privacy. And if someone were to say publish your credit card information online, and make that information available to me, I would contact the police. I do however have the right to talk about things that aren't hurting anyone, and to learn about things that don't hurt anyone.

So the question here is, is my knowing a song that was released, in such a manner that I can access the knowledge over and over again at my convenience, where the person who made the song (because I don't want to get into legalities for this I'll assume that person is also the copyright holder) does not want me to do so under the means I acquired it, hurting anyone? This information is not private. It's not the person's credit card information (or some other harmful information). It's a song, that anyone can go get by spending some money at a record store. In fact, the person who made the song wants me to have it.

So the only way I can see getting this information as harmful is if it prevents me from buying it, and if me not buying the song is harmful. But you just said it's not, or at least I have the right to inflict harm in that manner. I can not buy all the CDs I want, and no one will find that wrong, including me.

So, from what I can tell, and from what I've gotten from arguing this with other people, is that no, downloading music (or TV shows, or Movies, or books, etc) is not wrong, in the moral sense.

[Rysto]

I am be serious. This is a serious argument. Please don't treat it like I'm joking, or whatnot. If you have a problem with the argument, please argue against it, not just dismissing it out of hand because you don't believe it.

You mean like the way you dismissed out of hand my economic argument that music will be underproduced if you can't make a profit doing it? You can't just wave your hands and say "I don't believe in economics" and call that a valid argument.

[zenten]

I am be serious. This is a serious argument. Please don't treat it like I'm joking, or whatnot. If you have a problem with the argument, please argue against it, not just dismissing it out of hand because you don't believe it.

You mean like the way you dismissed out of hand my economic argument that music will be underproduced if you can't make a profit doing it? You can't just wave your hands and say "I don't believe in economics" and call that a valid argument.

I didn't think I dismissed it out of hand. I dismissed it because your argument does not fit with evidence. You were also arguing that there would be no more music produced, not that it would be underproduced.

So, lets just assume I read your argument wrong. What do you mean by underproduced? Do you mean that the cost will be kept artificially low somehow, below where the supply and demand curves meet? If so, can you explain how that might be? Because I see the issue being that if filesharing became standard you would get at the worst much of the supply curve being very low. That doesn't fit underproduction at all.

[Rysto]

Underproduced, as in, a lot less will be produced as would normally be the case were it a private good.

[Karrion]

[some people] say that people who copy a song would not have bought the song if they were unable to get it for free. Why do you believe that to be the case? They might not buy every song they copy for free, but why do you believe they would not buy any of them? And can you say this applies to all file sharers?

I don't think anyone can make universal statements about all file sharers. I think we can probably say some things on average though.

• The argument that the RIAA has put forward once or twice (in particular in some of their estimates of how much piracy is costing them), that every pirated song is a whole lost sale of an albulm, is patently ridiculous.
• The argument that each priated song is a whole lost sale of that song holds more water, but can still be seen to be wrong given the basic economic relationship between cost and demand. That is, at the higher price (ie not pirated), people will buy less on average.
• On the other hand it's certainly the case that there will be people who pirate songs that, had they not been able to pirate them, would instead have purchased them.
• Thus it seems logical to conclude that. on average, each pirated song is equivalent to some undetermined fraction of a lost sale.

My guess (and it's only a guess) would be that that fraction is likely to be on the order of maybe 2-3%.


As to the 'theft' argument: Copyright infringment is not theft. Here's the legal definition of theft in my state:

A person steals if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.

Emphasis mine; from the Crimes Act 1958 (Victoria/Australia), section 72 with some followup clauses in section 73.

Since you're not depriving the other of their copy of the song, you haven't stolen it. Nor have you 'stolen' any of their right to control the copying of their song; they still have that right (and you still don't have it). Certainly you've infringed on that right, and that's illegal. But it's important to get the terminology clear: the offence is copyright infringment, not theft.

[Hammer]

Another way to look at this is that the enormous dollar value of a popular song resides in its ability to be easily replicated and sold repeatedly without additional work from the musician.

The great service I got at the restaurant is valuable to me. I'm willing to pay for it both by eating in restaurants in the first place, and also by tipping my waitstaff. Let's say the waitstaff got a total of $20. In order to get another $20, they have to do all that service again. It would be really cool if that great service experience could simply be replicated without the waitstaff having to get up and do all the work again, but that's not how it works. There is no way for me to get this without going to a restaurant and getting good waitstaff.

Currently, a song doesn't work that way. Once the song is out there, the artist is meant to get money every time that song is played or used or acquired by another person. Even though they don't have to do any additional work. (For the sake of this let's assume that this song is simply uploaded to a downloadable-music-for-sale site and there is no production or active marketing being done.)

Therefore, since the song only has such tremendous earning power by dint of this easy replication and distribution, if you remove the ability to easily replicate and distribute it, doesn't its economic value drop considerably? Is it fair of the artist (and associated corporate machinery) to expect the same amount of money for a song if they remove one of its primary value-adders?

[Amnesiasoft]

[*] On the other hand it's certainly the case that there will be people who pirate songs that, had they not been able to pirate them, would instead have purchased them.

But it is also the case that pirating things encourages the purchase of a product. I would never have bought Supreme Commander, Rainbow 6: Vegas, Gears of War, or subscribed to GameTap for Sam & Max, Beyond Good & Evil, and Psychonauts (and others) had I not downloaded those games. Why should I buy a product if I don't know if I'm going to like it? Sure there are things like demos for games, but those tend to be oversized and too short to even give you a feel of what the game is really like. Sure the iTunes music store lets you listen to a 30 second clip of a song, but many times that will not be a great section of the song that you get to preview. Sure, we have trailers for movies, but all that is is a collection of short clips that are not in context at all, which completely alters the way the movie apperas compared to how it is. 300 for instance, if you are going to market a movie as a movie with a lot of action, don't fill it to the brim with boring dialogue.

[zenten]

Another way to look at this is that the enormous dollar value of a popular song resides in its ability to be easily replicated and sold repeatedly without additional work from the musician.

The great service I got at the restaurant is valuable to me. I'm willing to pay for it both by eating in restaurants in the first place, and also by tipping my waitstaff. Let's say the waitstaff got a total of $20. In order to get another $20, they have to do all that service again. It would be really cool if that great service experience could simply be replicated without the waitstaff having to get up and do all the work again, but that's not how it works. There is no way for me to get this without going to a restaurant and getting good waitstaff.

Currently, a song doesn't work that way. Once the song is out there, the artist is meant to get money every time that song is played or used or acquired by another person. Even though they don't have to do any additional work. (For the sake of this let's assume that this song is simply uploaded to a downloadable-music-for-sale site and there is no production or active marketing being done.)

Therefore, since the song only has such tremendous earning power by dint of this easy replication and distribution, if you remove the ability to easily replicate and distribute it, doesn't its economic value drop considerably? Is it fair of the artist (and associated corporate machinery) to expect the same amount of money for a song if they remove one of its primary value-adders?

I'm not sure what you're talking about with the ease of replication and distribution, unless you're talking about DRM being bad or something. Downloading a song through unauthorized means does not make getting the song legitimately any harder.

[Hammer]

I'm not sure what you're talking about with the ease of replication and distribution, unless you're talking about DRM being bad or something. Downloading a song through unauthorized means does not make getting the song legitimately any harder.

I'm talking about what makes people willing to spend money on music - what makes it valuable. I'm also talking about at what point the originator has gotten what they are entitled to.

Some of the things people do with music are social. They want to share and swap what they like with friends. Participation in that kind of activity is a big part of what makes the song valuable. Since one of the reasons people like music in the first place is to share it with others, does it make sense for the RIAA to be screaming that people share music? The fact that people like to share music is one of the reasons why they have a multi-gazillion dollar industry to be screaming about. Seems to me to be biting the hand. Note that I am not talking about people who rip and sell 1000 copies of an album. I feel that is a different thing.

If a professional comedian tells me a joke at a show I paid to see, I don't have to pay him if I repeat that joke to my friend the next day. Why not? I have effectively made a copy of the joke and given it to someone else while still retaining my own copy. Is that the same as sharing a copy of a song with a friend, or is not the same?

Again, I'm not taking a side here. I think both sides have points where the are right and points where they are wrong. This is a complicated issue which has been seriously muddied by both sides, and I don't think anybody has it figured out yet.

[zenten]

I'm not sure what you're talking about with the ease of replication and distribution, unless you're talking about DRM being bad or something. Downloading a song through unauthorized means does not make getting the song legitimately any harder.

I'm talking about what makes people willing to spend money on music - what makes it valuable. I'm also talking about at what point the originator has gotten what they are entitled to.

Some of the things people do with music are social. They want to share and swap what they like with friends. Participation in that kind of activity is a big part of what makes the song valuable. Since one of the reasons people like music in the first place is to share it with others, does it make sense for the RIAA to be screaming that people share music? The fact that people like to share music is one of the reasons why they have a multi-gazillion dollar industry to be screaming about. Seems to me to be biting the hand. Note that I am not talking about people who rip and sell 1000 copies of an album. I feel that is a different thing.

If a professional comedian tells me a joke at a show I paid to see, I don't have to pay him if I repeat that joke to my friend the next day. Why not? I have effectively made a copy of the joke and given it to someone else while still retaining my own copy. Is that the same as sharing a copy of a song with a friend, or is not the same?

Again, I'm not taking a side here. I think both sides have points where the are right and points where they are wrong. This is a complicated issue which has been seriously muddied by both sides, and I don't think anybody has it figured out yet.

Ah, ok. I totally agree with that.

I'm also willing to concede that my filesharing habits might be doing bad things. However I haven't found good evidence that they are. So until I do, I'll keep on doing what I do (which now a days largely just consists of downloading TV shows, as we canceled our cable).

[Malice]

[*] On the other hand it's certainly the case that there will be people who pirate songs that, had they not been able to pirate them, would instead have purchased them.

But it is also the case that pirating things encourages the purchase of a product. I would never have bought Supreme Commander, Rainbow 6: Vegas, Gears of War, or subscribed to GameTap for Sam & Max, Beyond Good & Evil, and Psychonauts (and others) had I not downloaded those games. Why should I buy a product if I don't know if I'm going to like it?

Why did you buy Supreme Commander, Rainbow 6, or Gears of War, if you had already downloaded them?

The problem with this argument is that books, movies, games, and songs are not really like clothes. You can't "try them on" before buying them. When I pay for a movie, I pay to watch it. If I watch it first for free, there is no need for the second half. The difference between trying on a shirt and wearing that shirt around town is evident. The difference between trying out a game and playing the game is the money you pay for the second one. If you download a game, play it, and like it, there is no need for you to buy it.

It's a matter of who has control. As a consumer, I want control over artistic media and whether my money goes to any of it. As an artist, I want control over the art I create and whether anybody gives me money for it. Both sides cannot have control. The problem is that an artist who doesn't have that control will not want to create art.

Why can't both sides have control? Because most people doing the illegal downloading are rational people. Me, for example. I have a limited supply of money. I could use half of that for food (and such) and half of that for entertainment. Or I could steal my entertainment and use all of it for food (and such). Given the choice I will choose not to pay for entertainment. Why should I, if I don't have to?

But if everybody acted like me, nobody would pay for entertainment. So what's stopping them?

1. They're not filesharing. Either they think it is wrong (like my parents) or they don't know how (like my grandparents). Expect this group to shrink as time goes on and the people uncomfortable with technology get old and die off.
2. They prefer to bypass the studio system and give money directly to artists. (This is the "I steal but if I like it I donate" option.) Expect this group to grow as long as the studios continue to be asses.
3. They get something legally they can't get illegally. For example: "I'd steal the music but I like the insert that comes with the CD," or "I'd steal the movie but I prefer the quality of an official DVD." Expect this group to shrink as technology gets better.

In the future, more people will take option 2 (and option 4, the one that I take most of the time).
The problem is that this will result in the death of the studio systems. I'll be the first to tell you that the studios we have now suck, from the slavedrivers at EA to the censors in Hollywood to the DRM-loving, sue-happy RIAA.
But studios are necessary, because the creation of art requires capital and infrastructure. So does the marketing of art.

The future consists mostly of low-budget art that nobody's ever heard of. And gee, where'd all the big-budget entertainment go?

So basically my answer to "But filesharing isn't hurting anyone" is "Yet."

[trickster721]

Hammer; I think the point is that scarcity does have value, but it's wrong to try and create it artificially in order to preserve that value. No one is entitled to have the scarcity of their product enforced by the government.

Do I win?

[Rysto]

They do for public goods. It's in everybody's best interest, because without some kind of government interference in the market you'll see underproduction, which hurts both suppliers and consumers of public goods.

[Antimatter Spork]

So clearly the solution is for all art to be subsidized by the government and distributed freely. A special "art tax" would be enacted to cover the cost of having the government fund all production of art.

</really stupid ideas>

[Amnesiasoft]

Why did you buy Supreme Commander, Rainbow 6, or Gears of War, if you had already downloaded them?

Because they were good games and I'd like to see more? If I didn't care if I saw more, then I wouldn't buy them (as is the case with things like The Witcher, BlackSite: Area 51, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Strangelehold, Crysis, Two Worlds, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) While they were reasonably good games, I could care less if I see more of them.

This starting to look similar to something? Like...the donation based system we came up with?

[Hammer]

Hammer; I think the point is that scarcity does have value, but it's wrong to try and create it artificially in order to preserve that value. No one is entitled to have the scarcity of their product enforced by the government.

Do I win?

No, because scarcity is not at issue. There is not a limited amount of legally available music. You can buy all you want. You are thinking of diamonds or Elmo toys, which is a different issue. This is a question of reducing value by limiting use. Would beer become less valuable to you if the beer companies decided you were not allowed to drink it with friends? No, I'm not talking about copying beer. I'm talking about restricting the social aspect, thereby removing one of the primary things people want beer for in the first place.

[photosinensis]

Hammer; I think the point is that scarcity does have value, but it's wrong to try and create it artificially in order to preserve that value. No one is entitled to have the scarcity of their product enforced by the government.

Do I win?

No, because scarcity is not at issue. There is not a limited amount of legally available music. You can buy all you want. You are thinking of diamonds or Elmo toys, which is a different issue. This is a question of reducing value by limiting use. Would beer become less valuable to you if the beer companies decided you were not allowed to drink it with friends? No, I'm not talking about copying beer. I'm talking about restricting the social aspect, thereby removing one of the primary things people want beer for in the first place.

I usually drink on my own, not with friends. In fact, amongst my friends, I'm one of the very, very few who does drink. Of course, I realize that I'm the exception here.

I still maintain that the artist rarely sees a dime of recording sales, and that in the music distribution game, the scarcity in question is not the availability of good artists, but the availability of recordings of artists' works. With the Internet, that particular scarcity has disappeared, rendering the labels (who are doing the whole copyright witch hunt) without a place economically. They're not suing on behalf of the artists--they're suing so that they can remain relevant in a world that no longer needs or wants them.

In short, pirate the shit out of music and go see the artists in concert. Pay the artist directly for his/her work instead of giving money to the labels.

[trickster721]

This is a question of reducing value by limiting use. Would beer become less valuable to you if the beer companies decided you were not allowed to drink it with friends? No, I'm not talking about copying beer. I'm talking about restricting the social aspect, thereby removing one of the primary things people want beer for in the first place.

You're talking about fair use, timeshifting, multiple devices, that sort of thing. I'm not sure how that can be the issue either, if we're talking about the morality of not paying for it in the first place.

Even if they stripped out the DRM tommorow and dropped the whole licence scheme, there would still be the problem of unrealistic pricing. And our distribution system is just better than theirs. In Rainbows was as torrented as anything else.

[zenten]

Hammer; I think the point is that scarcity does have value, but it's wrong to try and create it artificially in order to preserve that value. No one is entitled to have the scarcity of their product enforced by the government.

Do I win?

No, because scarcity is not at issue. There is not a limited amount of legally available music. You can buy all you want. You are thinking of diamonds or Elmo toys, which is a different issue. This is a question of reducing value by limiting use. Would beer become less valuable to you if the beer companies decided you were not allowed to drink it with friends? No, I'm not talking about copying beer. I'm talking about restricting the social aspect, thereby removing one of the primary things people want beer for in the first place.

Most things I download I can't get easily in other forms. Out of print gaming books for instance, or hard to find movies (Do you have any idea how hard it is to find Tommy up here?)

[Tei]

I am not against IP thief. I am against misuse of a shared resource: bandwitdh. Often some P2P protocols are dirty and ineficient.

[pointfivenine]

There is some music that I will either one of two things:
1.)Never be able to find.
2.)Never be able to afford.

Those are what I will "pirate".

[zenten]

I am not against IP thief. I am against misuse of a shared resource: bandwitdh. Often some P2P protocols are dirty and ineficient.

If my bandwidth usage is hurting other customers, then yes, that is a problem. But it's a problem for the ISP to deal with (and good ISPs will), not the law.

[Tei]

I am not against IP thief. I am against misuse of a shared resource: bandwitdh. Often some P2P protocols are dirty and ineficient.

If my bandwidth usage is hurting other customers, then yes, that is a problem. But it's a problem for the ISP to deal with (and good ISPs will), not the law.

No, no one obligate you by law or anything to act in a BW conservative way. Only netiquette.

[trickster721]

I am not against IP thief. I am against misuse of a shared resource: bandwitdh. Often some P2P protocols are dirty and ineficient.

The gentleman from Alaska does not have the floor.

[Hammer]

@Tei: Please post in the Intro thread. Thanks!

[zenten]

No, no one obligate you by law or anything to act in a BW conservative way. Only netiquette.

I can't parse that first sentence.