Downloading copyrighted material... be afraid

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kcin said:
I'd rather read Nick's posts about being a law abiding citizen than posts by some crybaby whining about oil company profits.
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You're just jumping on the bandwagon. I love how people revere some internet guy who did good on his MCAT. OMG Nick be my friend! We are just having an argument.
 
We can't all Get round on horses like down der in Texas Boy...Hee Haw :laugh:

As far as the downloading free ****: Paying for something that is readily available and free, makes you a dolt...
 
Medbits said:
I am in no way promoting piracy because it is wrong, but there were just some things that people (like me) can't afford....
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Just because you can't afford something doesn't justify stealing it.

I think there used to be an old saying, "If you can't afford it, don't buy it." Seriously, are people that entitled?
 
rentedmule said:
Because buses don't run on gasoline and because bus routes are always available where you live and always connect to every place you desire to venture to.

ImOnAHorse3_1_2010_3_Awesome_T_Shirt_Prints-s1000x708-200272-580.jpg
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So basically, you changed the argument over to oil prices because you realized you didn't have a leg to stand on with piracy?

Medbits said:
I am in no way promoting piracy because it is wrong, but there were just some things that people (like me) can't afford....
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There have been a couple people in the thread that said they pirate music even though they think it's wrong. This thread seems to be more of an ethical discussion over whether it is right or wrong than the practical question of whether or not you would do it.
 
rentedmule said:
Can you please run for office? Your impeccable platform would propel 'Murrica to the 22nd Century in less than 3 months.
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Sure thing. Better than your platform of "take what you want, screw the time and money anyone else spent to give you the products YOU MUST USE on a daily basis."

Calheesh - umad? I think it's because I don't make myself look like a complete ***** in SRS INTERNET DEB8S.
 
Whatyousay said:
Occasionally you'll need to walk. Or call a taxi. Or ride a bike. People use cars because they're convenient. If you don't like the idea of paying for that convenience, you'll obviously find yourself in some inconvenient positions. It all comes back to whether or not you're willing to pay for services/products that you desire.

The fact that buses run on gasoline is irrelevant. It's not like you're the one footing the bill for the gas - you're just paying to go from Point A to Point B.[/QUOTE]

By far the dumbest comment I've read. You honestly believe that bus fare doesn't incorporate gas price? LMFAO. Foolish.
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Whatyousay said:
Occasionally you'll need to walk. Or call a taxi. Or ride a bike. People use cars because they're convenient. If you don't like the idea of paying for that convenience, you'll obviously find yourself in some inconvenient positions. It all comes back to whether or not you're willing to pay for services/products that you desire.

The fact that buses run on gasoline is irrelevant. It's not like you're the one footing the bill for the gas - you're just paying to go from Point A to Point B.
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It would be very nice if everything in life worked out in the manner you describe (if not A then I can just B), but alas... it is simply not that easy.
 
Calheesh said:
By far the dumbest comment I've read. You honestly believe that bus fare doesn't incorporate gas price? LMFAO. Foolish.
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Mmm. Subsidies for public transportation. That was surprisingly easy to refute.
 
KLycos said:
It is not theft, and it's just utterly mind-boggling how many people on here believe it is.
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It really is. Think about it. The value of any product contains both physical aspects (materials, construction, transport, etc.) and intellectual aspects (expertise, patented discoveries, etc.). It is akin to stealing the "value" of the intellectual aspects of a product, which is not insignificant.

I've done it, but I don't kid myself into thinking its morally defensible. All arguments put forward (Record companies are evil, I wouldn't have bought it either way, it doesn't deny the object to someone else, etc.) are just a cover for the fact that you took something that had a market value of greater then 0 without paying for it. Thus you stole it.
 
Calheesh said:
Gullible. Easily stated.
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It costs me 25 cents to go from the outskirts of town to the center of the city. I am pretty sure the drive from A to B burned more than 25 cents worth of gas.
 
Calheesh said:
You're just jumping on the bandwagon. I love how people revere some internet guy who did good on his MCAT. OMG Nick be my friend! We are just having an argument.
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And you're wrong. End of discussion. :idea:
 
NickNaylor said:
I'm not sure I understand: how is taking away the source of income - movie/music sales - for entire industries which employ MANY people, the majority of whom aren't the super rich artists, not theft?

Gnomes: no you're not physically stealing anything via pirating, but you're depriving people of their incomes via sales of a product or providing a service, which is the end result of traditional theft. The two aren't distinguishable to the people that work in the industry. Why is it wrong to steal from a shop owner that makes his living from selling physical objects while it's acceptable to steal from an industry that thrives off of selling digital products? Even more, I'm assuming you would think stealing a physical painting from an artist's workshop would be wrong. What's the difference other than the format of the stolen good?
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You do realize that you just made the argument that if you don't buy something from someone, yet you also don't take something from them, then you are necessarily stealing from them. See, digital media is infinitely reproducible. The copyright holder loses nothing if their media is copied, because it didn't exist until you made the copy.

"you're depriving people of their incomes via sales of a product or providing a service," As another example, so by not hiring a maid, I am starving a maid by cleaning for myself, instead?

Case 1: You don't copy the file, you don't pay for the file.
Case 2: You copy the file, you don't pay for the file.

Either way, the copyright holder doesn't get any money.

I download things I would not be willing to initially pay for. If they're good, I pay for them, or support them in such a way as they make a greater profit (i.e. through merch, concerts, etc.--music sales are low profit for the producers)

That does not make "violating" someone's "intellectual property" "right" but it also is not theft, as they lose nothing.

Edit 2 More stuff:

Intellectual property is interesting because you can be granted a copyright for a mathematic formula, or series of characters. Even if I independently arrive at that formula myself, I am now, by US law, infringing on your copyright if I use it in anyway. Is that "right"?

The organization I was in charge of for a while had multiple debates on IP. The problem with IP is that it is hard to imagine that not having any protections for original ideas is a good thing, but it's also hard to determine at what point those protections should stop. It is one of those cases where our libertarian club recognized that the protections are useful, yet also arbitrary. It is wrong that you can be sued for something you bring out of your own mind, independently, yet it is also wrong if people are allowed to rip-off millions-of-dollars investments, say by pharm companies to make a new drug, without doing any work themselves. This is because it's hard to imagine, in the current economy where it is easy to reverse-engineer most inventions, a case where people would still make these investments as readily. On the other hand, it is sad that if one company finds the drug first, even if two are researching it, that only the one company is allowed to profit--this is necessarily wrong.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I had this tab open back when we were only on the first page. Didn't realize we were on 5 now.
 
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Whatyousay said:
Mmm. Subsidies for public transportation. That was surprisingly easy to refute.
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Which come from taxes. Which you paid. Which are incorporated, therefore, in the price of buses. It's like making the claim that public education is free.

Read some freakin' Bastiat. Analyze both the seen and the unseen. It's easy to make a Keynesian argument on anything, because it's like magic, via neglecting the behind-the-scenes costs and benefits.
 
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FlowRate said:
Which come from taxes. Which you paid. Which are incorporated, therefore, in the price of buses. It's like making the claim that public education is free.

Read some freakin' Bastiat. Analyze both the seen and the unseen. It's easy to make a Keynesian argument on anything, because it's like magic, via neglecting the behind-the-scenes costs and benefits.
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You pay those taxes regardless of whether you ride the bus or drive a car. For the purposes of just THIS thread, the analogy was attempting to demonstrate an example of cars being a "non-essential" good.

I am by no means making an economic argument. I have my own thoughts on government subsidies that have no relation to this thread.
 
FlowRate said:
You do realize that you just made the argument that if you don't buy something from someone, yet you also don't take something from them, then you are necessarily stealing from them. See, digital media is infinitely reproducible. The copyright holder loses nothing if their media is copied, because it didn't exist until you made the copy.

"you're depriving people of their incomes via sales of a product or providing a service," As another example, so by not hiring a maid, I am starving a maid by cleaning for myself, instead?

Case 1: You don't copy the file, you don't pay for the file.
Case 2: You copy the file, you don't pay for the file.

Either way, the copyright holder doesn't get any money.
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This is a flawed argument. If you clean your house on your own, you have not received the maid's good/service for free. In the case of pirated music, you have acquired the artist's good/service for free.

Your other argument is flawed too. Just because the artist doesn't get money if you don't buy the file doesn't make it ok to acquire the file in another way. You could use that argument for literally anything, but it doesn't make it right. Look:

Case 1: I don't go to the dentist, I don't pay the dentist.
Case 2: I go to the dentist, I don't pay the dentist

But nobody would argue that not paying your dentist is ok.

What it really comes down to here is that you've acquired the production asset of another person without compensating them for it. It's really obviously theft when that production asset is something physical, like a loaf of bread or a computer. It's even obvious when that asset is a service, like healthcare. The reason it isn't obvious with music is because nobody sees it when it happens. However, selling the license for their music is the way that artists make money, and by acquiring that music without paying for it, you have acquired that production asset without compensation just as surely as if you had gone to the doctor's office and not paid them for their work.
 
FlowRate said:
EDIT: I'm sorry, I had this tab open back when we were only on the first page. Didn't realize we were on 5 now.
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I'm surprised by the fact that after 5 pages, this thread hasn't dissolved into a GIF / JPG-spamfest.
 
Every time I watch "Super Size Me" I want a Big Mac. Reading this thread has made me want to download mad torrents. Funny how that works sometimes 🙂
 
kmnguyen1124 said:
Every time I watch "Super Size Me" I want a Big Mac. Reading this thread has made me want to download mad torrents. Funny how that works sometimes 🙂
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I watched Super Size Me the other day and I have no idea how it makes fast food at all appealing.
 
Astarael said:
This is a flawed argument. If you clean your house on your own, you have not received the maid's good/service for free. In the case of pirated music, you have acquired the artist's good/service for free.

Your other argument is flawed too. Just because the artist doesn't get money if you don't buy the file doesn't make it ok to acquire the file in another way. You could use that argument for literally anything, but it doesn't make it right. Look:

Case 1: I don't go to the dentist, I don't pay the dentist.
Case 2: I go to the dentist, I don't pay the dentist

But nobody would argue that not paying your dentist is ok.

What it really comes down to here is that you've acquired the production asset of another person without compensating them for it. It's really obviously theft when that production asset is something physical, like a loaf of bread or a computer. It's even obvious when that asset is a service, like healthcare. The reason it isn't obvious with music is because nobody sees it when it happens. However, selling the license for their music is the way that artists make money, and by acquiring that music without paying for it, you have acquired that production asset without compensation just as surely as if you had gone to the doctor's office and not paid them for their work.
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Let me explain it differently:

Artist produces work. Let's use music. They made a song. That song is available to pay for download, or to pirate, or whatever. The artist has already produced the music, regardless of whether anyone listens to it or pays for it or uses it in any other way. Regardless, it exists now. The file used to convey that work is infinitely reproducible. Meaning, the artist could give away digital copies, for free, to everyone in the universe.

However, the dentist cannot infinitely reproduce his services--they are time, work, and material intensive per unit of service, unlike the music file. Similarly, the artist's concerts are not infinitely reproducible, as they must physically show up and play. It is wrong to not pay for a dentist visit, and almost as wrong, from a utilitarian standpoint, to not pay to see a concert for which the artist pays for the concert using cover charge money. These are contractual obligations. By using the dentist's services, you enter into (usually an explicit) contract to pay them for their services. Likewise, the cover charge is an implicit contract with the venue, who signed an explicit contract with the artist, that your money will be used to cover the costs of the concert from which you will be provided with entertainment.

When downloading a song, you do not enter into any contracts. There is no breach of agreement, implicit or explicit, as there is no financial transaction, no tangible good, and no service rendered.

You see, IP infringement isn't theft. No matter what you may think, it is simply not theft. You are not depriving someone of anything they did not already own. The money you are potentially paying them for the infinitely available file that you got for free was not stolen from the artist, as it was already in your possession.

However, that does not mean that downloading the file for free--assuming the artist doesn't want it to be downloaded for free (some artists allow free DL's of their music for a reason)--is right. It's not morally defensible.

My point is that you have to decouple the idea of theft and the idea of IP infringement. One is definitely never ok: real theft, where one person loses a finite item that they already owned, is wrong. The other is, as stated by another poster, part pragmatism, and part fuzzy morality. It is not good to take music for free, but it is not absolutely bad.
 
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FlowRate said:
Let me explain it differently:
<snip>
My point is that you have to decouple the idea of theft and the idea of IP infringement. One is definitely never ok: real theft, where one person loses a finite item that they already owned, is wrong. The other is, as stated by another poster, part pragmatism, and part fuzzy morality. It is not good to take music for free, but it is not absolutely bad.
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Hear, hear, what this eloquent fellow has to say.
 
FlowRate said:
Let me explain it differently:

Artist produces work. Let's use music. They made a song. That song is available to pay for download, or to pirate, or whatever. The artist has already produced the music, regardless of whether anyone listens to it or pays for it or uses it in any other way. Regardless, it exists now. The file used to convey that work is infinitely reproducible. Meaning, the artist could give away digital copies, for free, to everyone in the universe.

However, the dentist cannot infinitely reproduce his services--they are time, work, and material intensive per unit of service, unlike the music file. Similarly, the artist's concerts are not infinitely reproducible, as they must physically show up and play. It is wrong to not pay for a dentist visit, and almost as wrong, from a utilitarian standpoint, to not pay to see a concert for which the artist pays for the concert using cover charge money. These are contractual obligations. By using the dentist's services, you enter into (usually an explicit) contract to pay them for their services. Likewise, the cover charge is an implicit contract with the venue, who signed an explicit contract with the artist, that your money will be used to cover the costs of the concert from which you will be provided with entertainment.

When downloading a song, you do not enter into any contracts. There is no breach of agreement, implicit or explicit, as there is no financial transaction, no tangible good, and no service rendered.

You see, IP infringement isn't theft. No matter what you may think, it is simply not theft. You are not depriving someone of anything they did not already own. The money you are potentially paying them for the infinitely available file that you got for free was not stolen from the artist, as it was already in your possession.

However, that does not mean that downloading the file for free--assuming the artist doesn't want it to be downloaded for free (some artists allow free DL's of their music for a reason)--is right. It's not morally defensible.

My point is that you have to decouple the idea of theft and the idea of IP infringement. One is definitely never ok: real theft, where one person loses a finite item that they already owned, is wrong. The other is, as stated by another poster, part pragmatism, and part fuzzy morality. It is not good to take music for free, but it is not absolutely bad.
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Wow. That's the first logical post I've seen in this thread defending piracy. I still don't agree with it, but kudos to you for coming up with something more substantial than the standard, "I wouldn't have bought it either way."

Also, I agree that theft isn't the right word for it. I've been trying to avoid that term, but I might have accidentally let it slip in somewhere along the way.
 
We're all talking about music piracy, but music was intangible to begin with (aside from the physical medium that contained it). Those of you who feel that copying of music is so bad, consider this: what if the dream of nanotechnology were realized, and we could create anything out of thin air? At present, the effort to produce something (including obtaining the raw materials, and the scarcity of those materials) factor into the cost of things. If materials and products could be created in a virtually unlimited and effortless supply, would it be a bad thing?
 
FlowRate said:
However, that does not mean that downloading the file for free--assuming the artist doesn't want it to be downloaded for free (some artists allow free DL's of their music for a reason)--is right. It's not morally defensible.
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I would agree.
 
Velocity said:
We're all talking about music piracy, but music was intangible to begin with (aside from the physical medium that contained it). Those of you who feel that copying of music is so bad, consider this: what if the dream of nanotechnology were realized, and we could create anything out of thin air? At present, the effort to produce something (including obtaining the raw materials, and the scarcity of those materials) factor into the cost of things. If materials and products could be created in a virtually unlimited and effortless supply, would it be a bad thing?
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Someone mentioned something like this earlier. They said if there were a gun that can scan an object and reconstruct it, would it be considered theft? I know it's science fiction, but we are seeing that science fiction is progressively becoming science fact.
 
Astarael said:
Wow. That's the first logical post I've seen in this thread defending piracy. I still don't agree with it, but kudos to you for coming up with something more substantial than the standard, "I wouldn't have bought it either way."

Also, I agree that theft isn't the right word for it. I've been trying to avoid that term, but I might have accidentally let it slip in somewhere along the way.
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You disagree with his logic or with piracy? I ask because he admitted it wasn't morally defensible.

I'm still curious why people don't equate burning a copy of a CD for someone else with torrenting. Legally they're the same thing, yet the former seems more benign to us and we call it "sharing?"
 
gettheleadout said:
You disagree with his logic or with piracy? I ask because he admitted it wasn't morally defensible.

I'm still curious why people don't equate burning a copy of a CD for someone else with torrenting. Legally they're the same thing, yet the former seems more benign to us and we call it "sharing?"
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I meant I still disagree with piracy. His logic in the first part of his post was a good defense of piracy, despite the fact that he seems to not agree with it personally.
 
Calheesh said:
Someone mentioned something like this earlier. They said if there were a gun that can scan an object and reconstruct it, would it be considered theft? I know it's science fiction, but we are seeing that science fiction is progressively becoming science fact.
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Aye, nobody would have thought that music (among other things) could be replicated as quickly, cheaply, and easily as it is today.

But the reason I ask about it is to point out where the value is. For tangible products, we know where the value is. If for nothing else, it costs money to produce the thing, and there must be some incentive to produce it in the first place.

Music is a bit different. It costs money to record a song, but the major money in the music industry isn't made by song sales - at least, not for the artists. The major money comes from touring and providing live shows. As far as the business of music goes, the song itself is no longer the major product, as strange as it sounds; rather, the song is what gets people interested in the artist. In the past, a person might have spent $18 on a CD (yup, I remember when they cost that much), and they could listen to that CD countless times, yet the same person might spend $100+ on a concert, and they'd spend it again to attend another concert for the same artist.

As technology advances, the business model for music has shifted (and is still shifting). This applies to many industries besides music as well. To claim that copying and spreading of songs is morally wrong is only true if you're sticking with the old business models and expectations.

Put another way, nobody today would argue that the advent of the printing press was a bad thing. It allowed for the spread of books and knowledge and arguably contributed to the advancement of society. We would say that even though it put countless "book duplicators" (not sure what their official job title was) out of work at the time. Music may not be involved with the spread of knowledge, but it is an important part of human culture and people's lives. Its spread and ease of availability is a good thing. The only difficulty is in trying to figure out how to keep with the ideal while allowing people to make their living from it. (But this is a problem that all professions will face as technology advances.)
 
Velocity said:
Aye, nobody would have thought that music (among other things) could be replicated as quickly, cheaply, and easily as it is today.

But the reason I ask about it is to point out where the value is. For tangible products, we know where the value is. If for nothing else, it costs money to produce the thing, and there must be some incentive to produce it in the first place.

Music is a bit different. It costs money to record a song, but the major money in the music industry isn't made by song sales - at least, not for the artists. The major money comes from touring and providing live shows. As far as the business of music goes, the song itself is no longer the major product, as strange as it sounds; rather, the song is what gets people interested in the artist. In the past, a person might have spent $18 on a CD (yup, I remember when they cost that much), and they could listen to that CD countless times, yet the same person might spend $100+ on a concert, and they'd spend it again to attend another concert for the same artist.

As technology advances, the business model for music has shifted (and is still shifting). This applies to many industries besides music as well. To claim that copying and spreading of songs is morally wrong is only true if you're sticking with the old business models and expectations.

Put another way, nobody today would argue that the advent of the printing press was a bad thing. It allowed for the spread of books and knowledge and arguably contributed to the advancement of society. We would say that even though it put countless "book duplicators" (not sure what their official job title was) out of work at the time. Music may not be involved with the spread of knowledge, but it is an important part of human culture and people's lives. Its spread and ease of availability is a good thing. The only difficulty is in trying to figure out how to keep with the ideal while allowing people to make their living from it. (But this is a problem that all professions will face as technology advances.)
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Velocity, I see where you're going with this, but it should be the artist's choice whether they receive compensation for their music or not. Artists can and do release their music for free under the concert/touring business model. Not all of them do so though, and to take that music in defiance of the wishes of the artist is still wrong, even if they make the majority of their money from touring (and even if they make more money from touring in a piracy rich environment than in a piracy lacking one).
 
What happens when 3D printing becomes mainstream and you can download the specifications to print a car, or a diamond necklace, or designer clothes? It will still be copyright infringement, but won't it be so cool 😀
 
Astarael said:
I meant I still disagree with piracy. His logic in the first part of his post was a good defense of piracy, despite the fact that he seems to not agree with it personally.
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There are a lot of things that I don't think should be illegal yet which I would also not do personally. (by personally, I mean that i would argue they are usually good actions, from a moral/ethical standpoint)

Velocity said:
Music may not be involved with the spread of knowledge, but it is an important part of human culture and people's lives. Its spread and ease of availability is a good thing. The only difficulty is in trying to figure out how to keep with the ideal while allowing people to make their living from it. (But this is a problem that all professions will face as technology advances.)
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Ah, I forgot to mention this point. It comes up pretty often when I talk about the US economy and IP law and that general deal.

Many people have been brought up to believe that, if you can do it, you are somehow entitled to make a living off of it. To make my point really short, I am of the opinion that people should see art as a (very valuable) hobby which they might get lucky enough to make a living off of, not as a career path, per se.

Just because people can exploit the lack (or sometimes, the availability) of a technology to make money does not mean that they should expect to make money off of that level of technological advancement in the future. Much like the printing press, or various sorts of manual labor which are now done with robots.

It would be great if the music/movie industries would get on board with new tech. Stuff like Netflix and Napster are the way to go, if only Napster didn't have obnoxious DRM and bloatware.
 
KLycos said:
What happens when 3D printing becomes mainstream and you can download the specifications to print a car, or a diamond necklace, or designer clothes? It will still be copyright infringement, but won't it be so cool 😀
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Indeed, this is why, even though piracy may be defensible, who in their right mind would imagine that a car company would invest the ridiculous amounts of money in making plans for a car if they didn't expect a profit from the licensing of their car's plans? This is why IP, again as stated by someone else and then by me early, is a pragmatic thing and the debate is really about when IP is necessary, for how long, and all those other arbitrary things that make bureaucracy so frustrating.
 
Astarael said:
Velocity, I see where you're going with this, but it should be the artist's choice whether they receive compensation for their music or not. Artists can and do release their music for free under the concert/touring business model. Not all of them do so though, and to take that music in defiance of the wishes of the artist is still wrong, even if they make the majority of their money from touring (and even if they make more money from touring in a piracy rich environment than in a piracy lacking one).
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I don't necessarily disagree with this. After all, American society largely subscribes to the belief of the individual - "is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow" and such. But is this right? Is it sustainable?

I'll make what will initially seem like a far-fetched comparison: music to research. Who owns my research, and who has rights to it? My research was partly funded by pharmaceutical companies, and partly by government grants. The research was based off of and inspired by at least a hundred other published works. Yet I alone put in the time and effort to sort through and organize the previously published works; I put forth the concepts that lead to experiments and analysis which lead to discoveries. Who owns the discovery? Can I patent it as my own? Am I free to sequester it? The guidelines of research generally dictate that publicly funded projects belong to the public; therefore, because I worked with government money, my work belongs to society.

We're OK with that concept for research. This stuff costs a lot, and ideally it's for the betterment of society.

How about music? I'm not a musician so my conception of how music is created may be way off, but I would wager that many melodies and songs are inspired by other songs, entertainment mediums, events, and/or experiences. Many stabilizing forces are responsible for creating a peaceful and prosperous society that grants musicians the freedom and ability to specialize in music, yet the musician (or songwriter, for commercial music) is the one who puts in the work to piece a song together. Who owns the song? Is it the artist, who pieced it together? Or is it the society that nourished, inspired, and protected the artist? (Or from a commercial standpoint, is it the record company that initially funded and promoted the artist?)

We currently say that it is the artist, but isn't it a matter of convenience? Research involves money, and part of that money goes toward the livelihood of scientists. If the artist has no ownership of the song, how can he survive on music alone? This partly gets into FlowRate's remarks:

FlowRate said:
Many people have been brought up to believe that, if you can do it, you are somehow entitled to make a living off of it. To make my point really short, I am of the opinion that people should see art as a (very valuable) hobby which they might get lucky enough to make a living off of, not as a career path, per se.
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I've heard this concept before. It seems very practical. Humans are resistant to change, so the idea that artistry as a career or specialization could disappear is something that makes many people uncomfortable (myself included).

As far as money and music are concerned, I have no problem with the original concepts of copyright. The idea then was that you had exclusive rights to your work for a relatively short period (somewhere between 5-10 years, I believe), after which it entered the public domain. Large companies lobbied for changes, and now the limit is much longer... I think we're currently around 70-90 years. That is ridiculous.
 
The SDN Terms of Service specifically states that advocating illegal activities will not be permitted. This includes advocating or attempting to pirate copywritten materials.

This thread is being closed.
 
NickNaylor said:
Well I see that any real semblance of discussion has run its course and has now degenerated into two internet tough guys from MSU being super sweet, so

I%27m%20Outta%20Here.jpg
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How is "MSU" relevant to the discussion again? This in itself proves how big of a tool you are.

Weren't you getting out of this thread 5 responses ago?
 
Just buy the Examkracker texts. They go for under $100 used (2 days working at mcdonalds 😉 ). Then just sell them to get your money back. That's what I did, and they were the only study materials that I used and got a 37 with 3-4 months of studying. 😀
 
Velocity said:
Music is a bit different. It costs money to record a song, but the major money in the music industry isn't made by song sales - at least, not for the artists. The major money comes from touring and providing live shows. As far as the business of music goes, the song itself is no longer the major product, as strange as it sounds; rather, the song is what gets people interested in the artist. In the past, a person might have spent $18 on a CD (yup, I remember when they cost that much), and they could listen to that CD countless times, yet the same person might spend $100+ on a concert, and they'd spend it again to attend another concert for the same artist.
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Music labels got greedy. They sold CDs with 1-2 good songs for $18 and expected people to bend over and take it. Now, you can just buy your one or two songs for $0.99 on iTunes, and they get 30 cents. The artist probably gets 10 cents. The album now serves as a means for the artist to get people to come to their shows.

Astarael said:
Velocity, I see where you're going with this, but it should be the artist's choice whether they receive compensation for their music or not. Artists can and do release their music for free under the concert/touring business model. Not all of them do so though, and to take that music in defiance of the wishes of the artist is still wrong, even if they make the majority of their money from touring (and even if they make more money from touring in a piracy rich environment than in a piracy lacking one).
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Yes, sort of. It's pretty hard for an album to be produced and distributed without the use of a music label, who will start adding in all of their own stipulations.
 
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