This is a thread for discussing the ethical, political, and legal values of music downloading.
In my opinion, the internet removed nearly all practicality of copyright infringement of music. This is why I think that soon America (and other countries such as Canada, etc.) might rid of copyright infringement of music entirely, because the internet is way too public for these laws to be enforced.
I was suggesting that if only a few people ripped the band off, that wouldn't hurt the band as much as if most people did so.
so how do you designate which people are part of the few? if people dont use illegal downloads at all then the bands can pay for better equipment and if they dont care about money eventually theyll be able to lower prices to its cheaper for everyone to download their music not just people who dont want to pay
Its not really completely impossible because there is a YouTube down-loader that allows you to download videos on to your computer,even music videos.So really If the internet wants to stop illegal music downloading they'll have to close that down too.
Basically I want to listen to music but not so much that I want to pay loads of money for it especially as I don't get pocket money. So it doesn't affect the music producers. If I couldn't download it I wouldn't buy it. It is the same thing with books. I can wait for it to come to the library or download it as an e-book. Either way it doesn't affect the authors so why should they care. Now if people do this INSTEAD of paying that's different.
Well, to be honest if you know what your doing illegally downloading music is very, very easy. The main issue here I think is a moral one. If you download the music of your favorite artist illegally, you are essentially hurting their career. Making the music that they make takes time and it takes money, and the only way they get paid is by you purchasing their music.
The other end of this spectrum is youtube, now lets be honest here, if you know what your doing, all you need is a program or simple greasemonkey script coupled with an audio extractor and youtube becomes an almost endless source of free music. If you think about some of the largely popular artists, say whose youtube videos have millions or tens-of-millions of views, then they get paid A LOT of money for that. So are you stilling technically paying them by watching their youtube video, spreading it over the internet, and giving it more views? Well in a round about way, yes you are. But what about those artists whose videos aren't as well known? Back before the age of Illegal downloading and youtube, you had to buy the album and support the artists. Now in my opinion music was better back then, and it was better because the artists truly poured all they had into it to make sure that you would want to buy their album. But now days all you have to do is autotune your voice, sing some random meaningless crap, post it on youtube, and get rich of the crazed fans (or haters) flocking to your video.
It is all a rather hard subject, in this day and age enforcement of copyright laws on the internet and stopping the illegal downloading of music is, to be honest, impossible.
So in the end the question becomes less can you download it, and more should you download it?
Personally, I don't like to illegally download music, if I can afford to buy my music then I would rather show my support for my favorite artists.
Yes i think so.If its an issue a bonding mechanism to the device would be suffice to handle the pirate music. But the producers&artists abusin piracy to advertise on Tv etc.
If I actually like the music i'm listening to, then I buy it. I want that person to keep making music. If I were to lose the same cd by that same person I may download it. But honestly, a vast majority of these people make so much money just for making a cd, good or bad, just to fulfill a contract makes me sick. Downloading music should be illegal but I think the people who make or have made millions should be extremely lucky they get what they get in this economy.
In some cases you are helping their career as it helps to get their music heard. If the music is good the artist will do well.
Exactly, there's a great graph on exactly this but, alas, my Google-fu is failing me tonight.
Artists get about $1.25 from an album sale and $0.03 for a single sale; that's not a lot. Of course that's assuming the artist has a deal with a record label meaning they're probably decently well off anyway. Moreover am I really stealing anything? No. I'm taking away their ability to gain money from there IP. Actually, that's not true seeing as how I do, occasionally, buy CD's I've already downloaded if the music is good enough.
If the artist is independent I generally buy their music to support their career and because they actually make money on the sale. Otherwise I'll just go see the band in concert to support them.
Exactly, there's a great graph on exactly this but, alas, my Google-fu is failing me tonight.
I've seen that graph as well but I can't remember the site. I remember noticing from it that sales went down in correspondence with the recession, not the rise of downloading.
Yeah it's wrong but it's still being done. I know this is a discussion about music but I know why I rip or download movies. Most companies make it too hard to download a movie for example. I bought the Dark Knight movie a year after it came out and it had the Digital Copy option to download. I went to download it, it was expired and it was DRMed. If I buy a movie/music I should be able to put it on as many devices as I want that are mine. I think companies should make it easier to download movies and such that are not DRMed.
If I had to pay for every new album I wanted...Id have twice as much debt as I do from my college loans. Most bands don't care if you rip there music. They are just happy you like it. If they do care...**** them!
