bignickel said:
SOMEONE had to have access to the original in order to make the copy. You took the copy that that person made. Unauthorized.
"I" didn't
take anything. "I" made an unauthorised copy. There is an important difference. How often are we going to have to explain this?
Again, it's the logical extension if EVERYONE did it. So saying 'well, everyone would never do it' is not really an answer.
It's an answer if you were trying to present it as a real problem that had real consequences for real people. If you were just posing an abstract moral question, then yes it is not really an answer. But I got the impression you had concerns about more concrete issues.
In any case, what would happen if every single person in the world stopped paying for CDs and downloaded them instead? Well, the professional music recording industry would largely collapse, and CD stores would go out of business. Everyone working for the RIAA would have to get a real job.
Musicians would still record music, and they would still employ technicians, but recording would be an advertising expense rather than a profit center. Touring acts would still tour. The bands that release free music now would keep right on doing what they've always done. There would still be music. It would not be the end of the damn world. Sometimes technology just makes a business model obsolete.
Just as other crimes such as 'murder' have no impact on 'number of high IQ geniuses on the planet'? Bit of a problem don't you think, to measure such things, when there are simply TOO many variables to keep track of?
What a bizarre tangent.
I thought your argument was that file sharing had actual bad effects on actual people. If so, the test of that argument is to see if the people whose incomes are supposedly threatened had dropped. But what do I know?
Look, we'll put the ball in your court. What the heck is your thesis anyway, and how could it be falsified?
I just got a million billions songs free last year, and I'm gonna pay a single CENT to actually buy 6 CDs? WHY?
Sorry, but I'm not a mind reader. The evidence is that enough people do buy CDs, however, whether or not the thought processes involved are conceivable to you personally.
People don't buy CDs because they have this urge to buy X number a year: they buy because they want the MUSIC on the CDs. If they get the music for free which they would otherwise would have had to pay for it... they're not going to PAY for that CD.
For the third time, you think this is true but I have shown you evidence that this is
not true. Armchair psychology is no substitute for evidence.
So many people on this thread are so hung up on who is being hurt by all this copying: the RIAA, the musicians, the engineers, the retail stores... etc. etc. etc.
I'm kind of hung up on the question of whether anyone is being hurt at all, and I freely admit it. I think it's a really important question because criminalising file sharing is an enormously costly exercise for a society. Law enforcement is staggeringly expensive and destructive. Even allowing civil suits over file sharing is only justifiable if you can show that some harm is being done.
Here's a thought: maybe the person who does wrong is the one being injured by the unethical act. Or do you need figures and studies for that too?
Here's a thought in return: If the only harm done is being done to the downloaders, then it is only done because we have dumb laws.
Intellectual property laws are not handed down from God. They have no basis in any universal human rights or anything of the sort. They're a state-granted monopoly, and the sole justification for their existence is that, in theory, they encourage innovation and artistic endeavour.
We could just make specific exceptions to the relevant laws, and hey presto! Not only would it seem from the available evidence that it would do little or no harm to the recording industry, but it would prevent all that nasty moral harm from being done to the downloaders. If you genuinely believe that this is the case, you should be supporting the decriminalisation of file sharing.
