Is Downloading Music for free Wrong??

[moondog]

Originally Posted by 2strokebloke

O.K. Yogs, please inform me as to what makes recording a song off of the radio on to a tape, so you can listen to it again, not stealing, whereas downloading a song off of the internet onto a CD is stealing.

The RIAA would say that was stealing also.

It's the same thing as when VHS came out. The movie industry was quaking in its little booties thinking that no-one would go to the cinema ever again. Funnily enough, we all do. It seems every time some new technology comes out, the corporations get their collective knickers in a knot. Sharing mp3s is exactly like sharing tapes recorded from LPs - something that has happened pretty much since the invention of the audiocassette. Has that hurt the music industry?

Technically Yogs may be correct; but that doesn't make the RIAA's arguments correct. Last I looked (ok, it was quite a while ago), record sales were up, and many people were attributing that in part to Napster; people being stimulated to buy the cd of something they'd downloaded.

There's a lot of stuff you can find online that you cannot buy in a store. Why should I not download it?

Also remember that - as strange as it may seem to those of you with broadband - most people are on dial-up. Very very few people are going to download significant amounts of music over dial-up... and then re-download the corrupt files, the ones that are actually a completely different song, or a porn video renamed as an mp3, and the ones which cut out before the end, or have half of the next song from the album...then burn them to a cd. Of course, the resulting cd won't have the nice cover that we - being human - all actually want to have. What that means is that the vast majority of internet users who know about p2p programmes will still buy music. And of course there are much greater numbers of people who have no clue about it all anyway.

Personal anecdote: I went for years not buying any music. Then along came Napster. What happened is that it actually stimulated my desire for music, and I started buying heaps again. I'm not unique.

The reason the RIAA and some "artists" are so against it is that they know they are charging $35 (NZ dollars) for 2 good songs and 15 pieces of utter arse, and if people find that out before they buy it....they won't buy it.

[moondog]

Originally Posted by replicant_008

Apparently this is an ethical and legal question.

yep - legally it's fairly back and white. Ethically it's not so - which is generally the case in any complex ethical situation.

When you purchase music - you are effectively purchasing a licence for personal use of the intellectual property of the recording artist, the songwriter and the studio/label. This is a transferable licence - you can sell the music but once you transfer it you are legally obligated to destroy any copies that you have in your possession.

This licence enables you to make backup copies on other formats

You reckon? Then what do you think about the discs (I won't call them cds, as they don't conform to the RedBook standard) that won't play (audio) in PCs, or even some stereos? How do you make a back-up copy of that? In fact, how do you even play the thing? The only cd player I have in my study is my PC. I bought a santana album, and the damn thing won't play in my pc. It played in the CD-ROM drive (so I ripped it to mp3), but would not play in the CD writer, which was the one hooked up to audio. I absolutely disagree with tactics like that, because of the other effects it has.

By downloading music, whether it be bootlegs or unauthorised copies you infringe the rights of the parties who assert ownership of the intellectual property.

In law and ethics, it's very much like the principal of trademarks and patents - someone used their money, sweat equity, technology or knowhow to develop something that you use.

Erosion of these rights marginalises the decision to invest - which for instance means we have had about 2 anti-biotics come to market in the past 20 odd years compared to dozens of dieting and anti-depressants. It makes more sense for companies to sell you these drugs for the next 20 years than spend billions coming up with some anti-biotic you will use for maybe 2 weeks (irrespective of the fact that it could probably save thousands of lives) simply because some other company gets to make generics not long afterward that reduce the payoff for developing new therapies.

So how come we have actually got truck-loads of new "artists" being heavily promoted by the record companies?

In the recording industry, I expected that the diversity of artists would have improved with technology which enabled high quality production values at a fraction of the price - but what we are seeing is artists ending up in debt to the studios who don't get to see a decent return. I know some local artists and they have to do day jobs like you and I to feed, house and clothe themselves despite making bloody enjoyable recordings.

I'm sorry, but that's the fault of the record companies ripping off artists, and is not a new phenomenon.

About the only weapon the industry has is to use a deterrent approach to litigation ie find someone who infringes, prove it and make an example of them ie sue the crap out of them and hope that others will be 'deterred' from doing so. It's a complete nuke 'em and hope the other lemmings take cover approach - they tried the softly softly approach but going after people wallets changes their minds quicker.

Which doesn't work in any case, because everyone thinks "they won't bother coming after me".

Personally, I don't d/l stuff. Mainly because (as I said in my earlier post) it's too much of a hassle. However, despite the illegality (which you can't really argue with), I don't see that d/l music is any different from sharing cassettes etc, which has happened for years and years, and certainly hasn't harmed the recording industry. btw, we all do plenty of other things that are illegal, and we none of us would think they are morally wrong.

[2strokebloke]

btw, we all do plenty of other things that are illegal, and we none of us would think they are morally wrong.

Well a law doesn't ever have to do with morals at all.
Morally - there's nothing wrong with letting a friend borrow a tape. Morally there's nothing wrong with shooting buffalo from a moving train. Yet it's not legal apparently to do either.
Gee we teach are children about the goodness of sharing, and shooting - and what happens? It's illegal! Bah!

[moondog]

Originally Posted by 2strokebloke

Morally - there's nothing wrong with letting a friend borrow a tape. Morally there's nothing wrong with shooting buffalo from a moving train. !

Some people would say there is - to one, other, or both of those. The point is, morally there are very few things in life that you can come down and say "this is the right and wrong of it", and not be legitimately accused of superficial/concrete thought.