24 songs= $80,000 per song.

[Plow]

Again, intellectual property.

It is the person who creates the product's right to decide rather to allow you to enjoy its benefits. If you choose not to pay when the creator's decision is to require payment for the benefits of ownership/use of his product, and you circumvent said payment, you are stealing.

[Jefe]

are you saying I'm going and stealing CDs that I'm not buying?

really, if I'm not gonna buy it then it makes little difference what 1's and 0's are on my computer, in a strict sense of property and revenues.

Oh another logical fallacy. HMMM, please bitch, at least I didn't sleep during my logic class, fucking tard /ad hominem

[Gregorio]

Oh another logical fallacy. HMMM, please bitch, at least I didn't sleep during my logic class, fucking tard /ad hominem

How is that a logical fallacy? Plow accused him of stealing, while it's been clearly established even by the courts that no theft has taken place. You cannot put a monetary value on downloaded songs because you cannot prove that the person would have bought that song if the free version was not available.

[Plow]

A taxicab ride is not a tangible product.

Psychotherapy is not a tangible product.

Medical services in which no physical item is gained or loss are not tangible products.

Etc., etc. etc.


Trying to argue that a product must be tangible in order to merit the right to charge a fee for it is just silly.

There is your fallacy.


In the end it's the same kind of deal as stuff like littering. Sure, if one person does it, no big deal. If a few people do it, it can be cleaned up fairly easily. If you let it run completely unchecked, it's just going to fuck everything all up.

[Gregorio]

A taxicab ride is not a tangible product.

Psychotherapy is not a tangible product.

Medical services in which no physical item is gained or loss are not tangible products.

Etc., etc. etc.


Trying to argue that a product must be tangible in order to merit the right to charge a fee for it is just silly.

There is your fallacy.


In the end it's the same kind of deal as stuff like littering. Sure, if one person does it, no big deal. If a few people do it, it can be cleaned up fairly easily. If you let it run completely unchecked, it's just going to fuck everything all up.

No...you see all those things ARE tangible. It requires physical presence and time of the person who's service you're using. If you hop in a cab, get your ride, then run away without paying, you've cost that driver time, money, and gas.

If you download a song without paying, the artist has done no more work than if you had actually paid for it. Do you really not see the difference?

[Jefe]

Well, I guess that's all the steam our esteemed "Beckweasel" locomotive had, quite disappointing. Btw, Beckweasel, the only arguments you "defeated" in this thread are your straw men, son.

[Plow]

No...you see all those things ARE tangible. It requires physical presence and time of the person who's service you're using. If you hop in a cab, get your ride, then run away without paying, you've cost that driver time, money, and gas.

If you download a song without paying, the artist has done no more work than if you had actually paid for it. Do you really not see the difference?

The artist had to render the service in the first place. It's no different at all than if you tell a doctor you're going to pay and then don't. The product was created/service was rendered with the intention of being paid for it.


I mean, we could turn this into a debate on economics and equilibrium pricing, and what happens when the equilibrium price is 0, but I think that's rather self evident.

[Gregorio]

The artist had to render the service in the first place. It's no different at all than if you tell a doctor you're going to pay and then don't. The product was created with the intention of being paid for it.

No...they're completely different. The artist is creating something regardless of your feelings about it and without requesting your time. It's already done. If nobody buys it or if a million people buy it the artist does no more work. If you go to a doctor, you are demanding their time. They must work because of you. By your reasoning, just because an artist creates something with the intention of being paid for it he deserves money whether people buy it or not because he put time into it.

[Plow]

The musician creates the music with the intention of receiving payment.

If you go to the doctor, and he performs a service on you expecting payment, once the service is performed he is not performing any more work regardless of if you pay or not. You still receive the benefits of the service, rather you pay or not. There is no tangible product exchanged, there is a service performed.

The exact same is the case with the musician. Creating music is a service, if you want to benefit from his work, and he requires payment, you're stealing if you don't pay. If the people using his service are going to take it for free, why should he perform it in the first place, when you wouldn't say a doctor, or cab driver, or whatever should?

[Gregorio]

Plow...they're completely 100% different. When you go to a doctor YOU are requesting HIS time. When a musician makes an album he takes his time to do it with no regard for your time at all. Let's say the music is so bad that nobody buys it or even bothers to download it for free. Now again, when you go to a doctor and don't pay, YOU have already received a service that YOU requested. His time is taken up and you have gotten treatment.

Another example. Lets say you wrote a paper on a topic of your choosing just for fun and left it on your desk. Now without your knowledge I come by and photocopy it for my personal enjoyment and read it. You have lost nothing. This is comparable to the musician.

On the other hand, if I said I would pay you to write a paper of my choosing and then ran off with the paper without paying, I've cost you time that I requested. This is comparable to going to the doctor.

They're completely different.

[Khamsin]

Not that I agree with the standpoint, necessarily, but I think a better analogy would be something like how medical research and patents make certain drugs cost a lot more than their actual manufacturing costs.

That is, should we be able to get X drug for merely its cost to produce, or X + Y fee to go toward the research that made it possible?

The research has already been done, and it wasn't done specifically for you. Unlike a doctor's time, for example.

[Gregorio]

One more point...I'm going to just assume the lawyers on the RIAA's side are more well versed on this issue than us. Why haven't they filed actual police reports for stolen goods if anyone really considers this "stealing"? Why do they choose to go after people through Civil courts citing copyright infringment rather than go to the police?

It's because not even the RIAA considers this stealing in the legal sense.

[Kuya]

Well, I guess that's all the steam our esteemed "Beckweasel" locomotive had, quite disappointing. Btw, Beckweasel, the only arguments you "defeated" in this thread are your straw men, son.

Did you just declare yourself the winner of an argument because the other person left his computer?

[Beckwin]

what a fucking douche. I had to go into work and he thinks he can run his mouth like he actually made a good point. but yeah, typical douchebag cop out- oh you see I won b/c you didn't respond fast enough! huuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. terrible poster.

spoilers: you didn't make a good point.

glad to see others picked up the slack while I was out.

[guartz]

First off, that's your own personal take on it. If you don't think music, art, movies, etc. etc. deserve to have their own value beyond the price of materials to distribute it, well, I'd hate to be an artist in your world. Fuck, I'd hate to live there, seeing as there would be no such thing as a full time artists.

Artists can take more then one approach to making profit. Owning monopoly on distribution is only one approach amongst thousands.

You are depriving them of the money they deserve for the rights to their product.

ah lol. well, as you know, to sell something, you need at least 2 willing parties. The seller, and the buyer. Therefore nobody has a right to profit just because they worked. That's not how the world works.

As a matter of fact, it does. The item we speak of is simply electrical signals inside a person's brain. They possess it, and they have the right to choose rather to share it with you, offer it to you for a price, or keep it to themselves.

I don't ever remember downloading anyone's electrical signals from their brains.

You're directly infringing on their right to profit from their own work. The problem here is that you're literally viewing music, movies, etc., as if they don't require any effort or work to produce.

As a pointed out, no such right to profit exists. What you mean to say is, the ability of the musician to profit from their work.

Which is *exactly* why all of these terms, rules, etc. exist: because it would fucking suck if they chose to keep it to themselves, let alone still couldn't gain the means to maintain a reasonable standard of living if they did share.

I say IP stifles creativity and artistry. . . it turns art into a money making scheme, which in my opinion, should come as a secondary objective, not the primary.

Art doesn't fall into any categories of traditional products. It's not a necessity, nor is it of any tangible value and it's extremely subjective. A painting could be worth in millions or it could be worth less then the paper it's painted on.

So when you suggest that artists would not produce art because there is no guarantee that they would be paid, you insult and undermine a lot of artists.

[Shade]

I say IP stifles creativity and artistry. . . it turns art into a money making scheme, which in my opinion, should come as a secondary objective, not the primary.

IP laws protect artists. Without them, big corporations could swoop in and take your work, give you not a cent, and proceed to make money off of it. Do you remember all the dramatic fallout from the proposed orphaned works act some while ago? Artists didnt seem to like it much.

So when you suggest that artists would not produce art because there is no guarantee that they would be paid, you insult and undermine a lot of artists.

Artists would make LESS art... if they couldn't do art full time to live off of, and had to work at a "real job" instead. It's a simple matter of time and energy. And if it wasn't profitable, you wouldn't see as many promoters making it available to you.

That said, I still don't think the recording industry milking us for expensive CDs that are infested with hamfisted copy protection and suing soccer moms for millions of dollars is the right answer.

I thought this was interesting, even if it doesn't really propose any solutions either:
"Where the music industry has really gone wrong is that they've lost their legitimacy with consumers. ... They are training people to steal by giving them no legitimate alternative."
Comments on free music file sharing by Armen Kaleshian

[guartz]

Shade, thats why IP should be limited to trademark, which requires very little enforcement. Which is sufficient protection for artists. Copyright is overkill and whats happening now is inevitable with the copyright existing.

[Jefe]

what a fucking douche. I had to go into work and he thinks he can run his mouth like he actually made a good point. but yeah, typical douchebag cop out- oh you see I won b/c you didn't respond fast enough! huuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. terrible poster.

spoilers: you didn't make a good point.

glad to see others picked up the slack while I was out.

I posted while you were lurking around this fucking thread, asshole. You think I was gonna pussy ass talk about you like you do about other posters? And my point is very clear, or you are incredibly retarded. Lol @ "winrar" in a fucking forum "debate." Fuck off.

[Beckwin]

lol you've gotta be kidding.

anyhow champ, if you actually have a point different than the one you've already made (illegal downloading being wrong because it's... illegal) then by all means, spell it out.