What is your stance on this topic?
Is it illegal to download a song from the internet? Is it illegal to watch shows/movies online for free?
Where do you draw the line on creative content & IP?
For the ones who regularly do the above, do you ever feel guilty of doing it? Scared of getting caught? Feel that it weakens your moral fiber?
My views:
I do it. Never thought of it as illegal and still consider myself a person with high morals.
Check out The Cheating Culture. Hits home to your stance on being moral despite stealing music.
I don’t do it because movie studios and record labels actually want people to pirate so they can keep jacking up prices and blame pirating as they truck their billions to the bank.
I do, however, make copies of DVDs that I buy for my kids in case my daughter scratches the original.
Seems like a good read. Will have to find a free pdf copy online lol
I mostly listen to indie music. So I buy it when it’s not officially available for free. 1) to support the artist and 2) it’s typically higher quality.
I’ve been taking an extra effort to watch more movies in the theater and go to more concerts, but I pretty much stopped buying CDs and DVDs. I feel like I can still support the movie and music industries without getting raped by their overzealous IP.
I used to pirate everything I could. You know, P2P for music, movies and software. I remember using Napster before it was shut down. Now I don’t. 1. I don’t watch that much TV/Movies. So that spindle of divx movies/tv shows is pretty worthless. I’m not going to spend weeks and weeks of my life in front of the TV. 2. I honestly just listen to pandora. I have very little music saved to my MP3 devices. I pull up youtube if there is a specific song I want to hear at the moment. 3. I fear getting caught as I’m rather unlucky. That book touches on stealing songs online. The old argument is, “Fk Metallica, don’t they have enough money!?” Thing is, it’s not just Metallic suffering. The record label gets a cut of record sales. So if sales tank due to online piracy, the record label now has to chop a few off it’s docket since they can’t reinvest in new up and coming artists. So, like most things in life, it’s the little guy getting hurt. I think a lot of this is alleviated with folks ‘going viral’ online via youtube/twitter/myspace/etc. I think Justin Bieber was discovered when Usher stumbled upon his youtube clip? In any case, this is a fascinating discussion. Like many of you here, I’d never steal a pack of gum from the gas station. However I would have no hesitation to toe the gray line on my tax return giving myself a smaller liability due.
I think I am on the same boat as you. I used to pirate everything… then got caught with one of the movies… ISP sent a warning which scared the shit outta me so I went cold turkey. Then after a couple of years a buddy showed me another way to do it. (i.e download mp3 directly/convert through youtube and watch tv/movies online instead of downloading) and I was back to doing it again.
Over the past 2-3 years, I have really cut down on downloading music since I can stream most of it for free but I still continue watching stuff online. However; now I only watch DVD/HD quality stuff… don’t feel the need to watch a movie 24hrs after it comes out in theaters on a bootleg copy.
Internet has really blurried the line between right and wrong
what.cd
the movie/music studios far overhype the $ losses from pirating. Just because someone took 5 seconds to click a download button doesn’t mean they would have actually spent money buying the thing if that button didn’t exist.
But the studios count every click of the button as revenue lost.
I just listen to music on spotify or on my XM radio. I can’t be bothered to attempt to download things. I tried to torrent the mad men season premiere and couldn’t get it to open on my laptop, so I just paid $3 or whatever it was to get it on Amazon and watched it on my 50 inch tv. Seemed like a more enjoyable solution anyway.
I think some companies want me to steal their content. They’d make more money letting Netflix host it or something, but are stubborn.
Mad Men’s most recent episode is streaming right now.
I just go to youtube to listen to music.
No it hasn’t. It’s just made it easier for people to steal content and get away with it.
Where?
I heard Project Free TV was considering an IPO but the bottom line seemed to be mostly composed of non-recurring items. I’ll have to dig into the financials and get back to you.
I go to YouTube for music that I just want to hear a few times. Buying music off the web is now convenient and cheap enough that it doesn’t really make that much sense to steal it.
Actually there is a better audit trail on the internet than the old fashioned copying CDs and cassette tapes method. They can track your every move using your IP address (even if you attempt to mask it)
I just have a hard time accepting a song as creative content. If that was the case then anyone who attempts to sing these songs should also be considered a thief.
But do you limit your videos to the ‘official’ uploaders (i.e. record labels) or just anyone who uploaded the song? If the latter, then I don’t think there is a difference between dowloading a free mp3 vs listening to the song on youtube
Legally there is. Watching or listening to streaming content isn’t illegal (for the viewer) even if the source is. However, once you download it you take possession and then you break the law. Ethically there’s really no difference, but legally it’s a very big difference.
The same applies to pron too btw.