bittorrent

[kuchitsu]

That's pretty scary, isn't it? It was the biggest private music tracker for sure. And just like that out of nowhere came the news about it closing. Makes you wonder who's next...

[Bjenn]

thepiratebay has been raided many times, but they have had backups and redundancy and just put up the machines again in another country or so.
And it was so fun when Swedish authorities blocked the domain thepiratebay.se and they just redirected the site to another domain, like.. did they believe they could shut it down by doing that? xD
They have for sure already bought all the domains they need, many many years ago.

[Hosp]

w.cd's death veri bad, wat do now

[Tigro]

buy your shit at iTunes.

[kuchitsu]

Dunno, I find it extremely difficult to justify for myself paying for stuff that I can just get like that. Like ye, it's nice and feels good to support the creator, but it seems almost irrational/ridiculous/counterproductive/stupid to give someone else my money when there is an option not to do so. Even though I kinda realize that it prevents the author from getting richer and potentially making more cool stuff, I don't quite "feel" the destructive nature of what I'm doing. And this is the kind of culture I grew up around and still exist in. Even back when we only had 3 kb/sec dial-up and had to buy games and stuff, we would only buy pirated copies since those were much cheaper, not to mention that there were very few legal distributors at that time. It seems very tricky to get out of this mindset. Like, why not save money when you easily can do it without any bad consequences for yourself and with little to no feeling of guilt? It's especially hard to feel any guilt when you know that millions of people all over the world do the same thing and don't worry about it. Maybe if I was wealthy, I would start thinking about these things differently. Currently I only buy stuff that I can't seem to find on the internet (or can but in too bad quality).

[Hosp]

iTunes
you made me haha
ty

[ville_j]

Maybe if I was wealthy, I would start thinking about these things differently. Currently I only buy stuff that I can't seem to find on the internet (or can but in too bad quality).

I guess this is the main reason. I remember when I was younger I didn't even think of paying for music, movies, series.. nothing that you could also get for free. Well, there weren't that many legal services back then either, but even if there were I wouldn't have paid because I could find a better use for my money. However, now that I've been working and have a steady income there really isn't any problem. Well I don't buy music or even have any mp3s on my computer, but I pay for streaming services because they are also much easier to use for me when you can listen to all the music on different devices without any hassle. It's nice that it's legal, but the real reason I use them is because I just find it a better option than downloading files on devices. This same kinda applies for movies and series too, I have a subscription to several video streaming sites. However, because the movies and series are more spread out to different services and not everything is even available for streaming I still illegally download some of the series and movies I want to watch.

So yeah I guess it's all about the money. If I have the money and can make my life easier by paying a small monthly fee for services, why would I not do it.

[Kopaka]

Other than available money I think convenience is a very big factor too. Concerning games I pretty much prefer buying it on steam now over pirating them because it's more convenient because I know they're always available in the sky. When it comes to music streaming services doesn't really provide a boost in convenience. However I used to buy a lot of CDs some years ago, largely as a sort of collective item, but stopped when I got tired of the music industry using their time and money on sueing people for downloading instead of trying to come up with a competitive product to pirating.

buy your shit at iTunes.

The special thing about what.cd is that they had built up an extremely large library, bigger than the likes of itunes. And even if there may be other sites, it will take a long time to rebuild.

[Sunshine]

i support the pirate ideology and think copying something with practically zero cost is an amazing thing, if i could copy food in similar fashion every shopkeeper and farmer would lose their job but world would be a much better place. how we treat pirates today is imo a bit worrying sign for the future when we can actually produce real life goods with pretty much the cost of materials with 3d printing or maybe in far future by use of nanotechnology, what if you print an ikea chair? get sued for bazillion dollars?

[Tigro]

I like how you all thought I was serious.

Jokes aside, though;
I was pirating movies in a pretty big scale, sometimes pirating music too. Not so much lately. Netflix covers pretty much any need I have for TV series and movies, the rest I get from TPB or whenever possible. I bought something on iTunes, but it was usually just to show some love to the musicians, since their music was somehow special for me. So I supported them.

And if food could be pirated, we would all starve to death eventually, since no farmer/baker/... would ever get paid for their job -> he wouldn't do that job anymore -> no food would be produced.

The thing with digital data is that pirating it actually doesn't feel like stealing, because the content creator doesn't lose the content itself, only revenue from it. But I guess it still can and should be considered a theft.

[Madness]

Reported.

[Lousku]

And if food could be pirated, we would all starve to death eventually, since no farmer/baker/... would ever get paid for their job -> he wouldn't do that job anymore -> no food would be produced.

I think he meant if food could be copied without consuming the original, just like files. Food is moar about distribution though, and getting enough of it everywhere. We currently produce well over enough for everyone on earth. Variety of food is just a luxury that doesn't matter so much. I guess you'd still have the same problem of distributing enough raw material everywhrre, though maybe it could be moar compact and preserve better or something..? And I'm suar you'd still hev markets for new "recipes" because people get tired of eating the same shit and rich people can afford variety so why nat? Anyway, fun concept.

[pawq]

When I try to estimate the total monetary value of all the things I downloaded, the figure usually lands somewhere around 10k euro. Considering that I'm 23 now and haven't earned that much in my whole life, it's quite a lot of money.

However, when I try to estimate the total value of all the media that I own, the figure comfortably exceeds 1k euro.

There are several reasons why I download stuff (no particular order):
- I don't have enough money to buy it all,
- Some stuff is stupidly overpriced (a new game for 50 euro? come on!!!)
- I don't want to buy something before I verify that it's worth it (applies to music and games mainly, but also to films)
- Even if I do have the money, the combination of having other spendings and inflated prices discourage me from buying media

And there's one main reason why I do buy stuff:
- I am trying to support the artists, whose work I appreciate

Yes, I know that probably the majority of the revenue goes to the labels/publishers. That's the reason why I try to buy music directly from the artists (at gigs, through dedicated shops, through bandcamp, etc.) whenever I can. They are artists, and if they can't sell their stuff, they can't make it, so we can't enjoy it. And while I'm not gonna buy a CD of every band I've ever listened to, I'm trying to support my most beloved artists as much as I can.

And while I have no regrets when pirating (downloading about 10 films as I'm writing this), I am a little upset with people who never buy anything. How the hell are those bands supposed to survive??

[Sunshine]

And if food could be pirated, we would all starve to death eventually, since no farmer/baker/... would ever get paid for their job -> he wouldn't do that job anymore -> no food would be produced

you could make copies of copies

[gimp]

When you download a torrent illegally, is it the same as stealing it off the shelf of a store? I say yes. Which then leads me to understand that people aren't concerned with the principle of stealing, they only care about the probability of being caught (which is quite minimal when downloading torrents). What gets me is how anyone can claim any sense of self righteousness after downloading an illegal torrent, it's very interesting! I mean let's face it, we are criminals ignorant of our crime.

[Ruben]

When you download a torrent illegally, is it the same as stealing it off the shelf of a store? I say yes. Which then leads me to understand that people aren't concerned with the principle of stealing, they only care about the probability of being caught (which is quite minimal when downloading torrents). What gets me is how anyone can claim any sense of self righteousness after downloading an illegal torrent, it's very interesting! I mean let's face it, we are criminals ignorant of our crime.

I kinda agree. Though no material value is lost when you pirate, so it's not as bad. You know that YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR!!! bit that's unskippable on bought DVD's? I felt so insulted every time I saw that, so I started downloading movies out of spite. Nowadays you can just stream, of course, which is much easier, much better quality, and pretty much no chance of being prosecuted.

The fact is that stopping piracy is impossible. The Norwegian government tried very hard, they blocked a handful of sites like Putlocker and Pirate Bay, but in one day a new domain was up and everybody could use it again. For a very long time, pirating was the easiest way to get stuff, but when companies realised the potential in the technology developed by pirates we got Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Spotify, Wimp, Steam, GoG, App Store and a whole host of others. THAT'S the way to battle piracy: making it easy for the consumer.

That being said, I'm strongly opposed to the business strategies of certain services such as Spotify, which really is a piece of shit. It makes no difference to the artist whether I use Spotify or Pirate Bay, their cut is so small they wouldn't notice a thing even if thousands did the same.

[kuchitsu]

The fact is that stopping piracy is impossible.

Just start catching pirates and giving them really long prison terms. After a few years of continious incidents like this, most people will get scared and only very brave, very stupid, or very tech-savvy mans will keep doing it. No?

[Ruben]

The fact is that stopping piracy is impossible.

Just start catching pirates and giving them really long prison terms. After a few years of continious incidents like this, most people will get scared and only very brave, very stupid, or very tech-savvy mans will keep doing it. No?

It will never happen. No matter how hard they try the only thing that will happen is that a lot of people will be imprisoned, and a lot of powerful pirates will emerge. That's what the war on drugs did to druglords. Russia is one of the most notorious places for making things illegal, and it has an impressive history of smuggling and piracy. For example how western music was very creatively smuggled into the country in the 50's, the best example of this is ribs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribs_(recordings)

[pawq]

If they put all the pirates to prison, not enough people would be left to guard the prisons.

+1 for Ruben!

[ville_j]

That being said, I'm strongly opposed to the business strategies of certain services such as Spotify, which really is a piece of shit. It makes no difference to the artist whether I use Spotify or Pirate Bay, their cut is so small they wouldn't notice a thing even if thousands did the same.

This is indeed problematic, I have no idea why the money is shared the way it is in Spotify, I hope they would change it to be more fair towards smaller artists.

Just start catching pirates and giving them really long prison terms. After a few years of continious incidents like this, most people will get scared and only very brave, very stupid, or very tech-savvy mans will keep doing it. No?

When you break the law the sentence has to be in line with the caused damage and the severity of the crime, so you can't use this kind of scare tactics. Downloading a few bytes from the internet isn't very serious crime.

[Sunshine]

When you download a torrent illegally, is it the same as stealing it off the shelf of a store? I say yes

it would be same if you walked in to the store and made a copy of item x and then walked out while store still had their item

[kuchitsu]

I think making analogies when talking about pirating is probably pointless. They all just sound nonsensical and don't lead to anything. The problem lies elsewhere (mainly in preventing the authors from getting profit).

[Sunshine]

its up to debate whether financial harm is caused, there are clear cut examples though like man in 3rd world country downloading 3dsmax that retails at 3000usd when his monthly income is 300usd we can all agree there wasnt any loss of sales and ofc poverty exists in all countries, doesnt have to be some extreme 3rd world example. many studies have shown that people who pirate heavily also spend more on content than "normal" people who dont illegally download. here is one by ofcom (independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries) that says top 10% of "worst" downloaders spend 300% more than average: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/ ... p-dive.pdf. and another by BI Norwegian Business School that says music pirates are 10 times more likely to buy music (cant find actual paper sry https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/ ... more-music

i dont pirate or listen to music very much but i know some people who do that a lot and they also often have quite impressive collection of real cds and vinyls etc music related stuff so i believe in general that latter study to be true. i have steam collection probably worth at least a thousand dolars because i find that steam offers games conveniently enough and cheap enough. for series and music i havent found a service that would do the same, netflix catalog is absolute shit and most movies there are garbage and in general the price/quality is not there. for me the correct price for tv/movie service would probably be around 20e/month if it had everything but that will probably never happen because every company wants to have their own so i will continue to pirate instead of paying up the ass for 10 different services and even then some of them play ads. in the first study i linked, convenience, pricing and availability were listed as top reasons to stop illegal file sharing and i think in gaming steam has done that for many and other industries need to do something similar if they want to survive

ps: checked my steam accounts worth using steamdb.info and it shows current value $4280 and total cost with sales $1143 so ive used somewhere between those two amounts and this is from someone who is probably in top 10% of downloaders so the profit is there to be had if they just get the pricing and service right

[Ruben]

I love the Game Of Thrones producers' attitude towards piracy. They know it's impossible to stop, so in stead they're very proud of being the most pirated show ever. In the end, the people who pirated it would in all likelyhood never have watched it otherwise, so the economical impact is minimal. Hell, it might even be beneficial, because over time they may realize that HBO is a service worth paying for, and they are a part of the buzz surroundin the show, which ultmately leads to more people watching it.

[kuchitsu]

For some reason I don't like it when people try to justify piracy. Because they are still essentially justifying denying other people their income. I like it more when people honestly admit "yes, I am a pirate, I am damaging the industry, making companies afraid of experimenting with new things, preventing small artists from making progress, etc". I prefer being more upfront about it.

[ville_j]

for series and music i havent found a service that would do the same, netflix catalog is absolute shit and most movies there are garbage and in general the price/quality is not there.

Catalogue is not shit. It's only "shit" because you have already illegally torrented all the series and movies you want to watch. I don't know how much you want to get with 8e per month, you can't expect to get all the new movies and series with that price. For me, if there is even one series I want to watch then that's enough, add 1-2 movie watching per month and I think the price/quality is very oke. Would be nice if there was one service that had all the shows and movies, would gladly pay more for that, but yeah it's not happening. Anyways can't quite compare Steam and streaming services as in one you purchase everything separately and then you have it available forever, and in other you subscribe to get all the content for some period of time. Don't know if you would like to have a Steam-like service for movies and series where you just pay for everything separately? I prefer subscribing because then you get more content with lower price, and most of the time I don't need to have movies and series available after I've watched them.

[roope]

For some reason I don't like it when people try to justify piracy. Because they are still essentially justifying denying other people their income. I like it more when people honestly admit "yes, I am a pirate, I am damaging the industry, making companies afraid of experimenting with new things, preventing small artists from making progress, etc". I prefer being more upfront about it.

And I don't when people look at the world in black and white. I have no problem admitting that yes, I'm a pirate and I steal stuff because I'm lazy and have no money. However, giving reasons and doing the kind of fact checking that prev mans in this topic have done is also important, so we know where we're at. I'd rather look at the whole picture than stay in the "piracy is evil and in all cases a bad thing" bubble. I'm a pirate, but I don't necessarily agree (or have to agree) with that list of "I am damaging the industry, making companies afraid of experimenting with new things, preventing small artists from making progress, etc". Couldn't the opposite be argued for like each of those? For example, maybe piracy is actually forcing the industry to change for the better Often times mans are willing to pay but companies are making things too idiot and complicated, so mans go for pirating instead (both as a "fuck you" to the companies and because they still want the product); something like Netflix is hugely popular because they offer quality content with easy access, and more companies will follow (I hope).

[Lousku]

It maykes no sense to think someone who pirates content would buy all of it it if not for pirating. There's a much lower threshold to accumulating content when it's free (orly...) so ofc you would simply nat get most of it if you weer not pirating. It's not "denying the authors money".

[pawq]

+1 for what vermin, Ruben and Lousku said.

The theory that piracy is damaging the companies' profits is very questionable. The studies vermin mentioned are confirmed by myself - I download shittons of stuff, but I also have quite an impressive collection by my age's standards, which I've mentioned before.

And "preventing small artists from making progress" is just bullshit. In most cases it's pretty hard to find torrents/whatever for the least known stuff anyway. In fact I'd argue that piracy is helping those smallest artists significantly. I don't think anyone mentioned this argument before, but if you never download something illegally, you won't be able to try the majority of music/films at all, because let's be honest, maybe 0.000001% of people are able to afford everything. What happens with the internet, is that you can download 10000 albums and listen to them all for free (and illegally) and actually find maybe 10 bands that you'll fall in love with and buy their stuff afterwards. It's impossible to estimate, but I probably wouldn't know a lot of the music I listen to nowadays if I wasn't able to listen to it for free on the internet first.

And the steam argument is extremely important too. It's a perfect example of how doing business in the right way will convince people to use your services, instead of pirating. Yeah, you can get all (or most) of these games for free on the internet, but if the alternative is paying a reasonable amount of money, but also get shit like achievements, backups of the game and the profiles, extra content etc., why not?

Spotify is a similar concept and also works really well, the only problem with that is the share the bands actually get. Yeah, it's super easy for the industry to complain about people "stealing" their stuff, but why does nobody (loudly) complain about how the industry is treating the artists?

And stuff like this

I like it more when people honestly admit "yes, I am a pirate, I am damaging the industry, making companies afraid of experimenting with new things, preventing small artists from making progress, etc". I prefer being more upfront about it.

reminds me of:

Only the Sith deal in absolutes.

And as for

I don't like it when people try to justify piracy.

Well, about 10 people here have just justified piracy in a very constructive and well-informed manner, what's your opposing argument?

[kuchitsu]

I guess my annoyance comes from the fact that it seems like everyone is always talking about how piracy is actually good and I almost never hear anyone honestly talking about their pirate activities in a negative light. When artists attempt to actively fight piracy and actually defend their rights (since when is it a bad thing?), they are nearly always painted as silly idiots and evil greedy people. Meanwhile, torrenting is seen as this noble thing and people keep saying things like "we are actually doing this artist a favor by stealing his stuff", but I doubt any of them talked to that artist and received the "go ahead" from him. There is too much arrogance in their rhetoric I think ("we know better", etc).

[culinko]

I can say for myself that the stuff Pawq mentioned is true. I remember in the past I downloaded lots of slovak music (mostly ska) only to find out some cool bands for which I attended concerts/festivals later on and paid even more than would be the cost of the stuff I downloaded. Without downloading I would have never known about them at all.

[pawq]

I guess my annoyance comes from the fact that it seems like everyone is always talking about how piracy is actually good and I almost never hear anyone honestly talking about their pirate activities in a negative light. When artists attempt to actively fight piracy and actually defend their rights (since when is it a bad thing?), they are nearly always painted as silly idiots and evil greedy people. Meanwhile, torrenting is seen as this noble thing and people keep saying things like "we are actually doing this artist a favor by stealing his stuff", but I doubt any of them talked to that artist and received the "go ahead" from him. There is too much arrogance in their rhetoric I think ("we know better", etc).

I suggest you actually read other people's posts in this thread.

[roope]

I guess my annoyance comes from the fact that it seems like everyone is always talking about how piracy is actually good and I almost never hear anyone honestly talking about their pirate activities in a negative light. When artists attempt to actively fight piracy and actually defend their rights (since when is it a bad thing?), they are nearly always painted as silly idiots and evil greedy people. Meanwhile, torrenting is seen as this noble thing and people keep saying things like "we are actually doing this artist a favor by stealing his stuff", but I doubt any of them talked to that artist and received the "go ahead" from him. There is too much arrogance in their rhetoric I think ("we know better", etc).

watehell o,o

Yeah, people might disagree, but never have I ever seen artists being painted as greedy or seen any of these things you say. For real, +1 for what Pawq said. Of course people try not to think of themselves in negative light intentionally though, but piracy is something where it's easy to justify that. Why think "I'm a fucking ugly criminal that sucks ass and hates artists" when it's reasonable enough to think otherwise.

[Kopaka]

I guess my annoyance comes from the fact that it seems like everyone is always talking about how piracy is actually good and I almost never hear anyone honestly talking about their pirate activities in a negative light. When artists attempt to actively fight piracy and actually defend their rights (since when is it a bad thing?), they are nearly always painted as silly idiots and evil greedy people. Meanwhile, torrenting is seen as this noble thing and people keep saying things like "we are actually doing this artist a favor by stealing his stuff", but I doubt any of them talked to that artist and received the "go ahead" from him. There is too much arrogance in their rhetoric I think ("we know better", etc).

For me the issue is when artists or the industry or law enforcement speaks out about piracy they do it really badly. Using analogies like this one:

When you download a torrent illegally, is it the same as stealing it off the shelf of a store? I say yes.

When they do it's hard to take them serious.

I don't think most people really want to be a criminal, and would be fine with paying whatever they can afford if there were proper solutions to doing so. Issue being we are lazy, or we know so little of the money goes to the actual artist, or we are fed up with the way the industry is handling things and don't want to support them. When piracy is so much more convenient and the industry is witchhunting istead of having a proper conversation about a proper solution I really can't blame people for it.

[gimp]

does it really have any financial backlash at the end of the day? I think it does, but jappe made a good point, you are right in saying it does not have as much financial effect as stealing physical inventory, or copying it for that matter. I am not arguing this, perhaps it is a bad analogy in this regard, thank you for shedding light on this.

With that being said, I still believe it is a crime, it is stealing, and most importantly it is wrong because of the very simple definition that defines stealing.

You are taking something that isn't yours, and the person who owns it doesn't want you to have it .

Now you can dibble and dabble with all kinds of excuses to make you feel good about it, but deep down I guess I just kind of want the rest of you to man up and quit justifying your stealing, it would be very satisfying to hear that you have that capability, otherwise it's difficult for me to listen to your logic. Like what is the new argument? Yes I am stealing, but it's good for the person I am stealing from? That is not up to you to decide. My favorite justifications have been the people who justify their stealing because they don't like their payment alternatives. Just admit that you have been naughty and stop with the self righteousness and moral highgrounds. We are still discussing a crime in this thread, not charity.

[Sunshine]

you are wrong in arguing that it is stealing, you can argue it is illegal and wrong but it is not stealing which you so adamantly insist. if you steal from someone they lose an object, when you copy something no one lost anything and also it is wrong to say that each pirated copy is a lost sale like i said in my previous post.

or let me ask you this, if your friend buys chair from ikea and you then go to his house and take measurements of the chair and build one exactly like that chair, would you consider that stealing? half-stealing because you didnt steal the physical materials but you stole the immaterial "idea" or design of the chair?

but like ive said before pirating is ideological for me and i dont ever stop "justifying" my stealing because i dont think its a bad thing and it seems you want others to feel the same as you but i cant do that because for me its an amazing thing. again like i said before if we could copy physical objects with practically 0 cost like we can digital things then i think world would be a MUCH better place, it would be utopia.

[gimp]

You have not stolen a physical object from them. But say I make a compilation of sounds and images and tell you you can have them for x amount of money, but instead you copy it and then tell everyone they can now have it for free, you have stolen my level of ownership of what I created. To take it further, when the downloader of the copy knowingly downloads yet another copy, they have stolen potential money I was supposed to get for the compilation of sounds and images that I created, just as the original culprit had. This is why you couldn't compare it to a physical object being stolen, sounds and images can't be stolen in a physical sense, but you have robbed a portion of my ownership, that is my intellectual property and it can still be stolen in the sense that I described. Intellectual property is of course more philosophical, and what can and can not be owned is more or less up to society, can somebody own a specific sound like a G minor chord? No. But they can own a very complex creative combination of sounds improbable of unknowing duplication. Society has deemed that we may own such metaphysical things. I see why you are saying it's not stealing, but for this particular instance, I tend to agree with our lawmakers. I'd be interested to hear more about why you feel intellectual property can't be stolen based on the nature of it.

Now as for your idea of a utopia where physical objects can now be copied. I could justify this if it were for survival, I'd consider an argument to justify anybody stealing bread, water, or medicine for survival. I'd justify the theft and distribution of intellectual property if it was say the mathematical information that would help us blow up an incoming asteroid. But not because you want to watch Game of Thrones, that is just theft for personal entertainment. I would be interested if you have pirated some software, movie, or music that you feel should be free because it would lead to a more utopian society, but personally I have never encountered anything yet.

[Sunshine]

so in this utopia where everything can be copied you would allow copying of food for survival but disallow copying of for example yo-yos, snow globes, soccer balls etc because they are for personal entertainment? or if someone needs a bed and a mattress they could copy the shittiest bare essential bed and thin mattress but not a king sized bed with double mattress? can you also answer to my ikea thing in my earlier post im interested to hear your opinion

[gimp]

Answer: the chair example is not stealing

Reasoning: Physically copying exact measurements and then reproducing a chair from Ikea and then only using it for yourself would be like comparing if you physically went and hired all the characters from Game of Thrones and then physically observed and wrote and made a copy of every little thing about it and made it exactly the same yourself. Youd probably have to spend 100 of millions of dollars, never make it exactly the same, but I suppose youd get to enjoy it for just yourself, and you wouldn't be stealing the actual copy of the composition that they made themselves, nor distributing it to others.

You are trying to make a point that physically creating an exact chair for yourself is the same as downloading the actual work of others. But you didn't do the same physical work that they did to get your result, the chair would be okay because you did do the same physical work. I have already described Intellectual property is of a different nature because it is metaphysical. they need to be compared in the same realm of reality.

The utopian thing: I am tired of writing right now. One discussion at a time I guess.

[Lousku]

Why does it matter how much work you put into copying the chair?

[Sunshine]

that analogue is wrong. correct comparison between physically building a chair and copying would be the copying of 1s and 0s from one cd/dvd/hdd to another (this is the physical work part). if we used your logic then the comparison would be a man hiring a designer and an engineer to reinvent the ikea chair from a picture and then go and buy millions worth of equipment to mass produce the required parts. you said the chair example is not stealing but he clearly skipped a lot of physical work that went into the making of the chair (drawing blueprints, testing all the parts, reiterating the design etc).

[milagros]

and then in the distant future you change your mind when you actually develop something, nobody pays for it and you go bankrupt

[gimp]

You have to treat a digital copy, or any creative literary copy for that matter, differently than a physical object because of its metaphysical nature. The recreated chair copy is not the same as a digital copy by nature. This all now has to do with the concept of copyright. People realized literary books, music, and movies fall under a different form when copied. When you download a movie, the copy is the actual thing, it almost makes the copy not really a copy at all, hence why copyrights only apply to music and so on. I agree with why copyrights have been made apart of law. You are allowing ownership of unique intangible ideas, people should be allowed to sell them and have them treated under different copy laws than an Ikea chair, again, because they are metaphysical. A chair is not unique nor intangible.

[pawq]

I think this discussion has been steered too much into the topic of chairs.

I think you may've slightly misinterpreted mans' intentions gimp, when you say that we don't want to admit we're doing something bad. I think that's because we focused mostly on discussing the causes and impact of piracy, rather than "good or bad", which may've made it seem that way.

I, for one, happily admit I do something illegal, although, to be quite fair, illegality of downloading stuff is very questionable. I think in most cases >uploading/sharing< stuff is illegal, but downloading what's available isn't. Can't back this up with any solid info though, if anybody has data pls share.

To summarise my main point, ignoring all the intricacies of the impact of piracy on small artists etc.:
When you steal something from a shop, the shop has lost some money. Not the value for which the chair is being sold, but the actual value of production, transportation, etc. They just have to make another one.
Now when you download something... The label/artist doesn't lose anything. Yes, it's a breach of copyright etc etc, but they don't suffer any actual losses. This is based on only one assumption: if you couldn't download it, you wouldn't buy it anyway. And I think this assumption is valid in the case of 90% of pirates.

Probably no point going into this further, I think enough arguments on both sides have been presented so that now everybody is well-educated in the subject :)

peas

[Sunshine]

downloading is legal here, uploading not

[ville_j]

Actually, downloading is illegal too but not as severe as uploading.

I also agree too much chair talk in here, comparing those two isn't really that simple. I don't really blame anyone for downloading stuff because I also think that people would not have paid for most of the content ever. Of course, it is a bit unfair since the content creator has set up their own rules "if you want this content you pay for it" and you are getting it without paying, but the loss of income is arguable. Pirating is like spreading the culture efficiently and easily. We can only imagine what kind of a scene we would have at the moment if no one would've been able to download elma for free. I probably wouldn't be here since I still haven't bought it. That's actually a bit sad thought because I think this game and the scene with all the people has affected my life in a very positive way. Maybe a bit unfair considering the creators, but in the end it has caused more good than bad I would say.

[Hosp]

arr i am a bloody pirate hand me some rum ye scallywag

[Hosp]

double post but relevant

[Ruben]

double post but relevant

That's only true for a really tiny minority of musicians.

[Tigro]

Dunno if I am wrong but I feel that most of the time it's not the artists (musicians, actors) themselves who are complaining, but their label or production companies, etc.
If some artist complains, it is just more visible because it's in the news osv.