Posted on 12/21/2013 12:40:45 PM PST by grundle
I download a movie with the “unbox” application from Amazon. I get a video file in MS Windows .WMV format with DRM tied to my desktop computer.
If they came to your house and riffled your library and removed items while blithely assuring you that you would get it back tomorrow would you find this acceptable?
I do not find this acceptable.
As a former retailer I have to ask: Why didn’t you buy all of them from your local toy store?
My style of Christmas shopping if very random and impulsive. I’m not proud of that fact but it just is and I manage to stay reasonably sane during the whole season.
Thanks for that extra info. Perhaps a one day blackout is what they had planned all along - or perhaps the plan was for longer, but they changed it after customers complained.
The kiddies will just have to watch the shows on TV, so they can also be exposed to ads of gay people pushing Obamacare.
Depending on how they configured the DRM settings for the video, you could still be reaching out to a DRM server for permission every time you play the video.
Audials plays the video on the DRM enabled computer and captures the video and audio. Then you have an unencumbered media file they can’t take back and will play on any device.
Bootlegging is a completely unjustified theft of the property of another.
Your assertion that you get to decide what a “reasonable sum” is for another person’s property sounds much more like socialism than conservatism.
You do have the liberty to refuse to buy someone’s product, if you believe they have overvalued that product.
You have no right to steal that product from them.
“Bootlegging is a completely unjustified theft of the property of another.”
No, it’s a completely justified protest against the corruption of our copyright laws and against the parasites that sit between the musician and the audience. They provide no useful service, but reduce sales—and therefore income to the musician—by grossly overpricing the product.
It’s a corrupt system, and when you pay full price for a CD, you are supporting the corruption.
“Your assertion that you get to decide what a “reasonable sum” is for another person’s property sounds much more like socialism than conservatism.”
Road apples. It is entirely possible to determine how much of the price of a CD goes to legitimate expenses, how much to the musician, and how much the record company parasites rip off just because they can.
“You have no right to steal that product from them.”
Steal it from whom? The musician? They have entrusted their work to a corrupt system. Steal it from the corrupt system? They have no moral right to that money in the first place.
It is entirely possible to determine how much of the price of a CD goes to legitimate expenses, how much to the musician, and how much the record company parasites rip off just because they can.
Who gets to define "legitimate expenses"? Who gets to decide how much money is "fair" for the record company?
BTW, and more of an aside, the whole paradigm of "record company" is falling by the wayside, not because of thieves and criminals acting in the way you espouse, but because of the market and technology.
About half the CDs I purchase these days are produced by the artists, and sold through accessable channels like their own websites, bandcamp and other social websites, Amazon, and ITunes (I don't use Itunes).
Most of the rest I buy on Amazon, and generallly pay $10 or less for a CD with 10 or more songs. Point being, I'm not paying a lot, I simply don't buy albums if they cost too much. If everybody did this, the record companies would not make an evil profit, and if record companies could not deliver sales, more musicians would go independent.
But as to your point -- a musician OWNS their property. Your railing about copyright really doesn't apply to what we were discussing here, which was stealing modern music put out on CDs, music that would meet anybody's definition of copyright.
If the musician decides that they want to let an evil record company sell their music and line their pockets, that is a VALID choice for the OWNER of a property to make. You have every right not to buy the property.
What you do NOT have is any entitlement to listen to their music. If you WANT their music, you are legally bound to get it on the terms the owners of the music decide.
Socialism may not be an apt analogy. With socialism, government decides to take away a person's private property, and then make it available for what the government believes is a "fair" price. In this case, you are taking away the property, and only doing it for your OWN "fair price". Maybe it is just greed.
They provide no useful service, but reduce sales—and therefore income to the musician—by grossly overpricing the product.
I don't think of musicians as battered wives. They have their own free will to do what they want with their product. And to the degree they might have no choice, your stealing their music illegally does NOTHING additional to stop the practice than simply refusing to buy the album at all.
Which in the end is the point -- if you believe the system is corrupt, you can refuse to participate. Once you refuse to participate, illegally downloading the music is not a noble act, it is simply stealing the product. You having the music does nothing for the band, does nothing to stop the record companies. The ONLY person who GAINS from you stealing the music is yourself.
So you can make excuses as to why you are somehow entitled to take someone's stuff without paying, but in the end, it is really just about you.
+1.
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