Fellow freepers
I will respond to both or your posts in one if I may.
aft_lizard: "So does this mean you download the songs without paying for them?
Hmmmmmm"
Yes, it does. And not to sound like an ass but it doesn't even bother me in the slightest. There are a lot of artists out there who's music I enjoy listening to, but who I absolutely refuse to contribute to financially. An example off the top of my head would be Dead Prez, a rap group who's music I sometimes enjoy listening to, but who have socialist and anti-American tendencies in their lyrics. Am I supposed to contribute to them financially? No way in hell! But I enjoy the beats and a lot of the songs so I will download their material without blinking an eye.
I am a conservative, so if I were to only listen to music that agrees with my POV, I'd have to listen to silence, static or country, and I only like a handfull of country songs.. so to listen to the music I enjoy, which includes everything from classic rock and blues all the way to rap and underground electronica, I have to put up with POVs that I disagree with.. with music it's just easy for me to shrug it off I guess, I've been a music nut my whole life.
What if I had just recorded it off the radio? Big deal. In fact I am sort of glad that I am sticking it to them, in my own small way. The record companies come out with all these inflated figures, "we've lost x billions of dollars to file sharing this year." That is a total load of crap, they are summing up the total value of the estimated number of downloaded songs, as if, in every single case, had that person not downloaded it they would have gone out and bought the album. That is rediculous. The beauty of downloading for me is that I can listen to and sample any music that I choose, most of which I would never buy. Had those downloads not happened, the amount of that same music that would have been purchased from the store would be about .001 percent of what was downloaded. (That's just a wild guess, but it illustrates my point)
The way that the RIAA has behaved towards file sharing hasn't helped either. Now instead of being indifferent I am glad they are getting screwed. 16 dollars for a crappy CD that I only like 2 songs on? No thanks. Hello HP CD-RW, my friend.
apackof2: "Stealing is still stealing even when its digital."
You have a point, but it's a little different in this case. If you have a 5 dollar bill and I steal it. I now have it and you no longer have it. If I copy a song from you, you STILL have it and so do I. A victim of theft no longer posseses the stolen item. Now I realize the value is in the intellectual property, but if I had never ever intended to buy the CD anyway, the intellectual property is not affected. Again, what if I taped the song off the radio?
I am an old school computer nut from my childhood, and copying and sharing has always been a part of that culture, trading 5 1/2 floppies with games on them with my middle school friends at lunch time, etc.
So I am just being honest, with this post. I am not going to try and justify it to those people who think it's wrong. I do respect that viewpoint. but I will continue to do as I please with my own computer and internet connection, and when an artist comes along who has earned my 16 bucks, they'll get my 16 bucks. But now I have control over it, not the record company.
And NO, the artists are not going to starve, and no the music business is not going to fail. And, artists, if you're so worried about it, get your a** out there and play some shows.. earn those millions. ;-)
The powers that be have as good a chance of stopping file sharing as I do of collecting every single molecule of CO2 that just escaped from the soda I just opened and placing them all back into the bottle and closing the top. The genie is outof the bottle. You can't un-ring a bell.
best regards all,
Bones
Eminem speaks of anarchy; to an anarchist, all property is theft. F'em if they can't stand by the principles they spout.
SO because the artist is a scummy liberal its alright to steal there music and STILL listen to him?
Sorry but if I didnt like somebody and there politics I would boycott them altogether, not even give them the satisfaction that there song is the number one stolen song, either way stealing is wrong.
And BTW you got our quotes backwards.