More harm is being done to society by the industries pushing this issue than the individuals infringing copyright
Copyright and patent are good in concept at some level. In practice, very very bad
Companies that own the majority of the content being disputed esentially do NOTHING. They just sit on content. Their entrie business model involves ownership. They don't do real work, their work is in gobbling up content (such as by signing bands) and then partitioning it out
I don't feel a bit bad about 'stealing' music, movies, or television, and you shouldn't either.
The act itself is not analogous to shoplifting or robbery. It's analogous to not watching or muting television commericals. 'stealing' a file represents only a loss of potential profits. Whereas a real, physical product costs real resources to put on the shelf, a copy of a file on a p2p network is transferred with the bandwidth of the users involved, and stored on the harddrive of the one receiving it.
Stealing music is actually GOOD for small bands: When you're a worthless nobody, you want every single person you can POSSIBLY get, to hear your song.
It is only bad for large companies, whose business model is based around domination of intellectual property and nothing else. And even then, it is only bad because of the slippery slope it implies: They're afraid they will be unseated from their privelged position if this trend continues, because they know there's no substance to what they do, and without the corcercion of the law, they're screwed, they're useless and impotent.
They're not even feeling the effects yet, but if they were, it would be slicing their profit margins thinner, not putting them out of work.
They've been saying since the dawn of napster that it will destroy the music industry. Oh yeah?
I'm waiting eagerly for that day. Because people will never stop creating. The concentration of power would only shift to a new entity who eventually climbed to the top when the existing ones crumbled.
Going on 8 years later and it still hasn't happened. But, swallow more tripe, sheep
drathbun wrote:
Pay for download via legal channels is fine.
File sharing of protected content is not.
Now log on a secret non-mod account and say what you really think : )
And, while we're posting this using a peice of open source software, I have to say software is the best example. There is no harm to society in stealing proprietary software: There's an endless supply of programmers willing to contribute a version to society that is free as in freedom AND price. If stealing were able to destroy the market for proprietary software, I say
good! Get that buggy vendor locked-in crap out of circulation