When Pigs Fly: The Death of Oink, the Birth of Dissent Options

[boombaard]

perhaps an interesting/entertaining read: (not by my hand, found it yesterday)
http://www.demonbaby.com/blog/2007/10/when...k-birth-of.html

For quite a long time I've been intending to post some sort of commentary on the music industry - piracy, distribution, morality, those types of things. I've thought about it many times, but never gone through with it, because the issue is such a broad, messy one - such a difficult thing to address fairly and compactly. I knew it would result in a rambly, unfocused commentary, and my exact opinion has teetered back and forth quite a bit over the years anyway. But on Monday, when I woke up to the news that Oink, the world famous torrent site and mecca for music-lovers everywhere, had been shut down by international police and various anti-piracy groups, I knew it was finally time to try and organize my thoughts on this huge, sticky, important issue.

edit2: thanks for editing the title, kind (and anonymous) moderator

This post has been edited by boombaard: Oct 29 2007, 23:57

[plnelson]

I certainly don't disagree that the music industry is a stupid dinosaur deserving only our contempt.

But, it's legal to be a stupid dinosaur.

And even if stealing music leads to actual sales, as it did with "seanyseansean", companies also have a right to decide what marketing and promotions to use for their products, even if you think you know a better one. Here in the Boston area a local furniture chain offered its customers 100% rebates for furniture purchased in April if the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. The Red Sox won and the customers have netted an estimated $30 million on the deal. The company had the deal underwritten by insurance so it turned out to be a great marketing ploy benefitting both the customers AND the company, but my point was that it was their decision to make. It would not have justified stealing a couch.

No amount of rationalization gets around the fact that stealing is stealing. There are plenty of other legal ways to get back at the record companies. Buy directly from indie artists, for example. Buy MP3's from eMusic (~25 cents apiece, 192 VBR) Or do what I do: Buy used CD's - this is perfectly legal, it's cheap, and the record companies never see a penny of it. This also gives me the option of ripping/encoding it any way I want.

if I filled my shiny new 160gb iPod up legally, buying each track online at the 99 cents price that the industry has determined, it would cost me about $32,226. How does that make sense?

How would WHAT make sense? That you bought a 160G iPod without any thought to how you would fill it up with MP3's? Why is it the music industry's job to "make sense" of your purchase decision? If you bought a city parking garage and tried to fill it up with your own personal car collection and blew through your million dollar retirement nest egg before even one level was full would this justify stealing cars? You knew what music cost BEFORE buying your iPod (which, incidentally is 160G because it was designed with video in mind).

The bottom line is that a sense of entitlement is not the same as having an actual right to something. The European settlers who took over North America felt entitled to it, and, just like music pirates, they had the technology. We have people on this forum from all over the world, so if you happen to live in a country where the government bends the laws for "national security" reasons, remember: they are exercising their powers of rationalization the same as music pirates. Anything can be rationalized.

[skamp]

No amount of rationalization gets around the fact that stealing is stealing.

No amount of rationalization gets around the fact that copyright infringement is not stealing.

When somebody takes a CD from a record store without paying for it, they rob the store of the actual cost of the piece of plastic. The object itself has an actual monetary value, the store has already paid for it, they won't see that cash again, and they can't ever sell the object to anybody. That's stealing.

When somebody makes a digital copy illegally, no money has been lost by anybody. Nobody paid anything for that copy. The original is still there for someone to sell and someone to purchase. Nobody's been robbed of anything, except for a potential (and I can't stress that word enough) sale. The equation results in $0 instead of a potentially positive number, while stealing a CD always results in a negative number.

Please stop equating copyright infringement to stealing - it's just not the same. Period.