I understand that the joe average, and his P2P use should be frowned upon.

*Boy bad. Smacks*

But in some cases, I don't understand why it is not publically endorsed.


In my case, About 2-3 years ago, All I did was play everquest, while listening to the ocasional 128 stream techno music or rammstien/metallica/rap/pop whatever. Shitty shit, Kazaa, 128 usually. alot of what I was listening to at the time I owned when I was in grade 3-6 - About grade 7 I stopped buying CD's due to lack of interest in music, no money, and an increasing interest in computers/visual/games that kinda stuff.

Eventually my intense computer use brought me to IRC and various friends were found and nourished, then met in my own very city - and we gamed, smoked the pot, whatever young computer nerds like to do (Im still only 18 years old..)

Anyway, to cut it short - Eventually I was questioned on what I listened to, I shot the Ozzy, metallica, ACDC, rammstien, techno, stuff like that... The generals you know?

And my friend schmoo said to me, Aw man, great taste in music - would you mind If I introduced you to some awesome bands you might really like?

And I said, sure I would love that!!

And he sent me some metal bands a couple years back.. ensiferum, suidakra, runemagick, all the goodies... alot of stuff..
And eventually another guy uploaded me a gigabyte rar file ofmetal albums.

Nowadays, I am still broke - Working to save up a meager 5000-6000$ to buy a dingwall bass guitar and some ampeg gear -- musically influenced by the music I was "P2P'ed"

I now house over 14,000 songs most of my favorite(s) albums in 320 lame/eac rip format, alot in lame VBR, some lossless, some mpc, no wma *biggrin* And as a bare minimum for albums -- 192 original encodes.

Most of the music I have, I will buy - Provided its in the store -- and I have the spare money to buy the cd.

I will buy these musics because 1) I appreciate the artists, 2) I appreciate all CD quality, and CD artwork. 3) because I can afford it and the opurtunity is there.

But for most of these bands, if the CD can be found in stores like HMV or musicworld here in canada, they are usually 20-30$, not avalable or sold out.. Whatever. Not only that but Im having a hard time saving up enough money for my music equiptment.

To top it all off, I love mother earth, gaia, her wonderful nature - and I stand by the fact that Im listening to music by mostly artists who give jack shit about money, and also appreciate nature. Buying cds by artists that only want money is doing nothing but supporting greed, and shitty labels and tearing about nature... by using unneeded materaials when one can make use of magnetics and do it free of polution and degeneration.


When I have money, to throw - THe first thing I will be doing is buying a TSHIRT off all the bands I have grown to love - Because they make a hellofalot more money of that single piece of merch than prolly 4 or 5 cds depending on the label.

And of course, I will buy the CDS eventually if I want to.


If it werent for MIRC/KAZAA/DC++/FTP I wouldnt be listening to good music rite now... Or maybe not music at all? Because I didnt know... didnt care... to know what was out here.


I love this place.

Planet earth

Hydrogenaudio
the music world

and everything else.


Please, think twice when You critisize music sharing.


Mostly its coming from commercial bands....
Because true artists like I like to think of myself creativily as... Do not give two shits about a dollar - and would rather be poor and surviving happily than having money.
Maybe Im wrong.. Who knows. But I have gone over this with logic and all else.

Im sure HA Founder would agree with some of my points.


Sincerly,

Nigel Kristian


If it werent for music, I wouldnt be here rite now... I would be in some horribly dull soceity mentality driven place... music has changed my life - My thinking patterns - My use of brain capacity, right and left side activation.... Ear sensitivity. Logic. Creaitivity.

Are you referring to TOS #9 or a general sentiment?

I think it would be more logical to be leaning towards to "General sentiment" frowning upon.

Not towards causing rukus with the rules of this amazing community..

Im not here to do that or "troll", mearly here to express opinion.

And this is my opinion - I do not wish to enforce it upon anyone else but myself and my endovers.

You will find few who will wholeheartedly endorse drug abuse and theft. OK, OK, pot is not a serious drug. Smoking it is anti-social. Your choice. Do the crime; do the time.

Ciao4now

Hey cyde, I feel exactly the same way about music and filesharing! I guess us young poor Canadians tend to think alike on the subject. I'm 21 BTW.

[off-topic]

Why would you say that smoking pot is anti-social? Do you know anything about it? Have you ever smoked it yourself? Personally I feel a greater affinity for nature and love of all people and all things around me when I smoke pot (plus music sounds way better ). I find it in NO WAY anti-social. Aside from this marijuana really can't be put in the same catagory as dangerous drugs like alcohol and tobacco. MJ is really more of a herb, man. My favorite herb too, and don't you forget it!
[/off-topic]

@music_man_mpc:

don't be weird, marijuana is more cancerous than tobacco. while I'm fine with people smoking it, dont say it is "just" a herb.

P2P is not necessarily bad. For example, before I used P2P I bought about 10-15 CDs a year. Now I buy about 40-50 CDs a year.

But I know too many people who don't buy any music anymore since they started using P2P. And they actually think I'm stupid because I buy CDs ("why buy them when you can download them for free?"). I do have a problem with that attitude, but I'm afraid that the majority of P2P users think that way. That's why I generally have a problem with P2P and discussions about it, and that's why I'd rather not see too many discussions about it on HA.

Personally, I'm not proud of the fact that I used P2P, but I simply used it because there is no proper legal alternative (at least not in Belgium). If I had access to e.g. a legal unlimited streaming service (with subscription) with a very extensive catalog, I wouldn't feel the need to use P2P anymore. I simply use P2P to discover new music and to properly listen to new CDs before I buy them.

Thanks for your civil support friends, and im not going to get into the marijuana debate, as I've smoked a fair amount in my past - not lately, However not having any in 8 months is no reason for me to denounce its benificial, and social nature.

Which it is of course, Its not anti social at all. And the only reason it is illegal is because your government has managed to outlaw nature, please, tell me how one feels the need to play god, if you care to express such opinions so bluntly.

I belive for some people, it could be considered an anti social drug, and for others not. Everyone is different, thus everyone is entitled to an opinion of their very own.

Like the once Bill Hicks said, Pots not bad, and the only reason its labeled as anti social, anti society, whatever - is because when you smoke it, you relize, and then ask yourself, what the hell is the point?

In any case, I feel very honored to have been able to express my opinion in a very civil manner without causing any distress.

Music man MPC. I love you canadian brother Keep the mpcs a shinin'!

Ta ta;.

SO you should allow the greedy bands to sit in their lonely kingdom without you as a listener or customer. If you download their music then it is like they are right and the only problem is thieves (the RIAA party line). If they are shunned then the only explanation is that they have to change their act.

If you like the non-greedy bands, get your downloads from bands who actually allow their fans to share.

2 places to finds such music are:

Internet music archive (web downloads)

and
bt.etree.org (bittorent )

Or go with distribution models where the albums are cheaper and the band gets a high percentage of the price, like

magnatune

Or look around and find bands with free downloads on their websites.

The part about how you will buy the CD's if/when you have nothing better to do with the money is a real copout. You will ALWAYS find some other priority for your money if you are getting free product and don't fee obligated to pay.

Eating it, however, has very very few carcinogenic effects.

I'm not sure if any studies have ever been made regarding that topic, but I'll take your word for it. Again, I'm not against drug use, but don't say smoking pot is not dangerous for your health... of course, it also depends on how you do it.

Then again, all fun things seem to be related to some kind of health hazard... alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex, sky-diving...

back to p2p now...

Or if you use a vaporizer, and just inhale the THC all the fun and no carcinogens. Although ingesting it is probably the best as marijuana is know to contain anti-oxidants which will actually reduce your risk of getting cancer. For those of you who don't want to break the law to get this anti-carcinogenic effect anti-oxidants can also be found, in abundance, in tomatos, blueberries and a wide variety sprouted seeds (eg. alfalfa sprouts, bean sprouts, broccoli sprouts, etc). However I don't have any idea how much MJ has in comparison to these, better known, sources of anti-oxidants.

@ stephanV: If you could direct me to a scientific study that shows that marijuana is more cancerous than tobacco I would very much like to see it. When I was a child, in elementary school they told me that smoking 1 joint was like smoking 100 cigarettes, this scared the crap out of me. I thought that anyone who smoked even a couple of these things must be doing immense and permanent lung damage. However I found that when this was brought up next in junior high school the figure had drop enormously from 1 joint = 100 cigarettes to 1 joint = 25 cigarettes. After that I took everything they said in health class with a grain of salt, but thought that I probably would never hear another figure, that would be absurd, right? Well as it turns out in grade 11, in the last stupid course that I had to listen to propaganda regarding drugs they told us that 1 joint was like somking 5 or 6 cigarettes ! I couldn't believe it. From then on I have figured that marijuana and tobacco are probably about equal as bad for you, if not then marijuana would probably be less dangerous, after all all the stuff they told me about it in school were certainly lies. However it is possible that marijuana is worse then cigarettes amount for amount, but the average pot head smokes about 1 gram of MJ a day whilst the average smoker seems to smoke many 1 gram cigarettes in a day, in fact here in Canada it isn't uncommon for many smokers to smoke an entire pack (packs in Canada consist of 25 one gram cigarettes) every single day. Personally I only smoke about 1/2 a gram (of marijuana) per day and many people who smoke pot still consider this to be a sizable amount. Thus, unless tobacco is ~1/20th (conservative estimate I would say) as cancerous as marijuana is it is probably a more dangerous habit to start, and that isn't even considering the fact that nicotine is known to be highly addictive. I could go on and on here but some people may find this conversation a bit tiresome.

Well if he is buying more CDs now then he was before P2P and if he would purchase less CDs if he was denied access to P2P, this is certainly the case for me, then I think your argument is moot. I could never keep up with the amount of material I am downloading, but so what? So long as I am buying more CDs then I would be otherwise my downloading is not hurting anyone.

edit: BTW I really do appreciate your stance on the matter DonP, very uncompromising.

I think I agree with DonP to an extent. Why is that people have to rely so much on commercial artists just to listen to new music? I too believe that RIAA makes more money then I will ever see in my lifetime and they are greedy, but in the context of a lot of independent artists I would be willing to spend the money on their CD to support to them if I liked their music, they didn't mind people sharing their stuff, and they were going to get certain percentage of profit back fairly. I think HA TOS on issues is right one too. These forums are to converse about the technology itself. It also helps HA to avoid any legal battles. If you interested in copyrighted music go elsewhere on the web it's not to hard to find places were you can share that back and forth. It's hypocritical in some aspects too, if people have to moan and bitch about RIAA then question I have to ask myself is do these people really care about music? or are they more concerned about "casual listening"? People who pirate stuff back and forth it's clearly not the "case". Once again it comes back into full circle with people having to rely on the industry ALL THE TIME to satisify their needs. In fact Kavhi archive is one of my favorites on web for independent electronic music.

Yes I agree with all these aspects

And I mostly listen to independantly released metal music of all kinds... as well as artists like E-Head (Electronica).

So the RIAA doesnt affect me.

If they ever do, it would be due to the fact I have some crappy 192kb copy of an album I don't own and probably don't listen to often, or at all.

And then I'd just laugh at them as I delete it.

And then redownload it.

Or something.


It's all good, And I really appreciate HA.org's stance on all of this.

Good job all.
Technology/Spirituality = Certain amazingness, such as that seen here on HA.org.

As far as cancer causing properties of marijuana you might want to take a look at this study:
Wu, T. C.; Tashkin, D. P.; Djahed, B.; and Rose, J. E. Pulmonary hazards of smoking marijuana as compared with tobacco. New England Journal of Medicine, 318: 347-351, 1988.
I have no problem with people smoking marijuana who have cancer or AIDS and really need to take it to feel better. Anyway, I think there are some other risks associated with marijuana as far as changes in brain chemistry too. Anyway, if you want to smoke that stuff that is your business. I would just say, make sure that you know the scientific facts before you take any drugs ie from a doctor or someone else knowledgable. I realize that sounds sort of silly but I think people would do less of these sorts of things if they knew more of the science in behind it. In the past 3 or so years that I have been learning about these sorts of things in school I have really changed my diet and in some ways my lifestyle now that I know what some of these things are going to do to me.

It looks to me like that abstract is comparing tobacco and marijuana on something pretty close to a 1:1 ratio (900-1200 mg cigarette to 741-985 mg joint), which, as pointed out, isn't a particularly valuable comparison. It's a bit like comparing the health hazards presented by whisky and coke per 12oz serving.

And on the other topic: I agree that HA is not a good place for discussing P2P file-sharing, which, while peripherally related to the topics discusses here, would present a great danger of side-tracking the discussions of audio quality and technical aspects of digital audio. P2P doesn't really bring anything to that discussion except when talking about the larger social consequence of P2P on people's listening habits and technological affinities (both of which see some discussion here). Beyond that, P2P is simply a very interesting mechanism for transporting large amounts of digital data. It doesn't really have any direct connection with music, audio formats, or anything else that this forum is "about"--which already covers a broad enough set of topics. That said, I suspect a good number of people here listen to music illegally, but don't necessarily see the value of talking about it in public, or don't see this as the right place to do it. And then there are a number of people here that clearly frown upon such activities, and the two sides have so much else in common and so much to talk about that there's little value in creating any sort of divisiveness with a topic that isn't really related to the forum.

theoretically, maybe..
but practically actually its been quite a big part I think.

-

P2P as an abstract concept is fine, even good I'd say.

P2P in practice is often heavily associated with illegal activities.

The former case presents no problems for discussion on HA. P2P has many nice legal uses -- systems like BitTorrent can be great for distributing large files quickly when the person/website/organization needing to do the distribution simply doesn't have the bandwidth to use any other means. It's also great for independent artists to expose their content to the world, or for various fan groups to share homebrew content, etc., etc.

The latter case, however, is what most people seem more interested in talking about. Most attempted (they are usually closed/deleted quite rapidly) discussions that have involved P2P on HA have focused on someone joining the forum and then posting about or asking about using P2P to share copyrighted material of some sort -- usually music.

Because of that general trend, most discussion of P2P is frowned upon -- not because P2P is bad, but because most people want to use it for illegal purposes.

Note that this isn't a commentary on the state of what should or should not be legal -- that's not the point. HA is simply not the place to discuss things like this. It jeopardizes the safety of this community, and simply isn't worth it.

Having said that, if someone where to create a post about something relating to P2P that was 1) Relevant to the forum discussions, 2) Useful, 3) Legal, well then I don't think there would be any problem with such a discussion as long as people could keep it clean and within the rules.

I'm not sure if i understand you right, Dibrom, so i'll ask directly:

Do you think that discussions about "promoting" filesharing, or how to use it, etc.... are problematic from a legal POV..... but that discussions about filesharing from a political, technical and philosophical POV are okay?

If yes, then i've got no problem with that. It would mean business as usual..... people will be free to discuss the concept and effects of filesharing. There are more than enough ways to legally touch or even directly discuss this topic without getting into legal-troubles.


To the threadstarter: If you follow the various discussions a bit more closely, you will notice that overally the community is very openly minded towards filesharing. However, the board rules and guidelines are a different matter, and thats perfectly understandable.... The forum has to protect itself from legal problems... thats not a matter of ideology or opinion.... to put it blunty: if ha.org gets shutdown, then that will serve no one except the music-industry.

Basically, yes.

The discussions about promotion or usage are not even in themselves the problem so much as it is the aspect most people who have tried that here have wanted to promote or use P2P for.

Why is P2P discussion frowned upon but DVD-A ripping is not?

Sorry to go back off topic, but I find this actually more interesting than discussing whether we should discuss P2P or not And this is the off topic forum after all. Here's a quote from the abstract:


It is such a simple observation but it so true. I stopped smoking Marijuana about 11 years ago, and this made me realise that smoking a joint must have been the equivalent of smoking at least 4 or 5 cigarettes; simply because of how much of the smoke is inhaled and kept inside the lungs for a very long time.

I do believe prohibition will happen when all these companies behind the DVD-A scene start prosecuting people for doing it. (Ripping). AFAIK, its not still seens as an illegal activity because I do have the right as a consumer to transfer or copy my media for my convenience. (Will we be prosecuted for this? I dont no.)

The silence to my reply is deafening.

I guess I can articulate what I think the policy is as "don't say anything that would either get us in trouble or is associated with getting in trouble". DVD-A ripping is just completely off the radar right now so I guess it's not an issue.

That said I enjoy ripping just as much as the next guy, and I'd hate for anything to happen to the thread.

Well, as far as just the abstract is concerned, it looks like a single marijuana 'cigarette' is equivalent to 5 tobacco cigarettes as far as blood carboxyhemoglobin level is concerned, 3 tobacco cigarettes as far as inhaled tar levels go, and 1.333 tobacco cigarettes as far as tar retention in the respiratory tract is concerned. If you consider the lifestyle of a "serious" tobacco smoker (does 20-50 cigarettes a day sound about right? I'd hardly consider someone a chain smoker that smoked under a pack a day, and I've known people that do 2-3 packs a day) to the life of a "serious" mj smoker (does .5-3 marijuana "cigarettes" sound about right? I'd consider someone pretty serious about marijuana if they smoked half a joint a day, and I've never known anyone to smoke more than 2-3 a day), I'd say that marijuana is pretty obviously the less damaging of the two drugs, even if it is more potent on a per-cigarette basis. What strikes me as odd about that abstract is that they are measuring the drug on a per-cigarette basis (i.e., not taking into account smoking habits, as far as regularity is concerned), but they take into account the "dynamics" of the smoking (i.e, how the cigarettes are smoked differently). I wonder if they mention this in the full article.

I agree with your opinion on P2P. I find it helps people discover music.

Example:

Last year when Motley Crue reunited to do a tour I realised I had heard about them from my parents. I didnt think they were very good but I hadnt heard any of their music so I wouldent know... So I P2Ped three of their songs (Shout at the devil, Home Sweet home, Public Enemy #1) and realised they were great. I preordered the tickets months ahead and in the end I spent 170$ on tickets. I wouldent have considered it if I hadnt heard their music, and I wasnt about to buy a CD just to see if a band is good.

P2P probably takes money away from CD sales but im sure it adds to concert sales, and anyway - The artists make more money from one concert ticket then one CD sale.

I've seen people who smoked 8 grams a day, tops. Considering a cigarette weighs approximately one gram, it equivalates to the toxicity level of 40 cigarettes (again, tops), which is way less than what insanely heavy smokers smoke. However, THC has chemistry-altering effects on your brain, causes chemical imbalance, and can trigger mental illnesses, so those people have probably suffered significant corporal damage...

Re smoking marijuana in particuar and drugs in general: did you ever wonder why it is called "dope"?