It's better to steal a CD or kill someone than download illegally. - Page 4

..hmm there's a REALLY REALLY simple solution to all this.. and I do it quite often

I go to concerts

There's the moral highground, and that solves all of the issues you guys have (currently). And before you guys get into the who "oh I want to enjoy music when I want to".. well I dont' recall those arguments anywhere prior to this post. Just the complaints about the RIAA, big Obsolete Labels, Artists getting screwed, customers getting screwed, and freeloaders getting nabbed.

I think the real issue is that when music became digital, the big companies could not and would not redefine the ownership of music. Look at the writer strike a few years ago. The issue was that TV shows/movies etc... were deemed different products when you watch it on tv or movies versus when you watched them online. The writers would get royalty checks on dvd sales and tv airings, but not when the video was shown online (legitimitely through something like Hulu).

The problem is that these companies are redefining what you are buying when you buy a cd, download a song, or an album. And they are doing it in the midst of outdated laws that are having a difficult time coping up with the millenium age. So when they redefine what it means to buy a cd from "buying a media disk that contains several media files to be used by the consumer" to "buying a media disk that contains several media files that can only be used by the consumer in a way the RIAA sees is fit (notice this is problematic because they keep on changing it)," we can't help but flip off big record companies. Now if any of you guys are really making that "oh Im supporting the artist argument..." only do it if you really go out to listen to their music. As far as I'm concerned I'm still waiting for another round of Colin Hay concerts it sucks that I can only catch one concert a year because he tours worldwide all the time... and releases a cd once a decade... damnnn you man at work

the industry is not even sure, itself, what 'license' it wants to use.

I've heard the tv commercials say 'own it on dvd, today!'.

own it? really? they don't *really* mean that. they are actually lying. they don't want us to own any software, they want the pay over and over again model.

I do agree with the concert idea. its a new fresh performance and there's no real way to 'bootleg' a concert. if you've ever been to one, you know what I'm saying you can copy the music performed there but that's not why people go. its bootleg-proof.

I like your line of reasoning here. After all, I only spent about 15 grand on audio gear, surely I must be too cheap to buy music!

Who knows maybe the music companies will include a special kit with every concert aka "Scents of the concert series" I can imagine some sweat, beer, a bit of smoke...

man if that ever happens, I wanna buy the grateful dead summer tour

It only looks like the RIAA promotes a select few artists because their primary promotion method is through the radically darwinistic FM radio market. For bands looking to break into the mainstream, the dreaded FM power rotation is a rather cruel mistress... In any case, their method of starting in smaller markets then filtering the winners from those markets up to the national level puts most of the competition out of the public's view.

Sure the RIAA pushes the winners of this competition more than the losers, but hey, they're a business, not a charity. In any case, it's generally agreed upon in the music industry that the promotional package that almost every major record artist gets is superior in terms of stardom potential. While many record artists would do better under more low key/long term promotional methods, stardom is what the vast majority of them are looking for and who am I to argue with another adult's decision?

And yeah, there's far more to music than commercially viable music. But the whole issue of copyright infringement enforcement only applies to major record label music, so that's a bit outside of the scope of this discussion.

Hardly a solution to the moral issue if you're taking a stand against the RIAA. The big concert promoters, LiveNation and TicketMaster (combined music ticket marketshare: ~80%), aren't much better than the major record labels when it comes to business practices and are tightly entwined with the RIAA. Oh yeah, and they're about to merge...

heard somewhere in a parking lot:

"kind veggie downloads. get your kind, here."

Regarding the promotional aspect of the RIAA, they only really push those acts that sell well. All other acts are put on the back-burner. Obviously this is to be expected, as it is a business, and the goal is to make a profit. Nobody wants to push an act that will sell poorly, because of a niche sound or lackluster stage presence.

Having said this, the great thing about downloading and online promotion is that the playing field is leveled considerably in the sense that those without extreme marketability have a chance at the limelight. Sure they will not be huge, but word of mouth and free exposure gives them a much better shot at making a living.


Did you actually read what you wrote and who you wrote it to? I have spent more on CDs than I have on hardware. Go ahead, take a look at my signature, and tell me I am cheap...

Personally, I think that if anyone here really values "ethics," "morals," or any of those other words people use to define correct actions, then they shouldn't worry too much about music downloading. I'm sure that everyone here thinks killing a person is worse than stealing music. So, if saving people's lives is a higher priority, then why don't you get off Head-Fi for a second and donate some money to charities that serve the most sick and impovershed people in the world? I mean buy some ARVs or medical equipment, or even just food for people. It's a fact that millions of people die every year from treatable and preventable diseases. People will die today that you could have saved with your money. But you didn't. So it seems silly to me if you think killing people is worse than stealing music, but you spend more effort trying to find legal ways to buy music than trying to save a person's life. Yeah, I'm aware that you can't save all the millions of people dying today, but if you just save one isn't that worth it? So I think if you really care about ethics you will worry about music theft later and more important things now.

right, we're morally bankrupt because we hang out on head-fi and buy CDs.














wait...

Are you saying that we should illegally download music so we can donate our music budgets to charity?

I don't follow that line of reasoning.

Of course you should give something back and of course you should help the less fortunate. However, that's an awfully twisted - logically and morally - argument to make.

I'm not even sure where to begin, but buying or acquiring a legal righ to own music is moral and ethical. So is giving to charity and performing charitable acts. Both of which I do. Not to mention the considerable amount of taxes I pay. Hell, my taxes far exceed my music budget, and a significant portion of that goes to social services. I'm OK with that. I also donate quite a bit of used stuff to the Salvation Army and donate cash when I can.

Just because I also choose to purchase music doesn't mean what you imply.

[QUOTE=Uncle Erik;6000144]Are you saying that we should illegally download music so we can donate our music budgets to charity?

I don't follow that line of reasoning.

QUOTE]

I'm not making the argument that we should steal music to save money for other purposes. Stealing is still wrong. The argument that most people who think of themselves as moral or ethical people are hypocrites. They are the kind of people who worry for hours and hours about downloading a song or buying only locally grown food but never see the really important problems in the world. What I'm saying is that most people's moral priorities don't match up with their actions. This may be a controversial stance to take, but I think most people who imagine themselves to be moral or ethical are delusional. They only follow their "morals" when it is pleasurable to do so (i.e. getting smug satisfaction from buying a CD instead of stealing it) or painful not to do so (saving a person when they are drowning right in front of you). I think people change their personal moral codes all the time to suit their needs. 99% of people would not endure even a minor inconvenience to follow a rule in their chosen moral code. Instead, they just change it or rationalize any deviations. People only imagine themselves as ethical because they would feel pain (guit) if they admitted they didn't care because of years of social conditioning that ethics are important.

Let me use an example. Uncle Erik thinks it is wrong to steal, so he doesn't. But let's imagine an alternate universe where he is faced with a choice: either steal music, or he can't listen to it at all. If he wants music, he must steal it. But stealing would be breaking his personal ethics. What will he do? Change the ethics that he previously thought of as the one true way to live. Maybe he will choose a life without music instead, but I highly doubt it. So it's easy to see how personal ethics exist only for people's own self-satisfaction. Most of you will probably say that this situation is impossible in real life, so it's useless to discuss. Well, that is just another excuse instead of admitting that you would steal if you wanted to badly enough. I think hypothetical solutions like this are extremely useful when examining ethics. A statement like "stealing is bad, and I am not a bad person, so I will not steal" is easily tested this way. If stealing really is wrong, then every one of you that believes stealing is always wrong should answer that you would choose the life without music. Otherwise you should just say "stealing is always wrong except when I do it!"
(by the way, these hypothetical, unbelievable scenarios that we can use to test ethics actually do come up in real life. if you read enough about world war II you will see many "unreal" dilemas or "impossible" decisions that people had to make.)

The way I see it is that a long time ago, humans came up with ethical rules because they help us survive as a species. Life is a lot better for all of us if we don't kill, don't steal, etc. And these ethical systems/codes are so extremely important to our success as a species that pretty much every culture in the world follows broadly similar rules of conduct. So I don't think ethics is related to spirituality or part of a human soul. It's just a useful tool that helps individuals and the whole species. That is why we condition our children to believe so much in these rules that by the time they are adults they believe the rules come from some special mystical soul place inside of them and that somehow they always knew it was just WRONG on a cosmic scale to steal music. But this is where the hypocracy problem comes in. People don't follow their own ethical systems. They think it's important to have ethics, and they have a list of ethics in their head, but they only follow that system when it is pleasureable to do so and painful not to do so. They bend the rules and rationalize any deviations because it's too hard to admit that you dont follow a system of ethics that everyone around you has told you is the most important thing ever. It's so painful to think of oneself as unethical that almost nobody can do it.

Disclaimer: this is not a personal attack on anyone in this thread; I don't know anything about you or your lives
Disclaimer 2: I'm not pretending I'm holier than thou. I know I'm a bad person.

Music is not a high enough priority for me to justify spending the money required to have my library, and torrenting is so much more convenient then any current distribution models. It is so hard for me to see digital piracy of music as stealing because there are no physical copies involved, and piracy has increased my legal consumption of music. I buy more cds, concert tickets, clothing, and music related accessories.