320 replies to this topic

[yoshimitz707]

No because it's completely ridiculous how much money they make and we barely affect them. I remember a south park episode where this kid of a singer had to wait an extra month for his private island because we downloaded music.

[Endymion_Mallorn]

Should downloading music be illegal? Honestly, I shouldn't be answering this because the way I feel is hypocritical. I do feel that downloading music the way we do it now, where no one gets anything in return for the music, is wholly illegal and even slightly immoral. I console myself to my opinions by stating it thus: I consider what I do to be essentially borrowing the item from a library. For instance, I recently borrowed a copy of "The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions with Seu Jorge" from a library. I have ripped that music onto my PC, and thusly I have the data forever. Yet I have harmed no one, as the library purchased the music and I would have had the ability to borrow it anyway. And, had I not returned the item, while the fees would be stiff if I ever wanted to use the library again, I would have had it anyway. Instead, I have the music and returned it sooner than the due date, thus allowing for higher circulation and more people enjoying the data.And it's the same with my downloading. I download from either LimeWire or BitTorrent, both of which are P2P services. When I finish downloading something on BitTorrent, I've been taught to seed the file. On LimeWire, I download to my shared folder directly. I don't share partial files, but that's a preference. One person pays for the item, the rest of us borrow it from him by making our own copy and giving us a community-based situation. But I do feel that somewhere along the line, some organization, like a library, should give some money to those who are producing media.But then again, my idea provides for a worldwide system wherein only one copy of an item would be sold. There would be no gold records, no top sales lists, nothing of the sort. And that would mean that anyone who wanted to make music would have to produce both quality and quantity. Movies would be the same way. Essentially, we would be shifting the way we understand media, and the world would change its order.