46Driver said:
I'm going to disagree with Bart. File sharing is no different than copying music from the radio,
Yeah, you're right, it's copyright infringement and it's a crime
burning a CD from a friend,
Right again, it's copyright infringement and it's a crime
taping a TV show with a VCR
you're on a roll, that too is copyright infringement and it's a crime.
or going to a library and reading a book you didn't buy.
Bzzzzzt, sorry, your winning streak is over. borrowing from a library isn't copyright infringement, and it's absolutely nothing like stealing CD's. When you take the book back to the library, there's still only one copy of the book. If you want to own the book to have on your shelves, you still have to buy your own copy. If you photocopy the entire book then it becomes a crime, just like the first 3. A library is no different than borrowing your friends CD to listen to it. Nothing wrong with it at all. As soon as you copy it becomes a crime.
The first three acts you mentioned are just as much theft as downloading and copying music. The fact that no-one is actively pursuing people who do these things doesn't make them legal, it's just that they are much harder to enforce, and they are not as prevalent and don't cost the companies as much money. The quality of recorded broadcast material will always be poorer quality and seriously, and there's not much of a market for recordings of old seinfeld episodes anyway...so this stuff is ignored. If you will recall when VCR's first started becoming popular (although based on the maturity of your ethics I'm going to guess that you've lived in a world where VCR's have always existed) the television production companies made a lot of noise about copyright infringement. Ultimately they stopped because their revenue comes from advertisers and the relatively small number of people who taped shows and watched then later didn't have a measurable effect on their revenues.
The arguments are always the same, stealing music is OK because:
1) It’s really easy to do
2) Everyone’s doing it.
3) They are big greedy companies.
And in this particular case;
It’s ok because she’s a 12 year old Girl. (huh ??)
OK folks, suppose that some new technological advance made it really easy for 12 year-old girls to shoplift gum, or VCR’s, or training bras from some large chain store (wal-mart has been mentioned, so we’ll use that) And suppose that this technological advance made it difficult to catch training bra thieves, and a third of the 12 year-old girls in the US started stealing training bras from Wal-Mart. That’s a lot of training bras. That theft is going to cost Wal-mart a lot of money. Now ask yourself, should wal-mart just grin and let their training bras be stolen, because;
1) it’s really easy to do, so it’s OK and
2) a lot of people are doing it, so it’s OK, and
3) Wal-Mart is a big company, so it’s OK, and
4) besides, they’re only 12 year-old girls, so it’s OK?
Folks there is no difference between stealing training bras and songs. It’s theft, it costs the companies money, and it’s against the law. It is no different that if you walked into the music store and stuck the CD in your pocket and walked out I suspect that most of you who think stealing music is OK do a whole bunch of it yourselves. You really like being able to rip off whatever music your greedy little hearts desire, but you don’t want to think of yourselves as thieves, so you develop all these bizarre, convoluted rationalizations to convince yourselves that your crimes are really OK and not crimes at all.
It’s not OK, it’s theft, it’s clearly and unambiguously against the law, and the people you are stealing from are taking legal steps to stop you when and where they are able.
As for Dep676;
"I suppose the two that posted here have never taped a program on TV? That's illegal too just look at the credits and it tells you that. As far speeding I suppose you never speed in your car? I will say that you are a liar."
Yeah, like most people, I break the speed limit occasionally. (less and less as I've grown older, it's called maturity) When I've been caught, I didn't try to convince myself that somehow what I was doing was OK. I exceeded the speed limit, I got caught, I have no-one to blame but myself. As for taping TV shows, I own neither a TV nor a VCR. Never have.
Oh, this latest one from another ethically challenged listener is priceless:
"I;m sorry but I refuse to pay more than $12.95 for a standard CD."
Hmmm, OK, I refuse to pay more than $200 for a pair of Bose noise canceling headsets, so I’m going to steal them from my local pilot shop.
Hey, if you don’t want to pay the asking price, don’t buy it, but that has got to be one of the lamest rationalizations for theft I have ever heard.
