[Bodah]

SprCForr wrote:

If the creators aren't getting the cut they think they deserve from whoever they designated to collect on their behalf, then take it up with the parasites in the middle, don't go digging deeper into my pocket.

Artists think the same thing when they hear of the IIRC increasing taxes

"don't go digging deeper into my pocket."


Shit rolls down hill... .. . . ... . .

[SprCForr]

Artists should not be paid from my efforts in preserving family memories. Since they are, I'll let my kid download a few songs in exchange and then we're square.

OTOH, if they stop collecting money they're not entitled to, I'll get my kid to stop downloading.

[ASLplease]

westmanguy wrote:

Hey everyone! I'm competing in this Gr. 12 ethics essay to win a $1,000. The question is: Is it OK to download music, movies, and games without paying?

My opinion is that it is morally okay to do, so.

I have some preliminary ideas outlined, but I'm wondering if anyone can throw me some good points on why it is okay to do so.

one peice of advice that I can think of is "divide and conquer"

ie not all cases of downloading fit into 1 big category.

for example, what if the only music that I download is music that I used to listen to as a teen? every copy that I am downloading is a copy of a song where the copyright was previously sold to me. However, unfortunately the audio cassette was an inferior product and it didn't last. So am I to lose my right to a copy because it was on an inferior medium?

This brings to question about what is protected by a copyright? if it is just the audio cassette, then I would say that an electronic version of the same song violates no law because it is not on an audio cassette. Or on the other hand, if it is the music that is copy protected, then why are we expected to loses the rights to the song just because the audio cassette degrades over time?

IMO, I paid thousands of dollars for my favorite music oer the years, if I down load the same songs from the internet, it is because the music companies failed to provide me with a suitable backup solution, and they failed to provide me with lasting documentation that shows that I own and deserve to own the right listiening rights to a particular son g.

[ASLplease]

Another point that you need to make right near the beginning of your essay.....legal does not equal moral.

You need to make this point early so your various arguements aren't weakened by the doubt that the legal or illegal status of something creates on an issue.

[Donny_Brasco]

westmanguy wrote:

Hey everyone! I'm competing in this Gr. 12 ethics essay to win a $1,000. The question is: Is it OK to download music, movies, and games without paying?

My opinion is that it is morally okay to do, so.

I have some preliminary ideas outlined, but I'm wondering if anyone can throw me some good points on why it is okay to do so.

Is it OK to download music, movies, and games without paying?
Is it OK to do anything that we do in life?
Let’s discuss what “OK” means? Does it mean that god passes a moral judgement on you every time you do an activity? If you masturbate, indulge in excessive amounts of food or fatten your bank account without donating to charity, are all of those things “OK” to whichever god you choose to follow?
If your definition of “OK” is a true or false, yes or know, black or white answer than what you are asking should be simple. Does your belief system (religion) allow you to view downloading of music, videos and games or not?
Take a look at your religion. Simple day to day values put into text and verse in order to create order in your life and order in the world. Without, for example, the Christian Commandments, there would be very limited structure in the modern Western World. You could steal what you wanted, sleep with your neighbour’s and brother’s wife, kill people who you don’t agree with and piss off your mother and father without consequence.
How structured is that? In order to create some sort of sense of the chaos that humanity and their ability to choose brought to this earth, religion was brought in as a form of control, a set of rules that transcends humanness and creates a boundary for most things. Property was invented. Meaning that you and I can claim certain objects as our own and society recognizes that these objects are ours. The shoes and socks on my feet are mine, and the commandments which are now set into the laws of our society frown upon someone walking up to me and taking those shoes without compensating me.
Different religions have more or less the same standards. Right or wrong these standards were put in place to control human behaviour. Without these standards there would be chaos.
We as humans have the ability to choose and decide what is right and wrong. Our upbringing in society is attached to the moral standards that religions have dictated are necessary for us to make morally proper decisions. If one looks at animals, deer, foxes, whales, sharks, kangaroos, eagles...whatever, their lives are not governed by moral standards. Yet you will notice that it is rare for an animal to deviate for a normal pattern of behaviour. You rarely see beavers offing other beavers in order to gain control of their beaver home and possessions. You rarely see an antelope rape and murder another antelope, you don’t see one ant turn against the colony and start blasting away other ants with a Colt 45.
So why is it that we as humans are given this wonderful ability to choose to be morally correct, yet animals, who have not got that choice, usually do what is natural and morally correct for their species?
Morally correct for animals means doing what is necessary to survive and to pass along their kind in this world. Eat, drink, reproduce and carry on. That is what is morally correct. A starving animal may steal another starving animal’s dinner in order to survive. A mother may kill or neglect one of her offspring in order that the rest survive. Two animals may fight over territory or a mate in order to pass along their genes to the next generation. In the animal world morality is based on survival.
So if religion is invented to ensure survival of us humans, so that we can transcend chaos and all live together and flourish, and morality comes from that same animal instinct that we need to all pass along out genes, we all need to eat, we all need to reproduce, then how does our downloading of music, videos and games effect those basic needs?
Are we preventing another human being from eating? Are we going against our basic human instincts for survival, our collective instincts to band together and protect each other from other animals or the wind and rain?

I got to go play hockey, let me think about this one....

[Brenda]

Wow Donny!

[Choban]

1. First I'd like to point out that is companies like Sony ect (who produce both movies games and music) that created and first marketed DVD burners.
2. I'll also say that these so called artists that are supposidly getting ripped off can't be feeling it too badly, they still drive nice cars, live in mansions and wear designer clothing.
3. Average theater seat is about 12-15 bucks for an adult, average concert prices are between 40-200 bucks. If I like an artist I'll see them live, I refuse to go to a Theater but if I download a good movie I'll buy it on DVD eventually.
4. We used to in Canada (may still i don't know) pay an extra tax on blank disks just for this reason.
5. They want to hold people accountable for downloading music but they never go after the people that leak music or movies onto it before the actuall release date, and they do chase down the sites such as Pirates Bay, but what they fail to account for is the 100's of people seeding the files, the guys behind the website just provided the area to do the activity in, the ones seeding the files are the ones responsable for these sites running succesfully.
6. Untill they actually make the technology (which the industry provided) illegal then I will continue to download music and movies (though I'll have to dump my i-pod when I cross the boarder.

[Choban]

Donny, the difference between humans and animals is rational consience thought, we posses the ability to make decisions with our minds, animals rely on instinct.
If your arguing about animals being better than humans, I'll agree BUT they can, will, and do attack each other. 2 deer will fight during mating season, as will bison, big horn sheep and most predators as well.
Tigers will fight to the death for territory. Wolves have been known to kill slower or genetically deficient members of their packs.
So sorry I don't really buy into it, the only difference is that the animals have instinctual reasons while sometims people are just plain nuts!

[Bacardi4206]

Choban wrote:

Donny, the difference between humans and animals is rational consience thought, we posses the ability to make decisions with our minds, animals rely on instinct.
If your arguing about animals being better than humans, I'll agree BUT they can, will, and do attack each other. 2 deer will fight during mating season, as will bison, big horn sheep and most predators as well.
Tigers will fight to the death for territory. Wolves have been known to kill slower or genetically deficient members of their packs.
So sorry I don't really buy into it, the only difference is that the animals have instinctual reasons while sometims people are just plain nuts!

That's rather insulting to our species actually because everything you described generally humans are known to do. Except in larger percent. Not to mention as you stated, humans having the ability of rational consience thought. Yet still choose to act as animals do.

[Scape]

I see sharing songs online to the old campfire analogy. The songs were only as good as the people who performed them. When you went home you had the good memories of good times but it didn't cost you anything only what you wanted to share freely.

The people who were good perhaps when on and invested into production. The record companies were merely an extension of that production but they overreached. That has come back to haunt them as there is embedded resentment. However, the future is not going to be a solid state recording but rather cloud computing where instead of sharing a song people are subscribing to a service like netflicks over their PS3/Apple/Xbox/PC or DVR that will live stream to them for a monthly fee. People will no long invest in hordes of movies and DVD's only to throw them away when the next player comes out.

Prevalent downloading has only accelerated this evolving medium and this will be the new way entertainers will be paid for there professional services by directed marketing. They will be paid a stipend for being a part of these new venues much like they get paid now for doing gigs at a bar except on a much grander scale. Live, direct and on demand.

[Mr_Canada]

When I like a band (such as Billy Talent, for instance), I will pay for their CDs and go to their concerts. Because the memories are better then the bits and bytes that are their .mp3 songs.

The main point of a band should not be profit. If they bitch about kids sharing tunes, then I stop caring about their music. Chances are if they care that damn much about every cent being sucked out of their fans, they have some pretty soulless and voiceless music.

As far as movies go... Well, I dunno. *downloads Capitalism: A Love Story*

[Lemmy]

Zipperfish wrote:

Justify any way you want to, buddy, but that there is the biggest pile of baloney I've seen in some time.

Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but I see music downloading as taking out the middleman in the distribution process. I have more money now to be able to go to more concerts, so the actual artist gets more of my money, and the corporations get less. I see this as a fundamental change in the system that pays the artist instead of their handlers and that's a good thing. I'm not spending less on music than when I used to buy a CD a week, but the artist is getting a lot bigger share of the pie.

[Brenda]

They have "handlers" for a reason. They have to pay them anyway, whether you buy their music or not. Without those "handlers", you don't have concerts to go to.

[Choban]

Bacardi4206 wrote:

Choban wrote:

Donny, the difference between humans and animals is rational consience thought, we posses the ability to make decisions with our minds, animals rely on instinct.
If your arguing about animals being better than humans, I'll agree BUT they can, will, and do attack each other. 2 deer will fight during mating season, as will bison, big horn sheep and most predators as well.
Tigers will fight to the death for territory. Wolves have been known to kill slower or genetically deficient members of their packs.
So sorry I don't really buy into it, the only difference is that the animals have instinctual reasons while sometims people are just plain nuts!

That's rather insulting to our species actually because everything you described generally humans are known to do. Except in larger percent. Not to mention as you stated, humans having the ability of rational consience thought. Yet still choose to act as animals do.

That was just me pointing out to Donny that animals aren't any better than humans when it comes right down to it (despite what most people think). Sorry for the cynasism, I don't think I'm far off the mark though.
The only real difference is that the animals don't have a concience about the situation, we do and should act better because of it. But we're off topic.

[martin14]

westmanguy wrote:

Hey everyone! I'm competing in this Gr. 12 ethics essay to win a $1,000. The question is: Is it OK to download music, movies, and games without paying?

My opinion is that it is morally okay to do, so.

I have some preliminary ideas outlined, but I'm wondering if anyone can throw me some good points on why it is okay to do so.

Morality as a relative idea.


I don't think you got a lot of help from the previous posts.
p.s. you won't from me, either.. it's illegal and immoral.

I would actually suggest you try to find a Russian or Chinese forum that runs
in English; they may be able to justify it better.