Poll: How Do You Justify Music Piracy?

UmbrellaAssassin

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May 27, 2009
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Piracy is against the law, but even if you take your original copy and transfer to another your still counted a pirate.
Maybe if the music company wouldn't make it such a hassle and pain the ass with CD (copy- protection, overpricing, ect) the music industry wouldn't be dying right now.
 

Himmelgeher

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May 17, 2010
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Mostly by not caring. I've never felt "Yay! I'm breaking the law! I'm on such a moral high ground here guys!", but I don't feel bad about it at all. If the CD is less than a year old or from a new band that hasn't gotten started yet, then of course I'll buy it to show my support. It's also not feasible to pirate lesser known artists because people only put the popular stuff up on the internet. Something else I do is download an album to preview it, then buy it if I like it. If not, I'll delete it. I see no point in paying full price for something I'll only listen to once. But no, I don't justify it because there's no point in justifying it.
 

InsanelyZanter

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Aug 8, 2010
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The only possible justification I see is if the music is unable to be tracked down and bought.

If I want the soundtrack to a ten year old TV show, and the licence has long dried up, I can justify it. Not going feel good about it, but come on. I'll buy it if it's available. But if it's completely lost, even if I bought somewhere none of the cash would go to the creator.

But even then, hard to draw the line.

But any music readily available for purchase? Hell no. Music isn't expensive. Buy that crap.
 

mjc0961

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Nov 30, 2009
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I don't justify music piracy. I go on Amazon and order CDs. Yes, that's right, CDs. I still buy them. Deal with it.
 

ThisIsSnake

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Mar 3, 2011
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cookyy2k said:
I'd probably justify it as they should be doing it for the art not the money, I wonder how many musicians (and profesional sports players, though not really relevant here) would be still there doing what they do because they love it if they only made minimum wage.
Historically many artists would only do it for the money. Mozart, Beethoven, Da Vinci etc. They all worked for patrons. I personally wouldn't like to undergo specialist training and countless hours of practice at my craft, learning to play an instrument, sing, write or perform and then be told I should work for minimum wage otherwise I'm motivated by great and not a love of performing and music.

I understand your probably talking about the commercialised crap in the mainstream charts like Bieber and such; I find it annoying that he can sell millions of records whilst more talented, dedicated artists sell much less. Piracy doesn't really come into it though, I'm not going to buy Bieber or Miley Cyrus songs because I don't listen to them. I am going to buy songs by artists I like because in my opinion they both deserve my money and have earned it through hard work.

Although there are those cases when a song is either otherwise unobtainable or overpriced due to rarity, in that case it's understandable until it becomes available. Also this isn't really aimed at you personally, just a semi-rant.
 

ThatDaveDude1

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Feb 7, 2011
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haddaway234 said:
ThatDaveDude1 said:
Hmm...that poll seems a bit one sided...

I can already tell that this is going to be one of those respectful, unbiased discussions, where each side is given equal respect!

Sarcasm Aside:

The problem with assigning a value to a nonphysical item like music is that it has no inherent value. CDs and things of that nature have manufacturing costs, but downloads have no value in and of themselves, making it impossible to price them fairly. The issue at hand then becomes "How much is the effort of an artist worth?" Not, "How much is the product of an artist worth?"

The problem with that is that there is no uniform amount of effort that goes into the production of an album. One musician may pour their heart and soul into an album, while another might hire songwriters, hire producers, then mutter the lyrics halfassedly and finish it up with autotune. These two albums will be sold for the same price, which isn't fair to either artist.

Add to that the fact that what the artist thinks is a fair price will almost certainly differ from what the consumer deems a fair price, and we're left with a system with two competing markets:

One market (the legal one) has artificial prices, arbitrarily assigned by those who (generally speaking, not always) have money as their primary goal, a system tantamount to extortion.

Meanwhile, we've got another system (the illegal one) in which dickless little shits with false senses of entitlement take whatever the hell they want for free, a system tantamount to theft.

This is the very definition of a lose-lose situation.

When the choices are "More or less be Extorted" and "More or less Steal Shit," Piracy can be somewhat (and I stress somewhat) justified as the lesser of two evils, and honestly, if lost profit helps to once again launch the same type of paradigm shift [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes] that it did in 2001, and helps create a system in which both consumers and musicians can stop being fiercely raped (metaphorically speaking), then I suppose I'd be willing to at least turn the other cheek to music piracy.

tl;dr The current system by which we sell music is flawed, and it isn't completely inconceivable to view piracy (functioning outside of the system) as preferable to buying things legally (functioning within the system), if you agree that piracy is the "lesser of two evils."

I'd like to reitorate my position, however, that most pirates are "dickless little shits with false senses of entitlement." This is just a hypothetical justification that may be applicable, not a blanket "PIrATES r AWSOME FUK DA POLICE HERP-A-DERP!!!1!!1" generalisation.


Oh, and there's the fact that (most mainstream) Record Labels are money grubbing succubi (again, metaphorically speaking) who value nothing but profit. That may or may not possibly have a little something to do with the whole "lesser of two evils" justification that I mentioned earlier...
As to your point in the spoilers, here's all the response you need: Buy what you consider quality, don't buy what you don't consider quality. Simple as that, there are tons of ways to listen to music for free and legally like the radio, music stores, and many legal and free online sites like youtube. Nobody is forcing you to buy anything.

Record companies wouldn't be able to stay afloat if they stopped caring about the money, or do you not understand how a business works?
In reguards to the section that I've bolded: Yes, I completely and wholeheartedly agree, and I sincerely wish that more people did.

As for the rest: Yes, I understand how a business works. I also understand that there's a very big difference between not caring about money at all and not caring only about money, often to the detriment of the ones who give you the money. The way that record companies function now showcases a lack of respect for the people who, for the most part, pay their damn salaries. Obviously, I'm not asking for consumer satisfaction to be ranked as more important than profit, that would be disastrous. What I'm suggesting is that it should matter, and not just when it directly relates to profit.
 

Madman123456

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Feb 11, 2011
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I don't. I listen to old music now. Old music i bought before i got fed up, free music and classic music.

New Music was getting continuously worse for me and when this Piracy BS came up it got ridiculous.

In Germany, there is this Organization named "GEMA" which will charge you a fee for basically every medium and every device that could be used to record music.
They where founded in the days where Cassette tapes got popular, you couldn't enforce any law that prohibit People from recording music off the radiostations.

So this this Organization was found to charge Fees and distribute them amongst record labels.
This Fee and this Organization still exists. You pay more for a DVD burner then you normally would because this Fee is there, however, "pirating" is still forbidden.
Apparently, the Music industry somehow managed to bribe the product testers of "Stiftung Warentest", a product testing monopoly over here.
"Musicload.de" a service where you buy single songs for horrendous prices, 128kbit quality and DRM got a "gut", which would be a "B". When there's nothing good in the field, "Stiftung Warentest" normally wont shy away from giving bad grades across the board. If every new DVD Player they test is bad, every new DVD player will get a bad grade.



When the "you'll get arrested for Piracy" campaigns came around i finally had enough.
The Music Industry is trying really hard to screw their customers over and i have had enough.


The Music Industry is fucked beyond repair.
I will go as far to say that new music will eventually have a smaller Part in the lives of young People;
This isn't like "Rock'n'Roll" where Parents believed this Music is bad for the Kids.
Parents *know* that certain Discs could put a Rootkit protected Virus on the Computer. If it even runs.

I'd like to discourage buying Music. Well, except for People who have nothing to do with any big label.
 

drummond13

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haddaway234 said:
I think this would be a good idea. Maybe not everyone, but people who distribute pirated music, sue a bunch of them, and then that will send a good message.
Yeah, um, they TRIED that...

Apparently you're unfamiliar with the entire history of lawsuits between the music industry and pirates. I suggest you look it up. The RIAA has even publicly declared that it is going to stop suing pirates as it's just been a waste of time and hasn't impacted piracy at all. They are now looking for other methods to protect themselves.
 

Sightless Wisdom

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Jul 24, 2009
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I love music, it's the best thing about my life. If I couldn't listen to music, I would actually kill myself. I pirate music simply because I could never afford to buy even half the music I want. Now I also play music, I am in a band and we are going to release music for sale. However, we're not releasing it for a set price, it's a pay what you want deal with the option for 0$ and the incentive of an 8$ version with a lot of bonus content. The reason we're doing this is because we all love music and we'd much rather have people hear our music for free than never hear it because of lack of money. I think any musician who really appreciates music would tell you they really just want their fans to hear what they're doing. There are exceptions, but most of those fall into the category of musicians who really don't need the money that they're "losing" to piracy.
 

Death God

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Stealing is always wrong but I have always thought about it the way Notch once said about his own game that the more people pirate it, the more publicity they get. If you have one guy pirate a song, he tells his friends and they tell their friends, and so on. The more friends that hear about it the more hype it gets and the more people will legitimately buy it themselves. I mean seriously, who is going to sue if a couple hundred people pirate their music to enjoy?

A little off topic but it seemed to fit here:
 

Warachia

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Aug 11, 2009
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Valagetti said:
If you can't get it 'legally', then its "alright" to pirate it.
I'd say this, but it's a bit of a grey area for me, depending on why you can't legally get it in the first place, if you can't buy it physically or digitally (a HUGE if), then I'd say go for it.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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haddaway234 said:
So I read that article on anonymous and Gene Simmons, and apparently they (Anonymous isn't really a group, just a bunch of unrelated guys who think its cool to go under the same name) are mad at Gene Simmons for wanting to sue everyone who pirates music, but honestly, I think this would be a good idea. Maybe not everyone, but people who distribute pirated music, sue a bunch of them, and then that will send a good message.

I understand that many musicians are rich and don't 'need' all the money they get but what about newer artists who are just starting out? How about the many people involved in the music making process, there are many people who need to be paid and a lot of people in the music industry have lost their jobs because of piracy.

Also, from the point of view of some guy on a computer, I'm sure its easy to say "I wouldn't care" but if you were really a musician, you would care that people are taking your music which many artists consider a part of them that they spent a LOT of time on, and then people just steal it.

So I wanted to know, with my reasoning in mind, how is piracy of music (We are just talking music) justified and made okay? Do you feel 'entitled' to somebody else's work?

NOTE: I'm not sure how to delete a poll so I just changed it to have no real options because the only thing a poll did was have people answer with no reasoning whatsoever.

Well, a lot of this comes down to how you want to define piracy. In a lot of cases the people complaining about piracy are being ridiculous. The guys at the forefront of the crusade being old time rockers who came up as technology was developing, didn't have the safeguards that were in place due to nobody who saw where things were going, and/or were irresponsible with their money and decided to drink, snort, inject, or party it all away and wound up being famous without any real proceeds.

A good example would be how long-time rock bands used to do a lot of open performances, and/or had no objections to people making recordings during their concerts, heck a lot of them thought it was pretty cool, and even encouraged it since any exposure was more exposure. The whole recording industry took a while to evolve to it's current form. Looking back at bands like "The Rolling Stones" and even guys like "Ozzy Osbourne" or "Michael Jackson" there were plenty of oppertunities for people to legitimatly record their work, and never have to pay for those songs. They became more concerned about things as technology advanced, and the recording industry grew, and they watched guys who came up with more knowlege and at a later poing in the evolution making a lot more money due to being better assimilated to the way things work.

Not to mention the whole issue of musical formats, and the demands various artists and labels make that a person basically pay money for every format a song is on. Basically if tech advances they want everyone to pay again for all their music in a new format, rather than being able to say upgrade their records or 8-track tapes onto cassettes, or their cassetes onto CDs, or put their CDs onto digital platforms. Especially when your looking at old bands it's possible to go back as far as things like vinyl records, 8 tracks, and singles, which were purchused without even the slightest pretension of limitation on use (as nobody even conceived of later technologies) when looking at someone's rights in what they do with a song they purchused in transferring it. Not to mention the whole issue of certain performances becoming public domain, after all it used to be far more common for bands to show up in parks and such and perform publically without even ticket sales, and that right there means that a given song could have been captured by anyone who was present without any kind of agreement, and thus arguably the material became public domain.

Whether you agree with me or not is kind of irrelevent, the bottom line is that it's a mess, and a lot of the issues and anger comes down to guys like Gene Simmons screaming about injustices simply because they didn't have all the benefits people in the more evolved industry did, and of course a lot of them now caring a lot more about the money than they did then. Of course I suppose if your with one of the really great, long-time bands, it does kind of burn to see some bubblegum pop star of the moment making tons more money simply because their people have the benefits of being savvy to an evolved industry.

To be brutally honest, all the specific arguements made aside, I think a lot of the expectations are kind of ridiculous anyway. As far as I'm concerned if you've bought a song, you've bought it. I don't think you should be forced to keep re-purchusing the same material, if someone wants to transfer to updated technological formats I think that's their right. 20-30 years ago it would have been ridiculous to even suggest that someone be considered some master criminal for daring to transfer their 8 track collection onto cassettes or whatever.

The bottom line is that I'm hardly pro-pirate, despite how it might sound. I believe you should pay for things like this, however I don't believe in a lot of the technicalities placed on it, and guys like Gene Simmons in paticular seem to be taking the most greedy and ridiculous stances they can. I think the proper path is somewhere between the "I am entitled to steal everything" and "you should pay me again and again for the same thing" position. I also think as I explained, that a lot of the most extreme elements of this come from old timers QQing largely because they are old timers whose prime came and went in a very differant market, and are expecting people to shower them with massive piles of money. It's especially annoying when your dealing with guys who HAD massive piles of money, but were a big part of building up that whole "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" image, and pretty much pissed it away. The fact that someone blew their fortune stupidly does NOT mean they should be taking it out on the fans.

I think Gene's problem was that he stuck himself out there to to a ridiculous degree, taking a rather extreme stance, and being pretty much an example of everything that is wrong with the position he's argueing... well that and he threw down the gauntlet of challenge. That's why he got reamed by Anonymous. Plenty of people were saying the same basic things that he was, but didn't get attacked.

To an extent he reminds me a bit of Harlan Ellison . Mr. Ellison being a really talented (but sadly departed) science fiction author, who has produced some extremely insightful stuff. His stuff being so good that a lot of schools like to use his material for teaching students. He was really into argueing against literary piracy. I agree that people should pay for books, and the authors deserve royalties. His position however was that he believed that everyone who read one of his stories should have paid money to do so. The basic arguement being as I understood it that a school wanting to use one of his stories should have to buy a copy of the story for each student who reads it... as opposed to say buying the books, and passing them over from generation of students to generation of students, OR buying copies for the school library and then having teachers copy the stories through xerox or whatever to distribute to the students in class. His basic arguement getting down to saying that a library is effectively a criminal institution, whether it's school based, or publically run, because countless people can read the books there, but the authors only get paid once for the book in the library.

Incidently this is very similar to what I've seen of Mr. Simmons position, because everything else I've said aside, consider also that a lot of libraries include things like Audio Visual rooms, archives, and records. You'd be surprised what you can find there, especially in schools with music programs, because in general schools get tons of stuff that is never used. If say someone donated a bunch of music from KISS to a public library, or a music teacher who was a fan at some point purchused some of their stuff for a school A/V club/library, Gene is basically argueing that these guys are flying the Jolly Roger because he's not getting a fee from every single person listening to that stuff.

A lot of people don't bother to think piracy arguements through, especially when it comes to things like libraries. People tend to think of teenagers sitting around burning CDs off the internet, or people selling bootleg discs at flea markets and the like, however a lot of the same arguements made there also apply to things like libraries, Ellison was pretty direct in going after schools for daring to re-use books, and a lot of what guys like Gene Simmons are saying comes down to the same basic position. Even if the logic is differant, let's just say that throughout history there have been a LOT of people who have wanted to shut down libraries and such, and it's NEVER a good thing when it happens. That's where a lot of this anti-piracy stuff ultimatly goes, because the people making the arguements are doing so from what are some pretty extreme positions when you look at them fairly.
 

TheComedown

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MisterGobbles said:
cookyy2k said:
I'd probably justify it as they should be doing it for the art not the money, I wonder how many musicians (and profesional sports players, though not really relevant here) would be still there doing what they do because they love it if they only made minimum wage.
Most musicians don't make jack shit, though. It's only the top few that get extremely rich off of it, and they aren't hurt by music piracy very much at all.
Which is sad cause they are the loudest and most active fighting piracy.

I know loads of bands who don't really give a shit about piracy, they just do it for the music, and they see piracy as a way for more people to hear their music.

for instance Great musicians, but the song is irrelevant in this discussion, skip to the last 20 seconds.

Not to say i don't support bands like this and pirate their stuff, but for a lot of bands its just about getting people to hear their music. Should also note that many touring bands will make a shit load more from actual touring then record sales.
 

Nibblitman

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Dec 30, 2010
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I really haven't bought or downloaded much music in the last three or four years. Mostly I use Pandora, radio, and those cool music stations on my cable.

But I feel that all those are in a way like buying the music as they pay for the music they use. So I guess I would say buy not pirate.
 

triggrhappy94

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Apr 24, 2010
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Everyone on this thread is going to get suspended for piracy...

OT: I kno i shudnt, but I dont have the money.
 

Twilight_guy

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Nov 24, 2008
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Your question implies guilt no matter what answer is given. If your question is how do you think someone who does pirate music justifies it, then I have no idea. Maybe they don't. Maybe those people don't think its wrong or maybe they feel its not as bad because of some reason or maybe they use one of bullshit arguments like nobody really loses anything. I don't care. I don't support piracy and I'm not knowledgeable on the music industry to make a good assertion about its audience.
 

haddaway234

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ThisIsSnake said:
cookyy2k said:
I'd probably justify it as they should be doing it for the art not the money, I wonder how many musicians (and profesional sports players, though not really relevant here) would be still there doing what they do because they love it if they only made minimum wage.
Historically many artists would only do it for the money. Mozart, Beethoven, Da Vinci etc. They all worked for patrons. I personally wouldn't like to undergo specialist training and countless hours of practice at my craft, learning to play an instrument, sing, write or perform and then be told I should work for minimum wage otherwise I'm motivated by great and not a love of performing and music.

I understand your probably talking about the commercialised crap in the mainstream charts like Bieber and such; I find it annoying that he can sell millions of records whilst more talented, dedicated artists sell much less. Piracy doesn't really come into it though, I'm not going to buy Bieber or Miley Cyrus songs because I don't listen to them. I am going to buy songs by artists I like because in my opinion they both deserve my money and have earned it through hard work.

Although there are those cases when a song is either otherwise unobtainable or overpriced due to rarity, in that case it's understandable until it becomes available. Also this isn't really aimed at you personally, just a semi-rant.
Are you kidding me? Bieber talentless? He's a very very talented person, BUT the music he currently makes it garbage. I recognize that its generic pop trash, BUT have you seen him play guitar or drums? I think not, and I believe that some day he'll outgrow the teen pop stuff and make some real music in the future.
 

Smooth Operator

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Oct 5, 2010
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It can probably never be justified.

But the question is who is really hurting, because 90% of that cd/dvd sales money stays with publishers, musicians only really make money going on tourney/concerts.
And those lawsuits are plain ridiculous yet they succeed, pointing out the stench of corruption on every level, publishers got gobs of money and they are enforcing their own law.