Poll: How Do You Justify Music Piracy?

[TheIronRuler]

I don't justify it.
It can't be justified because the act itself of imposing such strict laws regarding intellectual property (in certain countries. *cough* USA *cough*) can't be justified.

 

[00slash00]

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.

i know this has been said a thousand times, but artists get the bulk of their money from performing, not from cds.

i dont download music, i buy used cds, which is about as harmful to artists as illegal downloads. strange that gene simmons isnt getting up in arms about that, but thats beside the point. personally, i feel that downloading helps the industry to an extent. when i downloaded songs it was always to become familiar with the bands style of music. cds are expensive and im not gonna pay almost $20 only to find out i dont even like any of the tracks. and if its a band someone really likes, most people will pay for the cd. now, rather than download a few tracks, i just search for tracks on youtube

im sure there are people with mp3 plays full of nothing but pirated music though, so maybe i was just one of the less evil pirates

 

[subtlefuge]

I don't buy or pirate music anymore. You can stream it for free and I use the radio for all the other times.

However, I would say that the fact that the record companies both punish the people who buy their music (DRM, Spyware), and attempt to seek damages from completely random people (some of them dead) would give some people a legitimate reason.

 

[USSR]

I think I'll go with ".."

 

[Saxm13]

I simply state, "MTV Cribs".

Your rebuttal?

 

[Zer_]

I go to whichever source offers me the best quality.

www.fixtstore.com has some good stuff.
The rest I acquire either legitimately or illegally depending on the rarity.

 

[Your Fearless Captain]

I've pirated an ass load of games, software, music and movies, at least 5 Terabytes. I haven't seeded anything ever or given anything back to the pirating 'community'. Thinking back on it, I feel like an asshole. It really can't justify it at all. I probably won't stop anytime soon though. Unless the FBI knocks on my door or something.

 

[classygangster]

i dont rlly gety some people r saying they pirate music to 'try it out', cuz most music is avaialable on youtube or the bands like website or something, or at least a couple songs so... can someone explain it?

 

[Canid117]

I justify it by not pirating but Gene Simmons was saying to ruin the financial future of everyone who had the audacity to download a 99 cent song for free. I would just like to point out that he is worth $300 million.

 

[Skratt]

There is no way to justify it. Do I do it? Not really anymore. I've purged a big chunk of my collection, and the rest is pretty much ignored. iTunes and Amazon have allowed me to stop paying for shitty albums and just get the songs I want, so there really is nothing else to ***** about.

The prices are sneaking up though, and that is starting to piss me off a bit. Time will tell, but honestly, if you don't have the expenses of CDs and distribution, there is no justification for higher prices. Supply is infinite and costs are fixed and the price of bandwidth and storage get cheaper every year. They only raise the price because they are falling back to the old age and game as before - when CDs started going up from about $8 to top off at like $20+ which is what pissed everybody off in the first place.

 

[Skratt]

I justify it by not pirating but Gene Simmons was saying to ruin the financial future of everyone who had the audacity to download a 99 cent song for free. I would just like to point out that he is worth $300 million.

That guy is a fucking asshole. The punishment should fit the crime. It's like the FBI warning on movies. I don't pirate them, but I sure as shit flip off the bullshit $250,000 fine warning for copying a movie every time it comes on the screen. You can steal a movie and go to jail for 5 years, but you can burn down somebody's fucking house and get 6 month's community service. You tell me which of those two crimes should carry a $250,000 fine, hmm?

 

[spartan231490]

I don`t think that stealing can be justified. As for the artists that just started, piracy can be a good thing, it can help them gain some popularity = more sales.

So does youtube, and that's legal. Also, the artist is in control, he can remove it whenever he wants.

I agree about not justifying it. It's wrong. Don't do it.

 

[ImperialSunlight]

If I didn't, I wouldn't listen to music at all because I have more pressing things to spend my money on (games). Its not stealing if no value is lost through it. Also I plan to buy more music officially when I get a job.

 

[Tiger Sora]

So long as your wearing an eyepatch while doing it. Pirate away I say.
I don't endorse anything though.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

OP snip

As a musician, I feel that the current system of copyright laws is incredibly backwards. Way too much protection for the corporations, not nearly enough for artists in some areas but a bit too much in others, and almost no protection for the aspiring artist, the person being inspired by the consumed artwork.

I'm not a current pirate, but most of my early inspiration in my music came from listening to albums that, were it not for having them accessible for free through piracy, I would have never listened to. In turn, during the time I pirated things, I tended to spend a lot more money on music or music related things. I would download a bands discography that I otherwise would have never bought any of the music from as I wouldn't have been able to afford all their albums(I'm not a song buyer, or even an album listener. I listen to bands, learn their music from their early days and see how they progressed through their albums), and eventually either go to their shows and legitimately buy as many of the pirated albums as possible if they were of high quality. If a band was bad, I just deleted their stuff to save the hard drive space and bought the same amount of their stuff that I would have if I had not pirated it - none.

Honestly, while I would prefer that copyright laws simply be changed, I think that in the current legal situation music "piracy" is one of the best ways for aspiring artists to continue being inspired and as something that, in the end, results in bands making more money than they would if piracy did not exist. I just stopped because they kept shutting down my internet. I'm not going to outright encourage piracy because I respect the Escapist enough to conform to its pretty reasonable wishes not to encourage illegal actions on their forums. However, I will say that, personally, I find it to be a force of good within the music industry.

post script - If you're wondering why I quoted you directly, even though by default responses are directed towards the OP, its because some people around these parts have a bad habit of not reading through their own threads past page three. I figure if I'm gonna take the time to respond to something with a few paragraphs, I might as well try to get it seen.

 

[McMullen]

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.

I'm sure someone has brought this up already, but what you are talking about in the first paragraph has been happening every year since the mid nineties. It hasn't worked, and in fact the lawyers spamming lawsuits have recently started getting in trouble for it.

Second, I am an artist whose work has been pirated. I passed the word along when I found out, but I am confident that there are larger trends affecting my livelihood than piracy. I'm not going to panic over it.

As for my opinions on piracy in general, I think that at the very least it's a dick move, and nothing to be proud of or righteous about. A pirate has about as much reason to be proud of their piracy as a healthy, capable 40 year old has reason to be proud of sleeping on his mom's couch for the last and next 5 years.

That said, there are things about the media and software market that are so horribly wrong and unfair to consumers that it's hard to imagine them being worse. If there were a balance between businesses and their consumers, the Project Manager at Microsoft who signed off on the first-generation Xbox 360 for release would have been fined just as heavily as the kid who pirated a few hundred DVDs. So would the people at Microsoft who chose not to make the warranty for Red Rings of Death a lifetime one. Even though Microsoft can put out a product with a ~30% failure rate, they were never held fully accountable for wasting their customer's money. A pirate on the other hand is fined for many, many times the financial damage he or she actually caused.

So yes, piracy is wrong, but the current situation is analogous to the police cracking down on speeders and litterers while completely ignoring all the drunks on the highway. I think that some balance needs to enter the market before we worry about piracy, and I also think that people would be more willing to act like respectable consumers if they knew they were going to be treated as such by respectable companies.

 

[haddaway234]

Hate the poll, could've at least left Yes/No.

While I'm sure no one condones theft, musicians (reasonable and rational, even if not successful ones) must account for some margin of piracy within their projected sales targets.

Remember, they don't just get money from CD purchasers and iTunes subscribers, they also sell concert tickets, make paid appearances on television and in public venues, not to mention those that use their music in other mediums such as film and television commercials.

So, you justify it by the fact that no one has a CD player anymore (dedicated device), with the exception possibly being in your car, but even they use MP3 players now, everyone has MP3s, and players for them, and the only outlet to buy MP3s is run by the evil Apple!
If Amazon would get their act together, and release their MP3 store to the world, or if Android twigged they could make a lot of money from it, I'd love to buy plenty of music, perhaps even hundreds of dollars worth, but I refuse to use Apple's "you're an idiot, do as we tell you" technology, so for now I rip my old CDs, have songs on here I didn't download, but I have no idea who gave them to me, and when a song comes out that I'm really really interested to listen to, I use YouTube and grab it from there.

It's that simple, if the market doesn't capture its consumers well enough, the black market wins.

I had a proper poll, but it just detracted from the thread.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Gene Simmons?...the man approved every piece of schlocky merchandise that could be thought of in the quest for mo' money. Maybe I'm out of line, but I'd put more stock in the opinions of a musician who doesn't have his own action-figure, someone whose face wasn't on lunchboxes...it's clear what his allegiances are.

Seriously though, how do you justify anything? I sold an Epiphone Les Paul(the custom model, a perfectly good guitar)to buy a Gibson Les Paul, and paid hundreds of pounds to do so. If the adverts are to be believed, that money would have fed alot of needy people...saved alot of lives. But that couldn't have been further from my mind.

Point being. If I don't care about that...which really does matter. It would be pretty silly of me to get too emotional over the plight of musicians.

I'd describe the situation as "unfortunate", certainly not "evil", and it's a circumstance that the music industry itself has helped to cultivate by screwing their customers and their artists for decades. How many times did you buy an album to discover the 2 singles were good and the rest was essentially filler? If you've bought records, you've been burned that way.

The consumers have power now, they can better shield themselves from buying crap that they only think that they want, and they understandably like it.

-Yowza!-

The Neil Gaiman defense.

Thank you very much.

This too. The promotional power of piracy is enormous, provided it's material that people genuinly do want.