Piracy...your take?

[Eilonnwy]

One could argue that by downloading TV shows you are bypassing network or web advertisements, which is how companies derive profit from TV shows.

True, but legally it's acceptable, and I'm arguing within the legal purview.

I don't equate downloading music or music with stealing because nobody is losing anything. It's not like Warner music will suddenly notice a missing copy of Appetite For Destruction after I complete a download.

You said software is a different story, yet if I download a free version of photoshop, Adobe is not technically "missing" a copy. It's still intellectual property. Under your reasoning, if you wrote a paper and I copied it and claimed it as my own, I'm not plagiarizing because you still have the physical copy. That's a fallacious argument to make.

Also, if you're arguing about sales, that me downloading a song is not a big deal because they won't miss the $.99 on iTunes, that's also fallacious. If I took a dollar out of my mother's wallet, is it no less stealing just because she never noticed? It's not, and you know it.

Potential revenue is bullshit in my eyes. I download albums because it's not feasible for me to pay for them. I wouldn't buy 3 albums a week if downloading weren't possible. I wouldn't hear it at all.

Doesn't make it bullshit in the eyes of the law. I also don't think it's bullshit. If I create a piece of artwork and someone copies it and sells it, not only can my credibility can be ruined, I can lose potential customers because of lost credibility or people buying from the art thief instead of me. Now I can't pay for rent. This is a legal argument and a fair one and being rich doesn't make it invalid, just most people feel less sympathetic.

The bottom line for me is that music has been commercialized to the point where the average person sees it as a product, not an artpiece. That means the million-dollar executives are winning. They aren't interested in fostering great art, they are interested in selling plastic discs, or better yet, bytes on a hard drive that they can tightly control.

Your objection to what commercial music has become does not justify stealing it. You can not buy it and support musicians who give away their music or go the non-commercialized route. Just because you disagree with an industries methods doesn't mean that taking from it is not stealing.

Art is a product. If I draw something and sell it, under the eyes of the law it is a product. It doesn't matter if my attitude about selling my artwork is commercialized or not. If I'm a starving artist on the street who cares deeply about art or a highly commercialized graphic designer making millions, my rights are still the same.

You can justify stealing to make yourself feel better about it, but don't pretend it's not stealing.