Morality and downloading

[bennyboy]

Whether you consider torrenting content to be moral or not, here's something you should keep in mind. You can be held accountable to the tune of $150,000 per work. Granted, they normally only come after about $750-$1000/work but how many songs on a CD? 10? 12? 15? Let's say 10. That $7,500-$10,000 per disc. Let's say you only downloaded 10 CDs. That's $75,000-$100,000 for 10 discs.. How much would those 10 discs cost new? $120-$150? Used? $50-$75. Don't believe they'll do it? Trust me, they will. Long after I gave up torrenting hard to find public domain works, I received a summons. It seems that someone got a bot planted on my machine that was using a torrent client to mass download porn to my machine and back channel transfer it elsewhere. I got sued by just one of the copyright holders to the tune of $75,000. They were willing to settle... For $50,000. Don't kid yourself that they only go after the uploaders or the big sharing sites. They go after individuals every day. If your IP is out there, it's being tracked. If you're torrenting, someone already knows. There are companies making millions annually just keeping tabs on torrenters. File share hiding tools are worthless. These guys know the tricks and have all the same block lists you do. When their IP shows up on on, they get a new IP.

I won't claim "pure as the wind driven snow" innocence with torrenting, but I did not download the crap I was accused of. Of course, in civil court there is no presumption of innocence. You have to prove your innocence or be treated as a criminal. I finally got a dismissal with prejudice and consider myself lucky despite my defense costing over five grand.

I agree with a lot of the arguments for torrenting, especially when you have already purchased the legal right to the content and have lost the ability to use it through no fault of your own. But, is it really worth it?

And, Benny, you seem to have stopped whatever research you were doing and are now making claims, arguments and accusations so I don't feel one bit bad about hijacking your thread.

I don't feel you're hijacking the thread.  You've made a very relevant argument-- there are real consequences for the amoral/immoral behavior we are talking about.  And I don't think I've "stopped my research."  I think morality is a largely emotional affair, and we all have residual emotions about various acts.  So what I want is to get down to philosophical ideas, rather than expressions of emotion.

As for my own (hypocritical?) expression of emotion-- it follows philosophical ideas of Nietzsche and Machiavelli, among others.  And keep in mind that my "king of my own world" speech is mirrored by the kind of companies you're talking about.  Surely, they know that fining someone $50,000 because their daughter was sharing the collected works of Justin Bieber is counterproductive to the society-- but they can get away with it, can recoup some of their losses, and might even profit from it.

And I think many other people talking about big business have been kind of hinting at that-- should we accept an unlevel moral playing field and let corporations decide for themselves what is right or wrong, and let them also act as judge and jury in determining what fines we should pay?  Does the government keep its implied duties fulfilled in good faith?  Do music agencies?  iTunes?  Collection agencies?  Where's the equality in the social contract?  In a world where every agency, government, business or otherwise is out to maximize profit no matter what, why should normal people be held so deeply accountable for their own conduct?  Is this not a deeply sick and hypocritical moral system?

In short, in a dog-eat-dog world, why should I let the bigger dogs muzzle me? Why on Earth would I give a shit if they growl at me, saying "Bad dog!"