digital music downloads

[dazzn]

Why do many deem this moral?

I see from a purely economic standpoint. If somebody sells a product, then it's wrong to acquire it unjustly (,i.e. a fair exchange of money for the product). Isn't this why we condemn shoplifting, as an example? it's also false that intangible goods are somehow "different" to tangible items. it's still the exact economic principle at hand.

People often make bs arguments like "record companies make shitty music, so it's my way of getting my own back" or "oh, those record labels have stacks of money as it is, so they're not missing anything!" or "hey, art shouldn't be for profit, dude!!"

yeah, so i can walk into an Apple store, pick up an iPhone 5 without paying for it, and proclaim "Yo, Mr. Cook, you have enough money as it is, why should i care about your firm's revenues?" that would be a nice thing to say to the judge when i'm being tried for theft lol.. also, who says art shouldn't be for profit? if any kind of artist wants to exploit economically his or her talent, yeah, holding economic freedom is Evil!! worse than Stalin!!!!!

Some may point out the contradictions in this posting, but I don't care. people contradict, and most people are flippant lol..

[wolf39us]

First, you should specify what you are referring to. iTunes, Amazon and others provide digital music downloads at a cost.

Surely you are referring to piracy.

Stealing and Piracy are not the same thing.

Stealing would involve someone grabbing something off the shelf and walking out with it. Piracy involves copying digital data. The company that is selling the item in question loses nothing. No bandwidth, no boxing, no materials, no physical property.

Now it could be argued that the company would lose sales revenue because the pirate would be unmotivated to puchase the product in question. Unlikely, people who download music do so because they wouldn't have paid for it in the first place!

Being a musician, I understand that bands need to make money too! A band whose music can be spread amongst the community freely gets more recognition than one that stands behind a price tag. If I loved a bands music and they came to my town, you bet your ass I'm paying $60-$100 to go see them at the show!

Many bands wouldn't even be known without Internet pirates.

[dazzn]

First, you should specify what you are referring to. iTunes, Amazon and others provide digital music downloads at a cost.

Surely you are referring to piracy.

Stealing and Piracy are not the same thing.

Stealing would involve someone grabbing something off the shelf and walking out with it. Piracy involves copying digital data. The company that is selling the item in question loses nothing. No bandwidth, no boxing, no materials, no physical property.

Now it could be argued that the company would lose sales revenue because the pirate would be unmotivated to puchase the product in question. Unlikely, people who download music do so because they wouldn't have paid for it in the first place!

Being a musician, I understand that bands need to make money too! A band whose music can be spread amongst the community freely gets more recognition than one that stands behind a price tag. If I loved a bands music and they came to my town, you bet your ass I'm paying $60-$100 to go see them at the show!

Many bands wouldn't even be known without Internet pirates.

you're making a false distinction. you're analogy is also false. if a band spreads music by their consent, then what is wrong in that? also, a band has far less resources than a major record label.

if a record label sells a record in a store, yet somehow a copy of the track is available for free online, how is that not a fair acquistion?

people need to understand basic economic theory. one sells a product, they expect a monetary return. to cite "record labels make shitty music" is immaterial. economic illiteracy shouldn't be the order of the day here.,

[Rev. Rye]

Really, if there's any parallel between piracy and anything else, it's not shoplifting, but photocopying or scanning a book or taping something from a TV Broadcast. It's making copies of music, and, even if it's not being done for free, the money doesn't go to the original owners. Hell, publishers don't get royalties for having their books checked out of a library or getting bought second hand. By your logic, libraries and used media stores are just as bad.

[pocaracas]

All that sounds really good on paper, but real life begs to differ!
FORBES's piece on "Swiss Government Study Finds Internet Downloads Increase Sales".

The report states that around a third of Swiss citizens over 15 years old download pirated music, movies and games from the Internet. However, these people don’t spend less money as a result because the budgets they reserve for entertainment are fairly constant. This means that downloading is mostly complementary.

Another study finds music piracy 'does not displace digital sales'

A report from the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, part of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, has found that "digital music piracy does not displace legal music purchases in digital format", and that "there is unlikely to be much harm done on digital music revenues".

The study specifically looks at the impact of online streaming and downloads -- both legal and illegal -- on digital music sales rather than sales of physical media such as CDs.
[...]

perhaps the most striking finding was that "the majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in [the] sample would not have been purchased if illegal downloading websites were not available".

One would think that a government would want to enforce laws and entice consumption so it can get more from taxes...

[Sal]

I think Wolf put it succinctly enough for me to agree with. Copying isn't stealing.

[Rev. Rye]

That actually jibes with my own experience; Years ago, I used to download albums through sites like eMule or Kazaa. I stopped because it was giving my computer viruses, so now, I mainly download them by ripping them from CDs I rent from my library and liked, but I frequently download them (even in my eMule days) with an eye towards, one day, finding them at a reasonable price on CD and getting a proper CD and give the artists their due. And to this day I'm still getting them. For instance, at a recent Memorial Day sale, I recently bought the CDs for these albums I downloaded years ago: Reise, Reise by Rammstein, Mellow Gold by Beck, Since I Left You by The Avalanches, Stadium Arcadium by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and all four of Green Day's albums from their International Superhits! era.
So, yeah.