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I totally agree. However I think we should include a third group in the pro-file sharing side: people who don't have the money to pay for content or just wont b

I totally agree. However I think we should include a third group in the pro-file sharing side: people who don't have the money to pay for content or just wont because they're cheap. The problem is that the anti-piracy side mostly sees this group instead of the other ones and that's why, imho, they claim that pirating is like stealing and that it causes the same damage.

FreeFull 15y ago
If they don't have any money to pay, how is anyone losing any money when they download? This shouldn't hurt anyone in any way.
- matteodepalo 15y ago
  Of course if you have nothing you can buy nothing so the producer would get no harm, but this is rarely the case. I was a bit vague on this point but let me be more clear. "Don't have any money" doesn't mean having 0$ in your bank account, at least in this argument; it means that you are not willing to use the money you have to buy some things because in your opinion you have little money (compared to what you want to buy), so you decide to spend it for things you care about and can't get for free. Now, imagine a scenario where you can't get those things for free. In this scenario, you distribute your money differently in order to be able to buy the products you need. I can assure you there there are many people I know that have the money buy they tell me they don't have it to buy certain products, so they pirate it. They are being cheap. If they couldn't get those things for free they would pay for them. This kind of people cause harm to the producers. Talking about a real example: in my country (Italy) many people have breakfast at bars with 2-3 euros and nobody will question this price. At the same time these people don't want to pay for a 99 cents song that will entertain them for days. This is something wrong and I see why producers want to change this kind of behavior. The problem is they are "doing it wrong" by enforcing (or trying to enforce) laws that protect things that just can't be protected anymore.
roguecoder 15y ago
There are people who want things for free. However before the internet those were the people trading bootlegs, buying $2 CDs from sketchy catalogs, borrowing cds from the library or friend, watching MTV, listening to the radio or simply not listening to music. I would argue that they are no more supportive of piracy than any other form of free entertainment. Additionally, I don't believe most of them support piracy because they want free stuff (there are some horders out there, but that's an actual mental illness/tv show). Most of the people who "like free stuff" support piracy because they value the entertainment they get. By far the biggest group here are teenagers, and it appears that the more music teenagers without money download the more music they will buy legally later in life. Right now teenage unemployment was 25% last summer and that's just among teenagers who wanted to work. Unpaid internships seem to have become the norm. If we don't give teenagers a way to get the medium of exchange we shouldn't be surprised that they develop parallel economies. That said, if they weren't going to buy music anyway or, as most studies find, people buy more music in the presence of file sharing, it doesn't imply that there is any theft going on or that creators are damaged in any way by more value being derived from the work they already did. I think record companies see their control over the airwaves and their kingmaker roll slipping away. Like publishers, they are progressively less relevant and the services they do provide aren't worth nearly the percentage of profits they charge their artists. They don't need to believe it is theft for them to cynically exploit the argument in order to remain relevant.

FreeFull 15y ago

If they don't have any money to pay, how is anyone losing any money when they download? This shouldn't hurt anyone in any way.

matteodepalo 15y ago
Of course if you have nothing you can buy nothing so the producer would get no harm, but this is rarely the case. I was a bit vague on this point but let me be more clear. "Don't have any money" doesn't mean having 0$ in your bank account, at least in this argument; it means that you are not willing to use the money you have to buy some things because in your opinion you have little money (compared to what you want to buy), so you decide to spend it for things you care about and can't get for free. Now, imagine a scenario where you can't get those things for free. In this scenario, you distribute your money differently in order to be able to buy the products you need. I can assure you there there are many people I know that have the money buy they tell me they don't have it to buy certain products, so they pirate it. They are being cheap. If they couldn't get those things for free they would pay for them. This kind of people cause harm to the producers. Talking about a real example: in my country (Italy) many people have breakfast at bars with 2-3 euros and nobody will question this price. At the same time these people don't want to pay for a 99 cents song that will entertain them for days. This is something wrong and I see why producers want to change this kind of behavior. The problem is they are "doing it wrong" by enforcing (or trying to enforce) laws that protect things that just can't be protected anymore.

roguecoder 15y ago

There are people who want things for free. However before the internet those were the people trading bootlegs, buying $2 CDs from sketchy catalogs, borrowing cds from the library or friend, watching MTV, listening to the radio or simply not listening to music. I would argue that they are no more supportive of piracy than any other form of free entertainment. Additionally, I don't believe most of them support piracy because they want free stuff (there are some horders out there, but that's an actual mental illness/tv show). Most of the people who "like free stuff" support piracy because they value the entertainment they get. By far the biggest group here are teenagers, and it appears that the more music teenagers without money download the more music they will buy legally later in life. Right now teenage unemployment was 25% last summer and that's just among teenagers who wanted to work. Unpaid internships seem to have become the norm. If we don't give teenagers a way to get the medium of exchange we shouldn't be surprised that they develop parallel economies. That said, if they weren't going to buy music anyway or, as most studies find, people buy more music in the presence of file sharing, it doesn't imply that there is any theft going on or that creators are damaged in any way by more value being derived from the work they already did. I think record companies see their control over the airwaves and their kingmaker roll slipping away. Like publishers, they are progressively less relevant and the services they do provide aren't worth nearly the percentage of profits they charge their artists. They don't need to believe it is theft for them to cynically exploit the argument in order to remain relevant.