NEWS: Stop Downloading, Start Stealing

GEEK: Stop Downloading, Start Stealing

We all know stealing is bad, our mommies taught us better than to take other people's property, but our mommies never really went into detail, and it seems intellectual property theft wasn't covered, so an awful lot of people sit around happily downloading movies, TV shows and music every day. But beware, it seems that stealing people's ideas is actually worse than stealing their ideas AND their property.

As it is completely legal to record your favourite TV shows, be it on your TiVo or burning them directly to DVD in real time, you have to wonder exactly who these laws are meant to service. The only difference I can see is that the commercials are usually edited out of the shows available on BitTorrent, if the shows were made available for download with all the commercials intact, would it still be a crime?

This is yet another example of an industry too lazy and too stuck in the old ways of doing business enlisting the power of the government to bail it's ass out. If the recording industry would spend more time cultivating real organic music, and less time turing out cookie cutter pop star after pop star, they'd have a much more tenable position. Instead they sell, by and large, a crap product at astronomical prices, rip off the artists, and expect the govt to be their muscle, when people say "You know what, I've had enough and I'm not paying $15.00+ for a bunch of ill conceived over priced over produced bullshit."

It seems really silly at first glance, and I agree that the penalties are incredibly unbalanced. However, I think I have an explanation, and I get to talk about Foucault while giving it, so how could I resist?

Foucault noted that in the past, criminals weren't caught very often, so the penalties for crimes had to be terrible when they did actually catch someone. Public torture and execution were carried out for things we would now find trivial. If you could download music in the Middle Ages, you'd be looking at getting your mouse fingers cut off and displayed on the front page of YeOldeSuicidegirls.com.

As we got better at catching criminals, the mere threat of prison time or even fines was enough to discourage would-be criminals. Shoplifting is far from a sure thing. However, we have an attitude that downloading copyrighted materials is perfectly safe. We can get away with it, and we will. Since so few people are caught, the penalties for doing it have to be huge in order to discourage potential downloaders.

I don't agree with it, but this might help explain it.

I know that in Canada it's not a crime to make television shows available online as long as the commercials remain intact. A friend of mine was contemplating putting The Daily Show up on his server regularly for people to watch and he looked into the legality of it. I don't know about the States, though.

well if the courts make kazaa hand over those logs they've been keeping it's going to be pretty easy for them to start catching people

Kiss my ass RIAA...Kiss my ass Metallica.. Some people download everyday and they do it in a fashion that you pricks will never be able to trace it...I know this because uh, someone told me about it.

I think ill stick to my illegal downloading, I really have no shoplifting skills...........

You can't only place blame on the music industry for the cookie cutter pop stars, rock bands, and rappers. Our society eats that crap up, and asks for more. They appeal to those who need to fit in to the in croud, while those of us who like to think we have good taste in music pretend we don't like Toxic and love Hey Ya and Gwen's new album.

I'd like to see that what if scenario if they replaced Winona Ryder's name with someone named Tyrone Jenkins.

Load and Reload were teh best ever. It was the fault of Napster they didn't go platinum. best ever. nothing at like turd and returd.

Man, Tyrone totally got a bum rap. He was nowhere near that Saks Fifth Avenue!

now im wondering what yeoldesuicidegirls.com would look like

lots and lots of ankle.
maybe some shoulder too.

I have a feeling that there would be a lot of tattoos of the letter "A" in red.

Wasn't there some idiot TV exec a couple years back who claimed that using a TiVo to record shows without the commercials amounted to stealing? His argument was something like if you sat down to watch TV, you were implicitly contracting to watch the commercials as well. I guess we can shortly expect the legislator to outlaw bathroom and snack breaks during commercials.

The same discrepancy assails you when you compare the penalties that continue to be handed out for marihuana related infractions and those for mayhem and murder.

The same discrepancy assails you when you compare the penalties that continue to be handed out for marihuana related infractions and those for mayhem and murder.

Mary Jane not May Hane.

Today penalties are also assigned based on how large the percieved problem is. This issue came up back in the mid '90s about the discrepancy between punishment for distributing Crack v. Cocaine. Because crack use was spreading faster than cocaine use the penalties for distribution stricter in hopes of curbing the problem, even though for intents and purposes of law they are the same substance. The same is true today, law makers (or rather their financial supporters ie RIAA) feel unauthorized distribution (up/downloading) is a more serious problem than unauthorized appropriation (shop lifting).



TKS

It's a literal quantitive issue as well isn't it?

Those typically assaulted by the industry, often have hundreds of songs, movies and games, as compared to a shoplifter taking... dozens, at most, if they are persistent and good.

At any rate, the idea that making the punishment extremely harsh as a deterrent has never really worked well historically. Folks stole, murdered and slept around during Hammurabi’s time, and the punishment for just about every crime was DEATH.

People, don't bother downloading music, just copy your entire cd collection to a couple of dvds and give them to your friends. It'll save everybody lots of time and hassel, plus, if your friends return the favour then you could double or triple your music collection overnight.
Buy cds to support the bands you like and think deserve/need the support. Otherwise, just take it. most of the money goes to the record companies anyway

Well said.

I think the other thing we need to remember is that while our justice system is based on high minded principles, at its core there's an element of pragmatism in it that can't be ignored. Many, many criminal cases are decided in the absence of compelling evidence that points in either direction, and yet a decision needs to be made in order to provide some form of closure and ensure that the system keeps working. With that in mind, an unequitable punishment scheme like the one outlined here stasrt to make sense because while in theory it seems ludicrous to have stronger punishment for theft of an intangible than something tangible, the reality is what you've already described. It's a scheme to try and deter people from committing what amounts to a spectactularly easy form of theft, a rather practical end.

p2p is different than shoplifting

shoplifting you steal the cd and thats about as much as most people are capable of doing.

p2p

user b, c, d download from user a

user e, f, g, download from user b | user h, i, j download from c | user k, l, m, download from d | and on and on...

that there is 12 copies of illegally copy music.

i-tune charges a dollar a song?

that's allot of money with very little effort?

p2p spreads like a virus.

now think how accessible it is to p2p compared to shoplifting do you think there is more people shoplifting or illegally downloading music?

do you walk into the mall and see large amounts of people shoplifting from sam goodie at a time?

no because stealing is wrong and you might get caught.

but unlike shoplifting people don't see p2p as stealing which is really which really reflect on how people see the internet. sum people can't mentally grasp the idea that p2p and shoplifting are the same thing.

do you have any idea how much it would cost to fill a 40 gigabyte ipod with itunes not to mention the time to do it?

time is money.

has anybody succesfully filled up a 40 gigabyte ipod with itunes?

i cant even imagine shuffling through that many songs on a ipod.

excessive?

showing any interest in it just fuels riaa more.

just don't listen to music.

supply and demand = crappy pop culture music, same music different name.

if you didn't buy it where would the the riaa be?

so arguing about riaa wanting to collect money for copy-righted works is just doesn make sense, don't like it don't buy into it.

it's not a necessity for me.

how do this with-out being caught to get online you have one address, phone number, which you computer connects to the internet uploading and downloading from which I assume can be easily logged how would you go about this and not get caught eventually in most cases?

[Edited on Feb 10, 2005 by fiendish]