Downloading mp3’s is NOT stealing. The only reason I download mp3’s is because they’re free. That’s right, free. It is pointless all you people coming out and saying “the music industry is suffering… blah blah blah”. Bull shit they are suffering. If I had to pay even one red penny to download the songs, then I wouldn’t. I am not costing the music industry any money. Either I get them for free… or I don’t get them at all. No money lost there.
I believe the whole point of intellectual property rights is that there are some things which don’t require “manufacturing” to exist. Manufacturing goes a long way to making sure that people’s ideas become goods that have the qualities of physical property–> you have to physically rip them off, or buy them, or actually acquire them PHYSICALLY in some way before YOU can have them. It’s quite tidy.
Music and other creative works don’t require manufacturing (although we do find a way to mass-market them in forms that do–CDs, books, etc). And long ago we decided that these things did deserve to be called "property"even if they didn’t have the physical characteristics of such. Intellectual property, we called it.
Just because it isn’t an iron anvil that makes a funny bulge in your pocket when you try to steal it, doesn’t make it right. Since it is property, it IS a loss to the copyright holder, “even if you wouldn’t have bought it anyway.” Even if “the industry isn’t suffering.” Sorry dude, that’s my viewpoint.
Promise me you’ll never, ever go into Intellectual Property law? I’m predicting big malpractice problems if you do.
I’m closing this thread. There are plenty of them around on this topic. This particular OP seems it would have played better in the Pit anyway.