Blue Dragon, rather than going off on atangerine would you care to explain how you concluded that it is morally wrong?
Because if the artist wished for it to be free it could be placed in the internet and/or file sharing, as some artists do. By not doing so, or by implementing some manner of piracy protection, the artist is saying “I do not wish for my work to be traded for free. I agree with the record company and desire people to pay for my work.” Downloading the song, in that case, is similar to stealing.
Metallica disagrees with file sharing and habe gone on record to say it is wrong and asked fans not to do it - they have gone on record to say they desire their work to be bought and paid for. Ripping song off their recorded materials and sharing them, to me, goes against the artists desires. To me, I see that as morally wrong as it goes against the artists wishes.
The difference here, though, is the giant billion dollar record indutry that has always ate up artist and crapped out money they’ll never see. That eases to moral issue for me.
Two points:
- How is it stealing when the ‘victim’ has the exact same amterials after the act as before.
2)By what morality does the artist have the right to dictate my actions simply by speaking?
So if Hetfield told you he didn’t wish you to buy Evanescence’s music, it would be morally wrong to do so would it?
By what argument does contradicting an artist’s wishes become immoral?
Hmm. So because the record company screwed the artist, it’s okay for you to screw the artist as well? You’re putting yourself on the same moral level as the record company, as far as I can see, the same record company you profess to hate.
Because you have a copy of the orginal work that you did not pay for.
Because the artist went to the trouble of finding protection of thier work and have gone on record to say they disagree with file sharing. Their work is prtected legally and they went to measures to protect it. To say “I don’t care about that” is both logally and morally wrong.
No, what I am saying is that the record company is trying to use the moral high ground when they have not had it in the first place. I use that as the rationization for copying music. Am I really screwing the artist? I really don’t think so because I don’t think their profit is suffering in the least.
*Originally posted by Mr2001 *
You’re absolutely right, I have no idea how the MP3 got on their machine. Perhaps they bought the CD and ripped it onto their machine, perhaps they downloaded it from someplace else. The point is, it doesn’t really matter how it got there. It is the fact that they are sharing that MP3 with potentially millions of other internet users across the globe, something which is getting a few of them into trouble now.
Yes, I see this argument a lot. Frankly, I don’t have as much faith in people as you do. I’d rather take my chances, and lose all 3 album sales, rather than relying on the good will of people to pick and choose what they will purchase and what they will steal. This is for me to decide, and not the consumer.
As a side note, sorry about the spelling errors. I’m new to this format of board and it’s really late where I live…
Right, well that’s restated the premise very clearly but it hasn’t in any way answered the question. How is it stealing to copy a work without paying when the ‘victim’ has the exact same materials after the act as before?
So your argument is that if someone makes an effort to make an act legal, then such an act becomes moral as well as legal. An interesting proposition but one demolished much earlier in this thread. By this argument if the artist went to the trouble of finding protection for their ownership of your house and have gone on record to say they disagree with sharing your house with you, then your house is their’s legally and they went to measures to gain ownership. To say “I don’t care about that” is both logically and morally wrong.
I’m sure I don’t need to point out how utterly illogical this legality=morality argument is.
Plagerism is stealing is it not? Yet the original still exists. Identy theft? Is it morally wrong for me to go around and introduce myself as Blake, while the real Blake is alive and well? It’s legally wrong for sure. Does it go against your morals as well? Does it? If it does, does that means that everything illegal is also immoral? Hardly! So why leap to the conclusion that everything that is legal is also moral? Where did I state that?
If you publish an article, can I pass it off as someone else’s? The original is still yours. So if I copyright a song with the express desire to protect it from duplication and you make a copy of it, that’s essentially stealing it. You have an unwarrented copy of the file, something you should not have. You stole the original. Stealing is more than possessing the original without consent. The original copy exists to produce money and profit. By copying it, you have the properties of the original and circumvent the purchase. You have the file for free. You did not pay for it. You stole it.
I fail to see why you can’t understand that.
Did I say that? No. Where did I say legal = moral? And if the artist has ownership of your house, how is it “your” house? Did you pay for it? Because if you paid of it, you have ownership of it. For your analogy to work, you would have to have the artist build the house, pay for it, and then you would move in, free of charge.
The artist here, in this case and no other, goes on record to ask the public to NOT COPY their music. You, the public, hears that does it anyway. That is morally wrong. This does not lead to the equation of legal = moral, which I never implied or stated in the first place, so you don’t have to explain anything and, oddly enough, it appears to be quite logical.
Well, i must say you have strange morals. You never answered my previous question. That’s ok. But answer this at least:
I assume you believe all of these things are morally acceptable also ?
(1) software pirating
(2) dvd/film pirating
(3) counterfit merchandise
Neither of these things take anything physically away from the original owners. They each have the exact same “materials”, as before the act.
That was my question. How is it stealing to copy a work without paying when the ‘victim’ has the exact same materials after the act as before? You keep restating the question without ever actually answering it.
If it does me no harm I can’t see how.
That was essentially the whole of your argument. The fact that a band makes an effort to make something illegal also makes it immoral. There was no other argument hidden in there. Just “Because the artist went to the trouble of finding protection of thier work …Their work is protected legally …To say “I don’t care about that” is both logically and morally wrong.” That argument is in essence: it is immoral to do that which has been made illegal through effort. It’s a subset of the legality=morality argument.
Morally I have to say yes. Can you explain how it could be otherwise?
I will ask for about the fifth time: How is it stealing to copy a work without paying when the ‘victim’ has the exact same materials after the act as before? You keep restating the question and the original premise without ever actually answering the question.
Oh no. You paid for it, but they changes the law so that it became legally theirs without payment. They legally transferred the deeds without your consent. The artist went to the trouble of finding protection for their ownership of your house and have gone on record to say they disagree with sharing your house with you, then your house is their’s legally and they went to measures to gain ownership. To say “I don’t care about that” is both logically and morally wrong. Such a position is just silly isn’t it.
Do you agree that an artist making an effort to make something legal does not make it moral. Do you agree that an artist making an effort to make something illegal does not make it immoral?
If you do agree with those statements the what is the relevance of whether an artist makes file swapping legal/illegal? Why did you mention it? I assumed that since you mentioned it in an debate you believed it somehow supported your position, and yet now you say that legality is not an issue in morality. You are not making yourself very clear.
I’m sorry Blue Dragon but this is just argument form assertion. You keep asserting this is morally wrong without ever explaining why. That is not logical.
To help you understand why, what would you say if I posted “The artist here, in this case and no other, goes on record to ask the public to NOT COPY their music. You, the public, hears that does it anyway. That is morally right”? You see now why this is not an argument? It just consists of you repeating the same statement and me gainsaying you. In the words of Monty Python, that’s not na argument, it’s just contradiction.
Now would you care to explain why it is morally wrong rather than repeatedly asserting that it is morally wrong?
Sorry. I must have missed it. What was the question?
I will also point out the same omissionon your part. Specifically:
Why should people be forced into paying for a higher quality product whether they want it or not? Why shouldn’t people have the choice as to whether they wish to donate to support high quality music or just let high quality die in favour of garage?
I have answered that question a dozen different ways a dozen different times. It’s not your fault but frankly I’m getting tired of it so I will just repeat my response to John Mace the lat time he asked me this.
No one has yet shown that copyright laws have any moral basis. That doesn’t necessarily make them immoral, but it does mean that disobeying them is not immoral. I will restate what I have said before: personally believe that any law is immoral if in interferes with the people without moral cause. It’s a default position.
Would you agree Daisycutter, that impinging on another’s freedom is automatically immoral if there is no overriding moral basis for doing so? That it is immoral of me to order two homosexuals to stop kissing in public when there is no moral reason to do so? That it is immoral to order a black man to sit at the back of the bus when there is no moral reason why he might not sit at the front?
And you think that many artists and creative folks are going to be eager to part with any of their work so easily, if they know that after it’s out of their hands, it’s “open season”?
Yeah, right.
What you are talking about is competetion, and people face that all the time. Fair competition means that two people (or companies) offer services, and the cheapest (or attractive) service gets the business.
That doesn’t have much to do with someone being not “entitled” to be paid for the work that others want to consume.
So, if someone were to sell a painting, for instance, knowing full well that the “owner” of that painting could sell prints of the painting, put the painting on ads and billboards, you can be damned sure that the artists would demand a very high price for that original. Because it’s their only shot at getting paid what the painting is really worth. (And obviously it would be worth quite a lot, if it could be used on billboards, ads and prints.)
If all creative people sold their works with “all rights” built-in automatically (instead of the way it is now, where “rights” are signed away individually, and priced according to the rights actually signed away) then the price of all creative works could get very steep.
You think this is better somehow?
No I don’t.
The question asked was not whether this was competition or not. The question asked was who you believe has the moral right to the coffee shop’s income in the example I gave above? Is there any chance you can answer that question rather than defining what is and is not competition?
If you can’t or won’t answer it that’s OK, just say so, bit it does make it a bit had to resolve the situation if I can’t divine how you evaluate moral rights to potential profit.
Possibly the prices could get steeper. Possibly they could get cheaper. Possibly they could remain static. It depends what actually happens, and that’s impossible to predict. There are any number of scenarios.
It’s all rather irrelevant anyway to whether I think it is better. In fact the question itself is irrelevant because we are not discussing whether I think it would be better if downloading were more widespread. We are discussing whether it is moral to download. There are many things that might make things ‘better’ that are not moral. Shooting the terminally ill rather than providing treatment could make things better, but it wouldn’t make it moral. Seizing all private property and giving control to a benevolent dictator would make things better but it wouldn’t be moral.
However if I were to take a shot at answering the question I’d have to say that, yes, it would be better. You are asking me to make a subjective judgment about which of two societies is better:
One in which people have one more right and one more freedom, a society in which distribution of art and ideas is free and payment for copies is based on willingness and not artificial monopoly. A society in which the downside is that procuring originals may be more expensive.
The other society is the one we live in now. A freedom is curtailed and a right is overridden for no just cause. The distribution of art and ideas costs money and payment is based on monopoly. If you want to read what Stephen Gould has to say on an issue you must pay what the publisher demands, not what you believe the man is worth. A society in which the downside is that procuring originals is possibly cheaper.
Which of those societies do you believe is better? Are you prepared to say that it is better to curtail freedoms than risk an unknowable but potential rise in prices for luxury items?
*Originally posted by Blake *
Who is being forced to pay for higher quality product whether they want it or not ? Nobody is holding a gun to anybodys head, forcing them to buy CDs. If somebody seeks %100 free, legal music, there are numerous options to seek out. Visit anyone of the free internet music sites, and download free music to your hearts content. The statement I made earlier, was that i believe the majority of people who make this argument aren’t downloading just “free” garage music, they’re downloading the Metallicas of the recording world. Frankly, I wouldn’t want “high quality” music to die out, because I find the vast majority of the free music on the net to be amatuerish piss, which is evidenced by the high amount of illegal, copyrighted downloading going on. Clearly, given a choice between free and copyrighted, many choose the latter, I wonder why ?
There’s more than enough free music out there, so why the need to steal copyrighted music ? Anybody who wishes can post their own free MP3s “masterpieces” that they made at home and offer it to the world.
I fail to see how it is morally correct, if somebody is depriving somebody else of payment for their creation. If I have 5 pieces of chicken on my dinner plater, as opposed to six, because of certain people who have chosen not to pay for my creation, then I would assert that they are acting in a way that is morally wrong.
Well, I don’t see exactly what homosexuals or black men have to do with filesharing, but as I stated above, I do find it morally wrong for people to download
copyrighted music, because people are stealing other people’s intellectual property without offering them compensation. Since I will have one piece of chicken less on my dinner plater, I do think I can make an argument that these people are acting in an immoral way.
I am all for labels setting up their own servers, and flooding the net with bogus versions of songs, and possibly even MP3’s containing viruses/trojan horses, which will erase the theives harddrive.
Well, that may not have been the question you asked, but that happens to be what it is.
You are giving an analogy that does not quite fit file sharing. Of course people and businesses are entitled to compete with each other, and if one company loses profits, that’s part of the competition. No one else should have to compensate them for their lost profits, if these profits are lost because of routine competition.
What other answer you want for this question, I don’t know.
“Possibly, possibly, possibly.”
Please. Give me a scenario where an artist will be willing to lower the prices on their original work, knowing that they sell “all rights” in the process. Please. Give me a scenario.
Go ahead and discuss that, then.
I am just asking you about your statements about an artist having a moral right to profits. And I’d like to know how you think an artist is going to have time to create work that they can’t make a whole lot of money on. (If indeed you think there is a “scenario” where an artist will sell all rights to their work at a lower price than they do right now.)
You are thinking of file sharing here, I understand, but if you think that artists (composers, musicians) have no “moral right” to profits, then you obviously would think that artists, photographers, writers, etc. would have no “moral right” either. So if they have no “moral right,” how will they make a living? And if they stop making a living (which would be likely) how will they have time to produce the work you want to consume?
We all are. I thought you were arguing that I should curtail my downloading activities and pay for high quality music (rather than getting it for free) because if I didn’t then music quality would drop. To quote “However, I think it is fairly safe to state that the quality of the final production will most definitely suffer. Who is going to spend $100,000 to record a CD, if there is no chance of seeing any money back ?”
If you are not suggesting that downloaders should curtail their activities because of this outcome then why did you mention it? I really am confused here. I assumed that you brought up the negative aspect of downloading as some sort of argument against. In essence it sounded like you were arguing that downloading was/should be immoral because if people didn’t stop it then quality would drop. If this wasn’t your argument then I apologise, but can you explain what your point was?
Well in that case you are free not to download and instead support EMI with your cash. That’s a reasonable position on our part. However that does not provide justification for preventing/discouraging anyone else form allowing high quality to die out.
Firstly we haven’t established that it is stealing.
Secondly, I see that perhaps this is where the problems comes form. You are assuming that free music is not the same as copyrighted music. That is no the case. At this moment Sting, Metallica and Linkin Park are all free to anyone with a computer. Not legal, but free. You seem to be arguing that people should not obtain this music for free because it will kill high quality. To me that is not an argument at all. People should be free to decide for themselves whether they are comfortable with that consequence of their actions.
But that is an argument from ignorance. Something is not immoral just because you cannot understand how it is moral. An act is morally acceptable until shown to be immoral. I bet you can’t show that it is morally correct if two men have sex together either, and many people can’t see how homosexuality is moral. However that does not make homosexuality immoral. Homosexuality remains moral because it can not be shown to be immoral.
I think we all agree with that. That person has deprived you of your property. That is immoral.
nor did I ask you that. I asked you if you would agree that impinging on another’s freedom is automatically immoral if there is no overriding moral basis for doing so? That it is immoral of me to order two homosexuals to stop kissing in public when there is no moral reason to do so? That it is immoral to order a black man to sit at the back of the bus when there is no moral reason why he might not sit at the front?
We can sort out the relevance later, but I cannot make an argument without knowing your position, and you have not answered the questions that will allow me to divine that.
But this is circular argument. It is immoral because it is stealing and it is stealing because it is immoral. No one has yet addressed how something can be theft when the victim has exactly the same intellectual possessions after the act as before.
But therein lies the all important distinction. After the theft you will have one piece of chicken less on your dinner plater. After the download you will have exactly the same information within your intellect as before.
PS, Daisycutter, what was the question I didn’t answer earlier. I have looked and can’t find it.
And that was never in contention and so is totally irrelevant.
The answer to the question would be a good place to start dontcha think? Not a definition of competition. Not an opinion on whether compensation is owed. An answer that actually expresses clearly who you believe has the moral right to the coffee shop’s income in the example I gave above? Some sample answers would be “I believe the original coffee shop has that moral right”, “I believe Starbucks has that moral right” or “I believe entity X has that moral right”. You know, the same type of answer I gave to your questions. An honest and direct answer to the question asked without needing to be backed into a corner first.
As it stands Sting has a contract with Sony for x million dollars per song or per album. Say $10 million/song. If Sony music collapses due to file sharing Sting will not be able to command those prices because no one will pay them because, as you note, no one will ever recoup that investment. Instead Sting, if he doesn’t retire or go back to teaching, will only be able to sell his music at concerts via souvenier/autographed CDS. The effective price for the original work will be much less than the price Sting currently commands. In fact I find this far more plausible than your idea that Sting will be able to command a higher price than he gets now despite the profits form his work being much less. That just doesn’t make sense.
By this argument there were no artists creating work before the copyright laws because they couldn’t make a whole lot of money on it. That didn’t seem to stop Shakespeare or Michaelangelo or even an 1823 music hall composer creating their works.
Again, if you can answer how all those great works of art were created before the copyright laws were introduced then you will have answered your own question. Frankly it astounds me that you see to believe that only copyright laws make art possible.
*Originally posted by Blake *
No, I’m arguing that people should not download copyrighted music because they are depriving the creators/owners of precious revenue, which is due to them. As a long term consequence, the overall production quality of music would suffer, if today’s leeching practices were to continue.
Yes, I am free to continue to support “EMI” with my cash, and you are free to continue to download your “garagebands” for no cash. You are however not free to download any “EMI” bands, without paying for it, or suffer the consequences of those actions. Why would you want to anyhow ? I get the feeling that you dislike the labels, but would it be wrong of me to assume that you have quite a few songs on your harddrive which would not be classified as legal, free “garage” band music ?
Yes, this is true, it is relatively easy enough to get a hold of a track if one desires to do so. A Mercedes parked on my street is also free to me, if I have the proper tools, not legal of course, but free. Yes, and people should be free to decide for themselves whether they are comfortable with their actions. If some 12 year old girl gets busted for her activities, then I would assume that nobody would whine or have any problems with this.
I appreciate the discussion, but since I have nothing further to add, and there will no agreement on this particular topic, I will now bow out of this thread. I don’t agree with your views, but you certainly have a right to those views. I just hope you don’t view it as morally wrong, if one day you were to find your harddrive wiped of all the information on it.