Take a random episode of "24" for example. There's a big ole crisis going on, and some nasty terrorist is withholding important information which could save millions of Ameerrrriican lives :p
Most of us watching are lead to feel like it's "morally correct" to torture the terrorist to extract the information that will save lots of innocent peoples' lives.
It could be the same kind of "morally correct" that downloading a song is, when the party _potentially_ losing money is a multi-gazillion-dollar corporation that's suing children and grandmas left and right for a little pocket change.
Actually I happen to like buying good music on CDs, so that I can enjoy it at maximum sound quality and all. DRM and lossy compression make iTunes totally irrelevant to me.
And the other classic pro-piracy defense, that it works as a "try before you buy" has come true many times in my case. If I download a song that I really really like, I'll want to buy it too. If I don't like something, I won't listen to it either.
So let's not forget that when someone downloads a song, the record companies are not only potentially losing money, but also potentially gaining some.
On the other hand, the re-use value of even a good movie is pitifully low compared to good music.
A movie is simply not worth buying at 22 euros (Finland).
In Finland, all empty recording media such as CD- and DVD-Rs are sold with a sort of "piracy tax" included in the price.
Basically we're paying some kind of "royalties" to at least the Finnish equivalent of the RIAA, but I doubt that money ever goes anywhere else.
This tax was ushered in accompanied by a lot of moaning about how piracy is hurting the artists. "Every time you download a song, a baby seal is forced to listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit for five hours", and so on..
What it all means is that every single person in Finland who buys a CD-R is considered a criminal in advance, and pays a little tax for it.
So if we're already paying for being dirty criminals, why shouldn't we download things too?
Well, I've ended up rambling quite a bit about random thoughts, but the idea is to offer a different point of view.
The point is that piracy can be both right and wrong. There is middle ground.
People want entertainment, and many of us are willing to pay for it.
But in a way it's also right.
Take a random episode of "24" for example. There's a big ole crisis going on, and some nasty terrorist is withholding important information which could save millions of Ameerrrriican lives :p
Most of us watching are lead to feel like it's "morally correct" to torture the terrorist to extract the information that will save lots of innocent peoples' lives.
It could be the same kind of "morally correct" that downloading a song is, when the party _potentially_ losing money is a multi-gazillion-dollar corporation that's suing children and grandmas left and right for a little pocket change.
Actually I happen to like buying good music on CDs, so that I can enjoy it at maximum sound quality and all. DRM and lossy compression make iTunes totally irrelevant to me.
And the other classic pro-piracy defense, that it works as a "try before you buy" has come true many times in my case. If I download a song that I really really like, I'll want to buy it too. If I don't like something, I won't listen to it either.
So let's not forget that when someone downloads a song, the record companies are not only potentially losing money, but also potentially gaining some.
On the other hand, the re-use value of even a good movie is pitifully low compared to good music.
A movie is simply not worth buying at 22 euros (Finland).
In Finland, all empty recording media such as CD- and DVD-Rs are sold with a sort of "piracy tax" included in the price.
Basically we're paying some kind of "royalties" to at least the Finnish equivalent of the RIAA, but I doubt that money ever goes anywhere else.
This tax was ushered in accompanied by a lot of moaning about how piracy is hurting the artists. "Every time you download a song, a baby seal is forced to listen to Smells Like Teen Spirit for five hours", and so on..
What it all means is that every single person in Finland who buys a CD-R is considered a criminal in advance, and pays a little tax for it.
So if we're already paying for being dirty criminals, why shouldn't we download things too?
Well, I've ended up rambling quite a bit about random thoughts, but the idea is to offer a different point of view.
The point is that piracy can be both right and wrong. There is middle ground.
People want entertainment, and many of us are willing to pay for it.