Death to iTunes

head fucking slap. Jesus Christ.

 

Outing alert: Mustang is Yakov Smirnoff. What a country!

 

Oh the initial learning curve is there, but once you get going it's no problem man.

 

A couple observations from this thread:

1. There are an awful lot of numbered bullet points throughout.

2. I didn't know GoMusicNow was run by the Russian mafia, or any mafia for that matter. It's not ideal, but I was a good iTunes soldier for a lot of years when others were going nuts with Limewire and Kazaa and crap like that. My conscience isn't throbbing just yet.

3. I'm just glad that, if I'm truly funding the Russian mafia, I'm only doing it 9 cents at a time.

4. Hopefully it costs more than 9 cents to cut off someone's hands.

 

Nine cents may not seem like much, but I'm pretty sure you can buy a bullet for 9 cents. And I'm damn sure that the Russian mob likes to put bullets in journalists.

 

Please allow me to add this. You wouldn't steal a jacket from Sears. You wouldn't break into your neighbour's house and take his watch. Why is stealing from musicians okay?

 

When I take the jacket from Sears, Sears no longer has a jacket.
When I break into my neighbor's house and take a watch, he no longer has his watch.

What does the musician no longer have?

It's not stealing. It's copyright infringement.

 

Control over his or her work. Not every form of "stealing" can be easily pigeonholed into a simple definition

 

They are losing no control. They can do whatever they want with their work.

There's a reason words have meaning, and attempting to use the wrong word is an attempt to subtly change the tone of the discussion.

Physical property rights and intellectual property rights are two distinct concepts with two very different histories and two different purposes to society.

If you find copyright infringement to be immoral, fine. But it's not stealing.

 

OK, TSGITR. Someone puts out CDs, and no one buys them because they're getting them off the Net. Money that is due them is not making it into their pockets. And you know damn well that words just as often are designed to not really say anything, or to obscure meaning. Ever heard the word euphemism?

 

Theft has a real meaning. That meaning has been around for quite some time. It can't be theft unless the object in question is no longer in possession of the original owner.

Why is money due them? You don't make money off theoretical sales, and losing theoretical sales is not theft.

If you want to make an argument that without protection of copyright laws, artists might not contribute society because they don't feel the sales will be actualized, then go ahead and make that argument. That's why intellectual property was created a few centuries ago.

But it's still not theft or stealing.