Where do you download your music from?

Not from "Best Buy," but from the artist, yes. The whole CD burning phenomenon pre-dated Napster by no more than a couple years, if that. So it's not like there was this widespread acceptance of CD-burning pre-Napster. I understand there was a bootleg culture, but that was often encouraged by the artists. I understand people made "mix tapes" once upon a time. That was small potatoes compared to this. Yes, there is a difference. Today, by one estimate I recently saw, 95 percent of music was obtained illegally.

Anyway, all of you can rationalize it all you want. It is flat wrong to go onto a computer, download file-sharing software, and then proceed to start downloading free music that you wouldn't walk into Best Buy and take without paying. The only distinction is you know you won't get caught this way. Blame the music industry for putting out bad music (not true) or overcharging (true) if you must, even so you have two choices: (1) Buy it; (2) Don't buy it and live without.

 

Fine, then. Don't buy the $20 album. But you don't get to steal it instead. Sometimes, I wish I could buy less than a dozen Titleist Pro V1's at a time. That doesn't give me the right to rip open the package at the pro shop and extract a ball for my liking to use around the greens.

 

You're making Stewart sad.

 

Elaborate.

 

Apples and oranges.

I don't want to steal the entire album. If I liked an entire album, I would be happy to purchase it.

I want one song from that album. In the past, record companies would make that one song available for single purchase. They stopped doing that. So I found way by which I can still have access to that one song that I still want. I win.

And your golf ball comparison fails because, even if you only want one golf ball, you're still not wasting your money buying a dozen.....because, eventually, if not right away, you will find a use for the other 11 balls. They're the same as the one you really want. It's not the same thing as 11 songs the record company wants to force me to buy even if I don't want to listen to them because I don't believe they're as good as the one I do want. See what I mean?

 

I can walk into Best Buy and purchase, say, a "Pirates of Silicon Valley" DVD for $15.

Or I can watch it on YouTube for free (albeit in 10 parts).

Why is watching it on YouTube completely legit but making a copy (horrors!) for someone so horribly wrong?

You are still paying $0. The people who worked to make it get $0. And it still sits on the shelf at Best Buy earning $0 for the retailer.

I agree you should not make a copy and SELL it (or otherwise profit from the work of others). But it all you are getting is the entertainment value from watching (or listening) . . . what does it really matter how you are getting that entertainment value once you decide you are paying $0 to get it?

 

Did the makers of the documentary put it on YouTube?

Their copyright, their rules.

Otherwise, yes, watching it on there is wrong. Posting it on there is REALLY wrong.

And companies are usually fairly protective of their copyrighted material being posted free online. Some are more protective than others. You can't find baseball highlights anywhere, for example. And some songs are easier to find on a place like YouTube than others.

Yeah, there are a lot of little distinctions between formats and so forth and so on.

But to me there is no rationalization for downloading music to keep against the wishes of the label and/or artist. None. Again: Their copyright, their rules. You want to break the rules, that's fine. But stop trying to explain it away.

 

Hardly. There are several versions of the movie on YouTube. Posted by the likes of "soloapple", "glork2007", "Bluisbarragan" and God knows how many others.

Is there a version on there posted specifically by those "authorized" to do so. Maybe. Doubt it, though.

So who really knows if what you are watching goes against the wishes of the label/artist? If it's there, it could mean the artist/label doesn't care. Or it could mean that they don't know.

 

Once you get the plug in, add the songs you want to the rhapsody playlist. Start playing one song. Pause it. then you'll see a atom looking icon spinning next to your address bar. Click it, it will have an mp3 file that will download into your download file.
Rinse, repeat.

 

I think there are also some musicians that liked to have their songs up on Napster, for example.

I agree it can be a tricky proposition, and that Pandora's Box has been opened.

I just stay on the safe side and pay for my music, unless I know it is available for free (such as from the artist's Web site).

 

Using a different ball around the greens? Cheater.

 

Not that we haven't had this argument a million times on this site, and repeated all over the internet, but when I take a golf ball, the owner of the store owns one less golf ball than he did five minutes ago. That's stealing.

If I copy a song from another person's computer, nobody owns less of anything than they did before the copying.