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Downloading music: is it theft?

opaltiger said:
And here's the key. If I pirate an album I am not taking something from the record company. I am making a duplicate of something. It's true that the thing I made a duplicate of did not belong to me, but that doesn't necessarily mean I stole it. Again, it's about balance - if I were to steal something, it would benefit me and harm the other party. If I copy something, it benefits me and leaves the other party no worse off (in simple terms; setting the issue of potential profits aside for the moment). In some respects the comparison to commensalism is not far off.
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This is why I don't think piracy is unethical. I don't think it is really relevant whether or not it is "theft"; "theft" is just an arbitrary word and you can argue about its definitions back and forth, but I think the meaningful component here is ultimately whether or not it is ethical, and, again, because no one is actually harmed by piracy in itself, I cannot personally consider it unethical.

It is, on the other hand, quite problematic, simply because the entire system of capitalism relies on supply and demand, and for data that can simply be duplicated at no measurable cost, the whole concept of supply is pretty much thrown out of the window. What anti-piracy measures are is simply a feeble attempt to restore the concept of supply to digital products by creating an arbitrary faux limitation on this duplication, an extremely awkward and hackish solution that completely fails to address the core of the problem: capitalism was just never made for this.

In my opinion, the only way out of this is pretty much to just start the entire industry over from scratch with a system better suited to this sort of thing (though obviously, physical merchandise, concert tickets and so on, things that actually obey the laws of capitalism, are fine the way they are). One possibility would be bands publishing their music online with free donations - you like it, you want more, you donate to the band. Say all you want about how it would never work, but I firmly believe it would still work better than the current system. Or somebody could think up a completely new system, one way or another. Either way the conventional laws of the free market just can't handle products that can be duplicated just like that.
 
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I personally think the whole idea of copyright is ridiculous. If I have a computer set to produce random sequences of 0s and 1s, and after wading through millions of them, find one identical to a copyrighted song, is that theft? If I borrow a CD from the library (or a friend), is it theft? What if I put it onto my computer? What if I post it online, seeing as all the people who download it online could just go to my library and rip it? And to those who say to listen to it on youtube: when you watch a video, it is saved to your temporary files. So technically, that's piracy too.

As a musician, I would never want music I play copyrighted. Music has been part of my life forever; what if I had a meaningful experience while another song was playing and included a line from that song as the chorus? Is it anything but an homage?

Also, by buying most cds, you're being completely ripped off: it costs less than two dollars to make a cd (less for big companies) and, while recording time is not free, it is also not ten dollars for every cd sold.
 
wayland said:
what if I had a meaningful experience while another song was playing and included a line from that song as the chorus? Is it anything but an homage?
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I'm pretty sure that would be considered an homage. It depends if you were singing the line to a different melody or not, I guess.
 
I don't think many bands could rely on donations alone. But by selling merchandise and tickets as well, it would probably be fine. I honestly can not see what the objection to such an arrangement is.
 
Ruby said:
I don't think many bands could rely on donations alone. But by selling merchandise and tickets as well, it would probably be fine. I honestly can not see what the objection to such an arrangement is.
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Some bands/artists rarely, if ever, play live (like Darkthrone for example) so don't receive income from ticket sales. There are plenty of other bands who do play live but would not be able to afford to go out and tour if people stopped buying their records. Merchandise does bring in good income for most bands, though this in itself won't always be enough.
 
Ruby said:
I don't think many bands could rely on donations alone. But by selling merchandise and tickets as well, it would probably be fine. I honestly can not see what the objection to such an arrangement is.
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Do remember that we (or, well, I) do not disapprove entirely of the concept of record labels.
 
It is stealing.

I have talked to a lot of music artists that I know and they are independant, some of them see people downloaing there music a bonus however. When your not famous and do all the work yourself, you are not known much. So every download to them is just as important as a CD sale.

However you should always support your artists, especially the Independant ones.
 
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