You know, file sharing. Like Napster, and Limewire. What do you think of it?
Honestly, I don't give a shit if you file-share. I download music sometimes (although I prefer to buy my cd's). I don't give a shit if a file-sharing business is shut down either.

I agree with Mike Z.

I love file-sharing, personally.. it's a very great way for me to preview a lot of animes and stuff like that...
and if I dedice that I like it and stuff, then I go out and buy it so that I don't have to keep on downloading episodes of that same anime.

say I download 3 episodes of an anime, and I watch the three episodes to get a feel for the anime. and if I want more, I go out and buy it.

I mean, think about it... file sharing is also a way to get a taste of something you've never watched before or heard before. like great music of singers that you would had never heard of otherwise.
so in a way file sharing can also be beneficent to the big companies out there.... it's free advertising which they don't have to pay for, and more people buys animes/movies/music from them because of that little taste they got of what they had to offer though file sharing.

I download TV episodes and that is about it.

I don't see it as illegal really. Although it is considered as such.

I just want to see the latest episodes of my favorites TV shows shortly after they air and not wait months and months until they get to my part of the world.

What do i download, Above all Anime, I download obscene amounts of Anime, i also download the occasional program that i cant be bothered to fork out the money for or i otherwise just cant get (living in a small town with nowhere that sells software adds to this and i dont like internet delivery for various reasons) I download kaiju movies too, mainly because they are sodding hard to get without going by amazon and frankly I dispise amazon and its insanley shoddy delivery service, when i want to see a 200 foot tall atomic monster smashing japan i want it now not three weeks after its delivery date. I also download older series of Doctor who, mainly because not all doctor who storylines are actually good, and the ones that I already know to be good I buy on DVD.

Basicly I download things I can't get, things that I want right now and things that I am unsure about the goodness of.

Like VegaX, I download my favorite TV shows if I missed them when they aired. If I can catch them on actual TV, usually I prefer to do that instead, because it's easier and I get to sit on my couch.

Tater Salad
I bought Photoshop (7.0 is only like 40-50 bucks)

$40-$50? That's quite a bargain! Did you buy them from some guy named Steve in an alleyway? Last time I checked even the educational version of Photoshop was $300.

I guess it's possible you're running Limited Edition or Elements or something. Those could potentially be a lot cheaper.

Well, 7.0 is the old version, and I think they've already gone through a few versions of CS already, so I can see the price getting dropped substantially.

Anyway, I believe in downloading if the option of purchase isn't available. For example, Tater mentioned that Clerks II wasn't being shown near her, so I can sympathize with that logic. Anime also seems to be a popular download; I know I'd rather watch a fan sub than some of what ends up on air (Ex.: One Piece).

I don't agree with downloading domestically released, easy to access movies. Another thing I'm generally against is downloading scans of comic book series'. Again, though, if that particular series isn't sold near you, I can understand the desire to download it.

isn't weird how some people will download like 1...2 songs in their life and they they get caught and charged enough money to throw them on the street.

There was a rally one time in canada I heard about. Band like Nickleback and I think Sum 41 where there. They were going to have a concert for downloading music. They liked the fact that people downloaded their music.

They said it makes them feel good to know people like them enough to download it also. They said it is all about the music....not the money.

Pretty cool huh?

Too bad they caught the concert and threatened to arrest all of them if they had it. So it was cancelled.

What a great world we live in when it is all about money.

I mean you NEED money. But it isn't everything right?

Actually I say eventually, subscription programs like rhapsody for music or netflix for movies will take over the world and we won't have to worry about filesharing troubles so much anymore.

...then communism will follow and marx and engels will be happy. come on increased polarization of wealth and poverty!

I've never really seen a problem with file sharing. Especially with things like music or anime and such.

I personally think this got all really blown out of proportion with napster originally. But, what can you do, when Lars Ulrich speaks apparently people listen.

um, not really.

there may be stuff online that's free to download... but in this day and age, there's still a lot of people that doesn't have comptuers at home (le gasp!).....

so they would buy the alums. and plus there's also the type of people that despite having downloaded it, would still buy the alum because they have no CD burning stuff, or have a very shitty one that they would still preffer buying the real thing to have more high-quality stuff to take out with them in the car or whatever.

so despite the fair amounts of people downloading the artists are still making money off the sales. and ALSO off what they make for concerts, Music videos, etc.

so the music artists are still making money, regardless of "illegal copies".

MechaShiva

Kennedy0
Not entirely true. Sure, maybe some people are down with that, but I honestly hate it when people steal my shit. Being an indy publisher, it does not get paid for by the store, it comes out of my own pocket. And being that I don't have any other job, this honestly does hurt me personally.

that's why music and comic fields cannot be compared in this sense. cause musicians, at least a big number of them, still have gigs, where their biggest earnings come from. comic artists are not benefited in the same sense: gaining fame and recognition everytime someone scans their comics and shares them over the web, cause they don't have gigs where people can go see them draw live.
and i'm sorry to hear that happens with your work, Kennedy0 (if it actually happens and whenever it does).

that was actually the point that I was trying to make... ^^;;

so in total: Music Artists make most of their money off live gigs. Comic Artists don't.

equinox
If file sharing is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Amen to that brother!

i have limewire, winMX, bit comet, and bit lord so yeah i'm all for it.

i'll never get napster though bad memories.

There's two ways we can look at File Sharing. One is that you're stealing from the company. The other is that an aynonomous person is putting a file online and letting you "borrow" it for an indefinite amount of time, much in the same way that you could borrow something from a friend. If a friend lends you a movie that's not stealing, is it? And so file sharing, if you're not physically taking the file from someone, can't be stealing, right?

Well that's not exactly how it goes. Sure, someone may have legitimatly bought a CD and put the files online for you to download, and they're not making any money off of it or anything, but you aren't paying royalties. It's easy to use twisted logic to make the case for yourself that you're not actually stealing anything, but that's just you making up bull to appease your conscience.

Overall I think file-sharing can't be stopped or prosecuted, but it also shouldn't necessarily be done. However it's so easy people are bound to do it.

BigFishComic
...then communism will follow and marx and engels will be happy. come on increased polarization of wealth and poverty!

What is it with you and Communism?

o_0

SheaSummers
What is it with you and Communism?

o_0

Didn't you know that this is thread is actually a top secret Marxist headquarters? The working people will no longer be oppressed! We shall all have music, programs, movies, and other shit for free!

Rich

SheaSummers
What is it with you and Communism?

o_0

Didn't you know that this is thread is actually a top secret Marxist headquarters? The working people will no longer be oppressed! We shall all have music, programs, movies, and other shit for free!

*Runs and breaks into a GameStop, steals stuffies... and get's arrested"

>.<

DAMN YOU RICH! DAMN YOU!!!

DAMN! Another one of our comrades is help back by the government oppression! Fear not! For one day we shall have our Marxist paradise where everything is free and the working people are no longer oppressed!

Communism good...


Goverment bad.......

RAHHHHHHHHHHH, also the day of the dead is coming up ^-^

Communism needs government to function, so your statement doesn't work.

the quality of the things there are SHIT.

And I dont get everything from limewire. There are really good songs out there that you only get by buying the actual CD.

I personally refuse to pay $80 for Microsoft Office, or $300-$600 for Photoshop. I know people that have bought those programs legitimately, and I've just made a copy of the CD and written down the activation code (in the case that I need to wipe my computer or get an entirely new one).

As for music... well, one of my favorite bands, Seraphim Shock, is unsigned. I love their music, but can't find their CDs anywhere. I first heard a few of their songs from a friend that sent me some MP3s, and then sent me more when I told her I liked them. When their new album came out, I bought it directly from their website. I also did the same with three different CDs by The Cruxshadows. So... yeah. Even though I download music, I'll still ultimately support my favorite bands and buy the CDs (or individual songs off iTunes) whenever I've actually got the money.

Looking through this entree thread, I think Mike Z put the argument best, better than anyone else. It's genius:

mike Z.
I don't think file sharing is a bad thing. If I wanted, I could give a CD to a friend of mine and save them the effort of downloading. Taking down file sharing services under the guise of 'protecting sales' is pointless and it doesn't protect copyright.

However, taking down file sharing providors ensures that any new, independent, and non-wealthy artists without their own tools for promotion have to go through one of the major record labels. Record labels aren't trying to save their business, they're trying to control culture. Their business model is a formula that calls for direct control over everything from what artists will play, how they are managed, produced, distributed and when/how often they get played, and of course how they are chosen in the first place.

And that's just the huge corporations: Universal, Virgin, BMI. Smaller labels aren't campaigning against file sharing, hell, Nettwork even promotes it, and stepped in last year to help some poor American sap who got reamed by the RIAA for a huge sum of money by paying his settlement and legal bills. Size makes the difference here, the big kids want to keep their piece of the pie, which in there eyes, means everything everywhere.

As for the legality of it, I consider that moot. Copyright was not made for the way that it is being used now, even if the way its being used now is all well and legal. It doesn't take a law student to understand something is amiss. Copyright was intended to protect those with something at stake to protect their hard work, not for large mega-conglomerates with buckets of money to be able to swallow entire markets and wield total control. If it were up to them, everything would be stamped with copyright, everything owned, and though while you'd be allowed to listen to and enjoy your culture, you'd never be allowed to forget who owns it, and that it remains the excusive property of Richard Branson. Don't share, don't interact, don't talk back: just listen.

I would care very much if file sharing was shut down: it would be yet another example of concentration of power, from the hands of the people to the hands of the corporations. Again, all technically legal, which just makes me think the laws need to change, as they were supposed to be for us after all, not the exclusive privilege of economic giants.

.: mike z. :.

The only problem is that he doesn't cover other copyrighted digital media, like programs, movies and games. He's mainly concerned with music. But he's spot-on throughout anyway, none of this crap about 'stealing' and 'piracy'.

It's a complex issue, in it all RIAA are the biggest pirates and hijackers, they're basically robber barons. That's clear. As for sharing programs like photoshop, it HELPS the companies, because almost everyone who downloads them 'illegally' would NEVER have bought them in the first place. Instead they get free training with them, serving to increase the pool of skilled potential employees who can use them, and also POPULARISE the product immensely due to what they create with it (like Flash), therefore markedly increasing market share. -You see, the intended market of these companies IS NOT humble home users, it's small to medium business, who CAN easily afford them, and get easily caught if they use them illegally.

Sharing like that even HELPS Windows when it happens in third world countries. In places were a free OS like Linux would otherwise dominate, they use 'illegal' copies of Windows, which of course means that Windows easily gets massive market penetration. And when that market goes legal (like it inevitably has to), they're all committed to Windows.

And so it goes, with mostly all forms of 'file sharing'. The only people who actually DO tend to get hurt by it are small to medium content producers (music, programs, etc), but they always face MUCH more damage from the practises of the big, unethical content producers and copyright holders anyway.