george101
Good Boy
Downloading is stealing…. How many times have we all heard that? This lovely phase was started by the honest people at the RIAA and affiliate organizations to make you feel guilty and treat downloading as a crime, plus as a bonus labeling you a criminal… copyright infringement is not a crime as it belongs in a civil court hence it’s a civil matter and not a criminal matter.
The funniest part is the actual pirates (charging around $20 USD for a music CD and up to 20 pounds in the UK for that same CD) have the audacity to call the end users pirates… kind of makes you want to take to the sea, put a parrot on your shoulder, rob, pillage, rape and shout “Arrrr! Me matey!” does it not? Although the raping part, I imagine, can be a bit difficult with that parrot on your shoulder…
The way you most probably heard/read this is: “it’s no different than a person going into a store and shoplifting a CD”. Well, nothing could be further from the truth, while shoplifting is a crime, downloading is nothing close to it… because when you shoplift from a shop you a taking away something physical which the shop owner has paid for and which he will regain by selling it to the next person who comes in… (In the case of shoplifting, when the next person comes in looking for that CD that CD is no longer there)
When downloading on the other hand, you are not taking away the actual copy from the original, you are merely taking a copy of it… as an example, using a photocopy machine to… for the sake of argument… photocopy the Mona Lisa, the reason why I chose the Mona Lisa is because most downloads (but not all, be it audio or video) are not as good as the original as they use “lossy formats” (in simple English: this breaks down the quality a bit to give you a smaller file to download faster… as an example a song on a CD can be well up to 100mb but by converting it to a MP3 you lose a bit of the quality but you get a small compact file for <= 5mb which is much faster to download and won’t take up a much space on your (space limited) most beloved MP3 player)
There is an exception to the above of course, and a very important one: If you were to download a CD / DVD and sell it… then you are directly depriving the shop owner of a sale and his chance of recovering his investment. This is where most file sharers draw the line and try to distance themselves as far as possible from the ‘roadside criminals’ who hock CDs and DVDs.. downloading for yourself (non profit) is ok in the minds of file sharers… as they probably wouldn’t buy that CD or go to the cinema anyway.., but reselling what you download is a big huge no-no.
Getting back to our Mona Lisa example, by photocopying or taking a picture of the Mona Lisa have you lessened its value in any way? Have you taken away the option of selling the painting from the owners of that masterpiece? The answer of course is a big: No.
If you had actually taken the painting on the other hand… (see where I am going with this?) You have deprived the owners of selling the painting and THAT would be stealing.
Look at our history and around you…the whole world is made up of copying.
Think about the cars you see (and may own)… 4 tires, steering wheel etc…. if there was no copying and improvements of design… we would have impractical automobiles all around.
For example if someone invented the car with the present 4 tire design and said nobody may copy that… then the next person would need to make a car with 1-3 or 5 tires.. and the next 6 tires and so on… how silly is that and where would it stop?
Which brings us to the question of… what if someone had copyrighted the wheel?
The very act of learning in school is copying (and maybe later improving) what the previous generations have done.
Source : *www.ezee.se/articles-blog/2008/03/20/downloading-is-stealing/
The funniest part is the actual pirates (charging around $20 USD for a music CD and up to 20 pounds in the UK for that same CD) have the audacity to call the end users pirates… kind of makes you want to take to the sea, put a parrot on your shoulder, rob, pillage, rape and shout “Arrrr! Me matey!” does it not? Although the raping part, I imagine, can be a bit difficult with that parrot on your shoulder…
The way you most probably heard/read this is: “it’s no different than a person going into a store and shoplifting a CD”. Well, nothing could be further from the truth, while shoplifting is a crime, downloading is nothing close to it… because when you shoplift from a shop you a taking away something physical which the shop owner has paid for and which he will regain by selling it to the next person who comes in… (In the case of shoplifting, when the next person comes in looking for that CD that CD is no longer there)
When downloading on the other hand, you are not taking away the actual copy from the original, you are merely taking a copy of it… as an example, using a photocopy machine to… for the sake of argument… photocopy the Mona Lisa, the reason why I chose the Mona Lisa is because most downloads (but not all, be it audio or video) are not as good as the original as they use “lossy formats” (in simple English: this breaks down the quality a bit to give you a smaller file to download faster… as an example a song on a CD can be well up to 100mb but by converting it to a MP3 you lose a bit of the quality but you get a small compact file for <= 5mb which is much faster to download and won’t take up a much space on your (space limited) most beloved MP3 player)
There is an exception to the above of course, and a very important one: If you were to download a CD / DVD and sell it… then you are directly depriving the shop owner of a sale and his chance of recovering his investment. This is where most file sharers draw the line and try to distance themselves as far as possible from the ‘roadside criminals’ who hock CDs and DVDs.. downloading for yourself (non profit) is ok in the minds of file sharers… as they probably wouldn’t buy that CD or go to the cinema anyway.., but reselling what you download is a big huge no-no.
Getting back to our Mona Lisa example, by photocopying or taking a picture of the Mona Lisa have you lessened its value in any way? Have you taken away the option of selling the painting from the owners of that masterpiece? The answer of course is a big: No.
If you had actually taken the painting on the other hand… (see where I am going with this?) You have deprived the owners of selling the painting and THAT would be stealing.
Look at our history and around you…the whole world is made up of copying.
Think about the cars you see (and may own)… 4 tires, steering wheel etc…. if there was no copying and improvements of design… we would have impractical automobiles all around.
For example if someone invented the car with the present 4 tire design and said nobody may copy that… then the next person would need to make a car with 1-3 or 5 tires.. and the next 6 tires and so on… how silly is that and where would it stop?
Which brings us to the question of… what if someone had copyrighted the wheel?
The very act of learning in school is copying (and maybe later improving) what the previous generations have done.
Source : *www.ezee.se/articles-blog/2008/03/20/downloading-is-stealing/
