Piracy, Legal or Not? Options

[medic]

I've noticed on this forum that they shut down almost every topic that has to do with any P2P program. Its not piracy to have a P2P program, or to use it. Its the way people use it. RealPlayer records what you play and sends it to there datacenter, that invasion of privacy, why aren't they getting sued. And NO they don't ask you if you want to participate in a consumer deal, they do it on there own will. The program is made to share information, so if you find a P2P program illegal, shut down all topics about AIM, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger - they all have P2P in there, you can send files through them - but for some odd reason there not considered ILLEGAL and don't get stereotyped as PIRACY. Consumers label a P2P program as Piracy, I think it is unjust. Why isn't TiVo illegal - it records movies without commercials and you can then burn them to a CD. If I wanted I could go set TiVo to make a copy of Assault on Precinct 13 on HBO or Stars and then burn it to a DVD. I didn't pay for that movie, I pay for the channel - but that still does not make it legal for me to do that. So in what ways does you downloading the same movie off a torrent site have any different effect. The RIAA and MPAA are just looking for more ways to screw consumers over.

I am doing what one of the mods said, to post it in debate - so I did. And I bet it gets shut down again.

[madchenallein]

I think it's crappy to tell people what they can and can't do with something they buy (a cd, for example). If artists care that much, then don't distribute their work on media that can be copied. If I pay for a cd, I ought to be able to copy it and give it to whoever I want. If the artists put out their work on copy/scan protected media no one is going to buy hundreds of CD-Rs and burn and burn and burn cds for the sheer joy of ripping off artists for an easy profit.

If I like an artist's work well enough, I will pay for a cd. If not, I probably won't bother adding it to my collection.

I agree that it's basically a moral question, and I do think an artist deserves compensation for their work. On the other hand, if it's a question of whether their Ferrari has the standard champagne colored unborn calfskin leather upholstery or the dyed red color; I find it hard to care. I think it's pointless to make laws that the government is unwilling/unable to enforce. Again, it's a problem of big government. Artists don't like it, they can use their millions of dollars to protect their work. If it costs more to put their music on a copy protected media, you know as a consumer that they are just going to pass that cost along to you.

And if you like their music enough, you'll buy it. This is basically what your average small business owner has to do, ensure his profit via alarm systems, employee training, etc. It is just an entertainment industry specific concern. In an ideal world, yeah right, every artist would do that and the cost of copy protected media would fall, making the artists' work more affordable for all.

The free-enterprise system should take care of this, not the government.