Do you think it's unethical to download music illegally?

i think its fine to download as long as you do not make profit from it .
also think its ok if you are at sometime in the future plan to buy the cd/dvd

No.

Yeah, I guess I think it’s unethical. Artists already suffer because people don’t buy as many CDs as they used to. Some people think I’m crazy for actually buying my music on iTunes, but I figure I’ll help the starving artists out as much as I can. Even though some aren’t exactly starving anymore, but still. To me, downloading free music on Limewire or something is sort of like stealing.

Yes…using your example of someone who doesn’t have the money to purchase an album, do they have other options of listening to the music they prefer at a reasonable cost of $0 (i.e. the radio, Pandora, etc.). The answer is a simple “yes”. I equate the idea of stealing music off the internet with dining and dashing…you feel free to take the goods but when it comes to paying, you run. Having worked in the music industry for several years right around the time Napster and others were taking hold, I can tell you that some of the major artists probably wouldn’t hurt if a few songs were “stolen” but there are a large number of indie artists and bands out there that rely on the sales of their albums to survive. If you enjoy their music and you want the right to isten to their music whenever you wish, then purchase it…

use spotify or last.fm if you want to listen to it instead of downloading

It’s a good question, and I think it is unethical. And I don’t think that way because of its illegality.

Is it unreasonable to desire compensation for the hard work a person does? Do you not think you deserve getting a pay-cheque at the end of the month?

The only reason people steal music/movies/games/books/whatever on the internet is because it is anonymous and they know they won’t get caught.

You wouldn’t walk into a store and rip off a CD because you know you wouldn’t like your picture being taken by the police, and the people in your community recognising you when you go into their shops – thinking that you are just some schmuck thief.

At least I’m more stealing from the record companies than the actual artist.

http://torrentfreak.com/top-artists-strike-back-at-greedy-music-labels-090311/

FTA: “Another worry for the artist is the revenue on digital sales. Quite often, the deals record labels make for selling music online are vague and the artists don’t get paid at all. Last year we already reported on one such artist who found his music on iTunes, but never received a penny. Frustrated, he decided to upload his music onto BitTorrent sites so people could download it for free.”

I think it’s unethical. The musician makes the music available to the record company under certain terms, and the record company makes the music available to you under certain terms. If you don’t like those terms, your options are to negotiate different terms with the record companies, reach a separate agreement with the musician, or to forgo the music altogether.

If people make different arrangements with the artists—like some bands allowing or encouraging bootleg recordings, or allowing people to download MP3 files directly from their sites—then that helps the musicians. If people make different arrangements with the record companies—like emusic and iTunes, compared to digital sales—then that helps the musicians. If people copy the music, that helps nobody but themselves, and hurts the musicians.

Yes, the record companies are crooked. The way to fix this isn’t through rampant copying of music, because that is illegal and that drives to them seeking legal solutions like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—a legal disaster if there ever was one. The way to fix this is to find other ways to compensate artists that don’t require cartels and draconian legislation. For instance, seeing the artists live and buying T-shirts and CDs at the merch tent puts considerably more money in their hands.

I don’t buy “I can’t afford it”—you’re paying $50 a month for a broadband Internet connection, and you can’t afford a $30 subscription to emusic? Or a $12 CD?

And I don’t buy “I really would help the artist, but all the profits go to the record companies.” That’s just a rationalization for theft of services. Why aren’t you buying direct from the artist at live shows?

If I can buy it on itunes, I do. If it’s an unsigned band that I really like or I am really interested in hearing and they aren’t for sale on itunes but I can find them on limewire or somewhere I will.

@cwilbur I do buy CD’s occasionally, but only if I really like it. Downloading is more of a process of elimination to see what music I do like, at least for me.

I posted that quote mostly because someone in this thread mentioned iTunes.

“For instance, if someone honestly can’t afford to buy music via download or albums, do you think it’s okay to download it from a service like Limewire?”

—

WTF? Will downloading this music somehow save lives? No, it won’t? Then yes, it certainly is unethical.

And no, it doesn’t matter what service you use, it’s unethical.

Matter of fact, ripping music from someone else’s legitimately purchased CD is also unethical… you didn’t buy it. It’s not yours.

—

Please note, I’m wearing my “I’m a big hypocrite hat” whilst crafting this quip.

I don’t think ethics have much to do with it. I think it is pretty short-sighted, for reasons others have expressed here. If musicians don’t make money, they won’t make music. If they don’t make music, there won’t be anything for you to download for free.

Pay the damn Piper!

I think it is unethical. But all this is relative. It is more unethical than telling your children there is no more ice-cream in the fridge, but less unethical than cheating on your wife, or torturing Afghan prisoners for example.

Having said that, downloading music does not affect the industry as much as they tell us it does. Sure, some people download stuff instead of buying it, but if they couldn’t get it for free, they simply wouldn’t buy it at all. And most people will end up buying something they really like just so they can look at it on a shelf. This was so back when LPs were copied onto tapes and it has not changed with MP3s or iPods. I am pretty sure that a teenager with 200GB worth of tunes on their hard drive would never be able to afford all those thousands of original CDs (often worth more than $100,000) if they had to pay for them. They’d just buy the 10 best ones.

But the biggest problem with piracy, and especially software piracy as opposed to music, is that by reducing profits you take out the motivation and resources for future productions. In music this is not a huge problem, because you’ll still get amateur artists who’ll just go ahead and make music just for fun, and it could actually be of a pretty good quality. But not many people can programme decent software on their own, especially complicated things such as video games. You need a company for that, and if everyone copies stuff for free, then that’s the end of it.

As a singer/songwriter myself I have made my own CDs freely available to whoever wants to download them or copy them. CD sales have always been an insignificant source of profit for me, as most money comes from live performances (and the same goes for most singers). But I can also understand people who do not wish that to happen and they have every right to want their intellectual property protected.

Oh and another thing: this probably does not apply to the US, but it is a huge part of the problem (and I was reading recently how a US-based software company was trying to tackle the issue).

A few years back I helped with a game called “Heroes of Might and Magic IV”. Some of you may have heard of it. Anyway, I was in Greece when the game came out and I really wanted to get the copy as soon as possible. So I went into a shop and asked for it. They didn’t have it but said they could get it in 24h. So I go back the next day and they give me 2 burnt CDs, including a crack code. I took them, but insisted I wanted an original copy. I had to go back to the place another 3 times before they finally managed to get me one, almost a month later (and for 5 times the price of the pirated CDs I got the first day). It only makes sense that, even if the originals were 1/5 of the price and not 5x, most people would still go for the illegal copies, since they are so much easier to obtain, especially in countries where laws are not so strictly enforced. Almost 50% of the software used in Greece is illegal. In Russia this number is over 90%. It is practically impossible to find an original copy of anything, no matter how hard you try.

You don’t need music to live… and ever hear of the radio?

I think it is bad; it’s stealing.

It’s unethical. Plain and simple.

It is unethical and illegal.

If someone can’t afford food, should they just steal from a grocery store? I would be a lot more inclined to go for that if the person was hungry, but it is not acceptable in our society.

Music is not even a necessity. If you can’t afford it, you should not have it.

What if I already bought the CD, then it was damaged beyond repair or broken, is it ok to download the CD online or do I have to pay $25.00 each time it happens?

@tyrantxseries If a car gets damaged is it ok to just steal another one of the same model?

@sandystrachan , is it fine to walk in to Best Buy or FYE and steal a CD so long as I don’t profit for it? Or so long as at some point in the future I intend on walking back and giving them the money?

If not, why is it okay to steal via downloading but not via physical action?

@tyrantxseries – If you’re spending $25 for a CD that’s been out long enough for you to damage it, you’re doin’ it wrong. Unless it’s something super-rare, you can probably find it used on Amazon (or the like) for a buck or less, plus shipping.

To answer the question, yes, I do think it’s unethical. It’s not about whether or not you profit, it’s about whether the people involved in the creation of the music profit. It’s not the artist alone who made it, so you can’t just think, “Oh, the singers are all rich anyway and record companies are evil, so it doesn’t matter.” There are also the little people – session musicians, engineers, mixers, songwriters, technicians, and everyone else without whom the music would never have reached you. They deserve to be able to feed their kids, too.

Actually I think that having copies of a CD you bought for your own use is legal (eg a copy to play in your car when the original stays at home). But of course nobody does that. Copies are usually for others.

Money is not lost when someone who already paid for the CD once happens to scratch their copy and doesn’t pay for it twice. It’s the millions of people worldwide who don’t pay a single penny, ever.

Yes it is unethical, but honestly the music labels are making it really hard to be enthusiastic about purchasing music, same applies to software. They are afraid of change and want to force people to buy music their way, they don’t like digital distribution as it infringes on their existing distribution model which is setup for maximum profitability. If they had embraced digital distribution as soon as it was possible with MP3s, then I don’t think piracy would be where it is today. Also if the prices didn’t constantly make people feel like they were being ripped off, it wouldn’t be as bad. I’ve been buying albums on Amazon MP3 downloads when they have a sale, where you can usually get one album for that day for $1.99 instead of $8 or more. That is a good price and I’ll actually pay it. Yeah it’s not much for them, but they can either take my $1.99 or most likely take $0.00. I haven’t purchased a physical CD in probably 7 years. It’s a dead format as far as I’m concerned.

For software many companies lock their software down with so much DRM that the paying customers are the ones that are inconvenienced and treated like criminals. I read an article not long ago where a guy wanted to install some software his company had legally purchased, and the company’s support department made him send in pictures of each CD that he had so they could verify he had legit copies. It was a process that took a week or so, when the pirates that were using the software illegally were using it happily with no problems at all. I ran into a similar situation where I bought a legit copy of a game and somehow the CD-key needed to install it was missing. So I emailed the company and 3 days later got a response telling me to take pictures of the CD and box and send it in, and they’ll send me a CD key. I did so, but since it had already taken 3 days to get that response, I really didn’t want to wait for them to send me a CD-Key, so instead I went online and found one in literally 2 minutes and got down to playing my game. Now what is the point of even buying it when the user experience is better pirating it.

Gabe Newell from Valve Software is one of the only ones that has it right. He says basically that one big reason people pirate is that the pirates provide a better experience. They provide it through digital download, it’s faster than going to the store, in other countries you don’ t have to wait 6 months for it to come out, there is no stupid copy protection, etc. So his solution is to provide better service than the pirates. And that’s the only way to beat them. And I’ve purchased 3 games from Steam in the last 2 months because it’s a better experience, and stuff is affordable when they put it on a weekend sale.

it is sooooo NOT unethical! (it is not even a question about ethics. it is a question about profits!)

it is unethical that countries have made it illegal!

music is something to share not to sell. people who make music (for the right reasons), and really care about the music they are making are not doing it with profit in mind.

to say it is “unethical” just reinforces capitalist, profit-driven ideology! boo!

also most performers make very little from CD sales, most of that goes to the record label/company. musicians make the majority of their money from LIVE performances. so if you download and really like it, go support them at their concerts :)

alive does have a point (see what I said above) but it’s not as simple as that, either. Because if you take profitability out of the music industry, what you are left with are, well, guys like me. With just one guitar and a cheap microphone, recording stuff in a basement. My latest almbum cost $10,000, which is not even much, and I never broke even. Guess what? I’m not making another one. But yes, most of the money does come from concerts, so if I was still touring and making the sort of money I used to, I’d be able to afford another album once a year (which I’d probably sell at concerts anyway).

Tying all this to what StellarAirman just said: when mp3.com first started, I was one of the first people to support it. It was a great idea. Not just the format (which is now a standard), but the whole thing. Anyone could upload their music to the site and get a page for free, then people could hear a sample and if they liked it, they’d buy one song or the whole CD for 1/10 of the normal price. And musicians got 50% of that, which was still a lot more than we’d normally get. Unfortunately, it cut out the middle men (record labels, distributors, record shops and of course state tax offices) so a lot of people got pissed off and eventually the whole thing collapsed (mp3.com now belongs to the company that filed the first law suit against internet music). So yes, capitalist interests have harmed creativity in this case.

But this should not be an excuse for people to simply not pay for something that they have taken. I do not think downloading music is as bad as stealing, but it’s a bit like taking infinite amounts of free samples for perfumes or cheese and never actually buying anything. Or riding on a bus without a ticket. Especially where software is concerned (as I explained above), the result would be catastrophic, which is why I always buy originals of any software I use.

btw my record company (which mainly produces classical music) does not only sell CDs online, but also allows for digital downloads from their site for 1/3 of the normal price. People have not used that much, but I think that has to do with the type of music. Classical music fans are presumable technophobes with more money than the average teenager and probably prefer to have a physical product in their hands.

@alive – By that token, everyone should do their job and share it for free for the joy of it. I should enter data for free, for example, and you should also do your job for free.

But then, what would the musicians do to earn their rent money, if no one got paid, even for day jobs? Perhaps landlords will let them live in their apartments for free, just from the joy of sharing their buildings.

And then we wake up, stop dreaming, and start paying musicians like they’re doing a job. Which they are. And so are all the other people that help put that music into your hot little hands.

Besides, if musicians were really doing it for the love of playing to entertain you, they’d let you into the concerts for free, too. They would seem to prefer that you pay, though.

@alive, that’s a complete load of crap. The people who “make the music” are not just the artists, who I grant you, MAY have gotten into it for the love of the art. It is EVERYONE involved, from the artists to the sound mixers to the engineers, to the distributors, to the publishers, to everyone in between that I can’t even fathom. THIS IS THEIR JOB. It is absolutely something to sell. Just as your talent at whatever job you have is something to sell.

Ugh. People with the mindset of “it should be free!” disgust me with how much of a lack of sense of reality they have.

My recordings are free, although no one wants them. That’s due, in part, to our lack of marketing (not even a website or a Facebook account), and also that they are just recordings of jam sessions, so there’s a lot of dreck mixed in with the good stuff. Still, if we were distributing them, it would be for free.

@daloon , can we safely assume that you do not make your livliehood from these free non-distributed recordings? That you have some other means of income? That no one else depends upon them for their livliehood either?

If that’s all correct, than your situation has 0 to do with illegal music downloading.

@MrItty: You’re totally right. My experience is invalid. I never should have posted. I’m glad you noticed and were able to correct me on that. Sorry.

What is that? Mickey Mouse in your avatar? If not, you might want to get that fixed, man. Just saying.

@alive: to say it is unethical recognizes that musicians need to eat.

Your average musician who plays well enough to record CDs that people are willing to buy has spent thousands of hours practicing and probably hundreds of hours writing the music you like. The only person who gets to say whether it should be shared or sold is, believe it or not, that musician.

It’s easy for people who have no creative skills to say “It should be shared! It wants to be free!” Spend a thousand hours learning to play the guitar, and sweat blood over difficult fingerings. Pour your heart and soul into a song, spend a week looking for the perfect voicing of that chord, and then tell me that it should be something to be given away for free.

Further, persisting in your attitude means that musicians will not be able to support themselves, and will have to work day jobs, and will burn out.

How do I know this? Because I’m working as a computer programmer because I couldn’t support myself in music. I’ve had people tell me, “it’s a shame to let the music die!” And I ask them, how many MP3s do you have in your collection that you didn’t pay for? That’s the shame.

@MrItty: It’s also fair to say that if @daloon is giving the recordings away for free, without expecting to be paid for them, then downloading them is not illegal.

It doesn’t matter whether the artist needs the sale to make a living or not; the artist made the thing, and it’s basic manners and human decency to respect his wishes about it.

@daloon, I did not mean to suggest you were wrong to post. Forgive the implication, it was unintentional. I only meant that your situation is not an argument in favor of illegal downloading.

@cwilbur, Downloading daloon’s songs is, indeed, not illegal. He is the owner of that material. He is free to choose who can have access to it and by what means. Downloading songs that do not have a free release, however, is still quite illegal.

No i dont i never have but i would

@LYNN_WILL14 would you also walk into a store and steal a CD? If not, what is the difference in your mind?

MrItty, without actually going into details about my own opinion, I think you’re finally at the core of this argument. The difference in most people’s mind is this:

A CD is a physical, “real” product that you can very easily feel you have stolen, because you’ll know it’s in your pocket when you walk out the store. Most importantly, if the CD is not sold, the store could give it back to the company and get their money back. In fact, most CDs are SOE, which stands for “Sale Or Return”. This means the store will only pay for them once they are sold. So you are actually reducing the store’s profits by stealing a CD. The same happens when you steal a loaf of bread or a car. Though food does eventually go stale, so that’s a bit more complicated.

An mp3 download however is comparable to sneaking into the cinema without a ticket (or, in my example above, riding a bus for free). The music/film/bus journey has already been made, and by not paying you are not taking money away from anyone, though you are in fact reducing possible profits. A person who does not pay their ticket at the cinema does not affect the screening directly, as this would happen even if they weren’t in. But low profits do have a long-term effect on the industry as a whole (which is not the same as stealing a ticket from the box office).

So in one case you deduct money, and in the other one you simply don’t add any. The main argument there is that this money would not have been added anyway, as people who download music for free would simply not listen to it at all if they couldn’t download it. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. Statistical analysis (as well as our everyday experience) shows that they would probably just pay for some of it and never bother with what they couldn’t afford.

IF IT IS GOOD ENOUGH, I’LL BUY IT.

just like if i go to the store and there are free samples, if i like it i’ll get it, and i might even continue to get it. (to use the example from the original question – i would only want ‘unlimited free samples’ if i didn’t have enough money to feed myself)

i believe in supporting bands/performers that need the support. this usually comes down to local bands/performers, i will go to their concerts to see them live because there is nothing better! and i will buy their cds to listen to in my car and at home when i can’t see them live.

and if you go into music thinking that you will be making a lot of money (or even enough to support yourself) you are disillusion. (just like sports stars) only a very small small small percentage of performers/bands ever reach stardom.

as for the “implications of socialism” comment from laureth that is a whole topic in and of itself, but i will say this: you assume that if no one got paid for any job that landlords would still charge rent. that seems like a false premise because if everything is done for free then “rent” would be free – rent would not exist in a universe where everything is free.

But more importantly music is a “product” only because capitalism can put a price on anything.

@mritty your comments to daloon and to myself were fucking rude. thanks.

@Jack79, you honestly believe people are thinking of the company’s business model when they decide whether or not to illegally download? I don’t. I think they’re thinking “Hey I can download this, for free, without any effort, and not get caught!”

In the same sense people are not thinking of the company’s business model when they steal (or not steal) CDs from a shop. It’s not about the theory. It is all a matter of perception, and this was a question about ethics, not law or economics.

All I’m saying is that the average person does not consider going on a bus without a ticket as bad as stealing a ticket, or listening to music for free as bad as stealing the actual (physical) CD. It’s psychological, not legal. And they don’t have to be right or wrong, that’s simply how most people see it.

Which is why I said it is “more unethical than telling your children there is no more ice-cream but less unethical than cheating on your wife”.

And to put things into perspective, in my whole music career only about 8% of the money I earned was from CD sales and other merchandise. This includes a top 40 single and a top 10 album. My share from legal internet downloads was around 11 cents (total), which of course I never bothered to collect.

@alive – I understand your point about landlords, rent, and getting paid. I threw it in mostly to make a point.

the only reason that downloading is in question is because companies have a chance of regulating it (i.e. make their own sites to sell music).

think about the good ol’ tape days for example… you could just press record while listening to the radio and get it for free as well…. but companies never were smart enough to figure out how to squeeze the profit out from that.

and speaking of radio. it is FREE! ... it is free because it is supported by advertising the same way that most p2p sites are supported.

also lets not forget that bands/artists sell other merchandise far beyond just cds! why don’t they PAY ME for wearing their t-shirts, or putting their bumper sticker on my car!? that is TONS of FREEEEE ADVERTISING for THEM! or when i say to all my friends, hey guys i heard this really cool band you should listen to!

conclusion: i should be getting paid for promoting them… hail capitalism!

oh and about jack’s 11 cents… i have a question.

so when you buy a cd you have to purchase it as a whole. when you can download just by song does that lessen profit for artists? who gets the bulk of that “99 cents” per song down load?

“and speaking of radio. it is FREE! ... it is free because it is supported by advertising the same way that most p2p sites are supported.”

The difference there is that the radio broadcasters pay a license fee to the labels for every song they play. P2P sites are simply profiting from it and not giving anything to the record labels.

Exactly what @StellarAirman says!

I know a guy who gets checks from ASCAP because radio stations occasionally play some songs he wrote. It’s not a heck of a lot, but he does appreciate earning money from his skill as a songwriter. He doesn’t get that from pirating or P2P sites.

@StellarAirman ok, ok fair enough. but what about me getting paid for all the advertising i am doing for them?

Yes @alive, the deal with that site was that I’d get a certain amount of money per song, which was typically 1/10 of what I’d get if someone dowloaded a whole album. This is years ago btw. The 11c were actually 19pf (the DM no longer exists and I calculated it into US$, it would be like 9.5 eurocents maybe).

This number is after all the deductions were made. I’m sure there are people that have made thousands off that system (David Bowie for example), but then again Bowie can make 10 times more than that from a single concert. Overall, however big you are, the percentage is about the same for most types of music.

Sure, Paul McCartney lives off royalties, but that’s royalties from 100 songs, half of which have been megahits for decades. If the Beatles had been gigging for the last 40 years and filling up stadiums like they used to, he’d be even richer.

btw you could get paid for advertising them if you had such a deal. Nobody’s forcing you to wear the T-shirt. They don’t owe you anything, just like you wouldn’t owe them anything if they’d sent you the free song samples on their own.

Like Jack said, there are people that get paid to wear certain clothes, etc. For instance a lot of bands are paid to wear Hurley and other brand clothes. They get paid and get the free clothes. Same for using a certain type of guitar or amp. The reason they are paid to use those things is because by them wearing them, other people are more likely to wear them in order to emulate them. And then once you are that person, you are on the other side of the coin where you are paying the company to wear the same clothes as the rock stars you look up to to emulate them. (not saying you personally, just, you know…)

If by you wearing Brand X clothing, it would influence others to wear Brand X clothing because of your popularity or influence over some group, then you would probably get paid to wear a certain type of clothing as well.

haha i guess i’m just not popular enough.

(i was only using it as an example of how capitalism can make people pay for anything and everything. i don’t actually think i should get paid. when i buy a band shirt it is because i really do want to support them. i think i own one.—a fake faded rolling stones shirt i bought at target! JUST kidding! but everyone wants a slice of the pie.)

@alive: The difference between radio play and P2P sharing is that the bands and the record labels consent to the former, but not to the latter.

This isn’t even about capitalism (which appears to be your pet demon). This is about respect for the person who created the thing. The reason that musicians can’t make money is that people with an overinflated sense of entitlement decide that the fruits of the musician’s labors should be free for the taking.

Respect what the musician wants done with his or her work. If this includes getting paid for it—and signing a contract with a record label indicates that the musician wants to get paid according to those terms—then you should either not listen to the music or you should pay the musician. It’s not about capitalism and profit, it’s about respect for one’s fellow human beings and the hard work they put into creating art for you to enjoy.

@cwilbur like i said earlier if it is good enough i’ll buy it. i don’t have any problem supporting people that are making good and meaningful music. my ‘capitalism’ point is that we assume in the first place that we can put a price on music. (historically music is used as a social tool just like feasting to spend time with “one’s fellow human beings” and have a good time and enjoy each other’s comapny). i have plenty of respect for people.

but the fact is that we have pushed technology to do these sorts of things. what did they expect when cd burners were invented and placed in every computer. that no one would use them?

downloading and the internet has opened music sales to a world wide market. i can listen to obscure bands that i have never heard of or heard play before and if it turns out they suck, thank god i didn’t waste the money. but if they rock, cool, i’ll buy the cd.

also if you are gunna attack downloading sites because anyone can listen to the music for free, what about youtube?

apology to everyone who is sick of this discussion/listening to me blab.

@alive: Participatory music—where people create the music together, live—is a social tool. The current situation—where a few people make music and many, many more people buy it in a recorded fashion—is what makes music a product. It’s the CD player in your computer, and the cassette and record player before it, that have turned music from a social activity to a product that can be bought and sold.

And I am not ‘gunna’ [sic] attack downloading sites because anyone can listen for free; I think they’re unethical if they are copying music that the artists did not give permission to copy, because that’s violating what the artist has asked people to do with his creation. YouTube videos that the artist did not give permission to have circulated in that way are unethical copies for the same reason; YouTube videos that the artist himself puts up are not unethical because the artist is consenting to it.

The fact that the music is available for free is a red herring. You say you have plenty of respect for people, but you sure aren’t demonstrating it—if you respected artists, you wouldn’t steal their music.

@cwilbur

EXACTLY! i am demonstrating my respect for people when i buy it. there are plenty of “artists” who i don’t consider “artists” in any way shape or form (brittany is my fav example!) if i want to get wasted and dance to toxic, sorry, but i’m just not gunna paaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy

and please do not insult me with this “You say you have plenty of respect for people, but you sure aren’t demonstrating it”... just because i said something on a website doesn’t mean you know anything about ME. nothing.

So my next question to alive is:

Ok, so if you like the music, you eventually buy it.
But why download the song in the first place if you don’t like it?

I have a hard disk full of (illegal) mp3s that I copied from a cousin. I never listen to them, and if anyone asked me to pay for them, I’d just rather delete them. And I have another 40GB of songs I actually do listen to, which I ripped myself from CDs that I own.

ya well i would dl it to hear it in the first place. sometimes that is the only way i would have access to really obscure musical happenings. if it sucks, i would also delete it.

anyways, i wonder if this is also a generational question because i don’t really know anyone my age and younger who have any qualms with downloading. i was actually surprised that so many people answered that it is in fact “unethical.”

@alive: All I have to go by is what you say here. You’re advocating downloading music against the wishes of the artist, and you’re admitting to having done so; this shows that you have very little respect for the artist.

Your claim and your behavor are at odds, and actions speak louder than words. If that’s insulting, so be it; all I’m doing is holding up a mirror to your behavior.

yup. i also smoke, and i drink, and i have pre-marital sex, and i jay walk, and speed, and sometimes i even murder a person or two now and then. you’re right thanks for the mirror. i would have never have seen myself otherwise.

Really?...Jay-Z worth = $500M+, Beyouce worth = $300M+ FOR SINGING!!!...
for singing?....Not working in 100°+ heat on a repairing roof…NOT in a factory pulling a 14hour shift because you’re short handed, NOT even humping 100lb rebar all day to build a bridge…They are singing…and if you can sit back and be OK with that…then GO BUY their Damn Records or CD’s…for myself and the rest of us here in the U.S. that actually WORK for a living….well, I’m going to continue to download…Have a Great day!!!