Downloading movies?

You' re still free to put pictures, music and movies of your own design on it, aren' t you ? There' s plenty of free material and programs for that. Owning a box (or any sort of storage device) doesn' t mean any unpaid item you put inside it becomes yours. The only way to support the work and effort of an artist remains to pay him to enjoy his work, one way or another.

 

I only download movies for amv purposes usually or if they're reeeely hard to find and/or not made anymore. Like old digimon or yu yu hakusho movies that were produced on VHS in like 2002 that you can't find anywhere except for the internet.

 

even though i have occasionally pirated things before, i would never try to justify it or deny that what i did was wrong. i know it's wrong because there are laws that say it's wrong. so am i saying that it's wrong simply because there are laws stating it is? yes i am. just because you think a law is immoral doesn't justify breaking the law (in the legal stand point). for example: i can't just molest children or smoke marijuana and justify it by saying that i don't think it's immoral to do that. yes i know that's a different thing but i hope you get the point.

 

It's more like drawing on the inside of the box than that. The point is that it is not physical property, so using physical property as an example makes little sense on most levels.

More to the point, there is no such thing as originality, and I thought more highly of you than to argue this. Just because everything under the sun isn't copyrighted doesn't mean that the principle doesn't apply. "Well, they don't control it completely yet; let's let it go for now," is not an ethical argument, and it does not address my point at all, which is that they are claiming the right to control my physical property. Do you deny that at all? Because it is crucial to the argument that you take a stand on it, instead of rationalizing little points here and there.

This has to be the worst excuse for an argument that I have seen so far. And I mean that in all honesty. Let's start here.

No victim, no crime. This I hold to be a relatively obvious fact; it is not a crime to wear a blue shirt because there is no victim. That goes for nearly any possible law, but not for any existing law. Who is the victim when someone smokes marijuana? You can't be a victim of your own crime, because in order for there to be a victim there has to be a lack of consent. Please, indulge me.

 

What do you mean "for now" ? They' ll never have a right over what you produced yourself, at least I can' t see a way for them to claim such a thing. I know that they tried to, but they failed.

Yes I do, I still maintain the box analogy is valid. You own the box, you can store items you made or paid inside it, entering a shop and filling your box of unpaid items doesn' t make them yours. They didn' t claim any right over your storage unit, you' re still free to put anything you made or paid inside it. They claimed a right to not see THEIR intellectual property inside YOUR box without you paying for it first.

So of course we' re not talking about items per say, you can call it a stack of zeros and ones, a mere electric signal, a bunch of CD scratches, bladiblablablah, that' s what I called playing around with words. Maybe it' s enough to fool yourself, maybe it' s enough for you to raise a logic point, but it' s not gonna fool me, potato potayto, it' s a copyrighted game or movie that you never paid for.
I' m afraid that arguing that it' s stored in an intangible form appears to be the little point to me.

Let me put it this way :
Some people made a movie spending millions that somehow ended up in my storage unit, and now I can enjoy it anytime or give it to others without having paid a single cent for it, of course the ones I gave it to won' t pay a single cent for it either. If somehow the movie director comes to France and visit the shop I work in he' ll have to pay to enjoy the fruit of my labor. How ethical is that exactly ?

 

Movies are one thing but games and other things you can download illegally is a whole other story. With games I see if the console is making much of any money. Say for instance the Snes. That is making no money anymore. At all. So I can download anything and modify it any way I want without feeling guilty. What would they say? Stop it! You are taking away from our profits on it? I don't think so. If you can't find a game anymore then you should download it. Snes games? You want to play one? You want to buy a certain game? Good luck with that! Only a handful of places even sell those anymore. And the Snes is very unstable. Finding one that actually works is close to impossible. As long as nobody is making money on a system than I think you should be able to do anything you want with it. With movies on the other hand. You just try finding a working copy of some old movie that came out in the 80's. I have no regret downloading anything I have downloaded. Since most of the stuff I have downloaded can not be found anywhere anymore without having to pay several hundred dollars. Some of the older stuff can be worth quite a pretty penny now because of how old and rare they are. As for the PS2. Well they stopped releasing games for that when they made the PS3. So that puts that on my list.

 

no victim no crime? couldn't it be argued that the production companies are victims of piracy? even though the impact can on them probably isn't that big and the impact isn't what we're discussing.

i hope this doesn't veer off into it's own discussion but why does there need to be a lack of consent for something to be a crime? why can't you be a victim of your own crime? i thought suicide (not entirely sure of that one actually) and assisted suicide were against the law as well? and if there has to be a lack of consent for something to be a crime, wouldn't it be a crime to download music for free if the companies didn't consent to it?

the point i'm trying to get across is that you can't just pick and choose which laws you want to and don't want to follow. break the law at your own risk, don't go whining that the law was stupid after you get caught for breaking it. yes, you are allowed to protest about stupid laws and yes there are stupid laws out there. but breaking them BEFORE having them repealed doesn't protect you from getting arrested for it.

 

I would probably whine if I got caught downloading, because it's in my opinion a dumb law.
I don't think it hurts the bands at all, there's a reason bands tour. The companies however, not necessarily. I like knowing what I'm buying before actually buying it. If you're a big fan of something, you usually buy it, but you can also download it.

I mean, it has happened I've downloaded a CD and bought the CD because I like it so much I wanna support the band. Same with games, though that might just be me.

Download for free -> bigger network -> more fans -> more tickets sold for tour -> more money

That's my logic when it comes to it, and if you think about it, it makes sense.

 

All intellectual property, all copyright, restricts what I can and cannot "create" or do to my things.

You claim that they are objects again without reasoning. Your argument says that I take object and put them into the box. So far as I can see, you assumed this. Nowhere in this or your previous posts did you explain why an idea is like a physical object. This is what you are saying, "Because ideas are objects, it is stealing." Notice that the because is assumed without any preceding or following point in its favor. I am questioning whether they are objects at all. You just keep claiming that they are without reasoning.

You call it playing around with words, but it is a fact that if anyone owns any discs, then I own the disc, and that the data on it is just how a computer or player interprets the physical shape of my physical disc. I cannot change that by playing around with words, and you can't discount it by saying that I am playing around with words.

Let me put it this way: who turns out more the victim here? Here I have a disc. I can give the disc any shape that I want at all so that my disc reader will play a movie or some other such thing.

The movie producers worked to produce the pattern of the disc, putting them out of quite a bit of money. They did this willingly.

I own my disc in the present, and they are restricting what I can do with my property in the present. On their side, if I imprint the pattern that is their movie onto my disc, the money that they hoped to make doesn't get to them. In this scenario, I am the victim in the present; I cannot do something with my property right now because they are stopping me. They hope to make up for the money that they spent in the future, so they violate my property in the now. It should be simple enough to grasp. In the end, I lose at least one function of something that I have, and this is a tangible loss, while they lose nothing but hopes and dreams of money. I come out the worse, because I bought my disc, and if I can't do with it what I want, then it is worth less. I lose money that I had before the transaction. The company does not have this. They claim to lose something that they do not have yet.

He is paying you for the disc, not the movie. And I already stated that selling another's work is not piracy as I see it and is another ballpark altogether. More likely is that he would be handed the fruits of his labor for free, since this thread is about downloading.

See above.

News flash: laws are not perfect. Now here we have a true idealist. Suicide and assisted suicide should not have laws applying to them at all. People own their own lives, and they should be allowed to give them away or take them from the world at will, just like they should be able to destroy their own house if they want to.

The companies don't own the pattern. That is what we are arguing about here. I have answered this question thoroughly throughout the course of this thread.

Argument from authority and appeal to law are well known logical fallacies. Have fun dealing with that one until you realize that defending the status quo will get you nowhere.

Your argument is that might makes right. Whichever police force or government manages to take over, whatever law they manage to enforce, et cetera has a right to exist because they won. The winning side writes the history books and so on. By your logic, if I kill someone, I had a right to because I won. The only reason that we have the laws we do now is because of coercive violence. Using that violence to justify itself makes little to no sense. Please take a lesson in doubt and first of all ethics before posting again.

Edit: I am afraid that I must apologize for the above post. I do not react well to fundamentalist faith...

 

No you' re not, you' re turning it around. If they hadn' t produced that movie in the first place you would never have thought of that particular pattern on your own, would you ? You didn' t buy your disk thinking "wouldn' t it be fabulous to put that particular pattern on it", you downloaded a movie thinking "I' d love to have Lord of the rings for free".
The teacher that won' t allow you to look at other's copy during the exam is not restricting your copy property, is he ? He' s preventing you to cheat. You' re still free to write anything that comes to mind on it, burn it, torn it, eat it ...

Huh ? What are you talking about ?

I' ll rephrase :
I illegally downloaded the Lord of the Rings, I gave it for free to many friends. I enjoyed the fruit of Peter Jackson' s (and many others) labor for free. For some reason Peter Jackson comes to France and visits the shop I work in. If he wants to enjoy the fruit of my labor he' ll have to pay. How ethical is that exactly ?
BTW I paid the company which made my hard drive a long time ago, any guy who works for that company and happens to visit my shop will pay to enjoy the fruit of my labor just as I paid him to enjoy his.

 

What is the difference? Lord of the Rings is a beautiful pattern that I buy the disc for. You still have not made a statement on this. Are they limiting what I can do with my disc or not?

Actually... No. You are allowed to cheat, just as soon as any of those other things. But you can't do any of them if you want a good grade. Bad example.

Downloading a movie is not selling it to people, it is giving it away... And when you buy a movie, you buy the disc, not the data. The disc isn't a box. It is the product itself. Common misconception.

That makes absolutely no sense. If you gave it away for free, why would he have to pay you for it? Bad logic. Also, he still has a copy of the data, considering that you got a copy of it to give away in the first place.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Please word it better. I fail to see how buying the drive relates to where you work and how where you work relates to this argument.

Oh, I think I get it.

You have a bit of a problem in this. Labor does not equal profits. Making a movie is not a job. Selling one is. When you create a product, you take a huge risk. You have to pay other people, they do not pay you. You sell the product if you can. If you cannot... Then you did not correctly predict the market demand for the product.

That said, if they did not profit, they literally could not keep making movies. They would go bankrupt. The amount invested would outweigh the amount received. As long as people want movies, they will be forced to pay for them not because of the law, but because the producers can't make movies otherwise. It only follows.

Because of this, it is ethically incorrect to violently enforce something that the open market will take care of by itself.

 

Preventing you to download that pattern does NOT prevent you to find out that particular pattern by yourself and burn it. Your only problem is that you don' t know the first thing about that pattern, except that the resulting MOVIE is beautiful. If you want to try out your luck at burning any combination of ones and zeros you can come out with you' re free to do so. You' d have to be an IT crack, but still, that' s not impossible, the required knowledge is all around the web.

The same way an empty notepad would be cheaper than a novel, which wouldn' t prevent you to write that novel yourself on the notebook on the one over billions chance that you came up with the same idea. Making you pay for an idea in general doesn' t prevent you to come up with the same idea on your own. Good luck with that though.

Let me guess, your retort would be something like "well that' s why I used a program you dummy, that was my point the entire time", but honestly my main concern in this argument is rather the following :

You buy both, an empty disc would be cheaper. A copyrighted movie or game IS a product.
Since you can' t even use the lord of the ring DVD to burn anything we can state that what you really buy is the movie that comes with the DVD, i.e. the data. Unless you know people who actually bought it just to play freesbee ? There' s also movies or games paying downloads now, like the games on the PSN, what do you think people are paying for when they use those ?

Urgh ... the guy who sells the Lord of the rings DVD (or whoever profits from the DVD sales, isn' t Peter Jackson one of them ?) enters my shop, he would have to pay me to enjoy the fruit of my labor while I didn' t pay him to enjoy the data he was selling for an extra along with the DVD. How ethical would that be ? You did enjoy his product, the movie, at some point, right ? I presume you didn' t just stare at the CD scratches ?

I' m tired of asking so I' ll answer myself, it' s not ethical either. I don' t care that the geeks are whining cause preventing them to download is "restricting their liberty", they couldn' t have come up with the data they' re whining about on their own anyway (which is why hearing them whining about their liberty in that case seems to be the fallacy to me). If illegal downloading has any impact, however small, over the director' s profits then I fully approve of the law being on his side.

 

yes, i have stated that and am well aware of it.
i'm not gonna touch on that thing since it's a different subject. however, that doesn't really answer my original question about why to be considered a victim it has to be without consent
i'm not gonna lie here (and i'm not insinuating anything by the way), i HAVE read every post in this thread and i honestly don't know why you say the companies don't own the pattern because the patterns wouldn't be that way unless the company made them that way. i see what you're saying with the fallacy thing though, fine, maybe it IS stupid to believe something simply because it's a law.
no hard feelings. just an fyi, i'm not debating against anybody, and i'm not the type to cling to beliefs blindly. i'm just trying to understand your opinions better

 

The data is on the internet, which I have the right to access. I download the data into my hard drive, which I own, therefore I can do with it as I please.

Everything done is within our legal rights, and if anyone should be prosecuted, then it would be the people who rip the albums/films and post them online, but to what end? To send a message? Motherf***er, please, this is the 21st century. Companies make their profits no matter what happens, and it's not like they're losing significant sums of money anyway. I'd like to believe that we're more civilized than that for a little while longer (though I'd like to hear Sony's excuse on the matter, but I digress).

 

I personally don't do it, mainly because I like the thought of owning it and owning the disk with all the bonus features. If it's a film which isn't really around any more then it would be nice to be able to download it. Pirate DVD's I'm not so fond of though, I've heard many things about how much downloadable and pirate movies are affecting the film industry but I don't know what to believe.

 

I'd just like to note that piracy in this case is not necessarily stealing no matter how you put it. When you steal, you are removing something from another's possession without permission. In digital piracy, however, you are simply making a copy of it. It certainly isn't illegal for teachers to make copies of pages in workbooks to distribute to their students, so why then should it be illegal for people to make and distribute copies of movies and games? That's my rationale for it.

 

Hmm well, I'm not sure if I would say pirating movies (or even media in general) is wrong, per se. It really depends on how you go about it. For instance, I have a habit of pirating a movie, say, a Star Wars film. If I like it, I'll go out and buy it. It's a good way of gauging if something is really worth the money, especially with new movies nowadays being pretty costly.

Old movies, though, I usually can't find anyway so I have no way of buying them. Of course one exception is Back to the Future, which I have the BluRay special edition of. So amazing. <3

You're right, there isn't much of a difference fundamentally. But the law distinguishes the use of intellectual, digital and otherwise copyrighted property for personal reasons or educational use. If you use property that isn't for a strictly educational use, it is considered stealing. They refer to it as "fair use policy." A teacher can use pages of a textbook for the school, but not to give to teachers at a different school district who should otherwise have to buy their own copies. Make sense?

 

That's true but again, stealing removes something from a person's possession while downloading movies simply makes a copy. Every copy made by the company still exists in the store, the shipping queue, and the homes of those who bought it. You just made an extra one. As long as you don't sell the pirated copy, it should be perfectly fine.

 

Actually, the copies you download via the internet are really no different than the copies of the DVD's themselves. When DVD's are distributed, copies are made. The difference is, while it doesn't affect anything financially, you are still getting an illegitimate copy because it wasn't in the interest of the economy and distribution according to supply and demand. Imagine if one person bought the DVD and then everyone else in the country downloaded it for free. See the problem?

 

The difference is that the "legal" copy was burned to a disk in the company's facility, on the company's disk, by the company's equipment whereas a pirated copy is burned to a disk in the pirate's facility, on the pirate's disk, and by the pirate's equipment.

That's true. However, as long as the majority of people don't know about or how to copy movies, it's safe. Additionally, it cannot be expected that everybody is willing to go through the trouble of burning his or her own copy just to get it for free when it would be far more convenient in that person's eyes to go to the store and buy a copy that is not only pre-burned, but also comes with its own case, a content guide (or manual) printed on paper, and a nifty label on the disk. Considering that the majority of the people in America care more about convenience than cost (at least in the long run), there is very little danger that pirates will have as big a footprint on the economy as you seem to think.