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Legal Issues Don't Bother American Downloaders
An anonymous reader writes "Ipsos-Reid has released its latest research on file trading. Bottom line, the great majority of users do not believe they are breaking the law. Only 9% feel there is anything wrong with their actions. With 40 million Americans identified as active file traders this is indeed stirring information, though not surprising. Another stat, 73% of US downloaders report that their motivation for trading was to sample music for later purchase. You can see the charts and original press release here."
Does the RIAA + MPAA have? 27 000 000 or what?
Someone is censoring these postings. This is obvious to me bacause I posted a reply to something, and it is gone. In addition, someone else had something to say that is gone. Luckily, I copied the article (not mine) and now I will paste it back for you all to read. Enjoy! As they say, information has a way of getting free!
---- The Censored Article -----
Look, I'll be honest. I, like most other people here, have downloaded pirated music from the internet. Its seductively easy, and if you have a nice broadband connection, really quick. The sound quality on the 128k MP3 format may not be "audiophile" quality but for those of us using regular computer speakers, and not $6000 Bose systems, its plenty good. Just like with gay sex and open-source software, its easy to think that because its fun and enjoyable, pirating music is okay, and should be permitted. But thats the wrong answer. Despite all the half-baked rationalizations cooked up by piracy advocates, no one can really refute the truth spoken by the recording industry: Sooner or later, the widespread distribution of near-perfect digital copies will destroy the market for commercial recordings, and make the production of the very product consumers seem so eager to pirate impossible. Just take a look at the music you download now. Sure, you may occasionally in a fit of self-righteous anti-commercialism download a legitimate "teaser" track released legally, or some free songs from no-talent "independent" artists who are giving away their wares because no one in their right mind would pay for them. But you know that almost all of what you download was recorded, produced, distributed, and marketed by the very recording companies you claim to despise, and would never have been committed to disc were there not the possibility of profiting from exclusive distribution rights to audio recordings. Every time you download a popular song illegally, you are decreasing the probability that commerical-quality music will be made in the future, for any price. Anybody who cares about the system of intellectual property which has made the American entertainment and information technology industries so dynamic, and enjoys their fine products, from Windows XP to the "Lord of the Rings" movies to your new cell phone with built-in games and internet access, should understand the necessity of crushing Kazaa once and for all. We know that what piracy companies are doing is reprehensible, and moreover, as the Napster case and every successive suit against online piracy services has shown, illegal. But Kazaa is worse than that. They have deliberately created an organizational structure, similar to the front organizations used by organized crime, to continue to operate and profit from their misdeeds in spite of legal sanction from every civilized country in which they have been sued. And like any crime ring, they have gone to great length to extract as much money from their "customers" as possible, using the enticing lure of pirated music to force paid advertising and virus-like spyware on the computers of their users. But in this modern era of international treaties and multi-national organizations such as the WTO, no one is beyond the reach of the law, and I believe that Kazaa can be crushed. They must be submerged beneath a tidal wave of litigation, until one day no internet provider will dare risk allowing them access. Any desperate tax-shelter island which offers them safe haven should be considered a rogue nation, isolated internationally, and added to the state department list of countries sponsoring terrorism. If the world can beat Kazaa, it will send a strong message that theft is wrong, and allow the content producers to lead the way into the beginning of the true information age.
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And why did you ask Social Security and Credit Card Numbers too?
Oh... that! It's in order to enable us to automatically char^H^H^H^H credit you when we have some special offers and add some pension benefits too...
*Looks away reciting disclaimers* "Some restrictions apply. Credit can be negative values. Pension benefit is added in after life. Battery is not included.
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i'd like to address this a little differently from the norm. mostly because i believe this issue is bigger than just music sharing.
in america, we have become a society of endless laws. laws passed are measured in boxes and tons, not pages as they ought to be. as such, there is no reasonable way to know all the laws we are subject to.
worse, in many cases the laws are written such that you are a lawbreaker regardless of how you act. a simple example:
in all states, you can be written a ticket for exceeding the speed limit. you can also be written a ticket for reckless driving, endangering other drivers, or assorted similar offenses. unfortunately, in many states the one of the latter laws is interpreted to include driving slower than the traffic around you. so, if you're driving in a 65mph zone, but all the surrounding traffic is going 75, you can be written a ticket for speeding. however, if you do 65, you can be written a ticket for endangering other drivers (or whatever law would be relevant in a particular state). so, basically, by driving at all on those roads, you are a lawbreaker and whether you are ticketed has little to do with your own actions, but is rather a random chance.
this kind of situation is becoming more and more commonplace, in large part due to the sheer volume of laws to which we are now subject. i believe we need to take strong action to eliminate a large number of laws, for then it becomes reasonable for the citizens to actually uphold them, which i think most of them probably want to do most of the time.
back to music sharing. laws and court rulings seem to conflict. the might not legally, but they are likely to be understood that way to the average person. you can timeshift on your vcr, why not music? you do have fair use rights, supposedly, although the dmca seems to void much of that. so, sure, everyone's a bit confused. and then, again by volume of laws, who knows what any of it says anyway? a few of us /. types have actually read small sections of law and have a better idea. but that's not commonplace. and what to we find most of the time? that the law says something other than what we would have thought otherwise--for better or worse! so, most people simple pick what seems reasonable and convenient to them.
does this make all this music sharing right? not legally. practically? yes, for most people, which is why only 9% have issues with it. this is not a surprise, but rather expected given the state of american law today.
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