It's not a natural right, but considered by many people to be a societal right, granted by societal agreements. And taxes aren't theft. That's a false dichotomy.
Thank you for clarifying. That it is essential that songwriters be compensated by society for an illegal activity is an argument that I'll have to think more about. It's compelling, but I'm on the fence about it.
However, in addition to my argument about the cascade of other levies that this would likely precede (I know, I dislike slippery slope arguments too, but I can't imagine the motion picture & television industries not wanting an equivalent), I'll throw another argument against this:
By fixing the levy at $5/month, if this proposal became law, then the SAC would be defining the value that society places on music, rather than the marketplace. I believe that socialism has its place, but I don't think it's here.
Ahh. You begin to understand the meaning of "socialism". By spreading the cost out among everybody, rather than just the people who use the service, you can reduce the overall cost for everybody. Kind of like how our medical system works [...]
It doesn't matter that you aren't using that functionality. By charging you a small amount of money, it reduces the overall cost for everybody else.
$5/month is a bargain for those who enjoy getting new music at the rate of a CD every 2 months. When I was in my 20's, I would have agreed. Today, that's a rate almost 10 times greater than what I've spent on music over the last two years.
$5/month is a great deal for music, and maybe $10/month is good for movies, $30/month should be good for TV on demand compared to cable, and then there's video games, software, radio, subscription news, audiobooks, etc.; all of which might be digitally copied.
You can make a good argument for socialism on necessities like health care, education, road maintenance, etc., etc., but it makes a lot less sense when applied to luxuries. To categorize and treat them in the same way is a mistake.
This reminds me of when my family was flying out of Zanzibar. The baggage people claimed not to have time to search all of our luggage before the flight, but for a $5/bag processing fee (payable in cash to the conveyor belt attendant), we could ensure that they got it done on time.
Maybe whenever I miss Africa in the future, I'll just need to take a local flight to get the same feeling.
There will be a substantial reward for the one who finds the spammers. You are free to use any methods necessary, but I want them alive. No disintegrations.
Some examples of games that I've had trouble with (from being somewhat colour-blind):
On multi-player EA Hockey, the colours of players 1 and 2 are red and green (IIRC). Fortunately on the GameCube there are 4 controller slots, so I can usually find a colour that I can identify quickly enough to be competitive with (or helpful to) friends.
The Starcraft / Warcraft series uses the bright green and bright yellow on the mini map which has caused me to be taken completely off guard on occasions.
Well, I'm glad to hear there's more people out there that have found the same thing. It's an easy thing to fix if developers are aware of it.
Actually, yes. If the majority of people (or people in power at least) thought it was okay to steal then we probably wouldn't have laws against it. But the majority think it's wrong to steal so we have reasonably effective and publicly supported laws against it.
The majority (or sizable minority, I don't have numbers) don't equate copyright infringement with stealing. This suggests that the current legal situation doesn't represent an acceptable middle ground between copyright holders and the public.
When you sneak into a concert, you are reducing the number of people that can go see it. You're reducing capacity, which is usually listed as a finite amount of people, by one. It's a scarce resource and so doing this is a form of stealing (from my point of view, at least).
Compare this to downloading a music track, which doesn't reduce the ability of anyone else to listen to it because you are utilizing an essentially non-scarce resource.
Personally, I wouldn't sneak into a concert, and although I don't download "illegal" music I don't look down upon those that do.
Everyone has his or her dividing line between what is moral and immoral behaviour. Our laws have been traditionally been based on where the majority (of those in power) place that line.
But since I have this irrepressible notion that people are generally good, I would suggest that if the majority (or even a significant minority) of people want to download music then perhaps that action shouldn't be illegal.
Pro-choice is used to describe people that believe a woman has a right to determine whether a potentially dangerous fetus should be removed from her body.
Maternal mortality rates are admittedly low (0.012% in the U.S. in 1996), but some risk is still present.
There are certainly some people (myself included) that would describe themself as pro-choice, and who would also rather see abortion not used but believe that the choice not to continue the risk of pregnancy should be available. If there were another option (transplant, extra-maternal development, something else) that carried the same or less risk to the mother than abortion, I would probably support that.
I had a prof that offered us his car if we could prove P=NP.
So I went and did it and then not only did he say he was joking and didn't give me his car, I got in trouble for invalidating the work of the theory department.
IIRC, statistics don't really come into play in this case since you're not really _sampling_ a portion of the population (of those who voted, since those who didn't don't get a say in the matter).
Instead, you're evaluating the entire population, so statistics should not be used.
I could be wrong though, it's been some time since I studied any stats.
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It's not a natural right, but considered by many people to be a societal right, granted by societal agreements. And taxes aren't theft. That's a false dichotomy.
I'm Canadian. So my argument stands.
Thank you for clarifying. That it is essential that songwriters be compensated by society for an illegal activity is an argument that I'll have to think more about. It's compelling, but I'm on the fence about it.
However, in addition to my argument about the cascade of other levies that this would likely precede (I know, I dislike slippery slope arguments too, but I can't imagine the motion picture & television industries not wanting an equivalent), I'll throw another argument against this:
By fixing the levy at $5/month, if this proposal became law, then the SAC would be defining the value that society places on music, rather than the marketplace. I believe that socialism has its place, but I don't think it's here.
$5/month is a bargain for those who enjoy getting new music at the rate of a CD every 2 months. When I was in my 20's, I would have agreed. Today, that's a rate almost 10 times greater than what I've spent on music over the last two years.
$5/month is a great deal for music, and maybe $10/month is good for movies, $30/month should be good for TV on demand compared to cable, and then there's video games, software, radio, subscription news, audiobooks, etc.; all of which might be digitally copied.
You can make a good argument for socialism on necessities like health care, education, road maintenance, etc., etc., but it makes a lot less sense when applied to luxuries. To categorize and treat them in the same way is a mistake.
This reminds me of when my family was flying out of Zanzibar. The baggage people claimed not to have time to search all of our luggage before the flight, but for a $5/bag processing fee (payable in cash to the conveyor belt attendant), we could ensure that they got it done on time.
Maybe whenever I miss Africa in the future, I'll just need to take a local flight to get the same feeling.
There will be a substantial reward for the one who finds the spammers. You are free to use any methods necessary, but I want them alive. No disintegrations.
Some examples of games that I've had trouble with (from being somewhat colour-blind):
On multi-player EA Hockey, the colours of players 1 and 2 are red and green (IIRC). Fortunately on the GameCube there are 4 controller slots, so I can usually find a colour that I can identify quickly enough to be competitive with (or helpful to) friends.
The Starcraft / Warcraft series uses the bright green and bright yellow on the mini map which has caused me to be taken completely off guard on occasions.
Well, I'm glad to hear there's more people out there that have found the same thing. It's an easy thing to fix if developers are aware of it.
Actually, yes. If the majority of people (or people in power at least) thought it was okay to steal then we probably wouldn't have laws against it. But the majority think it's wrong to steal so we have reasonably effective and publicly supported laws against it.
The majority (or sizable minority, I don't have numbers) don't equate copyright infringement with stealing. This suggests that the current legal situation doesn't represent an acceptable middle ground between copyright holders and the public.
When you sneak into a concert, you are reducing the number of people that can go see it. You're reducing capacity, which is usually listed as a finite amount of people, by one. It's a scarce resource and so doing this is a form of stealing (from my point of view, at least).
Compare this to downloading a music track, which doesn't reduce the ability of anyone else to listen to it because you are utilizing an essentially non-scarce resource.
Personally, I wouldn't sneak into a concert, and although I don't download "illegal" music I don't look down upon those that do.
Everyone has his or her dividing line between what is moral and immoral behaviour. Our laws have been traditionally been based on where the majority (of those in power) place that line.
But since I have this irrepressible notion that people are generally good, I would suggest that if the majority (or even a significant minority) of people want to download music then perhaps that action shouldn't be illegal.
Maternal mortality rates are admittedly low (0.012% in the U.S. in 1996), but some risk is still present.
There are certainly some people (myself included) that would describe themself as pro-choice, and who would also rather see abortion not used but believe that the choice not to continue the risk of pregnancy should be available. If there were another option (transplant, extra-maternal development, something else) that carried the same or less risk to the mother than abortion, I would probably support that.
I had a prof that offered us his car if we could prove P=NP.
So I went and did it and then not only did he say he was joking and didn't give me his car, I got in trouble for invalidating the work of the theory department.
Bah, in disgust I threw away my elegant proof.
IIRC, statistics don't really come into play in this case since you're not really _sampling_ a portion of the population (of those who voted, since those who didn't don't get a say in the matter). Instead, you're evaluating the entire population, so statistics should not be used. I could be wrong though, it's been some time since I studied any stats.