The new Drug War is the War on Piracy

[Perpetual Burn]

Hey, IGOTJOINT4YA, if I buy an album am I allowed to play it in my house while others are listening or do I have to charge them? What if I have a loud system, can I not have music for my party because only one person is allowed to listen to an album? What if I had a medium to play my music for people across the world?

Can I burn a copy of an album to keep in my car or do I have to buy another one? Can I put it on my iPod or do I have to buy it again through iTunes?

When you download a song, you are not stealing from the artist, that's for sure. Artists make most of their money on tours and by selling merchandise... because record companies try to snake the artists out of the fruits of their labor as much as possible. You're not really stealing from the record companies either because it's not like these greedy profiteers print albums in the hopes that someone will buy them. You're "stealing" from Best Buy and CD Warehouse, the "pushers"... I'm all for people trying to capitalize as much as possible, but if the progress of humanity shuts this racket down, so be it. I'm not shedding any tears over the cotton picker who lost his job to the cotton gin.


Oh, I doubt this war will be as big as the War on Drugs; the music industry does not have nearly the wealth of the oil industry.

[SaintLs]

Regardless of pirating these albums are still going out to every major department store across the united states and in popular parts of the world. even if they're selling slowly, they're still getting rich off the first day album sales TO the department stores. And I dont think that artists are going to stop making music and stop getting rich just because they COULD be getting a little more rich...it doesnt cost a record company much to make an album and they profit 3 or 4 times as much as the artist does for his/her record sales, merch sales, and ticket sales.....

5 mil investment, rapper gets 4 mil off sales, company gets 15, and people still pirate.....

take lil wayne, a million people didnt buy his album. what happened was he had the most anticipated album of 07 then again in 08 which brought high demand for his cd. on his release day pretty much every store in america that sold cd's bought x amount of cds. and maybe 85 percent of the stores had to re-order more probably once.

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/..._id=1003815506

explains it there. he had a projected 400 somthin thousand sales first day...to all the stores...not the people. the projected 850000 - 950000 by the end of the week was in hopes people would buy out the stores stock.

anybody crying over pirating are artists that are struggling in the business in my opinion. and if they are struggling it isnt because of pirating, its cuz people dont want to listen to them anymore. like, metallica.

another example, lil wayne is one of the most downloaded artists in rap. mixtapes all over the place. and still, regardless of his whole album leakin in 07 and all the mixtapes still shattered records in album sales.

kanye too

they can accompish record album sales when downloading media is easier than its ever been. most people have high speed connections. even the cheap high speed will get you a discography downloaded in an hour. a cd in 13 minutes.

and downloaded all the mixtapes and leaked songs HELPED these people get to be the most anticipated albums of the year.

dont tell me the internet isnt beneficial to MEGASTARS. they get front page fuckin advertisements all over the net. where havnt you seen bigshot stars mugshots or "do you like this person yes or no " adds all over.

the internet makes careers and keeps current careers going.

maybe not for the movie industry....but an easy way to cut down on illegal movie pirating is to make sure people dont have video cameras on them. if they could stop this one little problem, people would have to wait a good month or so to get a screener of the net and that would in turn increase sales because people dont want to wait for good movies they'd rather just go pay. Too much money goes into making a movie for it to bomb in the box office cuz an early screener came out on the net. thats the difference of tens of millions of dollars im sure...where as an album...how much does that cost to make?

sorry so long. but fuck them.

[Perpetual Burn]

Besides, a strictly capitalist music industry gave us these guys...



Maybe the internet was God's way of preventing anymore musical travesties such as the Backstreet Boys.

[IGOTJOINTS4YA]

Originally Posted by Perpetual Burn

Hey, IGOTJOINT4YA, if I buy an album am I allowed to play it in my house while others are listening or do I have to charge them? What if I have a loud system, can I not have music for my party because only one person is allowed to listen to an album? What if I had a medium to play my music for people across the world?

Can I burn a copy of an album to keep in my car or do I have to buy another one? Can I put it on my iPod or do I have to buy it again through iTunes?

When you download a song, you are not stealing from the artist, that's for sure. Artists make most of their money on tours and by selling merchandise... because record companies try to snake the artists out of the fruits of their labor as much as possible. You're not really stealing from the record companies either because it's not like these greedy profiteers print albums in the hopes that someone will buy them. You're "stealing" from Best Buy and CD Warehouse, the "pushers"... I'm all for people trying to capitalize as much as possible, but if the progress of humanity shuts this racket down, so be it. I'm not shedding any tears over the cotton picker who lost his job to the cotton gin.


Oh, I doubt this war will be as big as the War on Drugs; the music industry does not have nearly the wealth of the oil industry.

I'm not telling you that it's not cool to break the law, I smoke weed don't I.

sometimes the benifits out way the costs.

look bro, I just wanted to get across that you are stealing, these companies did invest millions into this shit. Piracy has done alot to damage the PC community, there was a stat done that 80% of pc games that are played are pirated. Think about how games like the sims and such sell so many copies but the good games don't really sell that much compared. Same can be said for the music industry, why is it that britney spears leads in album sales, when everybody know she is a hack of a musician, because the only people that buy albums now are kids that do not know how to pirate. Same can be said for the sims on the PC, the community that plays those games are less likely to pirate, so will wright on the other hand makes butt load of mullah.

How about that stat that apple just released?

they said 97% of the people that bought there ipods pirate music, well if you look at around christmas time last year, everybody that was pirating got ipod music gift cards. The store brought in humungoes fucking profits and actually had to close the apple itunes store because of over traffic.

I know that if there was no pirating that less people would listen to music, but the fact is, these are these people lively hoods and when you copy there music and spread it to millions over the internet, you are hurting there lively hood.

[IGOTJOINTS4YA]

Originally Posted by Perpetual Burn

Besides, a strictly capitalist music industry gave us these guys...



Maybe the internet was God's way of preventing anymore musical travesties such as the Backstreet Boys.

here is the snag in your hypothesis...



ughhh...the jonas brothers

[Perpetual Burn]

Originally Posted by IGOTJOINTS4YA

I know that if there was no pirating that less people would listen to music, but the fact is, these are these people lively hoods and when you copy there music and spread it to millions over the internet, you are hurting there lively hood.

You're not stealing anyone's livelihood by pirating music. As you said yourself, you're only cutting into the profit margins of profiteers who don't actually do anything.

[Perpetual Burn]

Originally Posted by IGOTJOINTS4YA

here is the snag in your hypothesis...

ughhh...the jonas brothers

Too bad for you, that helps my cause... despite this piracy epidemic record labels can still produce useless crap for teenage girls.

[IGOTJOINTS4YA]

Originally Posted by Perpetual Burn

You're not stealing anyone's livelihood by pirating music. As you said yourself, you're only cutting into the profit margins of profiteers who don't actually do anything.

Most musicians make atleast 2 dollars per albums sold.

they sell 20 million albums that is 10 million.

I call that stealing from the musicians lively hood.

[Penelope420]

As someone who makes my living on copyrighted materials, I can assure you that piracy IS stealing. You can rationalize it all you want, but using someone else's work without paying for it = theft

[Perpetual Burn]

So, I can't let my friends listen to my CDs?

[Penelope420]

Originally Posted by Perpetual Burn

So, I can't let my friends listen to my CDs?

Sure you can, you just can't make copies to distribute.

Just like if someone buys one of my prints, they can hang it in their living room for other people to see, but they can't make photocopies to give away as christmas presents.

[IGOTJOINTS4YA]

This is the point, everybody is ok with theft until you find the person that actually makes it there livelyhood to sell this kind of media.

[Penelope420]

Originally Posted by IGOTJOINTS4YA

This is the point, everybody is ok with theft until you find the person that actually makes it there livelyhood to sell this kind of media.

Exactly. And keep in mind, most artists (be it musicians or visual artists) are NOT making millions of dollars. Most of us are barely scraping by, and copyright theft hurts us the most.

Theft and income loss aside, it just devalues art in general as though it's not something worth paying for. That makes me sad.

[Perpetual Burn]

Originally Posted by Penelope420

Sure you can, you just can't make copies to distribute.

Just like if someone buys one of my prints, they can hang it in their living room for other people to see, but they can't make photocopies to give away as christmas presents.

What's the difference? It's not the bytes on a computer or CD you care about... rather the idea that is the music. So, people can listen to your music for free but as soon as they duplicate it something has changed... ?

"I will not be justified by the laws of men."- Bob Marley

"The times they are a-changin'"- Bob Dylan

[Penelope420]

Originally Posted by Perpetual Burn

What's the difference? It's not the bytes on a computer or CD you care about... rather the idea that is the music. So, people can listen to your music for free but as soon as they duplicate it something has changed... ?

"I will not be justified by the laws of men."- Bob Marley

"The times they are a-changin'"- Bob Dylan

The difference is that *I* as the creator and copyright holder am the only person who gets to decide how my work is distributed. Period. When you make copies to distribute, you are working directly against the artist, and copyright holder.

If it didn't work that way, then it would be impossible for any artist to make a living. I would lose all control of my work.

Don't you think artists deserve to get paid for their work? Why do you think you are entitled to enjoy their work for free?