It does seem like trolling on their part. They could have better-performed this experiment if they wanted it to seem halfway effective.

@ Rocketpig:

If indeed they were priced fairly then it would be okay. But 15 quid for a cd with 30-or-so minutes of music? GTFO.

Furthermore, pirates statistically spend more on concerts, t-shirts and memorabilia than non-pirates. Yep. But by attending the concert I give my money to the musicians, not their greedy SOPA loving publishers.

Do you attend concerts for every musician whose work you steal? Highly unlikely. It's a strawman argument. You're still taking product from people and not giving them anything in return.

Don't think I'm some holier-than-thou anti-pirate, though. I steal plenty of shit. But pretty much all of it is stuff that I can't find legally for a fair price. At 99 cents a song, I have a hard time making the argument that music isn't priced fairly so I buy almost all my music legally.

But don't get me started on TV networks charging $55 for a season of a television show in HD. I'm liable to start ranting for hours. When I can find the physical media on Amazon for 60% of the digital price, the system is broken.

Damnit Rocketpig, please post more often.

QFE.

yeah but not because they have more money then, because people who steal (or pirate, stealing is worse because of the physical product) a lot of music are much more interested in music than the average human. if they are 4x as interested in music and spend 2x as much for music does still mean that they would spend double the amount they spend if they couldn't pirate

(yes all numbers are out of my ass but it should be clear what i mean)

Come come now. You talk of strawman arguments argument in the same breath as referring to illegal downloads as Stealing? No that won't fly.

Why would I attend concerts for average artists? Barely worth the download, often deleted also...thanks anyway Gorillaz, Oasis etc

I would love to attend a concert by Enrico Caruso, Janis Joplin or George Harrison. Please tell me how to manage that.

I very much agree about tv networks though. Expensive high-def garbage. Futurama and Trek get dumped but Courtney Love-Cox gets another season. WHY???

Sigh. An argument I hear constantly from people who don't create intellectual property. It's stealing. Go out and create something. See people using it without your permission and without paying for it. Then come back and tell me whether you think it's stealing. Dude, I'm about as laid back as it gets when it comes to piracy and people still take my (DRM-free and sometimes, free altogether) shit and use it however they like without my permission. There is a sense of entitlement when it comes to piracy that is really fuckin' aggravating, man. A complete disregard for the work put forth by others. I'm not saying you're one of those kinds of pirates, but when you try to tell me you're not stealing something when you pirate, it's hard not to categorize you that way.

Just be honest with what you're doing. You're using others' work without permission and without payment. That's stealing, period.

Great. We're back to piracy = theft again?

It is theft. Pirates like to tell themselves all sorts of stories to make themselves feel better at night but it's theft. You're taking peoples' work and duplicating it without their permission and without payment for their efforts. You can go ahead and tell yourself whatever you like but it's hard to make a logical argument that it's not theft. Is it the same thing as stealing a car? Of course not, you're not depriving another person of the product in question. Hell, you may not even be depriving the creator of revenue because if it wasn't free, you may not have even downloaded the movie/album/whatever. But that's not the only definition of thievery. In the end, you're profiting from another person without their permission. However you want to boil that down, it's stealing.