greenmedic88 said:
Claiming piracy is not theft is roughly the equivalent of saying printing your own money (ie counterfeiting) is also not wrong.
"I'm not stealing any money; I'm just making more of it!"
Claiming piracy potentially saves lives through the preservation of health is also the equivalent of saying stealing food for those on a strict budget (or worse) is morally right as well.
It's a known fact that healthier, more nutritious, less processed food is more expensive than highly processed pre-prepared foods. But I won't even venture to throw out the argument that stealing money or materials of value for the purpose of eating healthier has any sort of moral high ground either. |
Until you factor in the healthcare costs associated with a lifetime of eating that type of food. But he was joking anyway about the school lunch thing ... I think.
Anywho, downloading anything without paying is stealing. Metallica caught a lot of hell for this, the argument against them was "Don't they have enough money!" as if that justifies it. It's their property, why should they let a Napster profit off them, while pretending they're doing nothing wrong and not giving Metallica or other bands their piece of the pie? In other words, there's no such thing as 'enough money' deal with it.
With THAT said, I download from time to time. What can I say, I like free. Usually music. Sometimes movies, never games though. Though I have tried to locate old point and click games online to DL, but they never work right. My only defense ... well, I don't know if it's a defense, but I only DL songs I would never buy. I visited the UK a few times, was first introduced to a few UK bands that at the time didn't really make it here, or weren't as big. These bands were not my type of genre and I would never buy an entire CD or a single from the Coors or anything. So, I downloaded it. Did they lose money off of me? Yes and no. Again, I would not have purchased their album for one song. But it was nice to have it on my computer.
Still stealing. If I had bought it or not, wasn't mine to take. But Pandora's box is open. It's easier than ever to pirate. This is the world the entertainment industry has to deal with.
