Who here knows it is illegal to..

[BenKenobi88]

marc said:

BenKenobi88 said:
Yeah, you can't as easily call it stealing, but IT IS. Listen, I do it too, but that doesn't mean it's not stealing. Just because it's not as bad to you as stealing a CD, you're getting the same music WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT.

I think a lot of downloaders have deluded themselves into completely believing that there is nothing wrong with taking things that cost money without paying for them.

Except that it cost virtually nothing to make downloadable music especially if you dont use the companies servers and files. The problem is they are overcharging and everyone knows it. If their prices were more reasonable and justified for the amount of work being done then many wouldnt bother with illegal downloads. Reality is that songs shouldnt cost much more than $0.10 cents to download.

If a million people download the song then it takes in $100k. Please dont tell me that musicians should earn more than that selling COPIES of a single song.

- A soundproof studio can be built for less than $25k with computerized equipment using modern tech.
- Most songs only take a few weeks to write and perfect and even for a month of work, $100k is a lot of money
- Anyone and their mother can compress a song and distribute it over the net at about $10 a month (for internet access) using a peer to peer network.
- You only need 1 person to help produce the song and compress it for internet

Split the money in between producer and artist and thats a lot of money for the amount of work actually done. That puts them in-line with the rest of the world in terms of income and we are not even taking into account live performance where they can make millions per concert. Hell... you could even forgo the entire profiting from copies entirely and artists (and their crews/managers) could still make millions if they are actually good enough to perform live. To me copies of music are no different than listening to the radio for free. In fact I dont see the distinction especially if you have a good radio signal or premium radio.

 Hey guess what.  Your entire post?  Doesn't matter.

I don't care how much it costs to make each song...or each mp3 even.  Yeah, it costs them virtually nothing, so what?

The point is, it does cost something, and when you download a song from torrents or P2P programs, you are taking something that normally costs money.  That is, in fact, illegal, and it's NOT an argument!

If you would like to argue about why you think it's ok to download music for free (because it costs studios and artists virtually nothing to produce mp3s) then be my guest.  That's not what I'm talking about.  I'm telling you, it is illegal, and you ARE taking property that is supposed to cost money.