Quote:
Originally Posted by kalimus
Disregard all the red. It really makes me "sound" so angry! Maybe I should try yellow. That's the color of a milk dud box, which is of course the most apologetic of the boxed candies...
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LOL
I think you should have made the red bold too, just to add more emphasis
I put "illegally" in quotes because the exact same action is illegal in one example, but not illegal in another. There's a term in courtroom legalese called "jury nullification" which is a very similar concept to what's being discussed.
If I get called in for jury duty and one of the lawyers asks me if I believe ______ is a crime and I say no, they will dismiss me because they don't want the jury tainted with someone who will never be convinced the defendant is guilty of the crimes they're accused of if the juror doesn't even believe that particular crime should be considered a crime.
So, in that same way, I have a very specific definition of what I consider illegal when it comes to music and movie downloads.
I fully believe that someone who takes an album that's not even released yet and uploads it to a torrent site or other file sharing method is breaking the law.
However, I don't believe perusing a list of freely available downloads, clicking on one, and downloading it to check it out should be considered illegal, especially if your settings prevent others from in turn downloading it or any part of it from you (known as leeching).
If I download an album, and
don't like it, I delete it. This is exactly like borrowing a CD from a friend who already bought the CD, then returning that CD to my friend.
Does my having heard the product without paying any money constitute theft? What if I was riding in the car with my friend while he was playing the album? Does that constitute some End User breach of contract?
I reject your comparison that it's like stealing a CD from a store and then throwing it away.
If I download an album, and
like it, I keep the download and go out and buy the album. In this regard, this is like borrowing my friend's CD, enjoying it, and then going out and buying the same CD.
I don't go through iTunes because I don't want that bloatware installed on my machine, and I certainly don't want a dime of my money going to Apple...ever. But that's just me. Even if DRM really isn't an issue like y'all are saying, I still want a physical medium to hold onto in my collection. I keep the "illegal" downloads, though, because I suck at cleanly ripping CD's like I described earlier.
I realize I'm probably in a small minority of people who use torrent sites to download music.
But the fact is, once something becomes shared on the internet, does it remain illegal for a person to download a file off the internet if they don't have to pay for it? Does the crime lie with the person who is downloading or with the person who is uploading? Or is it a shared crime?
