This never stops annoying me. From here:
"We want to hit fans with the message that downloading music illegally is, as Britney Spears explains, the same as going into a CD store and stealing the CD," said Hilary Rosen of the Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA).
It is absolutely, positively NOT the same thing. To steal the CD, you are taking a physical item for which there is a price. When you take it, you deprive the owner of it's use. The record store can't use it anymore, b/c you took it. And that is WRONG. It's not right, under any normal circumstances, to steal a CD.
Now, to download a copy of Ms. Spears's songs from Kazaa (or whatever you use) you are downloading a digital copy. It's not the thing. It's a copy of the thing. It is not stealing in any sense of the word. If you download it from me, you do not deprive me of anything.
I understand Hilary must say these things. But when will journalists start challenging her phrases? The BBC of all places should be a bit more adversarial to a lobbying body. Perpetuating falsehoods is hardly the role of the Media.
Oh wait, it's the sole reason for Media. Nevermind.
Posted by danisaacs at September 26, 2002 12:52 PMYou are so wrong Blog boy, any, yes I said any, copying of a digital signal is stealing. Now I'm off to find a way to force Tivo users to watch commercials. We know where you live and that you watch DVDs from outside your region. We are watching.
Love Hilary
Also remember that in most cases someone actually bought that disc, extracted the digital data, compressed it in to MP3 or OGG format and assigned ID3 tags for proper attribution to a artist and album.
This is not a nontrivial event. I'm sure RC5
would have been solved a lot sooner if some of the ripping clients out there had been part of the RC5-64 http://distributed.net/ project.
So not only are you not dealing in physical tangibles, you are adding value through time and resources to create a finished product when you create an MP3.
I find that there is nothing wrong with stealing Mp3s. If kazaa never existed I would not have known my favorite band at the moment. There is no other way I would have heard of them. And by also loving this band so very much my sister would never ever be in love. I also pay lots of money towards my favorite band. They are still making money off fans. I think mp3s just allow us to sample songs and see if we like that band, if I like a song I have on my list I'll buy their CD. Plane and simple. We aren't doing ANYTHING wrong.
Posted by: Steph on March 19, 2003 09:22 AMPeople need to lighten up, just because they cant get their exotic house in the bahamas doesnt mean they should have to make a big deal. These bands should realize that the people they are trying to prosecute are their own fans. Could there be a dumber of an idea? Lets just take a coulple deep breaths and get on with our lives.
Posted by: Shawn on August 29, 2003 06:46 PM