- Joined
- Aug 26, 2007
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- San Antonio Texas
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Greetings!
I was having a heated disagreement with a good friend over the issue of movies and games being torrented.
His position is basically that because movies and games are merely "ideas" and that digital products like movies, music and games can be replicated with no loss to the person in possession of said media thus there is no "theft", they have no value. You cannot "put a price" on ideas. He used the old tropes of "I wasn't going to buy it anyway, I wanted to test the game first so it's okay..."
I contend that Torrenting movies, music and games is inherently an immoral practice. You are in fact, stealing from the creators of the content. While I have very little pity for the A-List actors whose payout might suffer if their movies don't do so well at the box office due to torrents being released, it's still wrong. Often the "talent" isn't who suffers, it's the stage workers, construction teams, set designers and the like who get paid less. Who watch as productions move overseas for cheaper rates to help alleviate the cost of loss from file sharing theft.
What say you DP denizens?
Greetings!
I was having a heated disagreement with a good friend over the issue of movies and games being torrented.
His position is basically that because movies and games are merely "ideas" and that digital products like movies, music and games can be replicated with no loss to the person in possession of said media thus there is no "theft", they have no value. You cannot "put a price" on ideas. He used the old tropes of "I wasn't going to buy it anyway, I wanted to test the game first so it's okay..."
I contend that Torrenting movies, music and games is inherently an immoral practice. You are in fact, stealing from the creators of the content. While I have very little pity for the A-List actors whose payout might suffer if their movies don't do so well at the box office due to torrents being released, it's still wrong. Often the "talent" isn't who suffers, it's the stage workers, construction teams, set designers and the like who get paid less. Who watch as productions move overseas for cheaper rates to help alleviate the cost of loss from file sharing theft.
What say you DP denizens?
Greetings!
I was having a heated disagreement with a good friend over the issue of movies and games being torrented.
His position is basically that because movies and games are merely "ideas" and that digital products like movies, music and games can be replicated with no loss to the person in possession of said media thus there is no "theft", they have no value. You cannot "put a price" on ideas. He used the old tropes of "I wasn't going to buy it anyway, I wanted to test the game first so it's okay..."
I contend that Torrenting movies, music and games is inherently an immoral practice. You are in fact, stealing from the creators of the content. While I have very little pity for the A-List actors whose payout might suffer if their movies don't do so well at the box office due to torrents being released, it's still wrong. Often the "talent" isn't who suffers, it's the stage workers, construction teams, set designers and the like who get paid less. Who watch as productions move overseas for cheaper rates to help alleviate the cost of loss from file sharing theft.
What say you DP denizens?
Greetings!
I was having a heated disagreement with a good friend over the issue of movies and games being torrented.
His position is basically that because movies and games are merely "ideas" and that digital products like movies, music and games can be replicated with no loss to the person in possession of said media thus there is no "theft", they have no value. You cannot "put a price" on ideas. He used the old tropes of "I wasn't going to buy it anyway, I wanted to test the game first so it's okay..."
I contend that Torrenting movies, music and games is inherently an immoral practice. You are in fact, stealing from the creators of the content. While I have very little pity for the A-List actors whose payout might suffer if their movies don't do so well at the box office due to torrents being released, it's still wrong. Often the "talent" isn't who suffers, it's the stage workers, construction teams, set designers and the like who get paid less. Who watch as productions move overseas for cheaper rates to help alleviate the cost of loss from file sharing theft.
What say you DP denizens?
Sure, it's theft in theory, but in practice, it really doesn't hurt anyone. Most of the people who do this wouldn't pay for it regardless, if it wasn't available for free, they'd simply do without, therefore there is absolutely no money being lost because there was never any money there to begin with. And since it is all digital, the copyright owners don't even lose anything demonstrably valuable. There's no "product" that they are losing the ability to sell for a profit. A million people can download their game or movie and they haven't demonstrably lost a thing.
Yes, it's thievery, and yes, it hurts.
When are they deprived of their copy? If I buy a copy of their copy, upload a copy of my copy up to the internet, and people download the copy of my copy to make a copy of their own, is the original owner deprived of their copy?
They are deprived of the fruits of their labor. People have taken their labor without their consent and without compensation.
Not all of the things that you can download are being stolen. The act of using bit torrents is not immoral in itself.
And videotape recordings didnt kill the movie industry. Nor did cassettes kill the music industry.
ANd have you tried downloading a new game? They are huge. I have a game that is over 40 gb's. ANd they can barely give away older games these days.
Downloading isnt as big of a impact as you think.
How are they deprived of the fruits of their labor? It's not theft to deprive people of future sales since they don't have those sales at the current time. It's just a mere potential, not something that actually happened or something that is possible for them to benefit from at the current time.
Yes, it's thievery, and yes, it hurts.
Easy to say when you're not creating content that's being stolen.
I, however, do. Sales go down when torrents and pirated downloads proliferate. After whacking those down, sales go up again.
People won't buy if there's a free option. But if they want it, they'll pay for it when there isn't.
When someone takes it without paying for it, they are depriving the creator (or owner) of the fruits of the labor.
If you want to sell or give away the copy you purchased, then there's no problem with that as long as you don't retain a copy for yourself. But making copies to sell or distribute to others not only deprives the creator of sales they would have had, it makes you an incredible dick. It means that you know someone's work is valuable, and that others would want it, but you're purposely depriving the creator of revenue.
Greetings!
I was having a heated disagreement with a good friend over the issue of movies and games being torrented.
His position is basically that because movies and games are merely "ideas" and that digital products like movies, music and games can be replicated with no loss to the person in possession of said media thus there is no "theft", they have no value. You cannot "put a price" on ideas. He used the old tropes of "I wasn't going to buy it anyway, I wanted to test the game first so it's okay..."
I contend that Torrenting movies, music and games is inherently an immoral practice. You are in fact, stealing from the creators of the content. While I have very little pity for the A-List actors whose payout might suffer if their movies don't do so well at the box office due to torrents being released, it's still wrong. Often the "talent" isn't who suffers, it's the stage workers, construction teams, set designers and the like who get paid less. Who watch as productions move overseas for cheaper rates to help alleviate the cost of loss from file sharing theft.
What say you DP denizens?
The most fundamental job of any producer is to make a product the public wants to buy at a price they want to pay. If you cannot do so, then you don't deserve to be in business.
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