Torrents? For/against?

What do you guys think of downloading torrents of software/music/etc. and stuff... Like do you guys support it or are you against it? I'm just bored and would like to see what others think...

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eMeS

Paul Boz wrote: »

"you are going to burn in hell if you aren't (insert faith here)"

"All (insert political party here) are idiots"

"I don't use bittorrent because people use it illegally"

"we should have a 100% ban on firearms because some people commit crimes with them"

These are hard-line stances. Unfortunately the world isn't in black and white so they generally make you look foolish.

You left out, "No means no!"

MS

7lowe

shaqazoolu wrote: »

I always used to try and defend my music pirating by saying I wouldn't buy the CD anyway so they aren't really losing anything, or I wanted to hear it before I buy it. With pretty much every song on Youtube now, that goes out of the window.

This confuses me. If someone illegally puts a music video on BT & you download it and watch it that's bad. But, if they illegally upload it YouTube it's ok to watch it?

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veritas_libertas

7lowe wrote: »

This confuses me. If someone illegally puts a music video on BT & you download it and watch it that's bad. But, if they illegally upload it YouTube it's ok to watch it?

7

You make a very valid point that I have not seriously thought about.

Good point!

stuh84

Now that places like Spotify and Last.fm exist, I dont see an excuse for the old "trying music before I buy it" argument. I will admit, a lot of the albums I have bought in the past have been a direct result of downloading copyrighted material, but I would never download the full album, just one or two tracks to get a taste, and then if it tasted good, I'd buy, if it didn't, then the tracks go away.

Now, I don't think I ever download any music illegally, as legal streaming is so prevalent.

I'm one of them strange creative types myself, guitarist first, network engineer second, so when I see people downloading freely and never buying any merchandise, never going to gigs, I think these kind of people are equivalent to any common thief personally. I don't care if the definition isn't exactly the same, its the same premise. If people are supporting the bands through other means, then I can understand, but the freeloaders are a waste of oxygen.

If you dont support the people making the music or whatever, the people doing it can't fund further releases. If all you want is record-label funded identikit bands, then go ahead. I'll continue supporting those who provide something interesting, and are doing their absolute best to survive and need every penny they can get from it.

msteinhilber

7lowe wrote: »

This confuses me. If someone illegally puts a music video on BT & you download it and watch it that's bad. But, if they illegally upload it YouTube it's ok to watch it?

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A large number of artists have their own YouTube channels where they place the video's on their own accord. Yes, some artists do not do this but many do as a marketing tool. And one significant difference between YouTube and BT is it's fairly easy for a copyright holder to get a video or the audio of a video taken down through a copyright infringement notification. With BT, the copyright holder would pretty much be SOL unless they had the backing of a larger organization or were willing to invest a good chunk of money to get things resolved.

shaqazoolu

7lowe wrote: »

This confuses me. If someone illegally puts a music video on BT & you download it and watch it that's bad. But, if they illegally upload it YouTube it's ok to watch it?

7

Like mstein said, many artists have their own channels on Youtube or still maintain a Myspace page where they post their stuff. Otherwise, like I said in my original post, iTunes and Amazon both have decent enough 30 second previews of the songs that you can sample before you buy.

SephStorm

Sorry to bring this back, but to everyone, a question, is your objection the legal issue, or the moral issues?

For whoever sent me that rep for my post,

I simply believe it is a complex issue. I do believe that there are times when I would have no objective to someone dl'ing copyrighted material, and then there are times I would be against it.

I'll present one example. A person wants to take a GIAC exam. GIAC offers a number of options for training, however, based on what I have seen, the majority of options all cost thousands of dollars. I would not object to a person downloading vendor study material. Yes, I know that is a loaded statement, that is likely to loose me a few friends, but it is my truthful opinion. I would however take issue with someone downloading a ******** or ********* for the same exam. In this case, my issue is that the though both actions were illegal, one shows an attempt by the individual to improve themselves. Now, I expect, when that person gets a job that can pay for such activities, they should use the legal option, again however, at the current time, I would not explicitly be against it.

Now lets take a movie/music. I have seen downloaded movies and heard music that was likely not acquired legally. I have some issues with intelectual property as it exist in our society currently, so a blanket statement would not be sufficient to apply to this situation, however, it is my belief that this activity does not sufficiently harm anyone to the point that I would consider it immoral. Again, the counter, I have seen people who immediately zoom over to a torrent site when a new movie comes out, I disapprove of such an attitude, but I don't take issue with their "infringement" itself.

azjag

I notice nobody is mentioning any tv shows in here. It's all movies, music and games.

Warsh1p

The Internet is working as intended. IMO

stuh84

SephStorm wrote: »

I have some issues with intelectual property as it exist in our society currently, so a blanket statement would not be sufficient to apply to this situation, however, it is my belief that this activity does not sufficiently harm anyone to the point that I would consider it immoral.

When studios are shutting down because the good record labels (i.e. not the big majors) cant afford to go to them anymore as the music they are selling just isn't getting bought, I'd call that harming people.

One of the biggest metal studios out in Sweden (run by Fredrik Nordstrom for those interested) has had the amount of people going through his studio significantly decrease, and has considered shutting down as its been hard to make money from it. Now to people who don't know metal, it may just sound like a small time studio, but some of the most influential metal records in the past 20 years came out of that studio.

Another example is Mattias Loren, an AMAZING graphic artist who specialised in CD covers, band art, logos etc. As a result of people not buying the records, he went from being quite prosperous to having to stop doing freelance CD art and the like to go and work in a 9-5 graphic studio. A complete waste of a talented artist in my opinion.

I'm sorry but the people who think its a blameless crime have just never looked beyond the charts, this is hurting so many people who have an actual passion for music, not a passion for raking the cash in, they are the ones getting hit.

The people who listen to music to sample it, and then go out and buy it are great, I do that myself and I know a lot of others that do. However I also know enough people that have bought about 3 records in the past 5 years and yet own 100-200GB of music that they have no intention of ever paying for.

bubble2005

DON'T LIE! You know all of you "ethical" I.T. Professionals do it. Just a quick swipe of the mouse huh. yeahhhhhhh

haha

At one point or the other we were all guilty of it directly or indirectly through someone else.

azjag

I'd be shocked if anybody on here admitted to getting a cease and disist letter from thier ISP or a movie/music company.

I got one a few years ago. Funny thing is i don't remember what it was i was downloading.

Ahriakin

Just an aside the the above post. The decrease in dedicated studio use is more directly affected by the increase in home studio quality. It's not just that publishers can't afford to send their bands to the top studios, it's that an awful lot of artists are just setting up their own. The music publishing industry will tout it as caused by piracy but it's as much their own fault, artists in general are not happy with the old distribution model, they got paid very little unless they managed to stay the course for multiple albums (usually a min. of 7 from the initial screw-them-to-the-wall contract). Even with the chance for piracy and misuse many artists that previously had no hope of commercial success are now seeing it online, maybe not at megastar levels - to kill a metaphor the slice of cheese is smaller but it's a lot more spreadable

stuh84

While I do agree that home studio quality has increased (I know, I do it myself), I still know the vast majority of people still have no idea about recording, and want someone else to do it. More often than not they still go to the local recording studios, and this carries on up through to the labels. Pretty much every band I listen to is still using dedicated studios, I can maybe pull about 10 out that dont (given I listen to hundreds this is quite a small amount).

I think the problem is, a lot of the judging of this comes from looking at the labels like Universal and the like, with no thoughts of ones like SPV, Nuclear Blast, Basick etc, or similar ones for other genres.

I'm not going to deny that the internet is a great place to hear new bands, given my record collection before it was maybe about 10 albums, and now its going on for about 300, with numerous gigs, merchandise etc purchased too, but I am quite often the one which defies the trend with my friends and people I know, I scarcely know people who still buy music, and it pains me

earweed

I still buy music but it's mostly for my daughter. I don't listen to as much music as in my younger days. My daughter will hear something on you tube or played on a movie or TV show and I'll either get her a few singles downloaded @$.99 each and maybe even get the whole album. My daughter knows about sites to get "free" music from her friends but she also knows how I feel about it so she just has a smaller, but higher quality, of music on her MP3 player.
As to the home studios a lot of bands for a long time have experimented with home studios and most have had really good results. By the time a band gets to the point of being able to produce a good quality album on their own and can get a good sound engineer and the rest of their own people then a home studio is the way to go.
A few years ago the Foo Fighters (one of my favorite bands) put out one of their best albums recorded at a home studio. They are an example of a band which has put in their time in traditional studios and found that they wanted more control and less time constarints because of studio time cost.
Newer bands coming up will continue using regular studios but there are a lot of these who are either tech savvy themselves or know people who are and they are able to bypass the regular studios.
In the days of Napster I was always on it. Yes, I downloaded a lot of music. A lot of it I already had on CD or on cassette tape and just liked the ease of getting it over the net to put on mycomputer. I didn't even own an MP3 player then, I just listened while on the computer or working out at home. I also purchased more CD's during that time period than at any time in my life, so that argument about artists losing money by my not purchasing their CDs doesn't really fit me.
I purchased CD's from more up and coming bands or bands who never did make it big but who I really liked some of their music. I used to play drums back then and anything with a really good drummer on it I would listen to and try to learn some of the beats. Anybody here ever hear of Dream Theatre? They're still around, not really real big but I got hooked on them through Napster. I still have a few CDs from them but lost interest in newer music when my knees went out and I could no longer "play" the way I liked to and sold my drum kits.
I still go to clubs some to hear bands and I'll still buy an occasional CD for myself if I like what I've heard. If a person is using Youtube or bittorrents or whatever to get a good sampling of music and then going out and purchasing the bands CDs or merchandise then more power to them. The people who are just getting all there music for free and never supporting the band then that's just wrong.

SephStorm

stuh84 wrote: »

When studios are shutting down because the good record labels (i.e. not the big majors) cant afford to go to them anymore as the music they are selling just isn't getting bought, I'd call that harming people.

One of the biggest metal studios out in Sweden (run by Fredrik Nordstrom for those interested) has had the amount of people going through his studio significantly decrease, and has considered shutting down as its been hard to make money from it. Now to people who don't know metal, it may just sound like a small time studio, but some of the most influential metal records in the past 20 years came out of that studio.

Another example is Mattias Loren, an AMAZING graphic artist who specialised in CD covers, band art, logos etc. As a result of people not buying the records, he went from being quite prosperous to having to stop doing freelance CD art and the like to go and work in a 9-5 graphic studio. A complete waste of a talented artist in my opinion.

I'm sorry but the people who think its a blameless crime have just never looked beyond the charts, this is hurting so many people who have an actual passion for music, not a passion for raking the cash in, they are the ones getting hit.

The people who listen to music to sample it, and then go out and buy it are great, I do that myself and I know a lot of others that do. However I also know enough people that have bought about 3 records in the past 5 years and yet own 100-200GB of music that they have no intention of ever paying for.

Very interesting post, and that is a great point. However I really think this is going to be based on geographic location and coverage. If a band is pretty popular, then it is likely to get pirated, however one of these smaller band, IMO is less likely to have the coverage to be available long enough to cause sufficient losses.

I believe this also has pro's. Recently I came across a band I had never heard of called Sunrise Seven. Heard a song on YT, and looked them up, myspace and the YT video claimed they had a CD coming out, and I searched for it on google, couldn't find anything, tried to contact them on Myspace several times.. After a few week, I looked on a popular torrent engine to see if the album was ever released. I found it on one site, but I never got the album, because as I said above, there had not been sufficient interest to continue seeding the torrent. Again, I would have been more than happy to buy the album, could I have found it legally, and were the band still active, I would have been more than happy to promote the band as wide as possible.

colemic

On the last page someone mentioned tv shows - if tivo is legal (and it is), what's the difference in that, and downloading, say, a bunch of shows from the history or discovery channel? I am a perfect example, I live overseas and simply do not have access to watch these shows via cable, satellite, or over-the-air for 'free.' is it considered piracy to download and watch these shows?

Hyper-Me

azjag wrote: »

I'd be shocked if anybody on here admitted to getting a cease and disist letter from thier ISP or a movie/music company.

I got one a few years ago. Funny thing is i don't remember what it was i was downloading.

Believe it or not my friends mom got one. She downloads movies all day long.

A week after she got the letter, she was right back at it.

DevilWAH

I'm a bit of a fan of Stephen Frys take on this.

Basicaly as he pointed out, when he was a teenager/young man. He was often swapping takes/cd's with friends or copying them to give away. Even though this was aginst copyright laws most of the music indstry turned a blind eye as righly so it was thought that making a compulation CD for a friend was what "kids" did. They didn't have the money to all purchase the CD's/tapes and they where not making money out of what they where doing.

It also introduced them to lots of different music. And ass they got older, got jobs they started buying the CD them selves. (a bit like the drug barron giving out free drugs to get you hooked,and then start charging and making he monety back)

So in my view at least, people who use torrent sites a bit like a sampleing ground, downloading stuff they have heard of to see what its like, but then also spending money to purchase the stuff they enjoy. I think it actuly waorks for the indstry. A friend who has one of the largest CD/Recourd collections I know of, regualy downloads stuff to see what new artists and CD's are like before a purchase.

On the other hand people who make money, or who arn't prepared to support the indstry in any way at all I don't have much time for.

There is a major problem with how things are going, is that as more people down laod, the more expensive CD/DVD are going to get. and the less people at the bottom end of the richness scale will be able to aford to buy them, so the more they wil download...

There is of course an argument that if you can't aford it don't watch it. But at the same time many films are aimed at this end of the market.

Its a vicious circle that will never end, untill a way is found to give a incentive to purcahse rather than download aside form the threat of leagl action. which at the end of the day is never going to stop it happening. It was nearly 20years ago that I first heard of down loading ileagle music, and for 20 years they have been trying to stop it. What makes any one think that they wil have any mroe luck in the next 20 years of closing the door?

Darthn3ss

netBooger wrote: »

It's piracy that keeps driving the cost of software, music, and games up.

Maybe software but definitely not music and movies. That's the thugs at the RIAA/MPAA trying to be scary. They also over inflate the crap out of the apparent damages and losses to them by file sharing.

I can't afford a Ferrari but that doesn't mean I should just go steal one.

That argument is invalid. Stealing a car is physically taking something something from someone else, which would cause them to lose money. I don't think sending bits of data over a wire is quite the same as stealing a car.

That said with free software from Microsoft and school, i don't download a whole lot anymore. I don't see too big of a problem with software piracy as long you're not distributing/selling it/using it for a business. I can't afford windows server 2008 or the latest cisco IOS, guess that means i don't deserve to learn them? Only the wealthy can learn right?

Darthn3ss

erpadmin wrote: »

By your logic, if I record something on the radio, and never buy the single/album from the artist, than that's stealing/theft. If I Tivo something, that's theft.

Thats the industries logic. Hell, if they had it their way, you'd be getting sued for driving down the street with your radio up - Everyone in earshot should have to pay royalties.

Devilsbane

Nothing wrong with torents themselves, the wrong comes in when copywrited material is being transferred.

Is it wrong for me to send you an email and attach a copy of a free program? No. Is it wrong for me to share that same program with you over a torrent? also no.

Is it wrong for me to email you a dvd? (10MB at a time

) Yes. Is it wrong for me to torrent that same movie? Yep.

7lowe

I don't see anything wrong with torrenting TV shows if you are paying for the channels that the show comes on.

Also, I don't see anything wrong with using it for out of print material as the whole argument of lost sales goes out the window since they aren't trying to sell it anymore.

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