This topic is discussed almost monthly under one pretext or another and since piracy is heavily shunned on those boards the resoponse is always pretty one-sided.
Originally posted by Therion
Ask them.. I don't know as well. Personally i don't download music as well (except when it's free), for example.
It's a certain mind set, I think. But.. ask them. They know.
Some people, I do know, just don't care about other's property.
The music downloading is a 'good' sign: when it becomes easy to break the law and the risk seems small morals and the law goes out the window in favour of free music.
I often marvel at why it's hard for people to comprehend why pirates do it. Allow me to answer this question once and for all.
Because it's free.
There I said it. It's almost instinctive for a man to buy the products which provide the greatest value at the lowest cost, and I would have thought Luis being an economist would quickly recognize this. As the supply of something becomes near-infinite, the price automatically approaches zero.
And before anyone becomes self-righteous and takes the moral high-ground by mentioning thievery (too late, I think), think what thievery is for a second. I'll help you think by helpfully providing a definition.
Theft - the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
according to Merriam-webster
Theft - the dishonest taking of property belonging to another person with the intention of depriving the owner permanently of its possession
according to Collins English Dictionary.
When someone downloads something he doesn't deprive anyone else of anything... except maybe some bandwidth but that is given with the consent of whoever you're downloading that something. Downloading music is therefore not thieft.
Originally posted by Moonbiter:
I could get ANYTHING, and I mean anything I want in a matter of hours, but I don't. Why? Well, when it comes to MP3s the quality of the sound is offensive to my ears. When it comes to games, I just love to have the cover, the manual and the other goodies standing on my shelf. The only thing I occasionally get are rare DVDs that for some reason won't be made available over here, and that is extremely rare.
Congratulations! If you can spot a difference big enough for you to consider offensive between a 192kbps MP3 and a CD you might have the best ears in the world. Interestingly enough, music companies seem to think that 128kbps MP3s are good enough as 128kbps is the standard format provided at online music stores.