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I welcome any debate to this thread so long as it is intelligent and non-flaming.
First off I will admit that I support filesharing, and yes I do it myself. No, I don't do it to "rage against the system," and not "because I can." I do it to show the people going after filesharers that it is not our fault that their market scheme can't survive the digital age.
The two arguments against file sharing and their rebuttals:
1 - "It is copyright infringement."
Though "copyright" law has been written to define it as such now, the current version is illegitimate and should be repealed and those responsible should be punished. The purpose of all copyright law, I contend, should be to ensure that due credit be attributed to the originator of ideas, to ensure
This is because the title and artist's name is kept with their work, otherwise no one could find it to download it in the first place. The artist retains full creative control by virtue of no one wanting tampered goods. If the problem was people ripping CDs and MISLABELING them as someone else's work, THEN there would be a real crime there: plagiarism. As it stands, that is simply not the case.
Since no money is made on either end when mp3s are shared, no one is profiting from the artist's work. Of course, if they were a TRUE artist, this wouldn't matter anyway and they'd be happy more people were exposed to their artistic expressions. Society did not sign a contract with artists saying that we would support them, so long as their art is "good," the legal qualification of which would be patently fascist, says I.
If you want a right to guaranteed profit from anything you do, get a job with an agreed-upon salary and duties. You want to just make music all the time? Well shut the f**k up and starve for your passion for you are entitled to NOTHING. If you sign with a record company, THEY are obligated to pay you; NOT ME. The fact that they depend on me and other consumers doesn't f**king obligate us to do anything. Thinking that it does is indicative of an arrogant, stupid company that deserves to fail. The very idea the the consumers should be saddled with responsibility for a company they do not own is 100% abusive, communist bullshit.
Before any of you "artists" whine that "music is your job," I'm afraid I must inform you that music is an art form. The only way to objectively define art, as applied to legal debate, is by the sole intention to express oneself creatively. If music is made with the intention being monetary gain, it is instead called "marketing whorebaggery." If your marketing strategy fails, fire your whorebag marketing department, you filthy marketing whorebag.
2 - "It is stealing."
That is a steaming pile of wrong.
This is where we show the name "piracy" to be a misnomer. For an act to qualify as "stealing" there must be some quantifiable loss on the part of the victim. In the case of file sharing, no one loses any physical goods and the credits for the content are intact, by virtue of peple needing to be able to identify it to find it.
We are looking at an organization, the RIAA, with a business model that involves cheaply reproducing something at a factory and putting a huge markup on it. This allows them to make instant millionaires out of people who do very little actual labour and who's work has an entirely speculative worth. All that is well and good, and if I had the means to make that kind of profit on something, I would. If the state of the world's consumer-level technology makes that opportunity disappear, however, to whom do I complain?
In fact, the very sum they CLAIM to lose is based completely on the assumption that I WOULD have shelled out 20 bucks for their album (or 50+ for their game or 8 to drive to the theater and see their movie once) had I not been given the option to see/hear/experiance it for free. Such an assumption is baseless, arrogant and irrelevant to any case wherein facts and proof are held above conjecture and emotions. No one should accept obligation to recoup anyone’s IMAGINED losses.
Develop a less stupid and abusive business model; don't whine to uncle sam to bully the public into ignoring better options.
_________________ Mycenae - The Great WTF of the WWW 
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