Carl Tyler's Blog

1 - By that arguement, if you refused to sell me your car for 10 pounds then I would be justified in stealing your car and giving you nothing.

Or the "Robbin Hood" arguement, if a bank robber buys a house with the proceeds of the bank robbery, are you arguing that the economy as a whole does not suffer from this loss?

Theft is theft, regardless of the motivation.

Now if you are inferring that the music industry is ripping of consumers by charging for the media cost of music, when they don't actually bare this media cost or they are charging excessive profit margins, then this is a different story.

In the end, the real victims of these illegal downloads (of music) are the authors, singers and muso's. They get paid a percentage of sales, if there are no sales then they don't get paid.

2 - @1 Read what I said again Ian, I believe you misunderstood. My argument is not that downloading is justified, I very clearly say it is stealing.

I am saying the statement that the stealing takes the money out of the economy is false. The money still goes into the economy, just through another channel.

3 - Also, we're disregarding the fact that people download stuff (and not pay for it) that they wouldn't have bought ANYWAY if it wasn't available on the net.

4 - The point I take from Carl's opinion was this one - "if the music industry and movie industry got their pricing model and delivery mechanism right they would see a huge reduction in piracy". To which, I am in complete agreement. I've been having an ongoing thread with a few people as of late regarding Netflix. As a DSL user, my bandwidth is not quite sufficient for their streaming service. However, if they had a "store and playback" option, I'd be a Netflix customer this instant. This is just one example to Carl's point.

5 - I agree, Carl, and I can offer a perfect example. Prior to the internet days, I rarely bought albums. When filesharing started, I became a "free-downloader", just because it was possible. I started downloading legitimately from Amazon when Pepsi offered promo codes for free music downloads, and I found the Amazon music was DRM free and didn't require special software to download, monthly subscription, or anything binding like that. (DRM free is important to me, as I have a couple computers, a Palm Treo, and two kids with music players that will all want to play the song.) The promo codes are gone, but I happily pay about 99cents per song to Amazon. The price is decent and I can take copies of my song anywhere.

6 - "Or the "Robbin Hood" arguement, if a bank robber buys a house with the proceeds of the bank robbery, are you arguing that the economy as a whole does not suffer from this loss?

Theft is theft, regardless of the motivation."

Digital media is not physicaly tangible.

7 - @6 Are you arguing that it does?