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Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years old?

Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years old?

  • No, it's not wrong. We should change the law so material that old is public domain.

    Votes: 22 62.9%

  • It's technically wrong, but not really a big deal.

    Votes: 7 20.0%

  • Yes, it's wrong. The copyright owner has the right to control it, even if he's an heir.

    Votes: 5 14.3%

  • Not sure.

    Votes: 1 2.9%
  • Total voters
    35
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

clownboy said:
Quite a distinct difference between photography and TV show/movies. I doubt any of those photographers have a problem with folks viewing their work and keeping a copy, because if the photos are online that happens automatically. It's when folks try to use that content without paying for it. Such use generally involves display to others.

However, with TV/movies you can trigger the fines and the RIAA's ire by just downloading and being in possession.
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I had to chuckle at this. You should read some of the threads in photo forums. They don't get upset at people viewing their photos, that is why they posted them to begin with after all, but they do indeed get hot when people download their photos without paying for them. "Some guy downloaded my photo without paying for it and I found it on Facebook! GAHHH!!! :2mad:"

They also don't like people downloading them to begin with, and know it happens, but without additional public posting they pretty much never know.


Cephus said:
But that's really the thing. If someone pays for a song on a jukebox, everyone in the place gets to hear it for free. While the wretched RIAA would probably want every single person to pay an independent fee, screw the f'ing RIAA.
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Not really. Somebody is paying for it. In this case, the jukebox owner is paying a royalty. Possibly even the business owner the jukebox is located. Just as you can legally buy a CD and play it in your car while giving a couple friends a ride.

ASCAP and BMI have teams of people roving the country looking for businesses that play music to bust. You cannot... legally... play the radio (where customers can hear it) legally without paying royalty fees. The fact that the radio station already paid their fees, or that it was available "free" on the radio, will get you exactly zero sympathy in court.

Restaurants sued for playing music without ASCAP/BMI licenses | Law Offices of Gordon P. Firemark - Top Los Angeles Theatre & Film Entertainment Lawyer


Superfly said:
What is Spotify?
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Note to self: I am so going to have to remember this thread when some of the more pious and self-righteous on other issues spout off regarding being law-abiding and/or ethical. :lamo
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Geoist said:
I believe intellectual rights have gotten out of hand. Yes, shows over 40 years old should be in the public domain.
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Honestly, shows over 14 years ought to be public domain, if even that long. The whole point of copyright is to give the creator a chance to make money off of their creation, not to make them stop creating anything new ever again because they're raking in cash from things they did long ago.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Dr. Chuckles said:
having to physically copy a tape and distribute it is clearly more restrictive than loading something up on the internet, where millions of people can access it within hours. I'm honestly amazed that anyone would take a contrary position to that, being that it seems so fundamentally obvious

PS not to mention your vhs and audio tape copies sounded like **** after the transfer. A digital copy can be endlessly traded with no degradation
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It may be easier. But it is no less or more prevalent than the black market for cassettes was. The only real difference between the two is that those that bootlegged cassettes actually made a profit off of it.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

radcen said:
I had to chuckle at this. You should read some of the threads in photo forums. They don't get upset at people viewing their photos, that is why they posted them to begin with after all, but they do indeed get hot when people download their photos without paying for them. "Some guy downloaded my photo without paying for it and I found it on Facebook! GAHHH!!! :2mad:"
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I hope someone has explained to them about the browser cache which automatically downloads and saves web page content. :mrgreen:

But, they do have a point about use. Someone has taken their works, without compensation, and is using it for public display. That's quite different from that same someone using the pic for their personal desktop image.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Cephus said:
Honestly, shows over 14 years ought to be public domain, if even that long. The whole point of copyright is to give the creator a chance to make money off of their creation, not to make them stop creating anything new ever again because they're raking in cash from things they did long ago.
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Precisely. And Thomas Jefferson (an actuary) calculated that 14 years was adequate time to develop, get to market and exclusively profit back when the Constitution was written. Since then in our development as a nation it's become faster and easier to develop and get stuff to market, so if anything the time for copyright should be less.

Congress and the SCOTUS, working in tandem, have made it many, many times more instead. Btw, the original bad boy and main culprit here is - Mickey Mouse!
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

clownboy said:
I hope someone has explained to them about the browser cache which automatically downloads and saves web page content. :mrgreen:

But, they do have a point about use. Someone has taken their works, without compensation, and is using it for public display. That's quite different from that same someone using the pic for their personal desktop image.
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About every two months, like clockwork, someone will ask: "How can I post photos for people to view (and hopefully purchase) and keep people from downloading them?"

The standard answer is: "You can't."

About the only thing you can do is make the resolution good enough to be viewable on a monitor, but so bad that you can't upsize it or print it and get any kind of decent result.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

clownboy said:
Precisely. And Thomas Jefferson (an actuary) calculated that 14 years was adequate time to develop, get to market and exclusively profit back when the Constitution was written. Since then in our development as a nation it's become faster and easier to develop and get stuff to market, so if anything the time for copyright should be less.

Congress and the SCOTUS, working in tandem, have made it many, many times more instead. Btw, the original bad boy and main culprit here is - Mickey Mouse!
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South Park's portrayal of Mickey Mouse is not far off.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Kal'Stang said:
But it is no less or more prevalent than the black market for cassettes was.
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I'm just going to laugh at this
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Dr. Chuckles said:
HBO was actually pretty smart keeping their content close to the vest. All the other channels did licensing their material to netflix accomplished was make someone else a huge player in the market. That's why netflix lost most of their content a year or two ago. Those early contracts were finally meeting their death and no content provider wanted to renew them at the original price
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Somewhat. I would say in limited cases, I thought the business model was damned stupid. If you consider the worst population with piracy being college and university students, then you would want to be able to pump that subscription option to the students. The only problem was that many universities do not have HBO options for students, and as HBO cannot get cable access to the students, they also have refused to add a separate subscription model like Netflix (controlled by themselves). Now, the only two options were as follows: buy the DVDs--->which used to be 80+ dollars per season, or download illegally. Guess what folks did more of?

Currently, I am hooked into my parents' cable package, using their cable account in order to get access to HBO Go, which is otherwise a fantastic service.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

clownboy said:
Precisely. And Thomas Jefferson (an actuary) calculated that 14 years was adequate time to develop, get to market and exclusively profit back when the Constitution was written. Since then in our development as a nation it's become faster and easier to develop and get stuff to market, so if anything the time for copyright should be less.

Congress and the SCOTUS, working in tandem, have made it many, many times more instead. Btw, the original bad boy and main culprit here is - Mickey Mouse!
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you guys are aware that many cult films and shows were a complete bust when they originally aired, and only developed a market years, and sometimes decades, later
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

radcen said:
About every two months, like clockwork, someone will ask: "How can I post photos for people to view (and hopefully purchase) and keep people from downloading them?"

The standard answer is: "You can't."

About the only thing you can do is make the resolution good enough to be viewable on a monitor, but so bad that you can't upsize it or print it and get any kind of decent result.
Click to expand...

Funny thing is this was possible on the older Mac OSes. They kept files in two parts, a header and the data part. So folks could write the header so the image was only able to display a certain number of times.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Dr. Chuckles said:
you guys are aware that many cult films and shows were a complete bust when they originally aired, and only developed a market years, and sometimes decades, later
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Yup, happens when you invent something ahead of it's time or fail in it's initial development/marketing. The public domain is so important the framers had debates whether copyright should be allowed at all.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

clownboy said:
They don't broadcast the decryption algorithm and they didn't put the decryption on your property. Subscribers rent the decryption.

I'd guess that water and electric lines run through your property, you still have to pay for access to those services.
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I don't need their decryption algorithm, I could've made my own (for example).

If I didn't want water or electricity, I could tell the companies, and they would shut it off. I can't do that with satellite signals. Also, water and electricity is an expended resource that costs those companies money if I use their product. Satellite providers don't lose anything by me pirating their signal. Their resource is expended regardless of what I do.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

clownboy said:
Funny thing is this was possible on the older Mac OSes. They kept files in two parts, a header and the data part. So folks could write the header so the image was only able to display a certain number of times.
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Yeah, that's great until you simply do a screen capture and save it as a new file.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

RabidAlpaca said:
I don't need their decryption algorithm, I could've made my own (for example).
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Practically speaking, to end up with something that works (a completed chip), assuming you developed a new algorithm that didn't rip off theirs, would take so much time and resources for an individual that you are getting a huge bargain by just paying them for the service.

RabidAlpaca said:
If I didn't want water or electricity, I could tell the companies, and they would shut it off. I can't do that with satellite signals. Also, water and electricity is an expended resource that costs those companies money if I use their product. Satellite providers don't lose anything by me pirating their signal. Their resource is expended regardless of what I do.
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No, those water and electric lines would still cross your property, even if you didn't pay to partake. Same with sewer lines (unless you are strictly on your own septic system, and that's rarer by the day). And the resources for manufacturing, installing and maintaining those lines is expended whether you join the service or not. In fact, good chance you paid for all that infrastructure if you're a taxpayer, regardless of your lack of use.
 
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Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

RabidAlpaca said:
Yeah, that's great until you simply do a screen capture and save it as a new file.
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Wasn't a problem then of course. Resolution and pixel count were weak points. Like taking a polaroid of an art piece.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Luna Tick said:
You would think that really old TV shows (40 years or more) would have expired copyrights, but that's often not the case. Do you believe it's wrong to download such shows from unauthorized sources such as torrents?

Just to be clear, the question is about shows 40 years old or more which do not have expired copyrights.
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you can't stop the signal
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Dr. Chuckles said:
you guys are aware that many cult films and shows were a complete bust when they originally aired, and only developed a market years, and sometimes decades, later
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Then maybe they should just make better movies.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Cephus said:
Then maybe they should just make better movies.
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well the argument was that shortening the length of copyright laws wouldn't hurt content producers. Well, if we look at cult material, it surely would.

That isn't dependent on you liking the material, or not
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Dr. Chuckles said:
well the argument was that shortening the length of copyright laws wouldn't hurt content producers. Well, if we look at cult material, it surely would.

That isn't dependent on you liking the material, or not
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It doesn't matter, once it's out there, it's out there. Whether it makes any money for the content producers means nothing. If there was a sudden renewal of interest for a film that's in the public domain, so be it. People can enjoy it without paying anyone a dime.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Dr. Chuckles said:
I'm just going to laugh at this
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With your screen name I wouldn't be surprised. ;) But you can't really argue that cassettes were not bootlegged in the millions. It was such a problem that many record companies and tv corporations tried to get recording devices outlawed through legislation. iirc They even succeeded once but it was shot down by SCOTUS.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Fiddytree said:
You won't get too much argument from me. Currently, my Blu-ray collections is close to 500 films and TV series, and I have probably some 200 DVDs.

I have discovered that a number of programs I would like to buy, actually no longer exist in any viewable format. These are mostly PBS or BBC programs from decades past, some of them documentaries.

I will say that some of this is on the distributor. Remember Tron? Before the sequel came out, I had tried to watch the film. No rental stores in my area had it. No online shops carried the digital copies. No DVDs were readily available. No VHS tapes were readily available. If I wanted to watch the film legally, I would have had to pay at least 90 dollars for the DVD, or 100+ for the VHS (all in the used marketplace, of course). I didn't pirate it, but I was dismayed at how Disney was promoting an upcoming Tron sequel, but there was no mechanism to legally purchase the predecessor without going through an incredibly pricey used marketplace.
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Last year I had a high quality boot-leg of Avengers on my computer the very day it came out to theaters.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Kal'Stang said:
With your screen name I wouldn't be surprised. ;) But you can't really argue that cassettes were not bootlegged in the millions. It was such a problem that many record companies and tv corporations tried to get recording devices outlawed through legislation. iirc They even succeeded once but it was shot down by SCOTUS.
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uh, with digital copies, one copy can be distributed to millions of people in a few hours, and there is no issue with constant loss of quality and no need for a physical exchange. So yes, I can clearly argue a difference
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Jerry said:
Last year I had a high quality boot-leg of Avengers on my computer the very day it came out to theaters.
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The Walking Dead on HD is also great. I actually prefer hi def, live streaming media as opposed to DVDs.
 
Re: Is it immoral to download from unauthorized sources (c) TV shows over 39 years ol

Cephus said:
As far as I'm concerned, if they're broadcasting it on the radio or TV, they're sending it out for free, they have no right to complain if I go and get the stuff they're giving away for free from an online source.
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As long as they fidelity of your online source isn't any better than the broadcast version. ;)
 
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