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Do you think downloading movies or other content should be illegal?

Do you think downloading movies and other content should be illegal?

  • Yes

    Votes: 10 27.8%
  • No

    Votes: 19 52.8%
  • Not sure

    Votes: 2 5.6%
  • Other (explain)

    Votes: 5 13.9%

  • Total voters
    36
It's not asking is it, its asking should it...

Of course it should be, why do you think there are copyright laws?

People who produce music and films expect to get paid just like the rest of us when we go to work every day. Which is why there are laws to protect their material.
 
Of course it should be, why do you think there are copyright laws?

People who produce music and films expect to get paid just like the rest of us when we go to work every day. Which is why there are laws to protect their material.

Except these laws were meant to be temporary control over a work after which expired after time, not a gaurenteed revenue stream for over a century easy.
 
Except these laws were meant to be temporary control over a work after which expired after time, not a gaurenteed revenue stream for over a century easy.

"50 to 100 years after the authors death" is the international standard for the purpose of copyright laws as I understand it.

So to expand the point - Edgar Allen Poe, his stuff is probably safe to download. Lars Ulrich and Metallica's - different story.
 
Of course it should be, why do you think there are copyright laws?

People who produce music and films expect to get paid just like the rest of us when we go to work every day. Which is why there are laws to protect their material.
Well some people are capable of free thought and asking questions rather than just accepting whatever the government dictates as right. That seems to bother you for some reason.
 
Well some people are capable of free thought and asking questions rather than just accepting whatever the government dictates as right. That seems to bother you for some reason.

What is the government dictating?

What do you do for a living? Let's say you're a CPA for arguments sake. I hire you to do my taxes. You do them competently. I refuse to pay you. How is that any different from refusing to pay a musician for his or her song?

I don't have a problem with logical issues, but your point makes no sense.
 
What is the government dictating?

What do you do for a living? Let's say you're a CPA for arguments sake. I hire you to do my taxes. You do them competently. I refuse to pay you. How is that any different from refusing to pay a musician for his or her song?

How is that similar?
 
Here's another poll that doesn't make sense or isn't clearly explained.

Downloading movies or other content by no means should be illegal - hell, just make internet access and participation illegal.

I think the pollster is asking "should downloading unauthorized (ie: unpaid) copyrighted material be illegal" - and answer is: it already is.

Is that the thing on this board - to put up illogical or incoherent polls and debate the non-issue for 50 pages?

I realize I wasn't exactly clear when I made the poll.

Something I can't change now please try to respond to the thread in the best manner possible.
I'm sure you understand what I meant and after all it is my first poll.
 
What is the government dictating?

What do you do for a living? Let's say you're a CPA for arguments sake. I hire you to do my taxes. You do them competently. I refuse to pay you. How is that any different from refusing to pay a musician for his or her song?

I don't have a problem with logical issues, but your point makes no sense.

That's an incredibly lame attempt at analogy. It doesn't have any logical connection to this topic at all.
 
How is that similar?

I understand why you're being argumentative now.

Alright, I'm patient - let's put it another way. You're a musician. You eat, pay bills, mortgage, feed your family off of your music. You have a hit song and earn a nickle off of every sale. You sell a million copies of that song - $50k, right? But alas, someone copied and distributed your song so the actual, legal sales (based on what you collected) were half.

So your $50k that you "earned" is now $25k because half of it was stolen from you.

Not sure if I can put it any simpler.
 
I realize I wasn't exactly clear when I made the poll.

Something I can't change now please try to respond to the thread in the best manner possible.
I'm sure you understand what I meant and after all it is my first poll.

No problem, I'm just in a dicky mood so forgive me.
 
That's an incredibly lame attempt at analogy. It doesn't have any logical connection to this topic at all.

How so - it has every bit of logic that you're questioning.

Artists expect to get paid, just like CPA's expect to get paid. They produce a product (or service) that people get value from, and they in return expect to receive value for producing it.

Pretty simple concept.
 
I understand why you're being argumentative now.

Alright, I'm patient - let's put it another way. You're a musician. You eat, pay bills, mortgage, feed your family off of your music. You have a hit song and earn a nickle off of every sale. You sell a million copies of that song - $50k, right? But alas, someone copied and distributed your song so the actual, legal sales (based on what you collected) were half.

So your $50k that you "earned" is now $25k because half of it was stolen from you.

Not sure if I can put it any simpler.

You sold the song to the copier. It was his to sell or do with as he pleased. Thus is the way of the free market.
 
You sold the song to the copier. It was his to sell or do with as he pleased. Thus is the way of the free market.

That's a pretty simplistic view. When artists produce songs or whatever, they have a publisher and/or distributor publish and distribute them. Generally, there is a royalty that the publisher or distributor charges as part of the sales price that goes back to the artist (along with whatever cut they are getting, after expenses).

If someone illegally copies the material and distributes it - both the artist and publisher lose. Artists aren't paid totally up front for their material - that would be crazy. What if it stinks, nobody likes it? It's an ongoing process - the more they sell, the more both parties make. The more it gets pirated, the less both parties make.
 
That's a pretty simplistic view. When artists produce songs or whatever, they have a publisher and/or distributor publish and distribute them. Generally, there is a royalty that the publisher or distributor charges as part of the sales price that goes back to the artist (along with whatever cut they are getting, after expenses).
The free market is beautiful in its simplicity. The problems start when government gets involved.

If someone illegally copies the material and distributes it - both the artist and publisher lose. Artists aren't paid totally up front for their material - that would be crazy. What if it stinks, nobody likes it? It's an ongoing process - the more they sell, the more both parties make. The more it gets pirated, the less both parties make.
Of course monopoly-holders are not going to make as much if their monopolies are broken up. Where is the issue?
 
How so - it has every bit of logic that you're questioning.

Artists expect to get paid, just like CPA's expect to get paid.

Except the method in which they get paid differ.

Expectation does not equal, however, guarentee because of the difference in which an artist functions from a CPA.

And having the income reduced from what you expect, when it comes to it, isn't having it stolen from you... you didn't gain it. It wasn't yours yet to begin with. That idea defies common sense and/or logic.
 
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The free market is beautiful in its simplicity. The problems start when government gets involved.


Of course monopoly-holders are not going to make as much if their monopolies are broken up. Where is the issue?

Free market? Monopoly holders?

You have any idea what you're talking about? Do you understand how artists get paid? By royalties earned through sales of their material?

The government has nothing to do with it other than legislating copyright laws, and they've been around for decades, maybe centuries.

It's pretty simple, I'm not sure why you keep trying to twist it into something it's not. Yes, it's free market - the artist signs a contract with a distributor that essentially says that the distributor will market and sell the artists work, and will charge a price, and that the artist will get a certain portion of that charged price as a royalty - for every copy sold.

If this process is bypassed by illegal copies of the material being distributed by pirates, the artist and distributor do not make money.

Freeloaders are looking for freebies, but the reality is that they are stealing from the artist and the rightful owners of this material.
 
Except the method in which they get paid differ.

Expectation does not equal, however, guarentee because of the difference in which an artist functions from a CPA.

And having the income reduced from what you expect, when it comes to it, isn't having it stolen from you... you didn't gain it. It wasn't yours yet to begin with. That idea defies common sense and/or logic.

The real issue is the medium which the product is distributed. A CPA's services are more personal, you can't copy and distribute a CPA's services like you can a song.

This is why there's even a debate. Intellectual property is often electronic and can easily be copied. That doesn't make it legal - it makes stealing it easier.

In basic terms, a songwriter and a CPA both produce the same thing - a product or service that they are selling. You can steal an artists product easier than you can steal a CPA's.
 
Well as long as the music, tv and movie industries are pigheaded and stuck in the 20th century, then download away in my opinion. They are the masters of their own doom.

My reasoning is simple. All the 3 industries have failed to keep up with the movement of technology. Why should I have to wait weeks and months if not years to see the next episode of my favourite tv show or new movie? This fact contributes to a huge portion of the downloading, especially on the TV side.

This is because of "rights", an archaic method to exploit more money out of people world wide. The "rights" issue was best exemplified during the last world cup in football. In Europe the main Danish tv channel has an encrypted version of its channels for expats living abroad (at an insane premium btw). But when it came to the world cup matches, they had to block the channel because they did not have the "rights" to send to Spain, France and others.. to Danish citizens, and only Danish citizens can get the channel (need passport to get the card). Now, you probally think, so what.... well the problem with this, is that the BBC, Spanish TV, German TV and many others, sent all the matches in the clear (non encrypted) for everyone to see. You could even watch some matches online at FIFA.com. This is just one example in a web of stupidity by the TV and Movie producers/releaser world wide.

It use to be that a movie was first released in the US, then Asia and then months later in Europe. Now days, a lot of blockbusters are released on the same day in most major markets, to avoid the piracy. But still, studios refuse to do so, and then complain when you can get a pirated version online before the premiere in the US. On top of that, some studios complain despite releasing the movie in Asia and Russia first, the world capital of pirates. And of course they provide no methods of being able to download or view the movies online at all.......... which does not help the situation either. They want us to buy DVDs after all.

Another idiotic moronic system is the DVD region codes. Not only is it anti competitive and in principle anti free market, it is acutally working against the studios! In today's market, one of the first regions to get DVDs is Region 5..... that is Russia, the worlds biggest releaser of pirated movies in DVD quality. We can get online, a Region 5 DVD rip of any movie (almost) before it is released on DVD in the US! And the movie companies complain...For example, a DVD region 5 version of "The day the earth stood still" was just released on the web a few days ago... the US DVD is out April 7th. See the idiotic nature of the system?

Look at TV. Most major TV shows (non reality) are made in the US. But because of the way the system is for the most part, the release of new episodes happens in the US first, and if we are lucky we get it the same week over here in Europe, but mostly its weeks if not months and years after. We have no possibility to download or access new US shows legally, because of the rights issue, but the technology is there.. yet the US tv companies refuse to give access to non Americans to download legally the content. And then they complain we download and watch illegal copies.... If I could pay a few bucks to watch my favourite tv shows hours after it airs in the US or even at the same time, I would. But I cant.

Now to compound the idiotic ways of TV channels, we have the case of Stargate SG1. For years, yes years, the pattern was the first half of the season was released in the US, with the rest of the world following the same week or week after.. no biggie often. Now, the Sci Fi channel held an SG1 winter break from mid December every year, but guess what... the Canadian and UK channels did not. They kept sending the episodes, so the latter half of the season was often OVER before American's got it on their screens. Of course American's loved to download the last half of the season. Even a few years, the SG1 season was started months before in Canada so when it finaly was aired in the US and UK, the Canadian's was several episodes in, and of course they were all over the net.... and TV channels complain................

The same goes for BSG btw.. during season 1 and 2, the UK's Sky TV aired new episodes before the US for a brief period.

On the music side, the industry took almost a decade to figure out that people liked having the ability of downloading, and that the industries pricing was insane. Now the game is up, and they are far far too late out of the "starting blocks" to do anything about the illegal downloads. On top of that they are only now, years after they finally accepted downloads (legally), they are now figuring out that having DRM systems suck and are counter productive.

Is this all stealing? yes, but when you leave the freaking door unlocked and big sign saying "come take my stuff because my security system is broken" then frankly I have no sympathy what so ever.
For crying out loud, do you actually work for a living? Well do you? You took all that web space to say that stealing is good and right. If you want better TV shows, then GDit produce your own in Spain! Can't you people do anything for yourselves? Next you'll be asking for an American welfare check. Are spaniards stupid, or do they have any skills at all? You have to steal everything, you can't work and make money so you can buy what you need? It's damn pitiful if you ask me, people proudly stealing everything they need and then blaming the victim for not locking their doors. "Thou shalt not steal", ever heard of it? We could never get self-government going in Spain, because their are people like you there who don't understand it. Self-government means YOU governing yourself. Yes YOU, that's what the self part is and always has been. But you smartasses over in Spain think you know so much about America, when you really don't know **** from shinola. I hate to tell you this but stealing is not only illegal, but WRONG. Wow, what a revelation! :roll:
 
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Free market? Monopoly holders?

You have any idea what you're talking about?
Yes, perhaps you should learn what a "free market" and a "monopoly" are so that we can move this discussion forward.

The government has nothing to do with it other than legislating copyright laws, and they've been around for decades, maybe centuries.
Is this a joke? The government has everything to do with creating artificial monopolies that harm the consumer to benefit monopoly-holders.
 
Yes, perhaps you should learn what a "free market" and a "monopoly" are so that we can move this discussion forward.


Is this a joke? The government has everything to do with creating artificial monopolies that harm the consumer to benefit monopoly-holders.

:lol::lol::lol:

I'm almost afraid to ask you this, but could you elaborate on both of your points?

Give me some specifics instead of belching out really bad cliche.
 
:lol::lol::lol:

I'm almost afraid to ask you this, but could you elaborate on both of your points?

Give me some specifics instead of belching out really bad cliche.

Elaborate on what point? Have you learned what a monopoly is yet?
 
You sold the song to the copier. It was his to sell or do with as he pleased. Thus is the way of the free market.

If you're saying that anyone who buys a song copy then has an unfettered right to copy and/or distribute it as they please, then you would be wrong, wrong, wrong.
 
If you're saying that anyone who buys a song copy then has an unfettered right to copy and/or distribute it as they please, then you would be wrong, wrong, wrong.
From an anti-property rights perspective perhaps.
 
Elaborate on what point? Have you learned what a monopoly is yet?

Wow - I have to spoon feed. I'm not surprised though.

Ok, let me dumb it down. Explain to me your thoughts on what a monopoly and free market system are as they pertain to sales of licensed, artistic material and how the evil government is "creating artificial monopolies" to disrupt the process.

Don't be shy, let it rip. I can't wait for your response.

This sounds like a Pinky and the Brain plot......
 
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