Swiss Government Declares Downloading for Personal Use Legal

Piracy is theft because according to the law of supply and demand, if supply increases, the value of a product decreases.

Remember back in the days of cassettes, when your good ole pal had a brand spanking new copy of "Master of Puppets" ( Metallica's third album, which I bought three times I might add) and s/he would loan it to you. Once home you would insert it into side "A" of your dual cassette player/recorder and you would proceed to dub the "Master". Then once you had your copy you would listen to it over and over and over again until you had this thought, "Man, I really do like this tape."

Afterwards you, me, and most (I would think) would buy the aforementioned album if we liked it, IMO its kind of like test driving a car; you are making an investment...why not try it out.

Peace.

reply to post by Tibik


Many people say that, but I have not seen this in practice; from all my computer user and music listener friends, actually 0 people bought the products they pirated. Yeap, that's actually ZERO people.

Back at the 80s/90s, me and my friends had heaps of tapes, disks and cds, with music, movies, and video games...we are talking about tens of shelves with the stuff. We practically had any game or application for Amiga/Atari, and almost everything rock and heavy metal. And we never paid a dime to those people for their efforts.

In the 90s, many Amiga game companies died because they could not break even to their production costs. Thanks to us pirates.

Nowadays, I have a legal copy of Windows 7 and everything on it is open source.

reply to post by masterp


Well I'm sad to hear that you weren't in better company. I myself am a musician, and as a musician I can say that its really not about the money; its about the art. For example, my second band (a metal band that we called Deviant) would throw cds out to the audience after shows in order to promote the band. Yes take the inferior product and come to see us as we were meant to be seen... LIVE!

EDIT: ...and guess what; it worked.

reply to post by Tibik


Piracy is certainly a very nice model for capturing a bigger segment of the market. You throw cds to the audience, Microsoft let Windows 3.0 and Windows 95 spread like wildfire, in order to capture the market.

But, if your band was the only source of income for you, and everyone was pirating your music, would you be able to survive on that? you would not.

I am a programmer that has sold a few programs of my own and I know that if I depended solely on my programs for survival, I would not make it, due to piracy.

Those people that claim piracy is ok have never tried to produce anything. They think music and programs grow on trees, probably.

reply to post by masterp


You don't know what you are talking about. You did not set the rules. Those who set the rules can take and are taking everything from us including the ability to earn money by doing something creative. It has nothing to do with piracy. Economy doesn't exist. There is only political plunder of what would be economy. You are shooting at the wrong guys.

reply to post by masterp


You misunderstand me. I did not say, nor will I say, that piracy is good. "Illegal" downloading should be used by the consumer as a means of evaluating a product before purchase (i.e. test driving a new car), after said evaluation period one should purchase the piece of art if you like it; if not then delete it and move on.
Peace.

reply to post by DangerDeath


What are you talking about? your reply makes no sense to me.

reply to post by Tibik


Most people are not ethical enough to do just that.

Originally posted by masterp
reply to post by DangerDeath

 

What are you talking about? your reply makes no sense to me.

The game is set up so you have to pay for things you shouldn't. And there are those who take your money in form of taxes or whatever they call them, and it is normal, not piracy? Come on. Shake up. When you buy a CD, how much do you think goes to the system and why?

This talk of piracy is only to make us all criminals and that will extend the power of authorities over us all. That's what this is about. Forget the talk about false morality. The system must control each exchange and their field of operation is spreading every day. We'll end up pirates just because we're breathing for free.

reply to post by masterp


And that is the sad state of affairs that we are in, my friend. I am speaking of society now; no true honor, not anymore. Greed is what has become of us and in that false pride we shall fall. Have a good day, I myself am going to bed on that note.

Peace.

Moves are afoot in the US government to block access to sites that contribute to piracy. Sites like Piratebay and the like. All US ISPs will be required to block the IP address for ay site on the governments list of forbidden sites.

If this law does get passed it will mean the end to mass piracy. Yes you will still be able to pass links to your friends but you won’t be able to go to a one stop source for links. Things will whither on the vine.

Not everything on torrents is copyrighted. Are they going to forbid any transfer of any information?
The madness spreads at speed of light.

reply to post by Vitchilo


I think if the cost of a ticket came down there would be less piracy!!

reply to post by Vitchilo


Aus der Schweiz. Good move.
Its logical, personal use should be without strings attached.
Besides the Movie and Music Industry dont lose anything substantial
and they get free advertisement by way of mouth.

So this is why my games and music and movie rentals cost so much ....

So Piracy is now called "sharing" ? .. ( BTW .. back in the days of cassettes tapes and copy games was called Hacking )

Kids dont get it ..they never will. If its on the Net then They have complete right over it and everyone else should just leave them alone because they do not want anything more then Instant gratification !!

"Test drive" music .. dont insult us older guys. You dont Test drive music. You heard it on the radio or from a friend and you like the song. As soon as your parents are not watching you sneak up that torrent or kazza or whatever and Download it. You will NOT buy it after the DL.. its in your 32 gig Ipod or whatever now.

You do not "test drive" "games or apps" .. you will simply download them and keep them. You kids have your Rars and your emulators and your games and apps ..

You kids Love the Internet .. but you also abuse it for your own interest. Not even that ..your not even hiding the fact that You are Thieves and proud of it. Then you complain about Internet security and taking away Your freedom..

No .. I say your taking MY freedom away with Your actions. You kids are Too Blatant about "sharing". You dont even care unless the whole wide world conforms to you do you ( it might even be that your too ignorant to understand )

I have seen a lot of post about this " Bread Bus " thing .. test drive it .. buy it ..etc ..

I would like to suggest 2 others ways about the Bread Bus ..

1. You test drive the Bread bus .. while taking it on a cruise you pull into a Replication car wash .. then create more busses .. You make one for yourself ..and give 1000 away for free to the anyone and everyone. Then you return the bus and say " naw .. this bus is not for me .. I dont like it " .. But those others that you Gave away might not think that way and start there own bread busses.

2. You "test drive" the bus .. but you find a Key that happens to unlock the Bread factory .. Saweet .. everyone has a bus .. but now you have the Key to unlock the door. You kids make thousands of keys for free. Now everyone has the key to the actual Factory to Make your own bread and carry it off using the factories own tools.

You see .. its Stealing no matter what you want to call it.

You Kids are going to regret stealing/hacking/sharing .. Your Too Blatant about it.

I somehow Know its not the older ATS'ers that condone this .. You just dont get it .. but you will soon .. and It is not MY fault. You leave no choice.

JG.

And when gov has right to open our houses, get into our phones, spy our computers, arrest us without any right to defend ourselves, that's OK

I say, all this false moralizing is a distraction from what is really going on.

reply to post by Jepic


What representatives? The ones that represent their citizens and not you? Good luck.

Ban the CD in that country? That doesn't even make sense. So if you were going to sell 100,000 cds in that country but beause they allow sharing then you will forego the sale of those cds. Besides, how are you going to keep someone from Spain from going to France and buying your CD and then going back to Spain and sharing and since the CD is not available any other way then they must get a copy off the net. That is a lose-lose situation that you would have created for yourself.

Originally posted by jaduguru
So this is why my games and music and movie rentals cost so much ....

No the reason is that copywright is a monopoly and the copyright holder can charge whatever they like. I'm sure they have number crunchers come up with the highest price that most are willing to pay before they start sharing.

So Piracy is now called "sharing" ? .. ( BTW .. back in the days of cassettes tapes and copy games was called Hacking )

Some governments have enacted laws, like the one in the OP, that state that downloading intellectual property is no different than sharing. And back in the days Hacking was gaining unautherized access to networks not making copies of cassettes. Making copies of an album for a friend was nothing now they are trying to make it a felony.

Kids dont get it ..they never will.

People who create these file sharing tools and the people who have been at it for decades are anything but kids. No need to be condescending.

You see .. its Stealing no matter what you want to call it.

It's not what we call it but what the legal system calls it.

You Kids are going to regret stealing/hacking/sharing .. Your Too Blatant about it.

I somehow Know its not the older ATS'ers that condone this .. You just dont get it .. but you will soon .. and It is not MY fault. You leave no choice.

What? You point out that it has been done since the 70's with cassettes but now, 40 years later, we leave no choice.

The last Tom Petty concert I went to, they were promoting their new Mudcrutch album on the side (Mudcrutch was the name of the band before they changed it to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). So basically Tom Petty was promoting two completely separate albums at the same time.

You know what they did to promote the unknown album ? They offered a free download of the entire album to all concert ticket buyers. Yes, that's right... they gave away the entire full album for free as an internet download.

And yet at the concert, thousands of people were standing in line to buy up the Mudcrutch album, along with t-shirts, hats, etc etc.

If it weren't for this type of promotion, most people wouldn't have had a clue that a band called Mudcrutch even existed... I myself never even knew that Mudcrutch existed before the Heartbreakers... and I've been a longtime fan going as far back as when I still had milk behind my ears. Concert goers got to listen to the music weeks prior to the actual concert (where the band only played a couple of songs from the album), and then were able to buy the cd's at the concert if they liked it enough.

Tom Petty made his money and then some.

Moral of the story ?
Some artists are business savvy and some are not. You learn to work with and take advantage of new technologies and the new way the world operates, or you fall by the wayside with the dinosaurs.

Let's face it, the old fashioned way of promoting your music isn't cutting it anymore, but even more importantly is the fact that with all this new technology musicians are actually able to reach out much farther in trying to dredge up a fan base than they've ever been able to ever before... and it costs mere pennies for them to be able to do so. The trick: Get your fanbase spread out via the wordwide web, THEN show up on tour... not only guaranteeing yourself a full house, but increased album sales as well.

For every 1000 people downloading stuff to save money, there are 2000 more going out and buying it because they want the actual physical property with cd slipcovers, lyrics, discography, band bios, pretty pictures, and all.