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Morality of Torrenting....
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Post by
ElhonnaDS
Out of curiosity, why is stealing Wowhead's content different than stealing a game company's content and code?
Post by
557473
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
But the torrent site is. THEY are the ones who are making money from advertising on the sites. THEY did copy the content, and are making money off of it. So the act itself is still what I described, to the tee. It's just that you are in the position of the person who bought the illegally produced car, rather than the person who made them. What the torrent site is doing is EXACTLY what I described with the car except instead of charging you directly, they charge advertisers with the promise of website traffic.
So my analogy is still a lot more correct than yours, except you in this case are not the person illegally reproducing the car designs, just someone who saved money because you benefited from the crime.
Once again, I know why someone would want to buy the bootleg car, and save money. But not how they can say they're not cheating the people who designed it, and how they can be indignant when the person who was reproducing it gets arrested and shut down for doing it.
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
557473
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
Out of curiosity, why is stealing Wowhead's content different than stealing a game company's content and code?
Oh, I meant it was another category of stuff than blocking banners or skipping ads. I didn't catch that you were talking about that as an analogy to sharing apps.
That's what I meant. I'm not talking about skipping banners. I am talking about stealing code and content and posting it somewhere else to take traffic away from wowhead by offering the same services plus porn or without language filters, or something like that, and how that would cost them advertising money by stealing traffic using the content that they spend money on developing.
Post by
557473
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
But the torrent site is. THEY are the ones who are making money from advertising on the sites. THEY did copy the content, and are making money off of it. So the act itself is still what I described, to the tee. It's just that you are in the position of the person who bought the illegally produced car, rather than the person who made them.
No, in that case, it would be people giving away ads, on my free car giveaway. I am still not making profit, I just share stuff. I do believe this is related but here Internet speeds are bit too low to torrent so we use harddrive and disks to share. Same principle, but ads involved. What you think about this kind of sharing?
Well, when you "share" something by making a COPY on a hard disk, how is that not copying? Please tell me how that doesn't create a second copy of the game?
Also, if you are given for free hundreds of dollars of items or services, rather than paying for them, do you not consider that having profited at all? Do you actually have to receive cash to have profited? Why would you not consider having gotten something of monetary value for free as having profited?
Finally, I'm not really sure I understand the answer you gave about the ads- it might be the grammatical structure. I told you that they take content, make an illegal copy and then profit from ads that they sell space to. How is that "giving away ads," when they sell them, and how is them profiting from illegally copying a movie different from them profiting from illegally copying a car design. I don't think you actually addressed the point.
Post by
557473
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
557473
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
Ok, so you profit from illegal activity only when you get the movies for free, and not when you share. I'll agree to that. However, just because you are not making money by sharing doesn't mean that you are not costing them money. If you steal something and then give it as a gift, you are not personally profiting from it but the person you give it to is, and you are making a gift to them equal to the value of what you gave, which wasn't yours to give, and are still essentially stealing on behalf of someone else.
If I go into a store and take an item for myself, they lose the value of that item. If I take it and give it to someone else, they still lose the value of that item. If I ruin it so on one will buy it, they still lose the value of that item. The profit made by you isn't as important to the classification of it as stealing as the profit lost by them.
With movies there are all sorts of broadcast regulation, based on how you show it. You are not buying the rights to display it in public when you buy it for personal use. Those are separate licenses. When you torrent, you are displaying it in public in violation of the terms under which you were licensed the original movie. A movie theater and a television network pays more than $20 for a movie when they show it. A bar or restaurant has to pay per seat when they order pay-per-view. When you buy a movie, you are buying the personal unlimited use of it- not the rights to copy, show publicly, or transmit globally.
Post by
168916
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Magician22773
Mainstream music has partially countered the problem of music piracy by drasticaly increasing the cost of live shows. I have always been a concert junkie, and have been going to shows sinve the mid 80's. I started looking back at my collection of ticket stubs, and the price difference from just 10-15 years ago is huge. (way more than just average inflation).
I saw Metallica, with Ozzy Osbourne and Alice in Chains in 1994. You are talking about the two undisputed kings of heavy metal, along with a band that was huge at the time. The ticket cost, for premium seats was $27.50.
My tickets for Warped Tour next week cost $94.
I also am going to Uproar Fest in August, which is Shinedown, Godsmack, and Staind. All three good bands, but they are not Metallica and Ozzy by any stretch....ticket cost....$149 for lower level seats.
There is one thing you can't torrent, and thatis a live show. And I think they have figured that out. Which, for me, sucks because I prefer live shows over CD's anyday.
Post by
Squishalot
I mean, people can't realistically "steal" wowhead's site, the important stuff is on the server. But somebody could make a site that shows the actual wowhead site inside an iframe, with unrelated banner ads next to it, if they wanted to - would that be immoral? I tend to think not, but it would also be ignorable (i.e. it wouldn't work, and wowhead could prevent it if they wanted). Likewise a site could make their own "mini-wowhead" based entirely on wowhead's intentionally-exposed API. Would that be immoral? Hard to see why. Anyway I think morality questions are essentially different for the consumer vs. the (re-)publisher so mixing the topics makes things murky.
Do you remember Blackle? They ripped off Google's search results but laid it out on a black background, and charged their own advertising, if I recall correctly. If I'm not mistaken, Wowhead has partners with whom it authorises to use the database, as opposed to making it freely available for, say, Curse to rip-off.
Mainstream music has partially countered the problem of music piracy by drasticaly increasing the cost of live shows.
To be honest, I think it's more to do with the cost of insurance than anything else. Concerts for classical musicians, which don't have the same piracy issues as mainstream bands, also have significantly higher concert fees than they used to.
Post by
Magician22773
To be honest, I think it's more to do with the cost of insurance than anything else. Concerts for classical musicians, which don't have the same piracy issues as mainstream bands, also have significantly higher concert fees than they used to.
From BBC
From 1981 to 1996, gig-goers found prices going up by 4.6% a year, while the consumer price index increased by 3.7% annually.
Since then, ticket prices have soared. From 1996 to 2003, they rose by 8.9% a year, as against inflation of just 2.3%
In a paper he wrote with Princeton graduate student Marie Connolly, he says concerts are now a much bigger source of income for major-league stars than CD sales.
"Only four of the top 35 income-earners made more money from recordings than live concerts," the paper says. "For the top 35 artists as a whole, income from touring exceeded income from record sales by a ratio of 7.5 to one in 2002."
Before the advent of illegal downloads, artists had an incentive to underprice their concerts, because bigger audiences translated into higher record sales, Professor Krueger argues.
But now, he says, the link between the two products has been severed, meaning that artists and their managers need to make more money from concerts and feel less constrained in setting ticket prices
One article is not exactly a "smoking gun" when it comes to proof, but I think piracy at least plays a part in the rise in prices.
Post by
Squishalot
Some of those comments aren't necessarily linked to higher ticket profits - it could just be that recording profits have come down that far (which they probably have). If previously someone made 200k from concerts and 800k from recordings, if recordings dropped to 50k because of piracy, then all the first few comments would still apply.
It could also be because people are doing different numbers of concerts than before. If they're trying to make more money, they'd just run more shows. If they're trying to reduce workload (for those who don't lip-synch), then they may be charging more to make up for it.
Post by
Magician22773
Before the advent of illegal downloads, artists had an incentive to underprice their concerts, because bigger audiences translated into higher record sales
Of everything I read in the article, this quote makes the best argument.
I remember several times that I would see the same band 3 or 4 times in a year. Most major bands would hit St. Louis, Springfield, Kansas City, and Oklahoma City...all a 3 hour or less drive for me, in a tour. It was pretty common for me to go see 2 or 3 of those shows. And we are talking sold out staduim shows with 60,000 people. Hell, I saw Pink Floyd at Arrowhead Staduim and the ticket sales were 95,000.
Bands had to tour like this to get record sales. Especially for the opening acts. I saw dozens of bands that were virtual unknowns in the 80's and 90's open up for the big bands. Dokken and the Scorpions opening up for Van Halen. Joe Satriani opening up for KISS. Bands like Great White, Ratt, Skid Row, Jackyl....all of them were openers for concerts I went to.
Hell, I walked into a bar once for a show that cost $1.04.....(our rock radio station was 104.7), and there was some white guy mixing rap with metal guitar on stage.........It was Kid Rock, about a year before he became popular.
Post by
gamerunknown
I feel like much of the world's greatest art comes from folks where part two will not happen unless part one makes some sales
What do you think of pictures of paintings being made available online? Does that harm artists?
What of film adaptations of old tales? Or film adaptations of modern tales: does the Bollywood adaptation of Léon deprive Hollywood of money?
Post by
Squishalot
What of film adaptations of old tales?
This is adequately dealt with under existing copyright laws.
What do you think of pictures of paintings being made available online? Does that harm artists?
If we could freely create copies of the Mona Lisa that were truly indistinguishable from the original, I do think that it would severely harm the value of the original, don't you? If every household had a Mona Lisa painting that was identical to the original, how do you think that would impact the original's value?
Post by
gamerunknown
The philosophical distinction - qualitative and quantitative, makes a huge difference. As it stands, uploads are often qualitatively different, too.
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