Downloading Music and Software?

[JamesLovesGod]

Hi,

I download music CDs all the time and sometimes download software. Would GOD see this a wrong, and would i be punished for it? Im following the bible alot but i feel like this is stopping me from mooving forward?

Please help.

Thanks

 

[peace4all]

*edited by Mod*

Srry that was extremly sarcastic and cranky..

On a lighter note. I dl music in teh classic rock genre. Most of the ppl i DL from, are peopel that are all for freedom and love and peace. I dont think they care, because alot of them donate a ton of money to aid funds ect..

The problem comes in when the rapper can tbuy another new car with 19 inch "dubs" that ppl get mad...

 

[Vic C.]

Srry that was extremly sarcastic and cranky..

Yes, it was and was uncalled for.

Just a reminder...

Rule 2 - No Flaming:
You will not post any messages that harass, insult, belittle, threaten or flame another member or guest. This will include misquoting another member out of context.

Rule 6 - No Trolling:
You will not post anything that disrupts the peace and harmony of this forum. Don't make inflammatory remarks just to get a response.

Rule 15: No promoting any sinful behavior (Homosexual behavior, Lying, stealing, murder....etc.)

 

[Scott]

What are you downloading and from where? People have it stuck in their minds that all downloading is wrong.... : . For instance purevolume.com has mp3 to download for free.

 

[boford]

Hi,

I download music CDs all the time and sometimes download software. Would GOD see this a wrong, and would i be punished for it? Im following the bible alot but i feel like this is stopping me from mooving forward?

Please help.

Thanks

It not illegal to dl the stuff it only becomes illegal when the stuff is copyrighted and you dont own it

 

[Quath]

It is theft if you are copying music that you have not bought.

But there are some grey areas. The music industry had no problem with coping music from the airwaves because the copy was not that great compared to the new stuff. But if I copy a song from an internet radio, I get a very good song.

Most of the music industry would not care if you downloaded a song and played it. If you liked it, buy it, if not, delete it.

A lot of the problem is it is a very easy theft where the music industry would probably be ok with some forms of it as long as they got paid in some way.

Pay music downloads are a step in this direction, but at a $1 per song, I think it is too much. (Buy 15 songs and you have paid the price of a DVD, which has sound and music.)

So in a sense it is an integrity argument since the enforcement is not up to par to stop people. If you are worried about God, then pay the $1 per song. I think it will make you feel better for a reasonable price.

Quath

 

[cubedbee]

It is theft if you are copying music that you have not bought.

I disagree. Theft is the taking of someone else's property, depriving them of what they own. Copying music involves copying someone else's property, leaving them with what they own. If I invented a machine that could copy a physical object, brought it over to your house and copied all your stuff, but left everything in place, I wouldn't have stolen. In the case of copying music, there are laws against the activity, so you are guilty of copyright infringement, but equating copyright infringement with theft has no foundation in reality and is just propogated by the holders of the copyrights.

But there are some grey areas. The music industry had no problem with

coping music from the airwaves because the copy was not that great compared to the new stuff. But if I copy a song from an internet radio, I get a very good song.

Most of the music industry would not care if you downloaded a song and played it. If you liked it, buy it, if not, delete it.

You use "the music industry" to refer to the executives of the record company or the megasuperstars. There are a lot more people in the music industry, with a lot of differing interests. I have several friends in small bands that have been signed with small labels, and they don't make squat off album sales. What supports them and pays their bills is touring, and selling merchandise at those tours. And they love the internet and all the downloading of music that goes on----because it allows thousands of people who wouldn't take a chance of paying money for a band they haven't heard of to listen to their music, enjoy it, and come to their shows. Illegal downloads are not a bother to them, they are a boon.

Pay music downloads are a step in this direction, but at a $1 per song, I think it is too much. (Buy 15 songs and you have paid the price of a DVD, which has sound and music.)

So in a sense it is an integrity argument since the enforcement is not up to par to stop people. If you are worried about God, then pay the $1 per song. I think it will make you feel better for a reasonable price.

Quath

I've been using iTunes since it first came out for Windows and have bought quite a bit of music for it. It's actually a great deal. The songs are $1 on an individual basis, which is far cheaper than a single at a music store, but if you purchase the complete album, it's usually $9.99 and sometimes a buck or two more, which is also much cheaper than the stores. The only problem is if you gradually start liking an artist, buy a couple of their songs singly, then decide you want to buy the album. But hey, still better than the stores.

 

[Quath]

I disagree. Theft is the taking of someone else's property, depriving them of what they own. Copying music involves copying someone else's property, leaving them with what they own. If I invented a machine that could copy a physical object, brought it over to your house and copied all your stuff, but left everything in place, I wouldn't have stolen. In the case of copying music, there are laws against the activity, so you are guilty of copyright infringement, but equating copyright infringement with theft has no foundation in reality and is just propogated by the holders of the copyrights.

It sounds like you don't believe in theft of an idea or intellectual property. Here are some cases where I think that does not work.

1. A coworker came up with a great marketing idea. You read his notes and present it first to your boss. In that case I would say you stole his idea.

2. Microsoft comes up with a new OS. Someone copies it and gives it away on the internet for free. Microsoft loses millions of dollars from this. I would say this copying is equivalent to stealing millions of dollars and passing it out to people around the world. But it was still stealing.

3. You find your daughter's diary. You photocopy it and sell it to a publisher. You daughter still has her diary, so nothing material was lost to her. But her secrets were stolen.

So patent and copyright laws are designed to deal with theft on the intellectual side instead of the physical side. The morality is that taking something from someone (idea or property) without permission is theft.

Quath

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

Quath, if the copying of the data of a binary file for a song is done witht the full consent of someone who has bought the song you aren't stealing it from the person who bought it and who is sharing it. Saying that it is essentially the same as someone putting a copy of Longhorn on the internet is fallacious, because MS did not consent to allow that person use of the OS.

Filesharing is done with the consent of the sharers. Even if copyright lawyers may consider it a crime, it's essentially victemless as far as the music industry goes, considering the fact that the people who run them are commiting a form of extortion.

 

[Quath]

A person is sold intellectual property with a contract agreement not to distribute it in any way the intellectual owner would not have wanted. You buy the rights to own the media with the intellectual property and the rights to distribute it or not. It is part of the sales agreement. You may not feel it is steeling, but at least it is a broken agreement.

There are victims of these types of crimes. Say I make a game and sell it for $10 each. One person buys it and puts it up for filesharing. For hours and hours of work, I will only get $10.

At the extreme, one person buys a cd and copies it for the rest of the world. So album only makes $16 for the band, song writers, distributers, etc. Either they stop making CDs or they charge $1 million for a CD.

On a lesser scale, if everyone paid for the music they have, they could lower the cost of music. But every stolen or copied work means they will probably raise the price for the paying customers.

Quath

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

On a cd of Sibelius Concertos I just picked off of my I looked for this alleged contract, the only thing that says anything about copying is some fine print on the back saying "Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable law."

What this means is I can't make copies and sell them, I have no intention. If a friend of mine asked to borrow it to make a copy for herself, then I'd lend it to her.
Saying that if every time someone listened to a song they didn't pay for, despite having a recording for themselves, was tantamount to refusing money to the intellectual property holders of that song, not necessarily the actual composers or singers, but the holders, and thus theft means that borrowing a copy of something from the library and making copies for yourself is theft.
You're stealing the intellectual property of Stephen Hawking if you scan a few pages from Universe in a Nutshell, or copy the audiobook, after you've taken it out of the library. In fact you're stealing every time you read or listen or watch anything you get out of library, because the people who wrote, performed, whathave you, that item have only been paid once for the number of times it's been consumed.

The cost of music production hasn't changed over the past 15 years, so there is no empirical evidence to suggest that cash strapped record labels are tightening belts and offering sigificantly lower contracts for crappy singers, no less talented ones.
Do you hear that, it's the worlds tiniest violin squeaking out the saddest song in the universe just for those poor record executives. Let's just hope no one starts seeding a torrent.

 

[Nostalgic Dawn]

download from allofmp3.com and just enjoy the lovely exchange rate from our money to russian. my USD gets songs for about 5 cents - 20 cents each. I'm still technically supporting the "industry." muhahaha ;)

 

[peace4all]

"Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable law."

says nothing about selling..

from the cd "star craft, brood wars: expansion pack"

the use of this software is subelct to the terms and conditions of the enclosed end user liscence. you must accept the end user liscense before the us of this product. the campaign editor in this product is provided strictly for your personal use. the use of the campaign editor is subject to additonal liscense restrictions, contained on the isnide the product, and may not be comercially exploited.




From the terms and conditions in there.

"unauthorised replication of this product is in violation of its copyright. People caught reselling or sharing this product will face criminal charges, and if found guilty, will result in a fine, and possible jail time."

I think it is pretty clear, that if i let someoen else get this product, I would be breaking the law.

 

[NRoof]

Hi,

I download music CDs all the time and sometimes download software. Would GOD see this a wrong, and would i be punished for it? Im following the bible alot but i feel like this is stopping me from mooving forward?

Please help.

Thanks

For all those who believe this is OK here is an example (we will stick with music only for this).

Lets suppose you start a band and want to make a living in the music industry. You spend 1 year coming up with new material and record it. Due to unfortunate circumstances you have to go this alone because big record labels don't want to take a chance on you. You decide to go for it because you are sure you have a sellable sound and front all the cost yourself.

Now you send copies to radio stations and sell 100 copies to various people. You sell these for $15 each and we will assume $10 profit.

You now have $1000 in you pocket and the radio stations are loving your music.

Someone decides to make your music available online for free (they bought their copy) and for sake of argument we'll say the album is downloaded 1,000,000 times.

The original artist should now have $10,001,000 in his pocket but because someone just copied a legally bought CD he still only has $1000. Now go back and ask him if he thinks he has been stolen from.

Now if nothing was done that was considered illegal by mans standard it is certainly morally wrong by most everyone’s standard.

This is an extreme example but I think you will understand its intent.

Back to your original question:

Would GOD see this a wrong, and would i be punished for it?

I believe God would see this as wrong.
Would you be punished for it? If you are asking the question I believe you already are being punished. The guilt or convictions you are feeling could be seen as a form of punishment. Are you going to hell for it? If it were up to me then the answer would be no but it's not up to me and I don't know Gods mind on this.

 

[Quath]

On a cd of Sibelius Concertos I just picked off of my I looked for this alleged contract, the only thing that says anything about copying is some fine print on the back saying "Unauthorized duplication is a violation of applicable law."

What this means is I can't make copies and sell them, I have no intention. If a friend of mine asked to borrow it to make a copy for herself, then I'd lend it to her.

I would say you have to find out what authorized copying would be. For the most part, authorized copying is to make backups for yourself.

You're stealing the intellectual property of Stephen Hawking if you scan a few pages from Universe in a Nutshell, or copy the audiobook, after you've taken it out of the library. In fact you're stealing every time you read or listen or watch anything you get out of library, because the people who wrote, performed, whathave you, that item have only been paid once for the number of times it's been consumed.

Basically, the copyright law is the agreement that publishers and readers are suppose to be agreeing to. So the rules allow for limited copying for special circumstances. They allow for borrowing, with the idea that the media will be returned within a certain amount of time. So borrowing is not criminal. If you give your CD to a friend and they give it back later, you have not violated the agreement. There are some cases where the intellectual property is sold with the agreement that you may not pass it on, but that is usually rare.

The cost of music production hasn't changed over the past 15 years, so there is no empirical evidence to suggest that cash strapped record labels are tightening belts and offering sigificantly lower contracts for crappy singers, no less talented ones.
Do you hear that, it's the worlds tiniest violin squeaking out the saddest song in the universe just for those poor record executives. Let's just hope no one starts seeding a torrent.

That is like saying it is ok to steal from a rich company. It is still stealing, it just doesn't hurt the company as much as it would hurt a Mom & Pop store.

I heard an interviewer with a song writer. he said that the music copying really has hurt him financially. He gets about $0.02 per song sold, which is $20k for a song that sells a million copies (kind of rare). So if half of the people that would have bought it copied it, he gets half as much money per year.

There are some tough grey areas though. For example, a friend wanted to give me his books on CD to borrow. But he didn't want to send 100 CDs in the mail. He also didn't want me to have to send them back. He was also worried about damage to the CDs while in transit. So he burned them to a DVD and sent that instead. So in theory I listen to the DVD and when finished, I destroy it. In effect it would be liked I borrowed it and returned it. It probably violates the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law.

Quath

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

As a matter of fact it doesn't violate any part of the law, as the law only pertains to money changing hands when a copy of material.
Go here to the letter of the law: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wci

As the end user agreement pertains only to the production of copies for personal use and restricts the sale or rental of the media, not giving it to another person as a gift.

Here are some statistics and analyses on the Music industry.
http://www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html

 

[Quath]

As a matter of fact it doesn't violate any part of the law, as the law only pertains to money changing hands when a copy of material.
Go here to the letter of the law: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wci

I only saw the rights given to the copyright owner, not the rights of the users of corywritten material. Can you point out which part you were looking at?

As the end user agreement pertains only to the production of copies for personal use and restricts the sale or rental of the media, not giving it to another person as a gift.

It could restrict giving away something. I work with industry secrets. We are sometimes given information considered "proprietary." We can not disclose this information without consent of the company that gave us the information. This could be software, business notes or raw data.

On the software end, a company could decide that it sells software to a user and only that user can use it. Or they can decide they sell it for one machine. Or they can sell it so only one person in a network can access it at a time. So the owners of the software can give as many weird requirements as they want for use and distribution. If we disagree, they don't sell it to us.

Here are some statistics and analyses on the Music industry.
http://www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html

An analogy to this is a kid that steals candy from a store. So he brings his friends to the store so distract the owner. The friends buy some stuff while there as the kid steals the candy. Overall, the storeowner made money than if the kid and the friends never showed up. However, the kid still stole.

To carry it to a new level. Bob goes shopping ata grocery store and buys $100 of groceries. He estimates that they made $20 profit on this. So he steals a TV guide and a coke. He figures they still made a profit so he did nothing wrong.

I personally think that stealing is just as wrong, even if the person stolen from didn't suffer much. The way I see it is by the Golden Rule. If I were a store owner, I would not want to be stolen from.

Quath

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

I only saw the rights given to the copyright owner, not the rights of the users of corywritten material. Can you point out which part you were looking at?

I was refering to the examples from myself and peace4all. They refer only to copyright law, which does have any enduser stipulations other than restrictions on copying for commercial use. As filesharing is not commercial, it doesn't apply and the RIAA hasn't got a case against filesharing.

Simon and Garfunkel is not proprietary information. That analogy doesn't hold up at all, since it would require that companies actively attempt to restrict access to the information and not, you know, sell it to bozos who will put it on the internet.

End user agreements are largely bogus legalese nonetheless, mostly an attempt by companies to reduce the likelyhood of lawsuits, "Windows is not for use on lifesupport equipment" and just plain silliness, "Use of Java may result in disease, serious injury or death." And on top of that there's significant precedent for judges not accepting end user agreements to keep companies from being sued, like "Microsoft is not liable for the bugs and security holes in its software."

Since users of music don't sign any agreements saying that they won't copy the content and give it freely to friends, they are thus not legally liable if the just give it freely. The law at this point does not go after those who freely share music and other media, and rightly so, because they haven't taken any money from anyone. The statistics actually SHOW that this in the case of 2000 and 2001, when music file sharing was pretty big and Napster was still large and unfettered.

Your analogies to a kid in a candy store and Bob the shoplifter are false. The Record companies can't say that they would have made more money if filesharing didn't exist, the evidence just isn't there.

If someone made money off of filesharing or if stores who had already bought thousands of CDs lost money on their investment, then it would be theft. Since the recording industry can't claim a significant monetary loss that they can point to filesharers as causing, as no such loss exists, they have not been stolen from. They've really just lost the chance to extort a group of people.

 

[Vic C.]

Tell all that to the creator of Napster. 8-)

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

I only saw the rights given to the copyright owner, not the rights of the users of corywritten material. Can you point out which part you were looking at?

I was refering to the examples from myself and peace4all. They refer only to copyright law, which does have any enduser stipulations other than restrictions on copying for commercial use. As filesharing is not commercial, it doesn't apply and the RIAA hasn't got a case against filesharing.

Simon and Garfunkel is not proprietary information. That analogy doesn't hold up at all, since it would require that companies actively attempt to restrict access to the information and not, you know, sell it to bozos who will put it on the internet.

End user agreements are largely bogus legalese nonetheless, mostly an attempt by companies to reduce the likelyhood of lawsuits, "Windows is not for use on lifesupport equipment" and just plain silliness, "Use of Java may result in disease, serious injury or death." And on top of that there's significant precedent for judges not accepting end user agreements to keep companies from being sued, like "Microsoft is not liable for the bugs and security holes in its software."

Since users of music don't sign any agreements saying that they won't copy the content and give it freely to friends, they are thus not legally liable if the just give it freely. The law at this point does not go after those who freely share music and other media, and rightly so, because they haven't taken any money from anyone. The statistics actually SHOW that this in the case of 2000 and 2001, when music file sharing was pretty big and Napster was still large and unfettered.

Your analogies to a kid in a candy store and Bob the shoplifter are false. The Record companies can't say that they would have made more money if filesharing didn't exist, the evidence just isn't there.

If someone made money off of filesharing or if stores who had already bought thousands of CDs lost money on their investment, then it would be theft. Since the recording industry can't claim a significant monetary loss that they can point to filesharers as causing, as no such loss exists, they have not been stolen from. They've really just lost the chance to extort a group of people.