Illegal Downloading No Different from Stealing a Handbag

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Illegal downloads are no different than stealing a handbag? That’s an interesting comparison. Not as interesting as this little nugget of info though:

Emanuel, the brother of US presidential adviser Rahm, said the industry was talking to the US government in a bid to introduce a "three strikes and you're out" law to govern illegal downloading. "We are in the midst of talking to the president and some attorney generals and [we are] trying to implement a three strikes and you're out rule," he added.
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The real crime is how much the RIAA-attached studios steal from the artist.
 
Also, Obama will lose another vote if he seriously entertains this idea.
 
What is this "out" they speak of? Jail time? Fine? No internet? Capital punishment?

Without getting into semantics of what piracy is (stealing vs copyright infringement), I'll say I agree that piracy should be illegal, but only if they make DRM illegal because it interferes with Fair Use. DCMA needs to be repealed too.
 
Illegal downloading is like driving on the toll road without paying. That's the closest thing I can think of.
 
Sure there is. It's called scarcity. The RIAA's inventory levels doesn't change when someone "steals" music.
 
Of course the music industry only believes this when it benefits them. The other day EMI lawyers tried to convince a court that Pink Floyd's contract requirement to only sell whole albums only applied to physical CDs and not digital. EMI lawyer's - get this - in simple terms said digital is different form physical and shouldn't be considered the same under the law.

Of course, when talking punishment or morals THEN they want everybody to believe they are one and the same. 'You wouldn't steal a CD would you? Then why would you download it?" out of one side, and "Digital is fundamentally different from physical, and people shouldn't consider them the same. Therefore this contract for limits on how we can sell their album is purely related to the physical form, not the digital one." out of the other side.
 
oh this guy can go to fucking hell you start regulating shit like this it will destroy the internet
 
maxius said:
oh this guy can go to fucking hell you start regulating shit like this it will destroy the internet
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No it won't. France already shows what it causes. People stop doing P2P and find other ways to get stuff. It does nothing to truly stop piracy, and as soon as people adjust to doing things differently it's like the law never exists.
 
Illegal downloading is like having some kind of super advanced star-trek gadget that can "scan" a handbag and create a duplicate handbag with all the contents out of thin air.

Whether or not you think piracy is wrong, it's not stealing by any definition or law.
 
Nonsense unless you get a perfect replica of the bad with all the contents of it. Then its not stealing because the victim still has their hand bag.
 
I don't care if it's illegal or not

what's illegal is them making all that shitty music, and all those stupid movies and conning people into buying them
 
Yeah right. You know how many CDs and DVDs I could steal and stuff in a handbag? I can't fit anything in a downloaded MP3....
 
or at least it oughta be illegal

fuck the RIAA, MPAA, and everyone who is on their side
 
meanwhile you can have 5 duis, rape a kid and shoot your wife and get less of a fine and maybe jail time.
 
hl3395 said:
Illegal downloading is like driving on the toll road without paying. That's the closest thing I can think of.
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I see it as rooting a clipping from another plant.
I see it as The Fed would with printing money out of thin air.
 
I really don't like piracy and even I think that is one stupid statement. Pirating a song costs the company at most $1 in a lost fee and even that is questionable. Stealing someones purse cost them the physical costs of the bag and contents + likely identity theft + time spent recovering all cards/id etc.

Not even close to comparable. The toll road actually isn't a bad comparison. Piracy at most should be punished by parking ticket type penalties unless done for commercial profit.
 
I guess my question is not with whether it is illegal or not, but who is going to be enforcing this? And how?
 
hl3395 said:
Illegal downloading is like driving on the toll road without paying. That's the closest thing I can think of.
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Except in most cases, you'll get a ticket in the mail after a couple weeks if you don't go back and pay it online :p
 
I like the toll comparison but even then driving on the road degrades it where listening doesn't. If you figure in just the cost of building the roads / booths but not upkeep / employees then yeah, it's about exactly like that. They made something, you're using it without hurting it.
 
Illegal downloading is no different than something it is completely different from? I'm paraphrasing but that is essentialy what it translates to. Jesus, how do people go through their lives with so little understanding of their native language? This guy is a turd huffer.
 
What a crock of shit. If I buy a musical cd, then offer it for download to other people then it's not the same as stealing a purse. If someone came to my house and took my cd, well yes then I would consider it stealing.
 
Sorry, I have a problem with buying some shit box game for 50 or 60 bucks and have to be connected 24, 7 to the internet just to play it. Put it where the sun don't shine Ubi.
 
How's that hope and change working out?

Q-BZ said:
This is the same guy that's into eugenics and Lord knows what else.
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Heh, I'd almost be in favor of eugenics based upon how dumb people can get ;) ... but if it happened, I know the wrong people would be dictating privileges. Humanity would go from bad to worse.
 
This from the same guy who refused to prosecute ACORN for voter fraud, tax fraud, or assisting in setting up sex slavery.
 
hl3395 said:
Illegal downloading is like driving on the toll road without paying. That's the closest thing I can think of.
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Yeah, it's hard to make an analogy about. It's like driving on a toll road without paying, but the owner of the toll road, after making the initial investment of 1 lane, can add infinitely many lanes are basically negligible cost (1 original mp3, copy it a ton, sell all the copies).

Closer than a handbag, each of which requires non-negligible costs to reproduce (obviously, the raw materials, plus the man power, etc...)
 
If both are equel, i see some excessive punishment lawsuits coming up. Since stealing a handbad would be a minor crime and get you community service. Shouldn't downloading a $1 song get you the same punishment?
 
Thank about it though. You steal this song which we can call a product. Now you place this product in an environment where multiple others can obtain a copy from you without paying you. Essentially, you've created forged copies and distributed them at your own will. It's worse than stealing someones handbag. Your committing multipe crimes. The only saving grace is you are not profiting from the distribution.

The companies that own the rights to distribute these products have to spend time and money searching and discovering those theifs, just like a woman would have to spend if her purse was stolen.

The value of a single song obviously doesn't compare to the value of a snatched purse, but consider how many songs are stolen and how many purses.
 
Between this guy and the federal judge talking about "nobody cares about privacy" and "privacy is just people hiding something" the government types are obviously completely out of touch with the people they are supposed to govern.

It's time to take them out of the equation and take back our self rule. we need some regular people to stand up and run for office who won't be in the pockets of the bureaucrats and/or banking executives. One side, we get screwed over for taxes to pay for votes from poor people and on the other side we get screwed out of money by corrupt businesses. This needs to stop.
 
Look at your monthly utility bills. That's stealing. Look at the taxes and health insurance premiums withheld on your paycheck. That's stealing. Look at politicians who get paid to represent the public but serve the lobbyists of big business. That's stealing. Do something about all that,maybe people wouldn't have to download illegally.
 
complexx said:
Thank about it though. You steal this song which we can call a product. Now you place this product in an environment where multiple others can obtain a copy from you without paying you. Essentially, you've created forged copies and distributed them at your own will. It's worse than stealing someones handbag. Your committing multipe crimes. The only saving grace is you are not profiting from the distribution.

The companies that own the rights to distribute these products have to spend time and money searching and discovering those theifs, just like a woman would have to spend if her purse was stolen.

The value of a single song obviously doesn't compare to the value of a snatched purse, but consider how many songs are stolen and how many purses.
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I have to disagree. In stealing a handbag, you deprive the vendor of a material resource and don't compensate them. They can't just drag and drop and make a new hand bag. You'll note that when you inadvertently distribute this song to multiple users, you incur no noticeable reproduction cost (unlike if you wanted to somehow spawn multiple handbags to give to others for free from the same design). To treat the two things as equivalent misses the point of actual transfer of ownership. If someone steals your car, you have no more car. If someone downloads an MP3 from you, you still have that MP3, and can listen to it at your leisure. There's no transfer of ownership in the situation of IP.

However, I do agree that entertainment IP, such as music, should have basic protections, and to allow for reasonable compensation if the IP is violated. The key word is reasonable. I don't want to be barred from ever having an internet connection again merely because some studio somewhere might have, in some strange realm where everything sampled is bought immediately, lost ~$3 to a file copy (3 files, three strikes). That punishment certainly doesn't fit the crime.

That, and there is a lot of new stats coming to light about offering more digital distribution options reduces piracy more effectively than ramming through harsh criminal laws for casual offenders.
 
Ari Emanuel is just as out of touch as his brother. In fact the whole RIAA is out of touch.

Maybe if a majority of media didn't suck, remember when an album had 10 good songs and not just 1, then people wouldn't steal it.
 
AlcoJaguar said:
I have to disagree. In stealing a handbag, you deprive the vendor of a material resource and don't compensate them. They can't just drag and drop and make a new hand bag. You'll note that when you inadvertently distribute this song to multiple users, you incur no noticeable reproduction cost (unlike if you wanted to somehow spawn multiple handbags to give to others for free from the same design). To treat the two things as equivalent misses the point of actual transfer of ownership. If someone steals your car, you have no more car. If someone downloads an MP3 from you, you still have that MP3, and can listen to it at your leisure. There's no transfer of ownership in the situation of IP.

However, I do agree that entertainment IP, such as music, should have basic protections, and to allow for reasonable compensation if the IP is violated. The key word is reasonable. I don't want to be barred from ever having an internet connection again merely because some studio somewhere might have, in some strange realm where everything sampled is bought immediately, lost ~$3 to a file copy (3 files, three strikes). That punishment certainly doesn't fit the crime.

That, and there is a lot of new stats coming to light about offering more digital distribution options reduces piracy more effectively than ramming through harsh criminal laws for casual offenders.
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I was trying to look at this comparison from a very basic standpoint to show that the punishments can't be the same for each. I do agree they aren't similar at all which is why they shouldn't be compared.
 
lol I bet it's "steal three songs and lethal injection"

Actually I wouldn't be surprised with the direction this country has been heading recently.. :rolleyes:
 
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