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05-09-2005, 10:40 PM

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Your right but professionals who save people's lives get payed a lot less. What i'm trying to say is that professionals such as doctors and firemen should get paid more since they do a lot more for people.

Alamgir: You're making it seem as if one single solitary system decides how much everyone gets paid. True, that the salaries of public servents, and teachers, and fire/police officials are determined by the government, but the salaries of people in record labels and artists are NOT.

The government can't just say "oh gee, record labels are making more than doctors, so we have to start paying them more." It doesn't work like that.

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Hell yes I would. Why? Becuase people need to wise the flip up and know we're not paying $15 for 30 minutes worth of music and quit being greedy motherfliper and over pricing the music by like 900%.

Well at least you're being consistent. Stupid, but consistent.

Although, in my question, I wasn't referring to CDs. My question was, "In a more practical, public sense, would you go ahead and steal something openly just because you believe that it's overpriced?"

So....would you walk into a grocery and say "wow, $3.50 for a box of Fruity Pebbles? I'm not paying this poop," then pick it up and walk out? Go into a bicycle shop and say "$300 for this new Trek GSX? Flip that!" then jump on it and ride it out?

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poop, and just how they're pratically ROBBING me, i'm gonnd litterally ROB them and take their poop for free. What can they do about it? Pratically nothing.
You know what that's called?
Life.
Life's not fair. It's not fair i'm gonna download this album for free while you have to pay for it.
Get used to it.

They're not robbing you. No one is FORCING you to go out and buy a CD. No one is FORCING you to listen to music. You're making your own choice to go out and buy a CD...that's not robbing you.

And btw, they....uh....CAN do something about it. It's called the RIAA suing you. You know....the thing you're complaining about in the first place.

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Let's take an argument from your book:
And who are you? Are you the morality police?
That's your OPPINION. Just how I cant prove certain arguments on my position, you can't prove your argument and you don't even try to, yoou merely regerjitate the same old statements, words, lines.

How is the definition of theft an opinion? It's NOT an opinion, it's a straight up fact that can't really be argued. It has nothing to do with morality, it's a case of LEGALITY. A pretty simple one too.

Theft: taking or acquiring of material without permission of the owner or owners.

Record labels own the music. Downloading music via p2p is a case of acquiring that music without the permission of the record label. That, by DEFINITION, is theft.

There's no morality code, there's no opinion there. It's the flipping DEFINITION of theft. Therefore, how can you say "it's just your opinion, you can't prove it?" That'd be like me saying "2+2=4" and you saying "no, it's not, it's just your OPPINION"

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I said "even that good", as in not as good as you would like to think. NOT that they're sucky. So, you're still wrong.
And you might have got me there, I might have forgot I said that, but you know what? It doesn't even matter because that's just one gramical mistake I made. That's not gonna prove your point nor is it gonna prove my
point. It has nothing to do with the subject at hand, it is topicality.
It's like me starting a sub-debate about the nature of the word "regardless", it has nothing to do with anytihng and shouldn't be discussed.

"Their music isn't even that good" isn't a case of you saying "i said they're not good people" nor is it a case of "they're not as good as you would like to think" (which really doesn't make any sense, since it's a relative concept).

If you wanted to say something else, why not just say it?

But point aside, it's not just me snagging you on a grammatical error. It's me pointing out a hidden message that you may or may not have intended to imply.

When I read the statement "You've got your Eminems, Dr. Dres, Metallicas and 50 Cents who are all against illegal downloading. All of these names have something in common, they're all filthy flipping rich, and their music isn't even that good," this is the message that I'm getting:

"Only filthy rich musicians whose music sucks are against the downloading."

That's pretty much the message that you're implying. And that's why I pointed it out.

Now, if that's not what you intended, just say so, and I'll drop the subject.

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You've also side-stepped most obviouse arguments, like trying to prove it HURTS the music industry and trying to prove it's bad economically as well as "morally".
Because i've already proved it HELPED the recording industry and that everyone wins.

That's like saying that stealing someone's shotgun from their home is justified because they could not go out and kill a deer, which benefitted nature, and therefore helped all those in PETA.

My argument was NEVER that it hurt the music industry, my argument was that it's the definition of theft, and that it screws the record labels out of money.

Now, you DID prove that CD sales went up during the Napster era, and went down afterwards. However, that doesn't prove that the record labels that were being gyped gained money as well.

Now, take all those record labels and companies who own the artists that protested Napster. If you could prove that those labels and artists actually profitted from that increase in CD sales during the Napster era due to illegal downloading, it'd put a serious hurt in my argument. However, stating an 11% increase in overall sales during the Napster era says nothing about how the protesting labels/artists were affected.

So if you can find proof via research that Metallica/Dre/Eminem and their respective labels actually profitted during this 11% overall increase in sales, even during their protesting, then I really wouldn't have much of a response.

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"DJ Danger Mouse remixed the vocals from Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' White Album and called his creation The Grey Album. He sent about 3,000 promo copies out, and was soon served with a cease-and-desist notice from EMI, who owns the rights to the White Album master. Danger Mouse complied with EMI's order, but Stay Free! (sponsors of the Illegal Art Exhibit) and other fans and activists continued distributing the record over the Internet. EMI sent legal threats to many of us as well but later backed down. Next, SONY/ATV -- who owns the rights to the Beatles' compositions -- stepped in and sent our internet service provider a DMCA takedown notice (3/1/2004). We secured legal representation from the EFF, moved our website to the Online Policy Group (a free-speech ISP), and responded to Sony with this letter. Fortunately, Sony also dropped the case and The Grey Album remains safely online."

Actually, it was theft until they dropped the cases.

You said that those who owned rights to the White Album and those who owned rights to Beatles compillations in general (EMI and Sony/ATV?) protested, and although Danger Mouse complied, fans and activists CONTINUED doing so. Illegally.

It seems to me that the only reasons they dropped their respective cases were that they couldn't possibly nab EVERYONE that continued distributing this material after the notices, and couldn't just go after certain ones.

Essentially, it seems to me that they gave up because it probably would have cost more money to pursue the case than to let it drop.

That's as if someone went into Circuit City, grabbed DVD player and ran out of the store, and the manager chased after him, and then gave up. Yes he gave up the case, but does that mean it wasn't a theft? No.

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Whithout illegal downloading, this great (great!) peice of music would never see the grasp of daylight. (BTW, AMG gave is 4/5 stars)
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/5937152
Now, oddly enough, it's called the grey album, and with this, it gives my point of "it's not black and white, it's grey" a sense of irony.

That's like saying that without slavery, african-americans today wouldn't be so dominant in american sports, or something else along those lines.

Catch my drift? Saying that something illegal and/or morally wrong ended up spawning something beautiful doesn't justify the fact that it came from something ugly. In this case, the ends DON'T justify the means.

[quote]You'll probably come back with "But does that justify stealing?"
Well, it's not stealing. Because as you said:
steal Audio pronunciation of "stealing" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (stl)
v. stole, (stl) sto