Almost free online music?

[SomethingClever]

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but in fact the analogy is perfect.

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Seriously, it's not even close to perfect.

[SomethingClever]

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you are doing exactly that. it's money out of the artist's pocket, justify it any way you want. I say this as someone who's on numerous records and has worked as a professional musician for many, many years. it's money out of my pocket.

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It's kind of funny that people are choosing to ignore that I have acknowledged that downloading music is "wrong."

Yes, it's taking money out of the artists' pockets.

I just happen to think that it's not very wrong in the grand scheme of things, given all the other factors, and certainly much less wrong than shoplifting CDs.

[ThaSaltCracka]

you guys are still talking about this? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[pshreck]

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and certainly much less wrong than shoplifting CDs.

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To be fair, we are all making arguments based on opinions here, but unless you have some advanced understanding of economics, business, or the nature of profit in the music industry, I don't see how you can make this statement.

We should get Partygirl UK in here to explain, he seems to understand economics.

[SomethingClever]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
and certainly much less wrong than shoplifting CDs.

[/ QUOTE ]

To be fair, we are all making arguments based on opinions here, but unless you have some advanced understanding of economics, business, or the nature of profit in the music industry, I don't see how you can make this statement.

We should get Partygirl UK in here to explain, he seems to understand economics.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think you need to understand those things to see that the analogy is flawed.

When you steal a CD, someone paid to have that individual CD produced, shipped and displayed on a shelf.

When you download, it's true that you're not helping pay for the studio time, artists' time, promotion, creative talent, etc, but there is also no incremental "cost" that you're stealing. These are fixed costs that have already been paid. The more units the label sells, the cheaper they become, in a sense.

So, you're not stealing "as much" as if you had shoplifted the CD.

And IMO, it's not even close.