Quote:
Originally posted by pod
Weeellll.... perhaps arguably, depends on the situation. If you download (ie make a copy) INSTEAD of buying, you might as well steal the CD. The product is still there, but the sale is not. It's still lost profit, where, under normal conditions, a CD would have been sold.
|
the difference is simple. copying is legal and always has been under fair use laws. stealing however is not. giving away
copies to family & friends (or anyone) has always been legal. the latest copyright law and the us supreme court makes it abundantly clear. the only legal issue concerns digital realms. analog copies are perfectly legal while perfect digital copies are not under dmca. that's the law today. what are mp3s? oggs? wmas? perfect digital copies? absolutely not. so, according to the law, something you hear a lot about from the riaa, the dmca does
not call sharing mp3s illegal which is the only place in us copyright law that even addresses the issue of private, not for profit copies, and that's why the riaa wants to
change the law. that's why they want to make something
now legal into something illegal. it's always easier if they argue the law already makes it illegal and they just want to clarify it. but it doesn't. the law does not concern itself with compressed files which means it's legal, and the statute is fully clear that sharing copied analog songs is also legal. we all have that specific right under us law and again, it says nothing about lossy files. don't buy into the riaas’ disinformation campaign. file sharing is legal.
i have downloaded songs, thousands of them, from the early years of rock and roll and beyond, some over fifty years old. i had years to buy them and i did not. i never would have. there are no lost sales in those downloads. who can say where "lost sales" are, i wouldn't want to try.
- js.