Quote:
Originally Posted by Socrates
I am not familiar at all with the pharmaceutical industry, and it is probably a bit off-track here. As it is probably a more sensible field than music, I suppose I have nothing to add to this debate regarding that.
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My post isn't as clear as I want. The reason I bring up the pharmaceutical industry is that that is something we all benefit from, yet at the same time costs us a lot of money. It's even killing people too poor to buy medicines (think aids in africa). We could discuss whether or not it is necessary to give Lady Gaga more money, but the morality of that case isn't as clear cut. I feel that having good medicine shows that research pays off. Intellectual property rights protect that research, making the world a better place (or changing nothing at all, if you are poor and dying of aids in Africa). Something like that. So, you pay for that product. You can't claim intellectual property rights are meaningless just because it's the work of an artist. You can't bend a law for a single aspect just because it suits you.
Obviously there's a lot going wrong with copyright and patents. It will even limit innovation at times. There's the concept of fair use though, so if you want to get something for free you can always say that's fair use. In your example of artists earning from concerts instead of album sales, copying music for free could be seen as fair use. Seeing how a lot of people pay monthly fees for streaming services, 10 euros a month for using your free collection is probably fair use though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Socrates
If I can get something for free (ie. technically there is something as free lunch), why try putting it as non-free? This is not how economics work!
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You can get a bread for free as well. That's called stealing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by akots
There cannot be any debate about piracy. Regardless of what you think of it, it is either a crime to pirate things or not a crime according to local laws. If you break the laws, you are stealing. If you get caught, there can be repercussions. That's all there is.
/subject IMO
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Well, I brought up the point because it is used as an argument by our government to ban websites. Censorship is only a small step from net neutrality. I think both boil down to the piracy debate anyway, since most traffic is used for either (paid for in hard cash or ads!) streaming video/music or illegal downloads. What made the subject relevant in the Netherlands was the revenue lost by mobile providers through the use of VOIP and Whatsapp. This doesn't use a lot of bandwith, yet the companies mixed some claims about "heavy data users" (people who watch youtube on their phone, basically) putting a strain on the network with the loss of revenue as an excuse to ask for more money (or rather, they aimed for breaking net neutrality in the first place, which they were entitled to based on their own contracts with their users (and I'm fine with that: just read the contract before you sign it); VOIP always was banned on mobile networks).