Comment Re:"Microsoft could sell more boxen.." (Score 2) 573
I'm not defending the music industry in these posts. What I'm attacking is the hypocrisy of people that pretend that infringing copyright is somehow noble or virtuous. It's not. People do it (and I'm not condemning them for doing it), and they should just admit that it's not a nice thing to do. You wouldn't want people to do it to your mother. You especially wouldn't want people to do it to your mother if she was asking them to stop.
Copyright infringement is theft, pure and simple. If I create a work, and you copy it for your own enjoyment without compensating me, then you have deprived me of my just due. You have withheld from me what is rightly mine. Just because you stole it so quickly I never had a chance to hold on to it, does not transform the loss from theft into something else.
I front costs in expectation of a later revenue stream. Just because my costs are sunk does not mean you don't deprive me of anything when you take my work and use it for your benefit without compensating me.
That being said, I'm not sitting here condemning file sharers. I'm just asking them to own up to doing something that is not the moral equivalent of scaling the barricades to free the slaves. It's music, people, not bread.
If you enjoy the music, you owe something to the people that provide you with that music. We (me included) don't all pay every debt we owe. That's understandable, but it's not right.
Copyright infringement is theft, pure and simple. If I create a work, and you copy it for your own enjoyment without compensating me, then you have deprived me of my just due. You have withheld from me what is rightly mine. Just because you stole it so quickly I never had a chance to hold on to it, does not transform the loss from theft into something else.
I front costs in expectation of a later revenue stream. Just because my costs are sunk does not mean you don't deprive me of anything when you take my work and use it for your benefit without compensating me.
That being said, I'm not sitting here condemning file sharers. I'm just asking them to own up to doing something that is not the moral equivalent of scaling the barricades to free the slaves. It's music, people, not bread.
If you enjoy the music, you owe something to the people that provide you with that music. We (me included) don't all pay every debt we owe. That's understandable, but it's not right.
