Metal Reviews

right on, noodles!



we have them in Portugal.

The money will go into the pool with all the licensing cash etc... which they take their portion, which is huge, then the rest is supposed to get sent out to the song composers, in this situation though, there is no claim to the royalties for GNR and whoever else wrote the songs in question.

To me, like most people its not a question of whether or not downloading is illegal its the industrys handling of it.

>Nice black and white view of morality, though

Yep. It's black and white. Stealing is stealing is stealing, and it is wrong, regardless of how anybody twists it or tries to justify dishonesty. The woman is a thief, and deserves the absolute maximum punishment possible. I don't care if you steal a pencil or an airplane, you need to get smacked down so hard that you and everybody else will think twice about taking something that belongs to somebody else. There are a lot of screwed up kids around that think they are somehow entitled to other people's property, and those screwed up kids grow up to be crack-whores living off the work of other people (usually in the form of property stolen by the government from the people who actually worked for it).

If you steal, you're a scumbag.

Ironically, if she lived in a "get your hands the fuck off my money government bastards", like Texas, wage garnishments are illegal and she'd just file for bankruptcy having hardly paid a thing

Was that Bill O's view on things? Do people having phone sex with Lufa sponges turn into scumbags as well? How's about pill-poppers like Rush Limbaugh? He must be a scumbag, he pops Viagra, probably to have sex with Crack Whores! Maybe this woman had a "wide stance" in public restrooms like Larry Craig.

If a starving man steals a loaf of bread as the only means to his survival, is he a complete and utter scumbag that deserves to be smacked down by the law for as long as utterly possible? Not that the situation described here is anything like that, but just to show that your conception of justice is incredibly simplistic and inapplicable in anything but a fairy like society with easily defined conceptions of "good" and "bad" or a tyrannical form of government.

Because there are differences between types of stealing, and not everything is so clear cut (the equivalent of that commercial might be: "YOU WOULDN'T KILL A MAN, YOU WOULDN'T KILL A WOMAN, YOU WOULDN'T KILL SOMEONE ELSE'S DOG- DON'T KILL ANTS.") Downloading is clearly different in nature from theft. If I steal a pencil from someone, then two things are necessarily happening: I gain a pencil, and he loses one. Nothing like this necessarily happens in downloading, simply because making a copy of a file is quite different from taking a file. The argument that can be made is that because the person now possesses a copy of the files, they will not buy music- which is untrue of just about every downloader that I know. Can making a copy of a file be considered stealing? If so, then perhaps copying a guitar tab is stealing as well (something which record companies are now saying). Taking a quotation from a book is stealing. Borrowing that book from your friend is now stealing. Do you really believe that everything is as black and white as you make it out to be?

I also find the concepts you propose to be completely ridiculous. Theft under $5000 can be punished by a maximum of up to two years- so by your "black and white" argument, anyone who steals a piece of candy or a pencil should go to jail for two years, something which most would constitute as cruel and unusual punishment and which about everyone but super right wing "we're so tough on crime that we get boners thinking about it" would consider unjust. See, for example, Rummel vs. Estelle- under Texas' three strikes=life in jail laws, Rummel was sentenced to life in jail for stealing, on three separate occasions, 80$, $28.36 and $120.75. Is this not greatly disproportionate to such petty crimes? Does it actually serve any possible purpose?

And I argue that this woman's case is the same. Yes, she was stupid to challenge it- that still doesn't make it right that she's charged over $200,000 dollars for such a small crime, and when she was essentially chosen randomly out of millions upon millions of people to be crucified for something they all do. The RIAA is going about it completely wrong- shit like this doesn't stop downloading, it just makes more and more people pissed off;, meanwhile, Apple actually did something intelligible and started ITunes, which has paid off. We need more solutions like ITunes and less like the RIAA's.

Here in Canada, downloading isn't against the law- and thankfully.

Edit: Eternal Idol's response is much more concise and just as good as mine.

I love you.

It's not downloading music without paying for it that I'm against per se, and perhaps the other antis will agree with me here, but it's the mindset of downloaders. People download pretty much any new release, listen to it a few times, and then move on. It cheapens the whole experience, if they had to pay for it, not only would people support artists by buying the good stuff, but they'd enjoy it more.

Yadda yadda I'm a hippy. The fine is bonkers, and morality, as anyone who has actually lived real life will know, is an extremely broad line.

I want The Professor to point me in the direction of these communist crack whores he knows so much about, as well.

+5000

That is the most thorough pwnage in the history ever. Every example is spot on. Hats off to you Brahm.

That's pretty silly. I think downloading offers the ideal listening situation, where people are allowed to listen to as much or as little music as they like and they don't have any monetary attachment that affects their opinion of an album. They can listen to as much or as little music as they like... whether its 2-3 new albums a week or 6 new albums in a night.

I also think the "not listening to music properly" thing is kind of silly, but that's mostly because the person who consistently recommends me the best music hardly listens to any album more than once or twice.

And if someone made a living off of said ants?

Yes, but listening to six new albums in one night isn't overkill? Course it is. That, right there, is not listening to music properly.

So how many times do you have to listen to an album before you've listened to it properly? And how many albums are you allowed in a night?

You know how many albums I've bought that I wasn't into at first, only to give them another chance down the road and think it's awesome? Countless! When you pay for something, you put the time in to give it a chance. When you steal something, you've got no attachment to it. You've lost nothing. Spending your hard-earned money on something will make you appreciate it more.

You disagree only because it's your defense against your penchant for downloading.

But those are silly generalizations, I've given albums second chances before tons of times even though I downloaded them, the only difference is it was because I'd heard people praise it rather than because I spent money on it. I disagree because the idea that there are "right" and "wrong" ways to listen to music is pretty silly, just like the idea that there are right and wrong tastes in music.

You have a point, Zad, but I think the amount of music available cheapens the listening experience regardless of how you come by it. When I suddenly had enough money to buy cds at a much greater rate, I certainly started valuing the experience of each individual cd less. If I bought as many cds as you I would probably be just as cavalier about digesting them properly as I would be about some crap I'd just downloaded.

NO WAY IF YOU STEAL YOU ARE SCUM PERIOD

I might value a £14 album more than a £4, but I'm still going to listen to them both properly! It's as much about owning the physical incarnation of the music as having paid for it that does it for me. I suppose it's a personal thing...



Hear, hear.

Brahm ftw.

All of the time up at college i meet these kids who claim to be big fans of everything and then say shit like " idon't know the album names/ song names I just know they are really cool/they suck"

These people with 4,000,000,000 songs in a library that they don't really listen to is definatly a bad thing for the culture of music, if nothing else. By the fact that you guys are spending time on a forum about music, its sensible to assume you spend a good deal of time listening to stuff you do download. In the majority of downloaders i have seen, they might not even listen to the tracks all the way through.