Free Downloads why not?

Yar in "The rhetorics and myths of anti-piracy campaigns: criminalization, moral pedagogy and capitalist property relations in the classroom" notes the many ways in which copyright industries attempt to challenge what they call "copyright theft" especially via the internet.
This highlights just how powerful the internet has become.
Why would people decide to leave the comfort of their homes to go watch a movie when they can do it in the comforts of their homes and if lucky in high quality without spending a cent?
There are two reasons why people would choose otherwise.
1. Is the experience achieved at the cinema which you can not get at home
2. Is peoples choice to not watch illegally downloaded movies
Yes copyright issues especially on the internet are getting worse and companies are losing Billions of dollars but is it mostly due to young people?
A UK based poll in 2004 found that 18-29 year olds owned pirated intellectual property of some type have young people really lost all morals? do they not care about the creative process, time, money and labour gone into making a movie, song or even game?
Most would say that they dont have enough money to buy the physical item from a store so do it illegally via the internet others would argue that everyone else is doing it so why not?
There is also the issue that when you download something from the internet the link is still there, others can download the same file an infinite number of times however when you take a physical object it no longer exists unless ofcourse its replaced but that particular movie or cd can no longer be purchased.
The truth is, downloading property of the internet has become not only easy but people can do so without being punished, why is it that people are less likely to steal a physical object from a store than download information off the internet...its simple there are less risks involved so why not??
Yes downloading other peoples property is bad, illegal and not moral does that mean people will no longer download files from the internet? No.
So until industries find a way to stop people from downloading illegally of the internet copyright issues will be a problem for a long time coming.

Piracy of music considered as stealing?

"You wouldn’t steal a car" "You wouldn’t steal a handbag" sound familiar? Most people would have heard of it. This is the starting to any modern film which strongly emphasizes on the issue of piracy as a crime. Well I have a different point of view when it comes down to downloading of music. For me I think downloading of music is not stealing because it is an intangible property and by downloading you are just duplicating copies of music. By downloading, it does not stop other users from getting access to it and you are not taking the one and only copy of the original music and having it entirely to your own. Since it is a digital content it can be copied over and over again. I think it is fine to download music from the way I look at it because it is widely known that most recording artists earn their living from concerts and piracy helps to promote and widely circulate artist’s music all over the world. As mentioned in the lecture, those people who download free music are also the ones who are purchasing more music thus generating more profit for the artist. Tangible properties such as Cars and Handbags are limited by nature as to their use and can be used by one person at a time and be in one place at a time. If you steal my car, I’m denied of the usage and unlike music it cannot be copied and since the car is an original property it is a crime when you steal it. As for music downloading since it is an intangible property, I would not consider as same as stealing a person’s car or a handbag. I think of it as more of a sharing as the reading mentions that pirates are 10 times more likely to buy music, which shows people like me and others who download free music are more likely to buy music than the ones who don’t download it for free.

Can technology really change the world?

One laptop a day...
will that really make a huge difference in peoples lives?
would it be more important than food, shelter, clothes?
yes education is important..thats the only way to get yourself out of poverty..but how worthy is a laptop when your too weak from starvation to use it...
Negroponte has a point in trying to civilize and educate third world countires..but I would have to take Winstons side in this case.. yes technology is important but I would not classify it under a basic neccesity...
being a SST activist (this basically means that technology changes due to social needs, therefore it is not technology which changes us and technology is not a product of our society like technological determinist's assume)
I would have to agree with this concept...yes technology is important in our lives but we must also not forget that we are the reason why theres technology in the first place we play a MAJOR role in why technology is so advanced in the world we live in.
This makes the Marxist view a lot more appealing, it is true that people around the world benefit on behalf of those that suffer through exploitation and free labour the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
We are living in a society where we think that technology is so important in our everyday lives...we are made to believe that we can not function without it however in truth we are living in a superfical world and at the end of the day money can't buy all your hearts desires (also ideals from the Frankfurt School for social research).
This brings us to another point Google and Privacy?
there have been many moral arguments around Google's right to information online..who's property is it and who has the right to that property?
moral judgements would suggest that no one is allowed to use another persons property without permission of the provider while others would say that information online has become so normalised and once it is posted or put online it officially becomes public property.
I would have to agree with the second idea... at the end of the day google has made people more aware of other peoples websites, information, even books...yes that can be a bad thing sometimes but in reality it can also be a good thing..for e.g. google books which provide users online the oppurtunnity to flip through snippets of the book online, this can encourage users to go out and buy the book which is the case on my behalf on numerous occasions.
Lastly is the idea of downloads such as films and music..
Everyone has to admit that they have downloaded something for free over the internet, whether its an mp3 song, a film or even an entire album we all fall victim to the appealing notion of free downloads. So is downloading a song online the equivalent of going into a store and stealing a physical item??
In a way yes it is.. the creative individuals involved backstage do deserve to get rewarded for their hard work (as RIAA have stated, it is the creative people involved who are being stripped from their rights, the record company comes 2nd however this is because it is the artist who does most of the work at the end of the day)
so is downloading free media online bad? in reality yes it is but will that stop people from doing it? I highly doubt it..the internet allows individuals to do almost anything which can be detrimental to those putting great amounts of effort into their work.... However I do know a lot of people who will download the song free first and buy it from iTunes later if they like the track.

Can the music industry dance to the Club Penguin boogie?

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The music industry says that P2P hurts artists (and the industry), but P2P users have become accustomed to downloading music for free. Is freemium a potential compromise?

In this week's lecture we briefly discussed a hypothetical music business model that balances unpaid digital downloads with ticket sales for live concerts... Hmm... Sounds like freemium! You get unrestricted access to the main course – songs, in digital form – but you don't get dessert – live gigs, standard and limited physical releases – unless you pay.

Compare this pay-for-concerts model to the Club Penguin model and you see an immediate difference. Where's the premium digital content? Club Penguin's physical merchandise can be equated with the concerts and physical albums from our music model. However, Club Penguin's subscriber content constitutes an additional digital-only category of premium content. If you give away digital songs, what do you have to offer as paid-for digital content?

Perhaps the music industry needs to find something other than songs to offer as premium digital content. How about a live stream of a studio performance that can only be accessed with a unique code that you receive after purchasing songs? This example may not be the best (someone could record and distribute the stream!), but my intention is to suggest that this way of thinking merits further investigation.

Our hypothetical model seems to come close to the current reality of the music business, with one major difference: people are paying for digital downloads. The Norwegian research discussed in lecture and a 2006 Canadian RIAA study both seem to indicate a self-mediated freemium among P2P users, whereby each user determines what they personally deem to be content worth paying for from the pool of free content. Maybe this shows that services like Spotify and KKBOX, which separate song content into free and premium versions before reaching the consumer, have a valid place in the market.

Compromise seems increasingly necessary, but the music industry would prefer access to digital songs to be completely locked down. If Apple found a way to block all illegally procured content from your iWhatever-you-use, would you continue to use it or seek out an alternative?