On bittorrent and other file sharing applications.

I think copyright is important to an extent. Without it, authors or music writers/performers would be nearly unable to make income from selling their works. Music performers would be able to do concerts -- but not music writers (unless they also performed), and that still doesn't help authors and other people in creative fields.

I also think that copyright law is currently going too far. Did you know that currently copyright in the US lasts for 70 years after the death of the original author (Life+70y)? In Canada it's nearly as bad, at Life+50y, and other countries are pissed off that we have such short copyright terms! How on Earth is Life+50y short?! I should think 25 years from creation is long enough to have made significant profit off of whatever you produced. Why should copyright last that far beyond the death of the creator? (We're talking 3 generations by the US standard.) If I ever do get a book published, I'm making sure my will has a stipulation to release my works to public domain....

I also think copyright law enforcement has gone too far. Someone should not be fined tens of thousands of dollars (sometimes millions) for uploading only a smattering of copies of a smattering of songs. If someone pirated 50 copies of a $1 song, then I think the cost ($50) plus a reasonable fine (say 5x the cost, which I think is a US standard, so $250) is perfectly reasonable. You break the law, you pay, but at least make the price sane and don't bankrupt people over a single song.

Oh, and those links in the OP are broken because the parentheses got stuck on the ends of the links. Try using the [ url ] tag for the links instead to avoid that problem.

I think it's something you have to decide for yourself if you find it ethical or not.
I'm not going to lie, I often illegally download copyrighted material such as movies, music and software.
I don't like doing that for music, but I don't mind movies and software, as IMO it's their own fault for overcharging us like that. That being said, I still would rather be able to pay for it as it's a way to "reward" and even thank the creators for what they have made.

Now with music, I usually download an album first and if I like it a lot, I buy it (I have about 60 CD's and 15 LP's).

And therefore everybody dies.


Money is just a paper representation of hours in the day that you spend working. I spend 10 hours teaching so i can trade that for paper and then someone else spends 10 hours making breakfast cereal and I can use my paper to buy breakfast cereal and he uses his paper to buy classes.

Really I'm just trading classes for food, it's just that making it paper means I can get more things and I don't have to meet all the individual people I'm trading with.

that's an interesting view ninjaearl, I never thought about it that way.

i believe that downloading should be legalised, if
1. what you are downloading is unavailable in your country, at the time of download.
2. the thing that you are trying to download is more than 10 years old.
3. if your doing a try before you buy kinda thing.

also it has allot to do with how record companies are refusing to move with times. sites like www.guvera.com are helping transition happen. this site allows you to download music for free but you have to watch an ad first, this basically means that the advertiser is paying for your download.

EDIT:this reminds me of the the Pirate party. which i know exists in sweden, and is in the beginning process of becoming a political party in australia. pirateparty.org.au/