movie, music piracy near me
 

I just heard about this piracy issue in Grand Rapids, which is where my parents live now.

http://www.mlive.com/news/muchronicl...980.xml&coll=8

It's weird because when I think of movie piracy, I think of people our age getting busted, but I guess 49 year olds are getting caught too. I'm glad because I really dont think people should get others work without paying.

I know we've clashed in the past, but I'm seriously worried that you're confused about this here.

First of all, "getting others' work without paying" in these kinds of issues is Copyright Infringement (the term 'piracy' is horrific, basically it's a PR campaign by the RIAA to apply a more malicious term to CI than most would accept). Simply put, 'piracy' is a pretty incredible term, and you should avoid it, just like you shouldn't call it 'stealing' when it's literally CI.

Second, the case you quoted isn't exactly "getting others' work without paying" since he was actually bootlegging the works of others for his own gain - that is, he's burning copies of music and selling them to others for his own profit, without the approval of the artists/lablels/management/BMI/etc. This is FAR different (and far more serious, in my opinion) than infringing the copyright of another person by sharing their works with others via digital means.

Now, that said, I do think it's amazing this guy was so brazen with his attempts to bootleg the materials - it's something out of Hong Kong, almost. Pretty ridiculous, and I'm sure he'll be paying his debt to society for a long, long time.

Well I think the RIAA and film industry is a bit ridiculous in their piracy advertising. I'm sure you've all seen the one where somebody is stealing something from a store and a voiceover goes "you wouldnt do this...but stealing music/movies is the same thing." We all know however, that it isn't the same thing. In retail, someone has purchased those items from a distributor, and the store is the one losing money if you steal from them. The only way somebody is losing money if you download music or movies is if it is something you would otherwise have purchased legally. I don't really download movies, but the huge majority of music I download I would never actually buy. This is also the reason most musicians could care less about you downloading music. Artists make pennies off albums, especially those in some of the most popular genres like rap. Many of them literally come from poverty and little education, and the often get screwed on record deals. So for them, they probably prefer you to download, as they make little money off record sales. The money comes from advertising, touring and merchandise, which all can be acquired through popularity, regardless of whos buying your album or who's just listening to the songs on their ipod.

I see you're point, but if you only download movies you wouldn't watch normally, why risk getting in trouble for something you really dont want to watch?