Your take on downloading movies

Well I'm definitely not worried, especially since it's not illegal in my country, just wanted to throw that situation out there though mostly for the moral opinions. I get a kick out of people's morals sometimes.

Also,I do live in Vancouver which is basically the place to go if you want to be a criminal and get away with it.

__________________
"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

I'll say this. If I could not download a movie to watch it once. I wouldn't buy it to begin with. The industry can say what they want. That's just how I'm brought up.

Same with music really. Luckily my favorite band has stated publicly that they don't care, and that they download music as well

And after all, isn't that their ultimate goal? It can't be money...*sniff*sniff* sarcasm?

By the by, I combined the latest thread with this already well established thread on the subject.

Carry on!

When the word illegal is involved with something I tend to stay away from it. Also I feel if someone puts effort into something to mass produce something which costs them money I should not have the right to get it for free.

I just did this same thing 2 more times, and there are still other threads on this topic. Please use the search function before starting any new threads.

__________________

I am sorry I just replied to EMMMAAARRRGGGHHH thread.

The industry seems to be better off with pirating.

__________________

Yeah, he's the one I was talking to.

I believe there's some rule that you're not supposed to make a copy of a dvd, but it seems like everyone agrees that's ridiculous. The movie industry does a much better job at dealing with piracy than the music industry, IMHO. People get ticketed or arrested for trying to make money off of things, but generally those who just download or stream do not. With music, those who copied or downloaded (even unknowingly) have been slapped with insane fines.

I just don't often feel the need to "steal" (infringe copyright on?) movies. Everything I need is available via Netflix, sometimes to watch instantly. If it's not there, it's probably in the theaters. If it's between theatrical and home video release, I guess I'm out of luck...but there are enough movies I've been meaning to see to keep me busy until it comes out.

Some films aren't available on DVD or at least a compatible DVD, and these are normally the very good films.

__________________
You cannot have it both ways. A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer. Never. (The Red Shoes, 1948)

It's wrong because, it's like, against society and stuff.

__________________
Under-the-radar Movie Awesomeness.
http://earlsmoviepicks.blogspot.com/

Agreed. One that comes to mind immediately is Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. It's still not available on video, but so worth seeing. Eraserhead was also difficult to come across on video until pretty recently.

Most of what I download is old films and old TV series (even some silent films recently). As far as I'm concerned the studios long ago made their money out of these and I'm not paying a fortune for them on DVD.

As to modern stuff, you hear of stars making $10 million for a film, for maybe several weeks work and you know they are ripping people off. Real people don't earn that much in fifty years of work.

__________________
All secrets are safe with this man, because none are as deadly to him as his own. His secret is that he is Richard Kimble. (The Fugitive - Conspiracy of Silence)

Here's the catch. Especially for me with Asian cinema. It's not like I can get it any other way except by ordering it through The Criterion Collection. But, you see, I would never order that many DVDs. It would just be insane. I would never have spent money on those anyway and I'm not spending any now.

My friend recently asked me if I could download "the world's most expensive poker book" which costs $1850.00. It's not like he WOULD HAVE gone out and spent $1850.00 on it. He just wouldn't have done it at all. As long as they're not losing money, even potential money, I think you should have the right to enjoy intellectual property.

I couldn't disagree more. For one, even if you couldn't order "that many DVDs," you might order some. And some people do. Maybe you'd just have to buy one or two. Or maybe you'd have to wait. If stealing them weren't an option, you might be surprised by what you'd suddenly be willing to buy, at least eventually.

It's some pretty curious logic, to say you can have something because you don't care enough about it to buy it. And that's without even getting into the moral issue. Morality here isn't just determined by whether or not someone is losing money, which isn't really something you could calculate, given the chilling effect of participating in piracy in general.

Someone puts their time and effort into something, and they quote a price for it. You can agree or not, or you can steal it. But if you steal it, you can't retain any kind of moral authority based on the fact that you would have never agreed to the price to begin with.

There is nothing being stolen. They are inferior facsimiles of something someone once bought. ETHICally, I don't think anyone is being hurt. For example, when you watch a bootleg, you're watching an incredibly ****** version of the film. YOU loose something too.

Before downloads, I watched zero films outside of a brief theater run. If downloads never appeared, I probably would never have discovered half the stuff I watch now. I appreciate the stuff, study it, praise it, love it. I think the artists would have wanted that. Maybe the distribution companies no, but I wouldn't have dealt with them anyways. I wouldn't have known Criterion existed.

Frankly, regarding the downloading of movies, imho, it's just plain piracy, which I refuse to partake of.

__________________
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

The fact that it's "inferior" doesn't in any way demonstrate that "nothing is being stolen." If it were worth nothing to you, then you wouldn't steal it.

You could say that someone who sneaks into your house at night to use your Internet connection to avoid paying for their own isn't hurting anything, either, but it's not their decision to make, nor is it yours to make here. And, as I've already noted, you really can't possibly say that there's no way you would have paid for it otherwise. You're saying that knowing that you don't have to, but what if it were the only way? It's quite plausible that you would, even if only rarely.

This is to say nothing of the cumulative effect of piracy, which decreases the reward for generating valuable intellectual property. That alone makes it harmful.

If they would have wanted that, then they could have made their films publicly available. Or they could verbally encourage piracy, as many musical artists have done even to the dismay of their record companies. But if they don't, then assuming that the "artists would have wanted that" is completely baseless.

Clearly, you're going to steal movies. I'm not going to flip out on you as if this were some horrible crime against humanity, and I can understand why people do it sometimes, particularly with films they literally don't even have for sale/available to them. But trying to rationalize it for things that are for sale as ethically neutral, or having the audacity to try to make it sound as if it's a good thing, is beyond the pale.

You're benefitting from someone else's work in a way they have not approved of. There's no way around that. And there's no justification for declaring yourself the judge of who's getting hurt by your actions. You're not a disinterested party; you have a self-interest in approving of your own theft, because it gets you things you want without having to pay for them.

Good for you. I like how you put "refuse" in bold, it really makes your statement that more effective. I think I'm going to stop downloading after reading your post. You've really touched a certain part of my (until now) dormant morality and it would never have happened were it not for your frank boldness.

Way to go, WSS! Who'd o' thunk anybody could touch Harry's... um, morality.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page