I think of it like this. If I knew someone who had all the cds I wanted, I could just as easily borrow the cds and rip them to my computer. That action is not stealing, it's perfectly legal. The only illegal thing to do, would be to make copies of that cd or to start sharing them with everyone on the internet. The same goes with pretty much any media. If it's a game, you could just as easily borrow that game from a friend until you're done, and then return it (or in case of a download, delete). I believe that you can leech all you want to, but once you start contributing to MASS AMOUNTS of sharing, downloading, uploading then it becomes a problem and then and only then will anyone really care.

music:
i usually only pirate foreign (okay well japanese) music that i wouldnt even be able to find around here. though most of the music that i have on my computer is pirated by my sister. and i guess if she hadnt pirated those songs, i would be pirating them. but anyways, i think that downloading music is great and that it shouldnt be illegal. to me, a life without music is severely lacking. just because someone may not have a lot of money doesnt mean they shouldnt get to experience good music.
i wish there were more artists who like people to download their songs. for example: weird al! he wrote a song called "dont download this song" that has a lot of sarcastic things in it about pirating; it's obvious he is supporting it. he's said before in interviews and stuff that he supports it, because it allows more people to hear of him and enjoy his music. and there are plenty of people who end up buying CDs because they liked some music they heard online. if i had never pirated music, i would never have heard hardly any music at all because nobody in my family has money to spend on ridiculously overpriced CDs.
and also, CDs have a bunch of songs by the same band on them (excluding mixes). for me, i don't really listen to a bunch of songs by the same band, same time, same everything. i listen to a few songs from one cd, a few from another, etc... whatever i find online. and i try to hear a variety of a band's songs. an album has ones all from the same time period, whereas i can find ones from when the band was new and ones from maybe 20 years after it was formed. and thats much more interesting to me.
i highly encourage pirating music. i think it shouldnt be illegal. it does NO HARM to the companies; it's way different than something like shoplifting. you're not taking anything physical. but then you are more likely to go buy something physical if you've heard a few songs online than if you never heard of them at all. and maybe you'll buy something to support them. but if you've never heard any songs free, then you'll have no idea what the band is like.

anime:
i think downloading/streaming anime shouldn't be illegal, too. first of all, there are many many many good animes that aren't even available in countries other than japan in any form. so it's not like we would be able to get them any other way anyways.
and if there's an english version of an anime being shown on american tv station, it's very likely that it: has terrible voices, terrible translation of dialogue, removal of scenes/unnecessary editing, and chances are that they wont show it again after it finishes and so if you miss it, then you have to buy the dvd. but that is really unfair. people who saw it on television didn't have to pay extra for it, so why should you? and not to mention that it could end up not being as great as you thought it was and then you just wasted money.
however, if you watch anime online (fansubbed) that has a crappy american version but you like the story and characters and all that in the japanese version, you might want to buy merchandise for it. but if you had only seen the american version, you wouldn't have liked it. and, like with music, you're not stealing anything physical so you're not costing the company money.

basically my views on all this:
if you hadn't gotten the product online (which wouldn't cost nor give the company any money), you wouldn't have gotten it at all (which wouldn't cost nor give the company any money).

Without internet piracy, there would have been no other way for me to be exposed to so many types of music. I buy an album every few months, and I love having a hard copy of an album.

Same goes for me and games, If it wasn't for piracy I wouldn't have even seen 1/10 the games I have in the 12 years I've known about it. Also if it wasn't for emulation, which is pretty piratey, I would never be able to play all these classic arcade, nes, snes, genesis, etc. titles against people all over the globe. But I do buy the few I actually enjoy (not many), and nowadays you pretty much have to for internet play, as far as PC games.

I never thought much of you either, so go ahead and suck yourself.

I was going to accept it anyways I was just making a scene because I knew he would let me go in. I had a lot of shit in my hand and I didn't want to put it down. Plus I did it when they FIRST started to check people, I never cared later when they were checking everyone (including myself) on debuts for other movies.

The girl didn't want anyone going through her purse either, they were sticking their fucking hands in it.

So I'm sorry for not standing there like a bitch.

I don't get it. Why couldn't you just LET HIM SCAN YOU?
I mean, you didn't have a reason to go up to the security guard and be all MACHO-MACHO for no reason, I mean,
it just seems to me that you wanted to get the pussy ( ​) that day and you felt that you REALLY HAD TO BE A CUNT towards a random person DOING WHAT HE'S PAYED TO DO. I mean, SURE, the whole proccess is UNPLEASANT but still, you have to go through it without whining!
Standing there like a bitch>Whining like a bitch imho

I am not even going to touch the issue of piracy here. Feel free to warn me for this post but that was just my two cents.


EDIT: Actually, there's something I need to say about piracy. I don't think there should be any discussion on piracy at all. It is just a really fucked up subject that can only spawn endless flaming from both sides of the argument. All I can really say right now is  because prety much everyone who can log on to a computer has illegally downloaded a song online so yeah 

I was talking to my dad about this and he mentioned that big name record labels; BMG, EMI, etc give very little money from the sale of a CD back to the band.  However, independant record labels give almost all the money on the sale of a CD back to the band.  My dad released a solo album and is able to keep all the money he's making from CD sales.  So, if you're being picky as to what bands you want to support, take a look at an album and see if it was produced/released by an independant record label as you'll be able to directly support the band/artist if you buy it.

I only download things that are:

a. Not available in the US
b. Really rare/overpriced in the US
c. Single songs that I don't want the entire album for

I don't pirate games either. Without me having access to a credit card/online shopping/importing I don't really have an option to do anything but download them. (besides not having them of course)

except this is all in Aussie XD

Sometimes I download them first and see if they are good

I download pretty much anything, but if I can find it, I'll buy it.  The reason I pirate these things is that there was a HUGE gap between when I downloaded movies like Delicatessen and Pretty Persuasion and actually FOUND them somewhere.  Those companies still got their money, it just took a while.  Sometimes I just pirate things because I either lost the original or don't want to rip it myself.  As for music, I rarely purchase the music that I download, but people are rarely downloading THOUSANDS of movies the same as they download thousands of songs.  If I had to pay for every song I downloaded, it'd be about impossible.  I do occasionally buy things I can't find downloads for off of iTunes, though.

I stopped caring about pirating music when I saw the soundtrack to Chess for sale for over $50, when I only wanted to buy it because of One Night in Bangkok (and the chance that other songs were also good).

Also when it comes to things that you can't just obtain so easily, I would think it's better the companies don't get anything than some person selling pirated DVDs gets money and the companies STILL don't get anything.

Almost no one here is trying to justify doing that at all.  Most of us are justifying things that aren't that easy to get.

If it's so bad to download why do the companies now provide it in the same format people now download themselves for free, if they did't want this they could take certain possibly low cost measures that would keep anyone from ripping music and stuff from the cd's. People record at concerts, should they not be allowed there too, piracy today is just another way of saying quit taking the money back from what I took excessively from you.

If CD's weren't up to 40$ a disc I am sure people would buy it more often.... it honestly can cost as little as 14c to manufacture a CD, and for each CD it takes up to 3$ to make it into a saleable product for entertainment... so why do they jack up the price so damn much? Average cost for the entire process for each disc as I have been told was 7$ THE ENTIRE PROCESS ON AVG FOR EACH DISC FOR ANY ARTIST IS ACTUALLY LESS THAN 1/2 IT'S RELEASE PRICE.

Why buy a music CD of only a few song on it you like? I just download the songs I like the most and say fek off to the rest. I download roms and such because like what if I really REALLY wanted to play Super Adventure Island 2, but never played it in such a long time... think I would want to waste another 10 years wanting to play something that i haven't played when I can just bop there we go, can play it through downloading. Seriously, old games like SNES, Gameboy, its not like if we sold em' at a pawnshop we'd make much money we're talkin' 5 bucks or whatever, the only places that games like those are sold are those Video Game Trading shops and those game are expensive as hell. So save the 120 bucks (depending on what it is.) and just download it....

ORRRR you can move to Canada where people don't give a shit if you download anything. 

That really was a Steel move. You jerk, me and Drule just got over this little argument. We promised each other that we would never call each other names again, no homo x10.

Hmm, now that I have a chance to sit down and reflect, I may have been an asshole.

To behonest I was trying to keep my P Shooter concealed.

To stay on topic:

Here are some very influencial people that have changed my view of piracy entirely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LkWKvMCzqA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4pnY1wFiU


Director Cut of the popular "You wouldn't StEaL..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wRxfz_6E7o

Just would like to point out that the second video you linked to is entirely pointless.  We're not BUYING pirated materials, and our downloading them is in no way supporting any criminals.  It is criminalizing ourselves, but that's a different subject entirely.  That has to deal with BOOTLEGGING, this is PIRACY.

EDIT: Also jman00 have you not read ANYTHING about Demonoid in the past few months?

  As far as music piracy is concerned, it does increase the availability of anykind music, but it has also changed the industry for the individual artist. I hear of artists now ahving to tour a lot more to make up what they would have made in record sales because people aren't buying albums in the numbers that they used to, because of the ease of piracy. Also, I've heard stories about bands having to try and whore our thier songs to companies for promos or commercials as BGMs to make sure they make good money and increase thier popular exposure rather than relying thier niche internet exposure. Of course, because of the internet it is both niche and universal, so there are tradeoffs. I'm not making any kind of judgement call on the issue, but I can see that it has started to change the way that a musician has to do business.
  But I know some musicians and I kinda feel for them, that there are people who know their name but wouldn't support them except with concert tickets and maybe t-shirt sales.
  I can see in some respects that the music industry has started to cope with the loss from internet piracy with things like price regulations and iTunes. From what I see, domestic prices have been starting to be fixed around $1 USD/CDN per track, with certain things costing more for various erroneous reasons. But most of you are right in saying the market place has changed. I can see why there is trouble adapting for all companies to a market where people are less and less willing to participate in it, and would rather benefit without being a consumer.

I dunno... Its all so lofty. I mean, you say you wouldn't want most of the things that you download... so why do you even download them in the first place? Because they're there? I don't get it, really, but that's just me. I don't download anything, really. Maybe some old singles now and then off Limewire and maybe roms from dead consoles once in a while for Nostalgia's sake but that's about it. I've got enough stuff.

EDIT: I would also like to add to the discussion to remember that there is a bit of a bias on GamingW that should be kept in mind and that what we talk about here may not be the norm somewhere else.

I love how my last post was completely ignored and how people continued to say "I don't buy CDs because artists never see any money from sales anyways"