A couple of comments here, as I seem to be the only one on the side of the music writer/owner here (which given the group, really surprises me). I think the acid test is "what if it was yours?" Seriously, if you wrote a song and it was really popular and you were trying to make your living by selling cds and downloads, and some guy buys one of your cds and sends copies to all his friends via e-mail, would you be pissed? Would you feel he had stolen from you? My answers are yes and yes.
BuddhaG wrote:If SSDD was available for purchase I would be all over that option. Unfortunately, there is no way to pay for it so that the money goes to the artist. I don't really feel waiting for it be released if it ever will be so I chose other options to obtain it.
This is nothing more than one of the hundreds of rationalizations I mentioned above. I read this to say "I find the artists chosen methods of distribution to be inconvenient for me, so I stole it."
If there is a free soundboard available online of a show that has been turned into a Dick's Picks and I download it am I a theif?
That depends. If The Grateful Dead choose to put a free download out there, and give you the option to buy it on CD, then you chosing the free download option is not stealing. If they are trying to sell you the CD as a "Dick's Picks" and someone else makes the soundboard available for free online, that person is clearly breaking the law. IMO, anyone who downloads it is stealing the content.
As for torrents, I don't use them but I watch a lot of new movies that my roommate downloads for free.
Forgive me, but I see this as self-contradictory.
I don't mind watching movies that someone else has "stolen". Should I reject all notion of seeing a movie I am curious about just because it was stolen?
I don't want to come off as telling people what they should and shouldn't do. Personally, I would not want to watch a movie that I knew was stolen. That is just me. The beginning of this thread was asking a question about what direction one's moral compass is pointing. I think that what you have written here clearly shows yours points in a dramatically different direction than mine. For whatever that is worth.
Mama Mama many worlds I've come since I first left home.