I wonder if you might consider the hypothetical situation in which the market for a product does not exist. For instance, the film/song in question might be available for (illegal) download and is not present is stores (either physical or web based).
Dear Ed,
By your logic I should be able to enter a movie theater without paying admission, so I chould check out the movie, if I like it I’ll pay admission, if not I won’t pay admission. This is ridiculous. As I have learned in a short time on these forums, there are many people trying to justify sin. People trying to rationalize in their mind that a certain sin is ok. A sin is a sin no matter what we think of it. And file sharing is just a nice name for stealing, which breaks the 7th commandment.the key word is sharing in file sharing…
i like file sharing cause i can see a movie and find out for myself if its good to buy or not and i dont have to pend the my hard earn money in something i might never see again, for example the movie 2012, if it wasnt for file sharing i might of bought this piece of garbage or apocalypto, it was great so i went out and bought it.
if you take something that someone created and then sell copies of it to make a profit yes that would be considered illegal and a sin but if someone puts something out there for free how is that a crime or sin?
If you did buy a book & wanted to give it away, fine. But you could only give it to one person. If you wanted to give the book away to 1,000 people legally, you would have to buy 1,000 books. Just because the technology today enables us to make copies of digital media or misuse the internet for so-called file sharing, does not make it right. Our entitlement society has people thinking today, they deserve stuff without any effort or payment on their part.
Actually Andy, suppose you owned the book, and a digital scanner. Then you could scan the book into a pdf file and share it with whomever you pleased, say 100 friends, as easy sending an email. Now assume that doing so is sinful. If it is then can’t be just an accidental property of your action that makes it sinful but must be something intrinsic to the act of sharing the material that makes it so. But then you could, if you chose, take the book from friend to friend, loaning it to each of them one at a time until all 100 had gotten their use of it. We would not think it illegal or sinful for you to do so. But then how are the cases dissimilar? It can only be because your friends are keeping a copy in the pdf case. So then, imagine that your friends, to whom you loan the book also have photocopiers. Is it a sin for them to photocopy the book you loaned them? If you say yes, then you must tells us why it is wrong for them to mechanically photocopy the book, but not for them to copy the book with their brain (which is in essence what it is to read a book, i.e., to make a mental copy of the thing read). How is the choice of copying mediums morally salient (brain tissue in the temporal lobes vs. paper)? You are copying my words right now, just by reading this post, and you may repeat what you read to others, and that could be a sin (which seems to absurd, right?).
I must admit I don’t know what the substantive difference is, but somehow libraries get away with it, eh?
Saying a sin is a sin is not an accurate statement. I have made this very statement on another thread and I got disproved.
Well said.
Those who can afford would or should buy (and I believe most of them do buy).
no, a sin is a sin and when is not a sin it is not, i am not trying to make a profit on anything i download and i am not stealing it either because someone else buys the movie and the maker of these movies decides to give a “digital copy” to he or she that bought it, and these people decide they want to put something they bought online to share with other people for free… how is that a sin? LOL
That is exactly what is happening. Copyright means right to copy. If someone has no permission to copy my work then they have no right to “share” it through a file sharing site. The company I work for spent many months putting a book together. About 30 days later, one of our employees found the entire book scanned cover to cover on a file sharing site. What if it was your book?
That is a very sad excuse about the Bible. I can get books on amazon for 2 cents. So, people want to pay nothing, I get that. Please stop with the excuses. It’s wrong. Period.
That’s nonsense. People who can’t afford to buy might get a shared from someone they’ll never meet copy off a file sharing site. Who are you trying to kid? I’ve been working in the media for years. Nothing is the price anyone can afford.
Perhaps you can explain that to the file sharing sites I tag that have illegal copies of our books.
So now you are comparing your actions to a public library. You are downloading this stuff out of the goodness of your heart. Give me a break. According to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, the definition of steal is to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice Are you wrongfully taking someone else’s property? If the company wanted us to have it for free, they would put up their own website for you to download it for free. But maybe the company wants to be compensated for their time, money & effort in producing something.no, a sin is a sin and when is not a sin it is not, i am not trying to make a profit on anything i download and i am not stealing it either because someone else buys the movie and the maker of these movies decides to give a “digital copy” to he or she that bought it, and these people decide they want to put something they bought online to share with other people for free… how is that a sin? LOL
no one is trying to justify sinning here because there is no sin in this, now if you are downloading and selling kiddy porn or porn than YES that would be considered a sin, but downloading a cartoon or a movie that you are not to sure about seeing and the actually buying the damn thing after… sorry sir but that is not a sin and no commandment is broken, maybe we should shut down public libraries for letting people read or borrow stuff for free?.. or maybe you shouldn’t t-vo or tape anything from tv either because it might be a sin?..
sorry but i know my commandments too and file sharing is not stealing on this planet.
oh yeah and i don’t go to the movies unless there is something specific that i wanna watch, so my logic is just fine. :tiphat:
Andy, My brother and I used to go over to our mother’s house all the time, set her DVR to record something for us, then come back in a week, and watch it. We didn’t own the DVR, we didn’t pay a cable bill, or Satellite bills. Did we sin? Or what about when I lived with a roommate and used his cable and a DVR to watch programming I similarly did not pay for, was I sinning, then? Or what about when I was 11 years old living in my mother’s house, watching her HBO, did I sin then?
I agree with Ed. Also, straight from the link provided by Ed. It is a violation of Federal law to distribute copyrighted music, movies, software, games, and other works without authorization.
It can be stolen, especially, if it is under copyright: **the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (as a literary, musical, or artistic work) ** It is on somebody’s hard drive or server. And if you download it illegally, it is now on your hard drive. It is all tangible.