Quote Originally Posted by Rad Bromance View Post
OH PUH-LEEEEEZE, you know what I meant, you aren't stupid. Okay, fine then, it's like giving prescription drugs to junkies who don't have a prescription for them. It's still illegal, and, in the case of copyrighted media, it's still distributing something that's not yours against the wishes of it's creators.

I always find these threads of people trying to make a moral argument in defense of what equates to stealing (notice, I didn't say is stealing) hilarious. Carry on.
My work deals with copyrights, and it's against copyright for anyone to take my images and use or distribute them without my consent. That includes using my images as avatars on a Final Fantasy forum. I'm sure Disney has similar copyrights. But sometimes people take my images and put 'em up on blogs or whatever and I just shrug it off. Is it hurting me? No? Ok then, carry on.

Is anyone arguing that pirating isn't illegal? Cause that's silly, it IS illegal. But legality aside, people are just giving reasons as to why they're pirating, not why pirating should be legal. Why should people stop giving their reasons? Isn't it important to understand the reason why people do what they do? And it's probably in the best interest of studios and movie makers to know the reasons why people are pirating since that's the only way they're ever going to properly address the issue. Shutting down sites will never work, because there will never be an end to these sites. Or to torrents. Or whatever comes after torrents. Someone can say, "I stole this because I don't have money to pay for it" and you can say, "Well that's a stupid reason" but it doesn't change the fact that it's THEIR reason. Just cause you don't approve of it doesn't make those reasonings disappear.

We're living in a new kind of world, where instantaneous access if becoming increasingly important. Everything about how we access and share information is changing, but the entertainment industry is lagging behind.

Look how long the music industry railed against mp3 downloads and the smart folks at Apple thought, "hey we could make money selling individual mp3s!" and now they've got a monopoly on the market and they're making bank while the music industry is still scratching their heads.