Debating with a friend who admits to file sharing and even stated they were caught and fined €1100 in Germany led me to question them further. The inevitable arguments about the major labels ripping of their artists and some of these big artists have already made enough money came up. However, TMV says who’s right is it to determine that someone is already making enough money? WTF!!!
Just because an artist is big and making lots of money does not in any way mean they are undeserving of the money legally owed to them. Regardless of the one-sided deals labels do with artists, the artist had a choice of working with that label or not. Furthermore, file sharing means yes, the label gets less, but as content pirate you also therefore deprive the artist of money regardless of whether that is lots or not. Is that justifiable? Not in TMV’s book.
When questioned further as to why this particular pirate did not therefore steal from electrical shops or supermarkets the answers was because they would be more easily caught and could face fines and a prison sentence. They agreed with the stance that stealing is wrong and that there should be sanctions against stealing. Yet they did not equate stealing content online as morally wrong.
Obviously, it is clear that online content pirates steal content because they believe that they cannot be caught. This same pirate clearly stated that after they received that aforementioned fine for file sharing in Germany, they discontinued their illegal activity. Apparently because Australia does not have such in their own words “harsh” sanctions for file sharing they will continue their illegal activity until such preventative legislation is enacted in Australia.
What this clearly states to TMV is that sanctions such as three strikes laws or criminal sanctions including criminal records, fines and even prison sentences for severe offenders are a reasonable deterrent to illegal file sharing activity. Statistics depict irrefutable evidence that France’s three strike laws have led to a large decrease in illegal files-haring activity.
Society decrees that stealing is wrong in any form – those are generally basic held ethics of any basic western democratic society and/or religion from the east or west. As such stealing in any form, in the physical or digital worlds is morally wrong. Just because something is easy to get away with does not make it right. If you think stealing content digitally is right then why are you also not ram-raiding stores you want things for free from? Pirates have no moral arguments whatsoever to justify their behaviour. I would suggest it is a moral and societal necessity to ensure anti-file-sharing legislation is enacted in every single country around the world.
To those of you who bring up the red herring or freedom of speech you are full of crap and do not know what you are talking about. In actually fact you are clearly hypocrites who have no moral basis to live in a free world. To those of you who use Facebook, you have no privacy whatsoever. Every word you write, every image or video you post, every interaction you make or your friends make is data-mined, monitored, filtered and shared with governments. To believe otherwise is to be stupidly naïve.
To ISPs and search engines that push this false propaganda of being crusaders for freedom of speech you are duplicitous crooks. You already filter against child pornography and terrorism and so are already breaching your users/subscriber’s freedom of speech and privacy. These same companies also provide your details to governments when requested. One just needs to see how far this has already gone with twitter now allowing governments to censor anti-government tweets.
It is time for ISPs and search engines to be brought to the negotiating table, and in chains if necessary. The content industry and more specifically the music industry has been very clear to ISPs and search engines that they want to negotiate but for seven years now. However, all they have received is the middle fingers of these businesses.
Furthermore, in 2007 the music business made it very clear that legislation would please no one including themselves. Despite these businesses that profit from the illegal activity of their users have ignored the call of reasonableness. As a result, the content industries have been left with no option but to pursue government legislation. Those governments like France and NZ, which have enacted anti-piracy legislation, have the statistics to prove that legislation works. In this instance TMV wholeheartedly believes government intervention is a necessity.
Like it or not piracy leads to less money being available to invest in new content. This DOES hurt creators of art whether that is individuals or businesses. Less artistic creativity means the word becomes rather homogeneous – which is exactly what our governments and trans-global corporations want.
On a final note, to those of you out there that are content pirates, you are crooks and the lowest of societies scum. You are no better than burglars breaking into innocent people’s homes. If your caught which I hope you are, you should be locked up in prison – let’s see how you like your prison husbands? Not one of you can justify your behaviour. You have no morals and do not deserve to enjoy the freedom our western democracy provides you.
