Can torrent sites be prosecuted.

[Walsingham]

If I wasn't working at home it would suck, I think. You have to pay extra to get a mobile device onto the service. But you can buy stuff from them, and then its yours. Plus I can use my account from any web browser which is quite handy for parties.

[Blarghagh]

I like my tangible things. I don't trust buying mp3s.

[Lare Kikkeli]

I dont get why anyone buys MP3's. FLAC or other lossless format maybe, if you don't care for physical objects but MP3? That's like paying for a book that has a printing error, or a movie on an old worn-out VHS. Sure it's adequate, but if you're gonna spend money why not spend it on the real thing.

[alanschu]

Because the loss level is pretty indistinguishable?

 

Maybe I'm a ripe 28 years old so my ears are failing, but I would rarely find a significant loss in quality at 192 kbps.

[Hurlshort]

Plus, you are looking at a very low cost. I'm not going to be up at night anguishing over my 99 cent MP3 purchases.

[alanschu]

And convenience. MP3s are pretty much the standard for audio files over the internet and have been for a long time now.

[Walsingham]

I had my hearing tested by the Army when I joined, and it's nearly flawless. I agree that recordings don't sound like the real thing. But I really can't hear a difference between mp3 and CD.

[Meshugger]

There's a press conferance right now about ThePirateBay being bought at the moment. More later...

[Lare Kikkeli]

Once you have good enough audio equipment you will. But I guess if you listen to music from iPod earbuds or a laptop speaker you wouldn't hear the difference.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Lare Kikkeli

[Blarghagh]

It's not that mp3 has worse quality or anything that makes me buys cd's (if I cared that much, I would go for vinyl). I just enjoy the experience of going to a record store, buying a CD, reading the booklets, holding the jewel case or whatever they put it in in my hand.

[Hurlshort]

It's not that mp3 has worse quality or anything that makes me buys cd's (if I cared that much, I would go for vinyl). I just enjoy the experience of going to a record store, buying a CD, reading the booklets, holding the jewel case or whatever they put it in in my hand.

 

I can agree with that. I also miss buying a CD and listening to it from start to finish. With MP3's, even if I get the whole album, I rarely listen to all the songs in order, and some musicians create their CD's with almost a story from one track to the next.

[Enoch]

It's not that mp3 has worse quality or anything that makes me buys cd's (if I cared that much, I would go for vinyl). I just enjoy the experience of going to a record store, buying a CD, reading the booklets, holding the jewel case or whatever they put it in in my hand.

 

I can agree with that. I also miss buying a CD and listening to it from start to finish. With MP3's, even if I get the whole album, I rarely listen to all the songs in order, and some musicians create their CD's with almost a story from one track to the next.

That's really a matter of your practices rather than anything inherent in the format. My mp3 listening is predominantly of the whole-album variety. My commute is roughly 45 minutes of walking and subway riding each way, so I usually queue up an album and listen to the most/all of it. Full-random is too disjointed (not to mention the jarring lack of volume normalization when jumping from album to album), and I'm not particularly motivated to create custom playlists when I've already got the artist-endorsed playlists of the original album track listing.

 

The big thing I miss about CDs when getting music via PC/MP3 player is the personnel listing on jazz albums. Album/CD covers almost always list all the personnel right up front. That way, if you're listening to a recording headlined by a saxophonist, but are more impressed with the work of the piano player, you can see who that piano player is at a quick glance. MP3 players and PC programs just sort everything by the headline name; you usually have to jump to the internet to look up all the supporting personnel.

Edited June 30, 2009 by Enoch

[Hiro Protagonist]

Considering the very high percentages of online people who fileshare, it could be argued that they aren't breaking any societal rules, though perhaps some capitalistic ones. There may be a societal taboo on discussing filesharing, but everyone's (well, a hell of a lot of people are) doing it nonetheless.

 

An example are newspapers reporting how bad it is to download movies, but in the same article tell you a Noobs Guide on what programs to use to download, hardware to use to store and to use with your TV to view these movies and who the best uploaders of torrents are concerning High defintion quality movies with full support of the MPAA, Record companies and FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft). In the same article they state what movies they download with FACT present, something illegal in itself. I would post a link to the news article but then I would be promoting piracy? Weird.

Edited July 1, 2009 by Hiro Protagonist

[Walsingham]

There are echoes, but not parrallels to the prevalence of customs fraud in the UK in the 1900s. Or to prohibition.

 

I genuinely support anti-piracy in principle. I know that it hurts real artists. On the other hand I also believe it hurts the music industry, and there are few carbuncles more deserving of a good shoeing than the music industry. I reckon that in general it is more likely to hurt the big money people than true artists. However, the most logical way for the corporate astards to react is to make cheaper music so they keep their overheads.

 

I dunno. At the end of the day I can afford to buy music properly, so I figure I may as well.