Tapedecks and videorecorders anyone?

[Ciaccona]

Can anybody explain to me where the difference is between:

-downloading music (or movies) without paying for it or recording it from the internet to your computer

and

-all the zillions of people recording music from the radio to tapedeck in the 70s and 80s, making "mixtapes" and giving them to friends and playing them on every party.

-recording a movie from TV to your videorecorder (or DVD recorder today).

the last time I asked there was silence.

I'm far from defending pirates but if think about it you'll realize that there are a lot of hypocrits among you and usually it's those who scream the loudest.

[HobbyCore]

Very little difference that I can see.

Why does this make anyone a hypocrite?

[Ciaccona]

Originally Posted by HobbyCore

Very little difference that I can see.

Why does this make anyone a hypocrite?

Well, they condemn people for doing more or less the same they used to do or still do with another media.

how can you judge kids downloading music while having taped songs from radio in the 80s or while recording a movie to DVD on Saturday evening because you prefer to go out for dinner?

I'm pretty sure everyone on here has done something like that regularly and it its tolerated in the society.


I say grab your own nose first.

[Siggi_O]

I think for one, back in the time with Tape - Decks and Videorecorders the Quality of the Material was not that great. You could definitly hear a difference and Tape and Videocassetes wore off. If you Recorded on Videocassate you had to also record the commercial, wich were giving the money to may the Industry. Cutting Stuff wasn't that easy.

And here in Germany (other places too of course) there are Institutions wich collect money from the radio stations (don't know how they're called in English) for the songs played. So in the end it was no complete loss for the Rights - Owner / Musician / Composer /etc., only to a certain degree

But illegal copying does even more damage, since theres not any end that get's some money, nor is there lack of Quality, etc. wich was a Reason for buying CD's / LP's.

And you know they say "two wrongs don't make a right...". So doing the one thing does't make the next thing, wich is just different better.

Siggi

[HobbyCore]

Originally Posted by Ciaccona

Well, they condemn people for doing more or less the same they used to do or still do with another media.

how can you judge kids downloading music while having taped songs from radio in the 80s or while recording a movie to DVD on Saturday evening because you prefer to go out for dinner?

I'm pretty sure everyone on here has done something like that regularly and it its tolerated in the society.


I say grab your own nose first.

Nonsense I say.

Hypocrisy, if it exists in the context you mention, does not change the ethics or legality of the subject.

At some level, everyone is a hypocrite. That should never have a bearing on the discussion of the concepts. It's an ad hominem and irrelevant to the debate.

[Batchainpuller78]

Taping someone's LP to Casette or Casette from the radio was not nearly the same quality, this was still in the times kids and adults would huddle together round the stereosystem on which they usually cared which speakers and amplifiers were used to have at least somewhat quality to listen to the newest LP from so and so.

same with video, especially VHS wich became the market leader, looking at those video's after a few plays, image and sound degraded years down the line usually horrible, but these days everyone is used to youtubequality a bit the same.

Unless you had Betamax, the audio degraded a bit, but those tapes are even today pretty good, and if you hit pause on a betamax the image would be very very still, almost an image compared to VHS were everybody starts shaking around.

I mean try copying thousands of cassettes or videos and distritbuting them illegally not so easy to do, but putting 1 file of music somewhere where whole the internetconnected world has acces to to download, the amount of damage is a lot easier made and a lot bigger.

[_rd]

You can not compare in all honesty

• a person in the 1980s who buys records in a records store and listens to the cassette a friend brought over with a new song recorded from the radio.
• a person in the 2000s downloading every song (and album) they ever hear from the internet.

[_rd]

Originally Posted by Batchainpuller78

Unless you had Betamax, the audio degraded a bit, but those tapes are even today pretty good, and if you hit pause on a betamax the image would be very very still, almost an image compared to VHS were everybody starts shaking around.

ahh... remembering the good times...

[bleepbleep]

its the scale of the distribtution more than the quality.

thus the crime is charged appropriately in a court of law.

so - distributing a handfull of pirate CDs to mates will be a lessser conviction than distribution 10,000 copies

its fairly basic knowledge - the bigger the crime, the longer the time

do a mixtape for a friend - get a smile

sell a bunch of knock off tapes down the market - get a slap on the wrist and a fine

pirate 10,000 copies of a newley released film - do a bit of time

[Ciaccona]

Originally Posted by HobbyCore

Nonsense I say.

Hypocrisy, if it exists in the context you mention, does not change the ethics or legality of the subject.

At some level, everyone is a hypocrite. That should never have a bearing on the discussion of the concepts. It's an ad hominem and irrelevant to the debate.

you do misunderstand my point.

I'm not saying the comparison I made justifies illegal downloads ethically or in any other way.

I want to bring into some people's minds that they may have done something similar on another basis back in the day or even still (DVD recorders etc.) and because of that should think twice before attacking others in a rude manner in this kind of wich hunt.

that is why it is not irrelevant to the debate as the credibility of words always depends on the spokesman.

Wherever you look everyone is damnating illegal downloads yet there are millions of them everyday.

[matskull]

You guys seem to have the downgrade in quality as an argument but you seem to forget that now there are HD dvd and hard disk recorder for TVs, the quality is at its best at this point.
To me, there's no difference between downloading and the tape deck example of the OP.

[Ciaccona]

Originally Posted by Siggi_O

I think for one, back in the time with Tape - Decks and Videorecorders the Quality of the Material was not that great. You could definitly hear a difference and Tape and Videocassetes wore off. If you Recorded on Videocassate you had to also record the commercial, wich were giving the money to may the Industry. Cutting Stuff wasn't that easy.

And here in Germany (other places too of course) there are Institutions wich collect money from the radio stations (don't know how they're called in English) for the songs played. So in the end it was no complete loss for the Rights - Owner / Musician / Composer /etc., only to a certain degree

But illegal copying does even more damage, since theres not any end that get's some money, nor is there lack of Quality, etc. wich was a Reason for buying CD's / LP's.

And you know they say "two wrongs don't make a right...". So doing the one thing does't make the next thing, wich is just different better.

Siggi

the difference in quality is just as big as 128 kbps to 16 Bit.
still people listened to illegal replications all day long so why does the quality matter as an argument at all?
If tapes wore off you could record it again or copy it before.

The only people benefitting from commercials were the companies who placed them.
In addition to that in the beginning of the 90s it became easy to record movies without commercials because the technique started to support it more and more.

Of course video taping harmed the owner as someone who had a movie on tape probably wouldn't go to the video store and rent it (where the owner of the movie would benefit from).

[lhm1138]

This argument keeps popping up even though it's been shred to bits each and every time.

It's like a freakin' whack-a-mole game that never ends.

[Zooey]

Originally Posted by Ciaccona

Can anybody explain to me where the difference is between:

-downloading music (or movies) without paying for it or recording it from the internet to your computer

and

-recording a movie from TV to your videorecorder (or DVD recorder today).

the last time I asked there was silence.

The US Supreme Court did a pretty good job of explaining it. I realize you may not have been born yet in 1984.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Co...y_Studios,_Inc.

[Zooey]

Originally Posted by matskull

You guys seem to have the downgrade in quality as an argument but you seem to forget that now there are HD dvd and hard disk recorder for TVs, the quality is at its best at this point.
To me, there's no difference between downloading and the tape deck example of the OP.

The answer is that time shifting something you were already authorized to watch in the first place is a fair use under US Copyright law, regardless of the picture quality.

[Ciaccona]

Originally Posted by lhm1138

This argument keeps popping up even though it's been shred to bits each and every time.

It's like a freakin' whack-a-mole game that never ends.

erm, this comment is absolutely useless as you don't explain or at least link to where you are referring to.

[Ciaccona]

Originally Posted by Zooey

The US Supreme Court did a pretty good job of explaining it. I realize you may not have been born yet in 1984.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Co...y_Studios,_Inc.

I'm about 28 which makes me being born in 1981... but I wasn't too much into courts by the age of 3.

I can't follow your link, there's nothing on that Wiki site...

[Zooey]

Weird. Try this one:

Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[matskull]

Originally Posted by Zooey

The answer is that time shifting something you were already authorized to watch in the first place is a fair use under US Copyright law, regardless of the picture quality.

Makes sence.

[Siggi_O]

Originally Posted by Ciaccona

the difference in quality is just as big as 128 kbps to 16 Bit.
still people listened to illegal replications all day long so why does the quality matter as an argument at all?
If tapes wore off you could record it again or copy it before.

The only people benefitting from commercials were the companies who placed them.
In addition to that in the beginning of the 90s it became easy to record movies without commercials because the technique started to support it more and more.

Of course video taping harmed the owner as someone who had a movie on tape probably wouldn't go to the video store and rent it (where the owner of the movie would benefit from).

Ah, you got me on this one, you kind of have a good point there.
Let me try to argue on another point...

1. If recording from TV (Public Channels) you often don't get the whole Movie, but rather a Film with lots of scenes cut out wich many people i think wouldn't enjoy. On a illegal Download you get the Film uncut, what-so-ever, extra scenes... But to be quite honest there I don't know how Pirates think on that Point.

2. I guess theres a difference because of actually having to wait for a movie / music to be played. In terms of movie, a big blockbuster might only come once a year. As I was younger I remember how me and my friends listened to the radiostations all day long with a finger on the "Rec"-Button on the Tape deck just to get maybe one or two songs. The Kids today are like "Oh, this sounds good, and this, I'll get it now! And when im at i i'll dowload the whole album, cd, w/e". Back then you actually had to do more to get the song you liked.

The point I'm trying to make here concludes out of a parrallel thread going on here in wich theres an discussion about quantity and on a point made by some users on this forum about the difficulty of getting something as a demotivation to steal music. A grown up person probably wouldn't sit in front of a radio the whole day just to record one or two songs, but rather just go out and buy the record.
The main difference between recording on Tape / Video / HD - recording I think is the amount. I think it's a huge difference if a few thousand People record a movie on Sundy evening rather then the same people dowloading 5 movies in the same time. Same with the music...

I hope i didn't mess my arguments up to much

greetz

[chrisso]

Yes, this is easy to argue away.
Firstly, it was for the most part illegal back in the day.
Record and movie sales came under threat from the late 70's onwards.
There was plenty of publicized hullaballoo in the 80's about home taping, it's wrong to say there wasn't.
Back then music fans were interested in the packaging, liner notes etc, so many people did buy the albums they first heard on a friends cassette.
Also, people bought the albums, then got around to making tapes of them. In todays case, the free downloads are often available before the record is even released.
Same with movies.
I used to tape movies of the television.
But they were mostly shown three or more years after the initial cinema release. As above, scenes were re-edited/deleted, and the film was often peppered with annoying ads.
Copying and reselling of music and movies onto good quality digital media (CDR and DVDR) has always been illegal, and I've never had anything to do with it.
So the short answer is, no....it has always been illegal, and it has always effected music and movie sales, except now it's gone from a minor problem out of a few kids bedrooms to a mass market, on an industrial level as per The Pirate Bay.

[HobbyCore]

Originally Posted by Ciaccona

you do misunderstand my point.

I'm not saying the comparison I made justifies illegal downloads ethically or in any other way.

I want to bring into some people's minds that they may have done something similar on another basis back in the day or even still (DVD recorders etc.) and because of that should think twice before attacking others in a rude manner in this kind of wich hunt.

that is why it is not irrelevant to the debate as the credibility of words always depends on the spokesman.

Wherever you look everyone is damnating illegal downloads yet there are millions of them everyday.

You need to take a introductory course in debate, logic and ethics. Your statements are exemplary violations of all three subjects.

The credibility of the words NEVER depends on the spokesman! The ethics of a subject also should never depend on the number of people who engage in it, nor should it concern the debater if they've personally engaged in it.

Here's some cursory reading for your courtesy of wikipedia. Feel free to branch out to more reliable sources.

Ad hominem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tu quoque - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I think you're trying to imply some sort of conflict of interest when such a concept should not apply to open debate on a subject. Bias is an inherent part of any discussion, and the only thing that should matter is the subject at hand and not the backgrounds of the engaging parties.

[TheRealRoach]

There is a big different between the two.

An illegal duplication with cassettes or CD-R burning resulted in the creation of one new "counterfeit" version per original copy per act of duplication (by "act" i mean the actual physical effort exerted by the person and machine doing the copying).

An illegal duplication with online media as a destination results in an infinite number of available counterfeits per original copy per act of duplication.

That's a pretty big difference to me.

[Zooey]

Originally Posted by TheRealRoach

An illegal duplication with online media as a destination results in an infinite number of available counterfeits per original copy per act of duplication.

I might say an "indefinite" number of copies, but yeah. That's the idea.

[lhm1138]

Originally Posted by Ciaccona

erm, this comment is absolutely useless as you don't explain or at least link to where you are referring to.

Look around, you'll find it. Again and again. In this very forum no less.

This topic is a cockroach you can't crush.

[qtuner]

Originally Posted by lhm1138

Look around, you'll find it. Again and again. In this very forum no less.

This topic is a cockroach you can't crush.

so are platitudes

[lhm1138]

Originally Posted by qtuner

so are platitudes

Platitude adjustment?

[Mike6581]

Don't forget as well with taping a film off the TV the film was almost considered at the end of it's revenue generating life. Films only appear on TV after they've made money at the pictures, then on video, then on pay-per-view TV movie channels, then subscription satellite/cable, then finally they're sold off to the terrestrial channels - typically between 3 and 5 years after they actually first appeared at the cinema. The terrestrial TV stations foot the bill for the royalties - either through commericial revenues or in the UK, via our licence fee. I can't see how that's as bad as torrenting for the film industry. Whereas that new X-Men film has been all over the web before it even came out at the pictures over here, with an American journalist famously getting sacked for reviewing a torrenting copy, that really will hurt the revenues of the film, whether or not the film is good or not is irrelevant. Tape to tape coping was virtually unheard of in Britain in the days of VHS, to the point I never actually came across anyone who ever did it. Could you say the same about torrenting?

Home taping, although did probably put a dent in sales of music it wasn't anywhere near as severe as torrenting. Home taping relied on knowing someone who had the original vinyl/CD so you could copy it off them. If you didn't know someone with that album, your only solution was to buy it - very different to logging into your favourite illegal downloads site and clicking the search button. Still wrong, but the wealth of content available was far, far smaller back then - particularly if none of your friends had the same taste in music as you.

Piracy of one form or another has gone on since we've had recordable media. I was recently given a reel to reel tape dating from the mid-late 60s by a friend of a friend to see what was on it, I think he was hoping a Beatles demo session. In fact, it was a very dodgy copy of Revolver!

And as previously mentioned, with domestic analogue recording media, there is a huge difference in quality from the master. The main problem with Internet piracy is that it's so instantaneous and plentiful. Downloading MP3s is far quicker than making the black art of the good old mix-tape we so fondly remember as youths. The irony is also that the pirate medium lends itself far more to the current playback medium of vogue, the iPod.

Of course in a black and white world, they're both as bad. I'm not convinced that the person who downloads the occasional track off a dodgy site is the spawn of Satan, but someone who does it constantly and has thousands of tunes and films they've pinched is!

[chrisso]

^^^^^^
Spot on in all departments.

[Beermaster]

Most Importantly A tax levy was put on all the blank media so when you bought a blank Audio Cassette or video tape or even at the time 'CDs- For Audio' ( which originally when CD burners first came out were the only ones that worked on domestic stand alone HIFI CD recorders ) - Part of the cost of that Blank media went back to the royalty collection agancies. ( as a recompense for you copying IP music and films )

The Point is that in DISTRIBUTING an album or film to a P2P service you're not just making 1 copy for a buddy or neighbour , you're distributing it to Billions of people. Not that either are tchnically right but you can see that the the problem is on a different universal scale.