I'll give you an excuse. They don't own the rights to the film, the production company or director does. There, that was simple enough. lol

A tad late to the party don't you think?


But feel free to explain how I am wrong, I'm all ears.

I've just been humming a Britney song
Can someone tell me where I should post a cheque ....... I don't like being a thief

you disgust me sarah. how dare you STEAL from Britney like that!

It is too late. Because of you a janitor is DEAD!!!

When they will start pirating HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray DVDs, it'll be the hookers the director uses that'll be out of a job.

Studio engineers get paid an expected rate like anyone in their field. While some may argue people make too much or less, the fact is when you get a job you expect to make a certain amount of money. If you work in a Ford factory making $30 an hour, you'd be upset if now you were only making $25 an hour. The question here is if there is an impact on studio's, not whether people's incomes are adequate. To keep the music sounding as it does today requires talent and equipment, it's not just a matter of throwing a band in a room.

Major label studio's are anywhere from $100 and up per hour to use their facilities. You can use smaller studios, but the sound won't be anywhere close to the same. It's a bit extreme, but it's the same reason people use studio's to produce high end CGI and not a PC or video toaster on the Amiga. You can see or hear the difference it makes.

Since the records are not selling, the budgets are getting smaller. The less you spend, the less you have to make back to break even. That's a given. Some people are seeing the impact it has on marketing, as some (not all) records have been coming out this year with little to no advertising. There have been add spots in certain markets, but for the most part advertising (depending on the artist) has taken a hit. The other places these budgets are hitting are in production budgets and studio budgets. Producers are no longer getting the advances they used to. In all honesty, there are major label artists that used to allocate $15,000 per song (for production) a year ago, that can now only allocate a mere $5,000. These are platinum artists, not indy artists or DIY's. It is still a good amount of money, but in less than a year some artists have seen their budgets being reduced down to a 1/3 of what they used to be.

With everything else getting cut, so are studio hours and studio selections. Artists are looking for cheaper solutions as they cannot afford the studio's they've been using. They are not recording as many songs per album, and they are doing a lot of their ghost vocals at home. You see, while production budgets are being cut, many "producers" are not interested in making less. Therefore the artist has to walk a fine line. While he or she may only have $5000 to spend on a piece of music, the producer may demand $7,500 because he/she understands their name with help sell the artists lp (like "produced by Pharrell" for example). Where does that money come from? Well, while many CD's continue to have 15-17 songs on them, the amount of songs they are recording to select from has dropped. Instead of recording 40-50 songs and taking the best 15, they'll record 25-30. Does that matter? I guess it depends on your perspective of how the creative process works. So instead of booking enough time to record the 40 songs (say 5 hours per song x 40 songs = 200 hours), they are booking for a mere 25 hours which results in a mere 125 hours of booked time. Not only that, but as a natural way to combat bad business some studios have to drop their price. The engineers therefore make less, and there is your impact.

(other parts snipped from message)

A nice lengthy answer, but only the above part even comes close to touching on the question, and even then does NOTHING to answer it.

Just how is the end result different between me downloading a film that I never intended to purchase or me borrowing the same film from a friend or watching it at their house? Your "license" talk has nothing to do with the end result, which in all situations is me seeing the movie without paying the rights holders.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of illegal copies... but I want to see some logical arguments as to why it's wrong.

OH SWEET CHRIST!!!!

I just realized - I own a store that specializes in USED DVD'S!!!! That means I'm making money off of helping people watch movies without giving any of it to the rights holders!

I DON'T WANT TO GO TO POUND ME IN THE ASS PRISON!!!!

Is anyone willing to help me hide? I'll bring some really cool DVD's with me and I'll make you a criminal too!

I've been waiting for those arguments for years. they don't exist.

I do not advocate downloading copyrighted materials, however when companies refuse to lower prices or to improve product they are only encouraging people to do so. For years i collected CDs and would not have thought to have downloaded a song, but in recent times the quality of the product has become worse and worse and i admit that i have downloaded some things when i should not have. But when you have a CD by a band and there is only maybe 3 tracks you like on it then you feel like youi are being conned into buying something without getting true value for money. I think that DVDs overall are a better produced product and i have never and will never download a movie. I appreciate the packaging, the extras and the presentation. But when companies double and triple dip on certain movies it is not helping the situation. If a movie is released to DVD with little or now extras included it is asking to be pirated. What reason are they giving to encourage people to buy??? Entertainment companies are greedy (along with idiots like Metallica and dumb ass Larrs Ulrik) and they alientate their fanbase/targeted audience by over charging and producing goods that are at times second rate. If they wanted to stamp out piracy once and for all they would each pump money into developing well designed websites that will allow users to download songs/albums/movies for small rates. I still do not see this happening very often, and when it does occur they still try to stiff the general public by charging them too much. They need to get realistic with their price settings.

Also the trend in recent years in Hollywood has been to produce bigger and more expensive movies. It amazes me that a low budget film today still means around $60 million being spent. Corporations feel the need to try and capture every single cent back from a movie once it is released, and with a great number of films being absolute trash it is proving more and more difficult. If you are spending millions of dollars on a project you should ensure that it is worth spending the money on and a good bet. If any area is lacking (Story is one of the biggies these days) then spend more time before developing it into a feature. At the end of the day you can't polish a turd.

Well the way that i look at this is i equate it to if you borrowed your friends car with his knowledge it would be fine. However, if you stole his car without him knowing i doubt he would still be cool with it. I am sure this is how studios look at it. I still find all the shit about broadcasting in public areas, lending to friends and all that shit about Oil rigs complete bollocks when it comes to copyright. Once you buy the product you should be able to do what the hell you want with it...expect reproduce and sell.

Well in 2004 there were 37 million Americans who were classified as poor, and that number will have only risen. Thats close to a fifth of the population, and this does not include people who are not poor, but are classifed as lower class. That number would be significantly higher. The value of the dollar to anyone in this section of the class structure is markedly higher than people who are rich, affluent and can afford to waste portions of their income on disposable entertainment. I think you are wrong also, i think every section of the populace downloads because people have generally grown greedy and the higher up the food chain you go the more greedy they tend to become.

My license talk has everything to do with the end result. The difference is whether or not you violated someone elses intellectual property.

The difference is largely due to market penetration.
If I purchase a copy of the blockbuster thriller "MovieExchange goes to Town" and upload it as a torrent and 100,000 people download it and watch it, perhaps showing it to another 100,000 people, that's 200,000 people who saw the movie and the studio made about $10 on one copy sold.
If I purchase a copy of blockbuster thriller "MovieExchange goes to Town" and show it to 9 people, then 299,990 people who were interested in seeing the movie on DVD haven't seen it yet. Say, 1 in 100 go out and buy it and show it to 9 friends each. That's another 2999 sales. The Studio makes $30,000 from the same group. And a few months later the other 90% of the people interested in the movie on DVD have a chance to get it at a reduced price.
Because the people who have purchased the DVD aren't going to show it to everyone, just a few friends, the mass market exists for the DVDs. The penitration isn't there for everyone to see it untill it is prevalent enough that everyone who wants to see it has a copy or has a friend who has a copy. People generaly don't loan DVDs to friends of friends (at least the ones with half a wit don't) so the availibility to people who haven't purchased the DVD isn't that high without infringing downloads.
The difference is moral. But when it comes down to it, every decision is a moral one.

An argument in the case of music CDs can be made that the infringing copies cause people to purchase licenced copies because they are interested in the music. The same argument does not hold up for movies. Most movies will only be watched a few times over the years. Some music you might listen to every day. Once you watch an infringing download of a movie you are not likely to purchase that movie, not nearly as likely as you are to purchase a music CD that you liked a song from.