You are using someone elses property without their permission, so it is clearly wrong. Whether or not it is immoral is a tougher question because morality is subjective. For example, some countries do not recognize intellectual property rights. If you are an American in one of those countries, is it immoral to copy media? It certainly wouldn't be illegal, but since you are from a culture the recognizes such rights, it would probably be immoral. On the other hand, if you were from a country that doesn't recognize intellectual property rights and came to America, then it would be illegal for you to copy media, but it wouldn;t be immoral.

It is neither. The internet is real freedom, don't take it away from us. Most of the money lost goes to big fat American corporations, so I don't really care.

While it could be considered ethically wrong to reap profit from someone else's work, you have to also consider what *Kind* of profit the original producer of the product wanted to gain for themselves when they produced it in the first place. Someone who consumes pirated media reaps no personal financial gain from doing so, the only benefits they get from it are the intellectual/emotional/artistic ones inherent in the act of consuming art in and of itself. Whereas someone who sells pirated media is reaping financial gain from it, which an entirely separate thing. People consuming and appreciating someone's art doesn't harm the artist in any way, shape or form, if anything it benefits them by promoting their work. If an artist sells their work for financial gain, then it can safely be assumed that financial benefits are the only kind they want out of it, so reaping the personal intellectual/emotional/artistic benefits by consuming it could not be considered any sort of crime. I'd say that when one produces a product (Be it a film, a song, a book, etc.) and makes it a publicly available commodity, people consuming it is the calculated risk that one takes. Once they sell their work, they turn it from a personal thing that they have personal creative and intellectual rights to, into a for-profit commodity, and it's an inhrent fact of the concept of "Free Market Supply and Demand" that if you put it up for sale, people will consume it. Therefor, producers/artists have every right to tell people not to record and sell pirated material, but they relenquished any and all rights they had to telling people not to *Consume* it the moment they sold it and transformed it from a personal thing that they had personal intellectual and creative rights to into a For-Profit-Commodity.

I believe the powerful deserve protection, but less of it than the weak. our society has that reversed. I believe that if the music industry wants antipiracy laws to be in place they need to stop commiting piracy themselves. price gouging is piracy. it isn't just music though, the modern bussiness model is rape pillage and plunder. people say "that is capitalism." no, that is parasitic capitalism, you can make a profit without hurting your customers. our economy will continue to fall into aristocracy until laws are enacted to promote economic responsibility through symbiotic capitalism... or we hit rock bottom and have a revolution like france and imperial russia.

Sure, I would love it it everything that I wanted in life was free, but I know that things don't just materialize out of nothing. As a drummer, a photographer, and a writer, I know that time and sacrifices go into creating my art. If I want to give it away, then let me be the one to make that choice. The widespread access to internet piracy has created a sense of etitlement. People feel that it is not just a privilege, but is their RIGHT to get things for free. Pirated goods never seem to have the same appeal as something you had to go out and purchase. It is all cheapened when the only effort involved in acquiring them is a few keystrokes and mouse clicks.

I think that if a persons inspiration for creating these (Software, Music, Video, etc.) is money alone, he/she should announce that fact to all of their fans and consumers at the risk of losing them, and thank them for purchasing. If, however, their motivation is what it should be, they will be satisfied with their finished work and the appreciation of their fans. Art(including music and video)for money is not art. It's work.

i guess that depends... if you didn't have the option of getting it for free, would you buy it ? if the answer's yes, then you're stealing. but if you wouldn't have bought it anyway, than they didn't really lose any money. so in that sense it's okay. . the problem is you can't really know who'd buy and who wouldn't. so legally this is a moot point.

Yes. It's wrong. Morals change from person to person, but if anyone here spent years putting together a high quality movie, only to have it pirated and only earn a few thousand dollars (remember that needs to be split between actors, crew, paying off probable loans for equipment, etc.) they would probably think that piracy is wrong too, even if they were okay with it before. Downloading pirated movies, music, software, is STEALING. No questions, that's what it is. If you don't think stealing is immoral, then fine, keep pirating. But if you wouldn't steal a CD or DVD, why would you download a pirated song/movie when it's the same thing. Unfortunately, most people pirate when they wouldn't steal something because it's much less likely that you'll get caught. But getting caught shouldn't be part of the equation.