I'm not trying to put you off or evade this question but the problem is that it's a horribly complex question because it goes into the matter of what "rights" are and what "goods" are.
For instance:
1) If I see you leave your bike unattended and I take your bike, you don't have a bike any more. If I make a copy of some music that you own, you still have the music. If you make a copy of the music, and you give that to me, and you still have the music, I haven't stolen anything from you; if you make a copy of the music, and you still have the music, and you put it up on a file sharing site, much like you might put an old bike on the street with a "free" sign, and I download that copy, I haven't stolen it from you. The artist doesn't want the music back. The artist wants to be paid for the effort that went into creating the recording. The only difference between torrents and mixtapes is SCALE. (The record companies have on several occasions tried to restrict the sale of blank cassette tapes and other recordable media for exactly this reason.) What the entertainment company wants isn't the music back, either; they want to be paid (in part for the real work of distributing it and producing the sound if not the physical media, but also for their armies of lawyers and lobbyists who are trying to take over the internet, and let's not gloss over that in an era where corporations are legally considered people.)
2) There is no good argument that anyone has a right to anyone else's labour or the products thereof. But there are a number of very good arguments that full participation in culture is a human (if not currently a legal) right, which I don't have the time to enumerate. Clearly there should be better channels for compensating people for their labour--channels that don't involve scary spyware or scarier lobbyists. But being able to participate in one's own culture, in the global culture, and not being restricted from acquiring knowledge (textbooks are also an issue here) and learning and becoming culturally literate on the grounds of where you live or how much money you have? There's a real issue there. I mean, this isn't just about whether or not Joe Schmo can put the latest Megaman movie on his iPad for free; this is also about whether or not people in countries where the cost of shipping physical books is prohibitive have the right to read textbooks or enjoy science fiction at all.
And the idea that full participation in culture is a human right is relatively new, but the idea of human rights is relatively new, period. I mean, there are lots of places even today where the right to believe what you want to believe and say what you want to say is not acknowledged; there are places in this country where the right to love who you want is not acknowledged; and the idea that some people don't have a right to eat or to basic health care is currently being contested in this very society. I have no doubt that future generations will think we're all pretty barbaric.
(One last thing: I haven't ever downloaded anything I could get direct from the artist and pay for, just FYI. In fact 90% of what I personally have torrented is TV shows I already paid for with my insanely high cable subscription that I don't always have time to watch when broadcast, and/or think I will need to rewatch throughout the season in case I forget something--or TV shows that aren't available legally at ALL because very few people still give a shit about them; some of them took weeks to torrent because so few people give a shit about them that hardly anyone was seeding.)
no subject
For instance:
1) If I see you leave your bike unattended and I take your bike, you don't have a bike any more. If I make a copy of some music that you own, you still have the music. If you make a copy of the music, and you give that to me, and you still have the music, I haven't stolen anything from you; if you make a copy of the music, and you still have the music, and you put it up on a file sharing site, much like you might put an old bike on the street with a "free" sign, and I download that copy, I haven't stolen it from you. The artist doesn't want the music back. The artist wants to be paid for the effort that went into creating the recording. The only difference between torrents and mixtapes is SCALE. (The record companies have on several occasions tried to restrict the sale of blank cassette tapes and other recordable media for exactly this reason.) What the entertainment company wants isn't the music back, either; they want to be paid (in part for the real work of distributing it and producing the sound if not the physical media, but also for their armies of lawyers and lobbyists who are trying to take over the internet, and let's not gloss over that in an era where corporations are legally considered people.)
2) There is no good argument that anyone has a right to anyone else's labour or the products thereof. But there are a number of very good arguments that full participation in culture is a human (if not currently a legal) right, which I don't have the time to enumerate. Clearly there should be better channels for compensating people for their labour--channels that don't involve scary spyware or scarier lobbyists. But being able to participate in one's own culture, in the global culture, and not being restricted from acquiring knowledge (textbooks are also an issue here) and learning and becoming culturally literate on the grounds of where you live or how much money you have? There's a real issue there. I mean, this isn't just about whether or not Joe Schmo can put the latest Megaman movie on his iPad for free; this is also about whether or not people in countries where the cost of shipping physical books is prohibitive have the right to read textbooks or enjoy science fiction at all.
And the idea that full participation in culture is a human right is relatively new, but the idea of human rights is relatively new, period. I mean, there are lots of places even today where the right to believe what you want to believe and say what you want to say is not acknowledged; there are places in this country where the right to love who you want is not acknowledged; and the idea that some people don't have a right to eat or to basic health care is currently being contested in this very society. I have no doubt that future generations will think we're all pretty barbaric.
(One last thing: I haven't ever downloaded anything I could get direct from the artist and pay for, just FYI. In fact 90% of what I personally have torrented is TV shows I already paid for with my insanely high cable subscription that I don't always have time to watch when broadcast, and/or think I will need to rewatch throughout the season in case I forget something--or TV shows that aren't available legally at ALL because very few people still give a shit about them; some of them took weeks to torrent because so few people give a shit about them that hardly anyone was seeding.)