When did IP become so worthless to people?

[Gamerforlife]

For me downloading stuff is sort of a practicality thing. I spend money on bills, food, the occasional video game, comic book and blueray movie. I don't have much money left for spending so when it comes to music I usually just download free stuff from the net. It's pretty easy to get high quality 320kbps mp3s and FLAC files these days

Would I like to buy all those cds? Sure. Hell, I wish I had room for them too, but with games, comic books, graphic novels, movies, etc. space is already at a premium at my place. My portable hard drive has 500 gigabytes of space for me to play around with though for music

[Inazuma]

Is there a legit way to easily download DRM free, commercial free, subtitle free, 1080p, Japanese anime videos, for a fair price? If so, I will be more than happy to stop using bit torrent.

[DinnerX]

I don't like the terms piracy or intellectual property. I'm not trying to attack you Mendoza. You didn't make up these terms. They just mean too many things. Piracy is downloading copyrighted stuff. Piracy is selling bootleg CDs. Piracy is installing windows on more than one pc when you only have one license. Piracy is looting a ship. IP is patents, trademarks, and copyrights all rolled into one. I wish I knew who made up these terms.

Anyway back more on topic. People often download because the industry isn't selling what they want. Anime fans want unedited, uncensored, shows without bad American voice acting. That seldom makes it over here.

Some music fans want high quality lossless audio. The industry doesn't make many downloads for them.

Some people download things out of convenience. For out of print stuff it's more convenient to download than hunt around at used stores.

I'm not trying to comment on whether downloading stuff is right of wrong here since that's really another issue, just why people do it.

The main reasons people resent companies for going after pirates is that many companies are making a good little bit of money anyway and when they do catch someone the punishments tend to be totally out of line huge.

[o.pwuaioc]

Some people download things out of convenience. For out of print stuff it's more convenient to download than hunt around at used stores.

To continue along this line of thought, used stores generate no more profit for a record company or publisher than downloading generates.

[Gamerforlife]

Some music fans want high quality lossless audio. The industry doesn't make many downloads for them.

This is true. I tried a pay for service that let me download music, but I got sick of low bittrate files. I even got an mp3 on amazon.com that wasn't high quality once. So now I just find lossless sites and get my music there. I have a converter that can make them into smaller 320kbps mp3s for my ipod, and I keep the FLAC files in case I ever want to use them

[DinnerX]

Some people download things out of convenience. For out of print stuff it's more convenient to download than hunt around at used stores.

To continue along this line of thought, used stores generate no more profit for a record company or publisher than downloading generates.

NOOOOOOOOO! Now that can of worms has been opened! Oh well...it ain't like it's the first time...or probably the last.

[ZenErik]

I always like having physical copies of my favorites. Whether it be music CDs, games, anime, manga, or anything else.

[Flake]

Some people download things out of convenience. For out of print stuff it's more convenient to download than hunt around at used stores.

To continue along this line of thought, used stores generate no more profit for a record company or publisher than downloading generates.

That's not true, actually. Used stores provide people who have already purchased a game from a company a chance to obtain credit for their games in order to afford that new game that just hit the shelf.

Without used stores acting as a buffer of sorts between players wallets and the artificial $60/$50 msrp for every new game (no matter what the game) the game industry would be in a lot more trouble than it already is.

[Inazuma]

Some music fans want high quality lossless audio. The industry doesn't make many downloads for them.

This is true. I tried a pay for service that let me download music, but I got sick of low bittrate files. I even got an mp3 on amazon.com that wasn't high quality once. So now I just find lossless sites and get my music there. I have a converter that can make them into smaller 320kbps mp3s for my ipod, and I keep the FLAC files in case I ever want to use them

Is there a big difference in quality between lossless and 320 kbps mp3s? I've never been a big music guy, or audio guy in general. Not sure if I can really tell the difference. Most of my music is 320 kbps mp3.

The whole point of mp3s was to reduce the file size of music files because internet speed and storage space was very limited back in the day. Now that the internet is much faster and storage space is super cheap, mp3s themselves actually feel rather obsolete. I never thought much about it till just now.

[Flake]

Some music fans want high quality lossless audio. The industry doesn't make many downloads for them.

This is true. I tried a pay for service that let me download music, but I got sick of low bittrate files. I even got an mp3 on amazon.com that wasn't high quality once. So now I just find lossless sites and get my music there. I have a converter that can make them into smaller 320kbps mp3s for my ipod, and I keep the FLAC files in case I ever want to use them

Is there a big difference in quality between lossless and 320 kbps mp3s? I've never been a big music guy, or audio guy in general. Not sure if I can really tell the difference. Most of my music is 320 kbps mp3.

The whole point of mp3s was to reduce the file size of music files because internet speed and storage space was very limited back in the day. Now that the internet is much faster and storage space is super cheap, mp3s themselves actually feel rather obsolete. I never thought much about it till just now.

Audiophiles will try to tell you that there is a discernible difference but there isn't. Unless you had the mother of all sound systems and a trained ear, it's pretty much impossible to detect that minute degradation.