Grand Rapids Business Daily

What are your opinions on illegal music downloading?

I have two speeches to write for Forensics class and I want to have some opinions to back up some of my statements... Including people having pro's and con's.

Public Comments

1. I don't have a problem with it so long as you don't get caught.
2. It's only illegal if you get caught. Dont be an effing dumbass, and we wont have any problems? Savvy?
3. No different than stealing a CD from the record store.
4. What is the difference in that or me and you exchanging cds and burning them off?
5. I don't think that it is any different from when I was a kid and I taped songs that I liked from the radio. That's where compilation tapes came from, it's been happening since the 70s.
6. If you get caught then the fines can be crazy. I seen one where a college student got caught and he only had 7500.00 and they took that for the fine though they can get more. Remember that getting caught downloading music is like winning the lottery.. The more you do it the more chances you get of being caught though like the lottery the more tickets you buy the chances are still pretty low that you will win. I downloaded all the time until I got my iPod shuffle and it is great except you have to pay 99cents a song. I miss my cd burning days lol
7. what a comment on American culture today. "It's okay unless you get caught." i can assure you that the college students that were forced to pay $3000 to avoid being taken to court don't think that any more. on the other hand, sometimes people want to hear something, and it would be nice if there were a good way to let that happen. the RIAA (i think) claim that they are loosing money is true. but it's not nearly as much money as they claim. the only money that they lose occurs when people download music to avoid buying it. and that's surely not true for the vast majority of downloaded music.
8. If you owned a business and had the overhead of employees, insurance, benefits and such and found you could not stay in business because people were stealing your product instead of buying it, what would you do? If you want to own a song or CD, buy it.