The Morality or Immorality of Copying DVD's and Music CD's

We are bombarded constantly with news quotes about the music industry and the film industry taking so called music and film pirates to court and demanding compensation for the loss of the money the artist should have been due to. I do have a huge philosophical problem with this. I totally disagree that a guy who maybe talented at writing music and maybe even playing an instrument should be rewarded with buckets of money and a very early retirement. It is immoral and a slap in the face for every hard working person in the planet. Mainly for the reason that if he is good he should make his money like the rest of us and get out on the road and earn it from live performances. I am of the opinion that the court cases against downloading of music are only for the protection of the music industry and not the musician. The industry usually screws the artist on their contract and makes the most from the CD’s, so I have no scruples about sharing my music via my MP3 player which isn’t an IPod and even cracking copy protected CD’s to copy onto my MP3 player. How many of us have been enraged by the ridiculous drug taking antics of some of the later performers and even older performers. Lets face it no one deserves to be stinking rich because they wrote a few songs. If it comes to that I don’t think a writer of novels should also become so fabulously wealthy they think they can take over a political party and even ignore the laws of the land. I even take the copying of DVD’s into this argument. I enjoy films and going to the cinema, which I do at least once a month but I do not and will not pay $20 for a DVD, it is a silly and large amount for something that can be seen on the TV after a couple of years for free basically. I copy copious amounts of DVD’s for my own personal use and don’t share them online but I do share them with my fellow contractors if they want, usually via large external hard drives. The overwhelming factor in all this argument is that the amounts of money we are talking about is huge and the companies involved want to screw us poor hard working public into giving them more and more of our hard earned money. I know that some of you think I probably earn too much myself but at least I do put in the hours and I did spend 4 years at university studying to get where I am today, but actors and musicians do not deserve a life of luxury just for what they do. The market forces will continue to drive people into copying music and films until the industry decides that they will have to charge the market price for there offerings. I think a DVD would be OK at $4 or $5 and a music CD at maybe $2, if I were to pay for the amount of times I have listened to Thin Lizzies greatest hits it would be about 25 cents. Some of the music I have got I don’t think I have ever listened to. I bet that most music downloaders are just collectors of MP3’s and hardly have time to listen to it. As far as DVD’s go I cannot see terrorist organisations ever trying to make money out of DVD’s as they are hardly a weapon of choice for the fundamentalists we have in the world. You would never see a proper suicide bomber trying kill others with the entire collection of The beach boys CD’s strapped to his body. It is a bogus argument and they are fighting a losing battle, market forces will without doubt always find a way to copy and reproduce both music and films into may digital formats and be carried about on mini digital players for both music and films so the sooner they understand that and stop pissing about trying to hold back the water like King Canute the better. Musicians would be better off distributing their music for free on their own websites and if they were good people would pay to go and see them, I have paid to see may great stars and would pay to see them again if they don’t keep retiring. I paid $100 to see Tina Turner and her fantastic singing even at the age of 56 overwhelmed me. So it isn’t the stars who would suffer only the companies, as for films well good films always make money at the box office and the crappy cinema copies that I often see are so bad I don’t bother copying them anyway so they should charge less and they would see the number of Films sold this way would multiply so greatly. So if they are listening to my rantings, Stop ripping us off you tight twats and sell the films cheap I would rather buy original than piss about for 3 hours ripping and burning poorer quality copies all for the cost of 15 cents, it is the cost you fools. Remember Walmart didn’t get where it was today by charging $50 for a loaf of bread did they so they should learnt he lesson or suffer constant piracy.