Do you feel guilty about downloading pirated music?

I won’t do it. Theft is theft, no matter how you try to rationalize or justify it.

How did you find out?
I mean, I’d never do such a heinous act.

But theft is removing something that belongs to someone else. Copying leaves the original intact.

@PnT: The artists make a living by selling copies of the songs. Still theft!

I don’t do it. But as I’ve been accused of before on this site, my morals are questionable when it comes to defining theft.

The wife gets CDs from the library and burns them. Maybe you can do that instead.

Yes, so I won’t do it, period.

Dave, there was a whole thread about file “sharing” on here just days ago. You should check it out.

I will, thanks. I didn’t see it in the search but maybe I was using the wrong words.

Half of the artists today wouldn’t be making money if it weren’t for piracy.

I admit it, I download songs using questionable methods. That’s only because I can’t find it on iTunes or I want to get a taste of some songs before downloading based on a 30 second preview. (YouTube for example works great for that too)

I’ve actually contacted an artist directly once because I couldn’t find their newest album on iTunes and told them I’ve pirated their album, sent them a check for the price of the album and then some.

It has it’s uses.

I have over a 100G of music all legal<rolls eyes>

Do i feel guilty about it?
lol nope.

Thirty seconds isn’t long enough of a preview to get a feel for the music. That little bit could be the best part of the song, and then it’s money wasted. I’ll download an album, listen to it, and if I think it’s worth the money I’ll buy it. If not, it goes into the bit bucket.

I’ll be honest: most, if not all of the music/movies/software I have is pirated.

The only thing that keeps my conscience clear is that I intend to buy all of that stuff at a later date (ie, when I’m out of high school and can pay for all of it).

@blastfamy but you wont. You may say that, but im pretty sure you wont.

Same goes for Photoshop. As of last year (April 07) I pirated Photoshop for the first time playing around with it and just doing stupid stuff.

I also got my first Mac in January of 07, now I’ve been through 2 top of the line Macbook Pro’s and 2 iMacs mostly for my video and design work.

Fast forward to today and I do professional work (no really, not that web 2.0 gloss crap) for a wide range of clients. I know have purchased Illustrator and Photoshop CS3. It has paid out for me and I thought Adobe deserves it’s money.

Without piracy I would have never touched Photoshop, now I play with it like my own newborn.

….starts laughing NO stops laughing

I am PnL, and i download music. There. I said it. Do I feel guilty? Not usually

i feel no guilt what so ever.

No guilt here

I don’t feel too bad about it. I really like live music, and there are some great small venues where I live. If I pay to see a band live, they probably pocket more of the money than if I bought their cd.