Downloading Pirated Music Should Be Legal

1. I always found it easier to number each point rather than include the complete quote. Its unnecessary to post the same words twice when they are on record. 2. Again, when talking about case studies there is no "common sense" that you can assume. The fact still stands that your study you cite suffers from the assumption that 46% of the people all behaved in the same manner which is completely false. It can be just as likely from your study that only 1% of your 46% are repeat offenders, and we would have no way of knowing. 3. I wish I could include a study that showed artists performance income before piracy vs after, but there is sadly not enough work currently done in the area to use. But to ignore that even the top 40 live performances are majority old artists would be foolish[0]. Still, I think we are detracting from the original argument here. I originally stated that music does indeed take money to produce, and that legalizing piracy would take what money the music industry makes from digital album sales and eliminate it. My argument for this is strong, as seen by album sales in the U.S. (digital and physical). They are currently valued at 4,481.8 million dollars[1]. Foolishly you argue that by somehow eliminating this revenue artists would benefit. [0] http://www.billboard.com... [1]"RIAJ Yearbook 2013: IFPI 2011, 2012 Report: 29. Global Sales of Recorded Music (Page 24)". Recording Industry Association of Japan. Retrieved 2013-05-14. 4. I do not think you understand how a Google search works. Simply creating a site and naming it something people will search does in no way guarantee that it will be a top hit. Google organizes its searches by how many websites their hits have that are "connected" to relevant sites. To do this takes money and time. Two things that an up and coming artist does not have a lot of. Debate.org shows up because it is already high up on the Google hierarchy. For someone with little to no advertising money it would be extremely difficult to get oneself exposed. This is why digital downloads are crucial to new artists that can gain fast revenue from it. 5. Piracy is uncommon in that there is a small sample of the population that pirates a large amount of properties. Relatively low compared to what it would be if it were legalized. I say nothing controversial here. 6. Your accusation of the authors intent hold no water. This is an independent study done for a large firm, which is done all the time. I believe you are trying to say that there is funding bias in the study we speak of, but seeing as it is not specified whether or not this is a doubly blind study, we have no idea if what you say is true. What we do know is true is that the numbers I cite do indeed exist, and they do indeed show the magnitude of how detrimental piracy already is to economic growth. So I can see your concern in trying to refute my numbers, but they do not come out of thin air. 7. By assuming that piracy is legal I state there would be 100% piracy. I do not know why you would want me to assume people would pay for a movie if they could pirate it legally. Also what percentage is thousands of dollars to movies that must make millions of dollars to profit at all? In conclusion: I believe my opponent uses arguments that have a large appeal to the pirating community, but suffer from some very basic mistakes. He twists the studies he cites to fit the needs of his numbers, despite the very clear ambiguities they state. He even goes so far as to argue that more piracy would lead to more income and economic growth. If this goes against your common sense, then you are in luck because there is good reason for such a feeling. I will concede that piracy would not effect all of the income that is made in the music industry, but I argue that it would be enough to stifle the growth and creativity of the industry. This is my final rebuttal, and the next post of my opponent should be his last as well. Thank you very much for your points Pro, I always enjoy a fresh perspective. Finally, thank you to the reader for sifting through so much information and making an informed vote.