Downloading Pirated Music Should Be Legal

“Your study admits that 46% of people have pirated, but this does not specify if they have pirated only once or are repeat offenders. For our argument, it is those who would be repeat offenders that do the most harm to profit margins.” How many people are going to pirate a single song and never pirate again? Not many. It's reasonable to assume that the majority of that 46% are repeat offenders. Your claim from round 1 that piracy is uncommon is incorrect. “This study suffers from making an overarching claim about what is a small and unknown sample population.” 5,000 musicians is not a small or unknown sample population. “Year Top 5 All-Time Grossing Tour Gross2009 " 2011 U2 " 360 Tour $736 Million2005 " 2007 The Rolling Stones " A Bigger Bang Tour $558 Million2008 " 2010 AC/DC " Black Ice World Tour $441 Million2008 " 2009 Madonna " Sticky & Sweet Tour $407 Million2005 " 2006 U2 " Vertigo Tour $389 Million” Thanks for providing me with such useful statistics to illustrate my point: musicians make most of their money from live performances, and not recorded media. “What do you say to the new artists who will find it impossible to find exposure to an audience.” I'm not aware of any new artists who are complaining about a lack of exposure. “Your argument also states that the artist makes money off of ticket sales and song purchases that people who otherwise wouldn't be exposed now make. But your argument assumes piracy is legal, and thus there is no profit to be made off music sales, a contradiction.” My argument does not necessarily assume piracy is legal. Piracy happens whether it is legal or not. My point is that piracy is going on right now, yet artists still make money off of both concerts and digital downloads. “Piracy would still effect the other business I mentions just as much if not more” Red Herring. This debate is about music piracy, not movie or game piracy. “There are no live shows for the Movie or Video Game Industry to profit from.” There are movie premieres, and of course, there are also theaters. In regards to video game piracy: “Console-based video game piracy on any scale is rare.”1 “Please also address the legal precedent that this ruling would set for other industries that rely on Intellectual Property rights, and how judges would not rule piracy legal for other industries as well.” Yet another Red Herring, but I'm going to take the bait one more time. First of all, the movie industry hardly relies on Intellectual Property Rights; in fact, it grew to the size it is today by breaking Intellectual Property Laws! 2In brief: Thomas Edison patented so much cinematography equipment, that it was impossible to run a film-making business a century ago without paying Edison a whole lot of money... if you ran your filming business legally, that is. Several entrepreneurs realized they could simply relocate to the other side of the United States, in California, far away from greedy Edison (who lived around New England). This was before the days of automobiles and planes, so Edison had a hard time traveling the breadth of the USA every-time he wanted to press charges for copyright infringement. These people who illegally used Edison's equipment were commonly known as... “Pirates”! Among these “pirates” were William Fox (founder of the Fox Film Corporation), Adolph Zukor (founder of the precursor to Paramount), and Harry Aitken (founder of Majestic Films). At least a couple of these names are probably very familiar to you. They set up operations in California, pirating Edison's intellectual property. That's how Hollywood was born – through piracy. Any argument from my opponent trying to say that piracy hurts the movie industry is ludicrous, given that the industry was born out of piracy. I didn't even have to argue about anything other than music, though. Like I said before, the resolution is in regards to music piracy, not movie piracy, or game piracy, or Somalian piracy, or Pirates of the Caribbean. 1http://piracy.americanassembly.org... 2http://www.filmsite.org...