Downloading Pirated Music Should Be Legal

“Its unnecessary to post the same words twice when they are on record.” I disagree =) “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.” I'm sure the voters will strongly disagree with you here. I'm sorry, but it's just not reasonable to think that 99% of all music piracy is performed by people who pirate just a single song. “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.” That's not a good excuse. “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].” Legalizing piracy would not “eliminate” profits from digital music sales. This is obvious, since music piracy is almost de facto legal. “Foolishly you argue that by somehow eliminating this revenue artists would benefit.” That's a strawman. I never argued that artists would benefit from the elimination of their digital sales. “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.” “I do not think you understand how a Google search works.” I do not think you understand how a Google search works. It's incredibly easy to get listed on Google. In fact, this very debate between you and I is the #1 hit on Google for the search: “Downloading Pirated Music Should Be Legal”.1 “Piracy is uncommon in that there is a small sample of the population that pirates a large amount of properties.” As I already pointed out, your own source from the previous round contradicts your claim that “piracy is uncommon”. There is also no reason to assume that most piracy is done by a small population. “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.” And since it isn't specified whether or not it's a double blind study, we have no idea if what the study says is true. “By assuming that piracy is legal I state there would be 100% piracy.” Baseless assertion. “I do not know why you would want me to assume people would pay for a movie if they could pirate it legally.” It's difficult, if not at times impossible, to pirate a movie that is currently in theaters. And since people generally prefer the experience of going out to the movies to watch it on the gigantic screen, movies would continue to make lots of money. Thanks to everyone for reading this debate. Vote Pro! Thank you =D 1http://lmgtfy.com...