how can they do that?

Question

ok there is a lot of arguments going on about the anti-piracy claims and stuff like the riaa sueing and the mpaa sueing. if they made the law how r they allowed to do stuff aginst it, like sueing people for downloading it and uploading it to the internet. i thought it was only piracy if you download and ditribute it for a profit. and P2P apps people are just downloading for free and not selling it. why do they say it's illegal. i do use P2P fileshareing and bittorrent clients, but i'm not selling the stuff.

sorry but its not stealing, ripping music from protected cd's is not stealing and there is not money involved in putting it on filesharing programs.

Answer 1

I like what Bob Dylan had to say about that, roughly as follows:

Mostly, music has been crap for the last 25 years. How can you steal something that's worth nothing?

Answer 2

The P2P filesharing systems are considered piracy because revenue is being denied to the producers (in theory). I don't personally believe that the amount of cash being 'deprived' to the producers is as high as they claim, because I know that a lot of people who use these kind of distribution methods wouldn't pay for the stuff anyway. So the argument from the music companies is, 'If you aren't willing to pay for it, go without it.' - which is exactly what would happen.
Conversely, there are instances where people have bought on the back of being able to get a sample first.
Essentially (back to your original question) - the difference is that piracy is deprivation of funds to the publisher network by distribution without agreement, and if you were actually selling it without paying a royalty to the publisher then it would be considered fraud / theft, and not piracy.
Hope this is useful

Answer 3

Your downloading is actually stealing it and you playing it means you are profiting from it.