Some would say no matter how you rationalize it, ''stealing is stealing'' and that is what downloading copyrighted material from torrent sites is, as long as the law exists. Others would say, if these avenues of getting some of these materials didnt exist at all, then everyone will be forced to pay unfair and insanely high prices for any material, great or crap, as long as it's been copyrighted! I do wonder: for those who say it's stealing, some of these same laws make you a criminal whenever you lend your dvd to your girlfriend, or get several music tracks via bluetooth from your colleagues or borrow your friends ps3 disc to finish the offline mode of a game since your disc got scratched, or copy your friends pc game after your computer crashed and your installation disc was no where to be found,as far as you don't ask for permission from the copyright owners.i must say that if you have never been guilty of these or anything similar, i fear you may not be human! Dont you think there's something wrong if you cant do these?? All these also result in lost revenue and according to these laws, more than half of the population may be criminals!this is what filesharing including torrents achieve, just on a larger scale(as long as no form of payment is involved). Agreed, it does get to the point where it's worrisome for those who have a stake in it, but that said,i think some of those who stand on the high moral ground of ''stealing is stealing'' are hypochrites because of reasons stated above. Sometimes, not everything in life is black or white. But one thing is sure: Good products will always sell even in a world where torrents exist and unfairly high prices for materials,especially those not worth it (eg some ps3 games or district 9
), will always promote some form of piracy. If anyone is againt torrents/existence of torrent sites/filesharing because of it's tendency to be used in distributing copyrighted work then there's something wrong cos they may as well be against the computer! In life,somehow there's always a balance and i think this situation isn't any different as efforts on both sides seem to balance each other.