Recently because of the Nintendo takedown of a major rom site, there was a lot of debate about game preservation and all that. Within the debate were many militant posts about how roms are illegal and Nintendo has to protect their copyright. All fair. People who admit to pirating games get banned pretty quickly here. Also a good thing. We should not encourage a culture in the community where people pirate things openly. Right?
Then I step into any thread about music, especially game music and soundtracks. And there are tons of embeds of complete tracks from Youtube accounts which are essentially pirating the music and providing them for free. I myself have done this because it's so easy to link something to share a track you really like. But this is also illegal right? It's against the law! It's copyright infringement! And with the way music is consumed today, it's not even a case of "one track is just part of an album, so it's not complete piracy of a work" because tracks are sold ala carte on music services. Each embed of a track that is sold on iTunes is essentially piracy of a track that is being sold for 1-2 bucks at least. Yet we all seem okay with that. Do we value/respect music publishers and composers less than we value/respect game publishers somehow? If so, why?
Then I step into any thread about music, especially game music and soundtracks. And there are tons of embeds of complete tracks from Youtube accounts which are essentially pirating the music and providing them for free. I myself have done this because it's so easy to link something to share a track you really like. But this is also illegal right? It's against the law! It's copyright infringement! And with the way music is consumed today, it's not even a case of "one track is just part of an album, so it's not complete piracy of a work" because tracks are sold ala carte on music services. Each embed of a track that is sold on iTunes is essentially piracy of a track that is being sold for 1-2 bucks at least. Yet we all seem okay with that. Do we value/respect music publishers and composers less than we value/respect game publishers somehow? If so, why?