Have you ever stole music?

[Hoss Ragen]

Fess up, sticky fingers! I don't condone taking anything that isn't yours (aside from maybe cheap office supplies, pens from the post office and the like ), but what albums/tapes/CDs have you lifted in your young and dumb days? I found a couple cleaning out my closet today. The Cable Guy soundtrack and Onyx's Bacdafucup, both on casette. Gangsta rap and 90s alternative rock. Why, I don't know. I think it was because I saw a couple of videos for the hit songs on each being riffed on by Beavis And Butthead and I already spent all my lunch money. Anyhow, I think I took these on a grade school field trip to the museum when I stopped by a Warehouse nearby.

[mightyjack]

Nope, never have. I've discovered that in the great scheme of things... I'm kind of a boyscout. Oh and being raised Catholic probably had a lot to do with it. Too much guilt, just pay for it and be safe

[solgroupie]

i am catholic and i did lift some music that wasn't mine back many moons ago. never got caught, but i think the universe paid me back for it. i would never do it now.

what about stealing/downloading music?

[MonsterX]

Never have and never will.

[Phantom Engineer]

OK, here's an ethical question. Some record stores have a policy that if you buy a new CD you can sell it back to them within 10 days and get a 75% refund. So if you buy a CD, copy it and return it, is that stealing? You're selling it back to the store as a used item, not selling it back to the record company. So the royalties to the artist and record company have been paid.
Is that stealing?

[Trumpy's Magic Snout]

phantomengineer said:

OK, here's an ethical question. Some record stores have a policy that if you buy a new CD you can sell it back to them within 10 days and get a 75% refund. So if you buy a CD, copy it and return it, is that stealing? You're selling it back to the store as a used item, not selling it back to the record company. So the royalties to the artist and record company have been paid.
Is that stealing?

No.

[Crowfan]

Sorry, I've never done that.

[Captain Hygiene]

What?! None.

[Krista]

I remember in 7th and 8th grade I had Kazaa. Great, until it destroyed the computer.

And now that I'm a bit older and wiser (I like to think) I won't steal music. Especially from smaller bands, which is the majority of bands I listen to. Unless the band sends me a free album (The guitarist of Pilot Scott Tracy sent me one) or says it's ok for someone else to give it to me (Alice Donut had no objections to someone shairing the song "Moon Pie" for me.)

So no, I don't steal it =]

[StreetDreamer83]

The only stealing I've done is through Napster, Audiogalaxy and WinMX. The one thing I've always done though is that I've went out and bought the albums of songs I downloaded. As an example, I would NEVER been a fan of Lindsey Buckingham, Billy Burnette, Christine McVie and many others had I not downloaded their music.

Matt

[Lounge Lizard]

I stole a Rush tape from a garage sale before.

[Mr. Atari]

Sadly, yes. I'll admit it.

In junior high, I would have friends dub cassettes for me of bands I figured I wasn't allowed to listen to (AC/DC, Van Halen, Guns 'n Roses, Iron Maiden, Metallica, etc.). That way, I could have the music, without the labels showing and alerting the folks. So not only was it theft, it was subterfuge. The joke's on me, though, since my parents wouldn't have noticed (nor cared) anyway.

Once file sharing became the rage, I would often go out and download songs I couldn't find elsewhere. Lots of '80s one-hit wonders, out of print stuff, or rarities from artists like Sting and Ben Folds. Once iTunes caught up, I started paying the $0.99 like an honest citizen.

[(busdrivertohell)]

Back in my klepto days I was a professional for stealing tapes from one of the music stores in the mall (back then we had 2) I had learned of a glitch in their security system that only scans for the security tags from a certain height, so what I used to do was take an extra huge cup from one of the food court extablishments (Usually Arbys), empty it, then put the lid back on with the straw, and act like I was drinking it. THen I would go to store, stuff 2 or 3 tapes in the cup (didn't have time to take them out of those white plastic thingies), then walk out, act like I had an itch in my armpit or like I was stretching, and raise the cup over the security sensors.

I maybe took a total of 100 tapes from that store over the time. It was mostly country (when I did have that phase), classic rock, and a little bit of the newer stuff (everclear, soundtracks, some of the current music of that time). A lot of it went towards my family or a coupla friends who were kleptos but were too nervous to do it. Nobody caught on at the store, mostly because they were teenage pothead slackers that played the same 2 or 3 albums in the store and liked calling everybody 'dude'.

That was in my 14-15-16 ish years. I don't klep anything anymore, even though back then it was like an addiction. I stole stuff for the high of the possibility of getting caught. Never happened. The music store and the fancy new security system was the mecca of kleptos everywhere back then. I defeated it.

Now I just run into burning buildings for an insane high.

[Skyroniter]

skyroniter name came from my Napster days. And I was one of the first on my block to have a cable internet connection. That combination was waaay too tempting. I don't do file-sharing anymore.

[Afgncaap5]

Define "stealing."

I've never done anything to keep royalties from artists, etc.

I have, however, been known to copy music onto my computer from CDs that I borrowed from the library.

Also: back when I "worked" in radio, I would occasionally swap fun little tunes with other radio guys so that we could find new cool stuff to put on the radio. When you consider that me playing those songs on the radio probably led to *more* money going to the artists, plus extra exposure, that's almost the opposite of stealing.

...almost.

Radio stations are lucky in some of the stuff they get. I was able to get a "clean edit" version of "Tribute" by Tenacious D. It's just as funny, and I don't have to worry about grandparents or younger kids in the car.