JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Petition to stop P2P-users abuses

Steggy,

It's not illegal to record from your tv, as long as you use it for yourself and are not making money from it. It is also not illegal to record one of your cd's as long as you use it for yourself and are not making money from it. What is illegal, is if you record from your tv and offer your copy for others to record, or if you record a cd and put it on the internet for others to record.

The problem everyone here is wrestling with is that songwriters, artists, and music businesses have a right to be paid for their work. When their work is on tv, the tv stations pay them for it. The consumer then has a right to copy this for themselves as long as they are using it fairly, and not distributing it in a way that the artists, songwriters and music businesses are not getting paid. It is illegal, however, to offer those copies to your freinds to copy from...remember, with digital copies, each copy is as good as the original. You see, your friends didn't copy it from their tv. They didn't watch the commercials you did, or pay your cable bill, which in turn paid the artists, songwriters, and music businesses. Your friends didn't buy the cd which paid the music people, they just want a copy because...it's free.

It's the same with the internet, only it's a lot more easy to offer copies to your friends. You might have bought a cd and put it on your computer, which is fair, you paid money which went out to the music people. When, however, you offer it to other internet users to copy, both you and those users are engaging in an activity that prevents the music people from making money.

The hard part of the problem is that people think because the music is on their computer, or available on somone else's computer, that it is their right to copy it. No...that's why the law is called a "copyright" law. The people who made the music are the only ones who have a right to tell the consumer how they can copy it. That's why your dvd movies all start with an FBI warning.

Think of it this way...McDonalds offers you free ketchup with your meal. If you filled your pockets with ketchup packages and then offered it to your friends who didn't buy the hamburgers, would that be right? It is McDonalds' right to offer free ketchup with certain conditions.

So, here is a moral dilemna for you. Now that you know it is illegal and, although in a minor way, damaging to the artists, songwriters, and music businesses, do you continue p2p sharing? Don't answer that, just think about it. Do I think it's morally wrong? Yes, but about to the same degree as speeding while driving...or taking extra ketchup home from McDonalds...or cheating on my income tax...or drinking alcohol while flying my plane...or...well, come to think of it, this is a problem the old philosophers had with morality. Socrates knew he was right and the state was wrong, but he accepted their punishment and drank the hemlock which killed him, because he also knew that to do otherwise was immoral. Ghandi and King practiced civil disobedience as a political tool, but they did it openly. If one is to download as a protest because the RIAA is corrupt, then one should do it openly and publicly.

Well, I'm starting to ramble here. Anyway, nobody thinks ill of you. Being an adult is full of these little moral dilemnas, we're just arguing about it here because we are the people who are most closely involved in the problem.

All the Best,
Mike

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Mike Dunbar Music