Downloading isn’t Stealing!
Aaron Swartz wrote an awesome little explanation of why downloading is sharing, not stealing:
Stealing is wrong. But downloading isn’t stealing. If I shoplift an album from my local record store, no one else can buy it. But when I download a song, no one loses it and another person gets it. There’s no ethical problem. Music companies blame a fifteen percent drop in sales since 2000 on downloading. But over the same period, there was a recession, a price hike, a 25% cut in new releases, and a lack of popular new artists. Factoring all that in, maybe downloading increases sales. And 90% of the catalog of the major labels isn’t for sale anymore. The Internet is the only way to hear this music. Even if downloading did hurt sales, that doesn’t make it unethical. Libraries and video stores (neither of which pay per rental) hurt sales too. Is it unethical to use them? Downloading may be illegal. But 60 million people used Napster and only 50 million voted for Bush or Gore. We live in a democracy. If the people want to share files then the law should be changed to let them. And there’s a fair way to change it. A Harvard professor found that a $60/yr. charge for broadband users would make up for all lost revenues. The government would give it to the affected artists and, in return, make downloading legal, sparking easier-to-use systems and more shared music. The artists get more money and you get more music. What’s unethical about that?
The Downloading isn’t Stealing! by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
January 18, 2007 | Filed Under Personal Thoughts
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2 Responses to “Downloading isn’t Stealing!”
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You are right. A graph of CD sales shows a steady drop year after year until the year that napster happened; during that year CD sales rose to double the previous figure. They bought Napster off and closed it down and CD sales went back to falling steadily year after year. I would guess that is because it revitalised people’s interest in music at all and let them audition loads of stuff that they then went out and bought. But the media companies don’t seem to get it, being more hung up on some terrible fear that somebody may be getting something without paying, rather than producing good quality product, well packaged at a good price, which is what any normal business would do to remain competitive.
Aaron is usually right :-)