You Don't Own It

The first kind of file sharing I think about when hearing the term is the one where people share music with others. That was the first file sharing I came across, in the form of Napster. A friend of mine was studying at the university, and had a very good internet connection. Someone had told her about Napster, a program which she had promptly downloaded.

When I got home I downloaded Napster. The program wasn’t working nearly as well on my 56k modem, and it took me about 15 minutes to download a song. In addition, I could only fit about 20 songs on my hard drive before having to get rid of one if I wanted to download another. I didn’t really think there was anything wrong with that, it more or less worked as any other demo.

Then Napster was shut down and I heard about Audiogalaxy, a similar program (although web based) that I used for a while. When Napster was shut down I thought a bit about the ethics surrounding downloaded copyrighted material. The practice, as I was told, was still legal in Sweden as long as you didn’t upload anything. So that’s what I did. The downloading I defended morally by it being so few songs, that I would buy the ones I really liked (an argument that many still use), and that most of the songs I downloaded like that were so rare that I wouldn’t be able to buy them in the stores in Sweden.

Since then, I have a much upgraded hard drive and internet connection. I can easily store all the music that I want on my hard drive, and as long as I can find someone who has it, I can download it in about five seconds.

How has that changed my thoughts about the matter?

I have a much harder time justifying downloading copyrighted material now than before. The argument that it’s ok to download songs that are so rare that you can’t find them anywhere, might still be reasonable. But the fact is that the legal alternative places to download music have grown so big now that you should be able to find most songs you could ever want there.

Personally, illegal file sharing hasn’t changed the numbers of CD’s I buy. I get the ones I really like, which is a maximum of three or four in a year. I didn’t buy more before that, and then music was way more important to me. I would never download a whole CD only to burn in onto a CD-ROM with printed sleeves from the actual cover.

But even so, the arguments against file sharing weigh heavier for me now. Well, actually I’m not even sure if it’s even worth arguing about. There’s really no twisting and turning, I just find it wrong.

The recording companies who own the songs have the right to ask for as little or as much as they want to. They may be greedy bastards, but that doesn’t change anything. I can decide that the music isn’t worth as much as they ask, but how on earth can I just say “nah, too expensive, I’ll go steal the song instead”? I don’t have any right to the songs unless I pay for them. Want it? Buy it. It’s really as simple as that.

You're the Song That I Want

I simply have to show a strip of the comic Zitz, found on another blog about ethics, I think it really portrays the discussions going on in many households regarding file sharing. At least it feels very familiar to me!

What Did You Learn in School Today?

Found an interesting post on the Slashdot newsportal about an idea the music industry has for teaching children that distribution of copyrighted material is bad.

I'll Follow the Law

I'm wondering if not many people have the terms ’legal’ and ’ethically correct’ confused. ‘There’s no law against it? Then it’s ok!’ is a very widespread idea.

Maybe it’s just the Swedish people who are very law abiding. I’ll take the smoking ban in restaurants as an example. Many smokers say, in retrospect, that the law is good, that it’s a good thing that people working in restaurants can now work in a smoke free environment.

What is very interesting here is that smoking in restaurants, pubs and clubs was very widespread before the law was passed. Smokers will now go outside for smoking, but what about before the ban? Did the smokers really need a law to change their opinions or open their eyes to it? It was perfectly possible to go outside to smoke even before the ban.

Is law = ethics?

Another example of this, one that is more related to technology, is TV Links. The site provides links to many streamed TV series, old and new. Sometimes the links don’t work (presumably when they sites hosting the video clips have been shut down), which you as a user can report, but most of the time you can watch episodes of The Simpsons, Grey’s Anatomy or Smallville without problems.

In the TV Links FAQ, one of the questions is ‘is this site legal?’ which is answered by a simple ‘we provide links, nothing is wrong with that.’ They also state that they ‘do NOT support downloading’.

I really don’t see the difference between hosting the videos and providing the links, from an ethical perspective. Legally there seems to be a distinction, sure, but is it right? For the user the videos are still only one click away.

If the people behind the site think that file sharing is perfectly fine, I guess there are no ethical problems with providing the links. But something feels weird, at least to me, when you perfectly well know that something is illegal, but support it just until the point where the law says no. When you follow the letter of the law, but not its intentions.