It's confession time: I haven't always had a completely legitimate music collection. I know, I know, shocking but true. Like many people back in the '90s, I got hooked on the Napster phenominon - I love music, and I love collecting, so those two things mean that I aquired music at a fast rate. When you combine those two things with a broadband connection, you end up with a whole lot of downloads. I used Napster, Kazza, Morpheus, and Limewire to track down singles I liked off the radio. In my mind I justifued it as time-shifting radio singles. I also took it a step further though - I connected with people that had private FTP servers full of complete albums. I somehow slipped into a pack-rat mentality, where I was downloading albums of music that I had no interest in listening to (Dream Theater anyone?) for the sole purpose of having the music "just in case" I needed it for some reason. Like a friend coming over and saying "Man, I've just gotta' hear some Dream Theater!".
I've seen people who are really into warez follow the same pattern - they amass gigabytes of software they don't use, but keep it on the off chance that they might want to use it someday. I am a Christian, and consider myself a moral person, but somehow I had convinced myself that as long as I kept buying CDs, it didn't matter that I was downloading all this music. I'm admitting that I was wrong: no one should have downloaded music they didn't purchase.
Time Passes...
I grew older, and when Napster got shut down in 2000 it was a bit of a wake up call. I kept buying CDs, and only fired up Limewire when I needed a certain song. Back then, there were no online music services available to me in Canada. Slowly but surely, that changed, and I started to buy singles from Puretracks. But I still had all those MP3s I had downloaded in previous years. I wasn't sharing them online with anyone, but I still kept them. In fact, they were a bit of an annoyance because when I did a random playlist of all my music, I'd get music I had no desire to listen to. So I moved them into a folder outside my main music folder, again, just in case I needed that music.
I've always been highly opposed to warez (illegal software), and even DVD ripping if you don't own the DVD, but it wasn't until I encountered a guy in 2005 that took IP theft to a whole new level that I got the moral wakeup call. In addition to having the usual thousands of songs he didn't own from peer to peer networks, he also had a mod-chipped Xbox that allowed him to play game ROM images, watch Divx movies, etc. He had hundreds of Xbox games he didn't own. He had hundreds of movies and TV shows downloaded that he didn't own. I was quite upset by his total lack of regard for the intellectual property of others, but I realized I was a hypocrite by having music that I hadn't paid for. Conviction set in.
So my next step was to delete every song I didn't own. Nuke it all! I was happy to find out that only about 20% of my collection was music I didn't own, but that was 20% too much of course. As I deleted the music, I made a list of what music I liked and wanted to re-aquire legally. If it was one or two singles, I'd aquire them digitally from MSN Music. If it was a whole album or enough songs to warrant buying the album, I'd add it to my Amazon wishlist and purchase it later, or go to eBay and buy a used copy.
Foiled by Geography
One of the primary problems of course was that the best online music stores weren't available to me in Canada. MSN Music uses 160 kbps WMA tracks, which is great for quality, but MSN Music doesn't sell to Canadians. I've go around that by using gift certificates a friend in the USA would buy for me - once the gift certificates are activated in your account, anyone can use the credits to buy tracks. After I get the MSN Music tracks, I burn them to CD, and re-rip them as 256 kbps MP3s. I get DRM-free music that I can use anywhere I wish, and the quality still sounds great. I normally go to any lengths to avoid re-compressing an already compressed source, but I've been pleased (and surprised) at how good the tracks sound once they're in MP3 format.
Now that I'm 100% legit, I can honestly say I feel better knowing that I no longer have any illegally-gained music tracks. I continue to buy CDs and music singles, and knowing that my money is going towards supporting the work of artists I enjoy is a great feeling. What about you? Have you gone legit, or do you still dabble in the murky shadows of having music you don't own sitting on your hard drive? Join me in the light brothers and sisters! ;-)
Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife Ashley, his sometimes obedient dog, and he has a music metadata fetish.
Jason, I am glad to hear that I am not the only one the has "gotten legit". I am also a Christian and justified the stealing with several excuses. I make a Christmas CD every year for family, and last year I decided to do the right thing and buy the songs. I use MSN Music through WMP11 and I feel much better now.
They do make it hard for us though, don't they. I don't have quite the problems that you Canadian users do. But I wish the music companies would go back through their catalogs and rip everything. I know the limitation is the agreements that were made, but wouldn't it be better to make money off a song in your catalog that would otherwise be collecting dust.
Back in the heyday of Napster, you could (with enough patience) find ANYTHING. Now it is so hard to find some older, obscure music. It almost makes me want to fire up one of the old programs again...but I resist.
Back in the heyday of Napster, you could (with enough patience) find ANYTHING. Now it is so hard to find some older, obscure music. It almost makes me want to fire up one of the old programs again...but I resist.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I had my list of perhaps 400 songs that I wanted to buy singles of, and I bet 100 of those weren't available. Some of the songs were sold only if you bought the full digital album, some were completely unavailable (though listed in the MSN Music directory), and some of the artists didn't exist at all. Very frustrating!
Interesting story, though the tie-in with Christian morality is questionable. Certainly "intellectual property" is a concept predated by scripture, so blanket application of the biblical imperatives to avoid theft means - for one thing - allowing corporation and government alike to redefine and extend the definitions of ancient words.
In this circumstance, I'd say the reflective meanings of "property" and "steal" have achieved modern legal definitions that serve powerful interests all too well. This is no mere "rationalization" for downloading, but a thoughtful inquiry into the questionable use of religiosity to achieve capitalist goals.
For many, IP "theft" is merely mallum prohibitum - on the moral level of highway speeding or marijuana smoking. Certainly some modern evangelicals have constucted elaborate Paulian imperatives to obey thy modern government without question (again, a convenient subversion of faith for the purpose of population control). But many of us would say that living morally is not at the same to obeying the law.
As a follower of Christ, I'd personally suggest that the avoidance of factory farmed food products, advocacy for the homeless and direct protest against old-fasioned theft (in the form of global northern capital flows through profit repatriation and basic rape of the global south) are probably much higher on the list of moral priorities than how we acquire music files.
I like your desire to avoid hurting music companies. I'm just not sure where the faith part fits in - do you believe you are obeying a "do not steal" imperative, or just a (weaker) imperative to obey one's rulers?
do you believe you are obeying a "do not steal" imperative, or just a (weaker) imperative to obey one's rulers?
I'm not sure it's about 'obeying' anything but your own personal convictions. I think the christian reference was just a shortcut to tell us he believes stealing (in any form) is wrong, even if he at times side-stepped that belief.
Great piece. I have to say, I downloaded URGE today, and I'm really impressed with the depth of the catalog. There's even obscure stuff on there that I can't purchase on CD, and can't download on "other" Music Stores. I think URGE is a great way to entice people to "go legal" for only $10 a month. You get better selection, a better service and interface, and don't have any of those pesky legal problems to worry about.
You definitely win the prize for the most interesting post I've read in a long while...
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcries
In this circumstance, I'd say the reflective meanings of "property" and "steal" have achieved modern legal definitions that serve powerful interests all too well.
Not from where I'm sitting. I know many musicians, one of which has recently recorded an album and is signed to a major music label in the US for distribution. If I were to download her album from a P2P network, rather than buying it, I'm taking money directly out of her pocket. To me, that's theft. If someone takes 100% of the content from Digital Media Thoughts, puts it on their own server, and puts up their own banner ads, that's theft.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcries
But many of us would say that living morally is not at the same to obeying the law.
I would be one of those people as well - I rip CDs I own, bypassing whatever DRM restrictions the publisher puts on them. I rip DVDs I own, which if I were living in the USA would be a violation of the DCMA and therefor illegal (thankfully I live in Canada). I believe that fair use of content that I paid for is moral, even if some might consider it illegal. And I also have strong feelings about things that are legal but immoral - I don't want to get into that though, for fear of turning this thread into a discussion about something other than music. ;-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcries
As a follower of Christ, I'd personally suggest that the avoidance of factory farmed food products, advocacy for the homeless and direct protest against old-fasioned theft (in the form of global northern capital flows through profit repatriation and basic rape of the global south) are probably much higher on the list of moral priorities than how we acquire music files.
My article was in no way meant to imply that music theft is somehow the most important issue of the day - it's certainly not. I'm merely one voice making my story known. Me mentioning my faith was to point out that I adhere to a moral code.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcries
I like your desire to avoid hurting music companies. I'm just not sure where the faith part fits in - do you believe you are obeying a "do not steal" imperative, or just a (weaker) imperative to obey one's rulers?
It's less about "hurting" music companies and more about honouring the work that musicians put into their craft - I appreciate music deeply, and want to support the people making the music. Taking their work for free and not giving anything back is dishonest.
Fair enough... I don't doubt your good intentions Jason, but am interested in thinking/discussing more about morality and intellectual property. Ethics, philosophy, politics, economics and theology are all at play here
Now, I certainly didn't mean to appeal to the old "music studios are fat cats so it is okay to steal from them" thinking. That certainly is a rationalization. I mean to suggest that intangibles like ideas, performances (visual and audible) and abstract icons may not be proper objects of ownership in the moral and/or biblical sense. Certainly biblical imperatives against stealing could only have been aimed at physical/tangible goods, which at the time were the only kinds of property that received economic exchange (certainly documents, such as the scriptures themselves, were considered public domain!).
Our technological capability has evolved much further; we are thus forced to extract basic principles if we wish to connect faith here. Now, your basic working principle of "theft" seems to be an act that deprives a person of some profit. Is that a fair statement? Because there is no finite supply of mp3s for a given song; you cannot deprive the producer of any original product by copying - you only deprive them of pure cash. Such is the nature of intellectual property.
The problem here is that you can't really have deprived someone of legitimate profit unless you've first decided that the profit would have been legitimate, if made at all. Starting from a moral/biblical baseline of physical-only property, one cannot say "well I could make money this way or that way" and then claim that you have done wrong by not playing along. Eg. refusing to fork over your wallet to a street thug may deprive that thug of income, but most would say that the right to walk across his 'turf' is not a legitimate object of ownership, so he cannot legitimately profit from its sale.
While I think we can agree that our society has deemed it necessary to construct an elaborate intellectual property scheme to drive production in certain areas of the economy (namely technology, art, etc.), this does not necessarily imply biblical agreement with all that is economically necessary. There are numerous examples in the Bible of God's prohibition and disapproval of certain kinds of exchange; sex-for-money being an obvious example. Indeed, while opportunities abound in nature for all kinds of profit between humans, certain things are not for sale and therefore not "protected" by a moral imperative to purchase them.
This is where I would suggest a dissonance between biblical moral imperatives and public legal imperatives - and in such cases, political ethicists have been hard at work to determine just how we can be compelled to obey the law. Contractarians would say that we have somehow agreed to obey the law (and observe intellectual property rights) by virtue of living here. Libertarians would say not. Most people speed on the highway because if it were up to them, they never would have made the speed limit so low - and so, feeling no moral compulsion to keep an agreement to drive slowly, they disobey the law and accept the consequences.
They have done nothing morally wrong. I suspect that neither have I, when I disagree with an artist's right to charge a fee for every set of electrons that happen to produce the same sounds that they once recorded. I also think that if you feel differently, it's great that you've found a way to sync your practice with your opinion I just wanted to throw in the idea that many Christians and other good, morally upstanding people can posess different yet reasonable convictions.
That almost brought a tear to my eye. I'm glad your conscience feels better but at the end of the day laws are still being broken. It's like being "a little bit pregnant". (A) for effort though :wink:
Going Legit with Music: My Story
Linear Mode
