Is downloading music truly evil?

I recently came across this on my news website: Music giants sue single mum over downloads.  What burned in my mind was the level of the fine handed down for the music copyright infringement and the amount of subsequent court costs. Over 200k! That’s a lot of money. At the end of the article the writer suggests that the record company could have sued the woman for amounts in the millions if they have of looked at her files (around 1800) that she had illegally downloaded. So in thinking about the fine (more than you get for drink driving offenses in this country) I thought is it a dangerous thing or perhaps an ‘evil’ thing to be downloading music?

Definition of evil

Evil is defined as something wrong or injurious to someone else. Evil single mom pictured in the above article has downloaded 24 songs which landed her in court. I think it may not have gotten that far if another company wasn’t involved… which I think is more than likely the issue here. That said, I have framed this debate thus: is downloading music evil? Evil means I injure, harm or do certain bad things to others because of my cruel nature. Consider for a moment these people who have been cruel to animals in Queensland. Now that is evil towards animals. Note the fines and compare them with what the “evil” lady got for downloading music. Is there evil there? I think not.

I must be evil

When I was a youngster I frequently copied songs off the radio to listen to on tape afterwards. I would often take this tape to my friends house and play in there. This tape was copied and distributed to other ‘tape players’ in the house. I did this with the complete and full intent of ripping off the recording industry. Yes, I confess. I haven’t recorded a movie directly to DVD yet from my camcorder because it’s broken. I do not drink and drive, I don’t rob people, I don’t steal, lie or even cheat on my taxes. Yet all of those things combined wouldn’t amount to a fine of this size. To be honest, I doubt those artists would have even come close to generating that much from each song… given the ridiculous nature of the royalties they get. I am injuring artists. I am stealing their money. What a complete bundle of evil I am. Can you forgive me? You see the problem is I have limewire and well I am addicted. Is there a ‘pirates’ hotline I can call?

Are you evil?

If you download music you are evil. Let’s face it. You are taking away the right of Lars Ulrich to buy another mansion. After all, you are evil. Why don’t we ever ask the question: how come Metallica make so much money for doing something as frivolous as making music while the rest of us have to work until our eyes bleed? My father works for a very low wage in an Multiple Sclerosis  home and he would put in more work than most in the rock industry. Not to mention the millions of people who have a creative talent and never make enough money to pay the bills *cough* *cough* ME *cough*.

In a society where we face problems like global warming, poverty, sickness, disease and death surely our resources can be better spent elsewhere. Surely, there will be a time when we will move into common sense and make business models like Magnatune and Jonathan Coulton’s regular place. Radiohead are even involved and they are huge! I for one, think that we really need to move beyond silly court cases and towards actual solutions. These two I have shown above are but a handful of the good ideas that are floating around the web at present. If the long tail has taught us anything it’s that there is room for everyone no matter how eclectic, strange or downright nasty they may be. Surely, this nonsense has to come to an end some time.

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