Is It Cool to Fileshare Music? – Part 2
Posted on 22. Jul, 2010 by Hector Aviles in Blog
The Moral and Financial Aspects of mp3 Music Sharing
I don’t have to tell you that from a legal perspective you can’t do mp3 file sharing. If the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) finds out, they will sue you for as many millions of dollars as they can to send you to the poor house for the rest of your life and make sure you never buy a house or send your kids to college. The way they see it, that’s the punishment you deserve for breaking the law. But I don’t want to share how I really feel about them right now. That and the legal matter of this issue is a whole different conversation.
The question is do you think you are doing something wrong by sharing your music? What about if you share it online, with some folks that are not close friends or that you may not even know? Why would you think the latter is wrong, but the 1st situation isn’t? Will the artist loose thousand of dollars if you share the mp3 files on the web?
This is a discussion we’re having at a Yahoo Group on Latin Jazz. From a moral standpoint, I think the lines are moving. The act of sharing is not morally bad. I encourage my kids to share what they have with others, be that toys, food, or other things. Sharing music online seem morally wrong because it is illegal. If it were legal would you see still see it as morally wrong?
Perhaps you may feel its morally wrong because you are robbing the artist. Now this case is interesting. Artists that sell many CDs will loose money if you share their music mp3 files on the web. But what about less known artists?
The last part of this blog topic will be:
The More People That Get the Music, the Better
Related LatinoMusicCafe.com Blogs:
Is It Cool to Fileshare Music? (Part 1)
Related posts:
Rpinero
19. Aug, 2010
There are two points in your argument that are joined together only in the mind of an literalist.
The fact that something is illegal does not imbue that something with the rubric you call morality. the reverse is also true.
The argument for this should be seen in the sense of property rights, I own product “x”, be that music, refrigerator, couch, etc. As owner of product “x”, I should be able to do with that product what i wish.
Put another way…if I record a TV show and skip commercials, am I depriving the sponsors of revenue?
As I commented on another post…I’ve had friends share music with me that I probably would never have listened to, my taste in music is rather eclectic, runs mainly to jazz and what is commonly called salsa, to make a long story short, I was turned on to a CD by Roswell Rudd; not sure as to whether I had heard any of his material i ended going to ‘the google’ and sure as shit, i ran across a CD he did with Yomo Toro, which to this day I consider on of the finest CD’s I have ever listened to.
To share or not to share should never have been a decision by RIAA to undertake, there rights end where mine begin.
Hector Aviles
30. Aug, 2010
I agree with you that sharing music is only valuable. Some see it as a form of “small pirating” but i think that at the end of the day, it causes a viral effect that ultimately benefits the artist.
Spreading music virally (through social interactions) works –> look what that YoiuTube video did for Susan Doyle.
The RIAA want to stop anything that is not buying software and their position is absolutely no freebies, regardless of whether it benefits the artist or not. To me, the RIAA is like an ostrich with their head in the ground oblivious of the new uses of technology in society.