Morally Wrong (Napster - Should Music Be Free To Share?)

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Napster - Should Music Be Free To Share?
Date:	08/02/01 (402 review reads)
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No internet user or music lover can be unaware of the debate currently still raging over the copyright issue of music passed on in digital format. At the heart of this debate is a company by the name of Napster. Napster allows you to download a program which then trawls the web for mp3s and allows you to copy them from one machine to another. Through a serious legal loophole, this means that you can basically get all your favourite albums from the internet with no personal loss to yourself other than the time spent downloading them. With the introduction of mp3 players as well, there really is little need to ever buy a CD again...

Undoubtably this is a loophole which is set to close as there is simply too much money being lost by companies which are too big and too powerful to have their voices left unheard for long, but until that time comes we can enjoy the benefits of actually getting something for nothing...or can we? The problem is that there are not only serious ethical issues here (basically its little better than stealing) but by using Napster in this way you are effectively taking money away from the people whose music you like so much - thus hardly encouraging them to make more of the same. The arguments thus fall into two camps - those for and those against, with good arguments coming from either side - argument which I will look at in further detail below.

1) Record companies can afford to lose a bit of money.

In one sense I would have to agree. The music industry makes a fortune every day from us, particularly the British where the prices charged for CDs are astronomical when compared to other countries. No one can justify why we should pay upwards of £14 for a CD whilst other countries pay far less than £10. I'm sure it's a matter of economics somehow, but you just can't shake that feeling that somewhere along the line we are being shafted. However, this line of argument sounds rather too much like the argument fr
om the shoplifter or bankrobber - they can afford to lose a few items/bit of cash, they're big enough to take it...truth it may be, but at the end of the day who ends up paying for it. Undoubtably were this trend to continue then we the consumer would end up paying as the price of CDs would rise to compensate for it. Eventually too, the loophole which is currently Napster would also close and we would have only ourselves to blame for rising the prices. Furthermore, I am a little worried by the use of an argument more commonly applied by a common thief to justify one's own activities...

2) Surely it's the same as lending a record to a friend?

Yes, in some ways it is, however, your friend probably doesn't have a record collection which covers every single song by every single band ever to exist. Furthermore, there is a difference between borrowing music from a friend and copying that music onto a cassette so that you never have to buy the album yourself which would effectively count as piracy and be an illegal activity. Yes we have all done this at some stage of our lives and go away thinking nothing more of it but in effect this is little more than piracy and takes money away from the record industry, bands and ultimately hits the genuine music lover as prices increase. Napster increases the likelihood of this sort of thing to happen by the sheer size of the 'database' at its disposal so that rather you having a friend who has already bought the album who then gives you a copy and maybe another friend as well, what you end up with is one person somewhere in the globe who buys the album and a couple of thousand(if not more) people who then obtain copies of it. The amount of money therefore effectively 'stolen' from the music industry ends up being astronomical.

3 If Napster didn't exist then there would be someone to step in its shoes

This again may be so, but this hardly justifies its existence i
n the first place. Its like saying if I didn't steal that money then someone else would simply because the opportunity presented itself. There may be a blind side in the law at the moment which Napster is exploiting but that does not mean that everyone has to forget their morals and jump in feet first into the free for all. Yes, undoubtably someone would fill Napster's shoes, and when they start charging a subscription to use their dubious service from the summer, then another company will surely step in to take over their original mantle until the issue is resolved finally by legislation. Until that time, there is a moral question to be asked of oneself before diving in and grabbing the freebie.

I suppose also the Napster user can be divided up into different categories. There are those who download files, sometimes an entire album, intend to keep them, have an MP3 player and never intend to purchase a CD ever again. There are others who download files as a try-before-you-buy kind of thing, listening to tracks and purchasing the album if they are impressed by it. There would also be many more in between but this is not the place to go into thousands of different scenrios. The point is that if the users of Napster intended to buy albums then there would be little problem here, the problems arise with the people who never intend to buy a CD again as they believe that its ok to download them for free off the internet. This latter view can only have detrimental consequences on the music industry and quite simply can not be allowed to continue unchecked.

I do not believe that music is free to share amongst all and sundry as there are people out there who put a huge amount of effort(and money) into bringing that music to your ears and to say that they deserve no reward for it is ludicrous. I myself am no saint, despite my comments above, as I too have used Napster frequently for downloading music files but it simply shouldn't be the case th
at we carry on doing so without thinking about exactly what it is we are doing - which is basically morally wrong. Music can not simply become 'free' just because the medium by which it is delivered has changed, surely anyone can see that. Surely you can all see that the bubble will one day burst - and the people left paying for the music industries losses will eventually be us anyway.

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