Copyright or wrong?

Is downloading music from the internet without paying really stealing?

The issues of copyright and piracy are rarely far from the headlines these days, particularly the dire threats supposedly posed to the music and film industries by illegal online file-sharing.

I'm anti-copyright and pro-piracy. Tut.

In this month's excellent Third Way magazine, comedy script-writer and regular columnist James Cary expounds on why we should pay for content rather than expecting a free ride. Appropriately enough, you can only read his article in full if you subscribe (I'm tempted to give out the login details but sadly I've not managed to get hold of mine yet, though I'm a subscriber). He concludes with the words 'But Christians should know that stealing from the rich is still stealing, isn't it? And stealing is still bad, right? We haven't exegeted our way out of that one, have we?'

As an amateur musician/song-writer myself and someone who's enthusiastically embraced the potential the internet offers to music-lovers, I'm interested in these issues. And I have to say that, unlike Cary, I'm pretty much entirely anti-copyright and pro-piracy. And me calling myself a Christian. Tut.

Yes, downloading or copying music without paying for it is certainly illegal in most parts of the world - but is it stealing, and just how wrong is it really?

What is theft?

For a start, I'd say that it all rather depends on your definition of stealing, and crucially on who's defining it and for whose purposes and benefit. For example, the UK copyright law that works stay in copyright for 70 years after their creator's death seems designed almost entirely to protect companies' interests and profits.

A music file simply isn't an item of property or a possession in the same way that, say, your computer or your car is

A music file simply isn't an item of property or a possession in the same way that, say, your computer or your car is. Copying or downloading a music file does not take anything away from someone or deprive them of anything, except the putative income they could have generated from it had you chosen to buy it - which you may well not have done. It's not like you've broken into someone's house and nicked their CD collection, or even shoplifted from HMV.

Who's robbing who?

Of course, even if it is stealing, robbing the rich (and the faceless system) to benefit the poorer is culturally enshrined in British mythology through Robin Hood and the romantic (though admittedly false) myth of pirates. This may not make it morally right, but there's a lot of power and truth in myth and I for one am on the side of the outlaw Robin Hoods against the Sheriffs of Nottingham, however legally in the right they may be. Laws don't always serve the common good or the common people, and in my opinion the outgoing government's Digital Economy Bill sucks big time.

I'd also be inclined to argue that it's the record companies who are actually guilty of stealing from the music-buying public - and probably the artists - by charging far more than is necessary for CDs and taking far too large a cut of the profits.

There are so many free ways of accessing music now via the internet that it becomes a ridiculous splitting-hairs technicality to say that listening to it for free any time you like on Spotify, we7, Grooveshark or YouTube (etc) is fine, but downloading it free to your mp3 player from a number of sites that I won't list is wrong.

I need to find the actual evidence here, but I'm pretty sure that it's been shown that those who download music illegally also tend to be the biggest buyers of legal music. Cutting off illegal file-sharers from the internet is ultimately biting the hand that feeds the music industry.

As an aside, we also have the moral dilemma - is it morally right for Christians to financially support the decadent and self-destructive lifestyles of some rock stars by buying their songs? If not, does that mean we also mustn't listen to their music, which in a sense is separate from them and bigger than them?

Free music for all

Cords, notes and rhythms are no-one's possession - music should be free and available to all

This leads nicely into my main argument, which is simply that chords, notes and rhythms are no-one's possession and that music, like birdsong, should be free and available to all. This may sound hopelessly idealistic and old-fashioned, but there are various ways it could be sustained - for example by a model of rich patronage (as in Mozart's day, though admittedly he didn't do well out of it), or by donation (like the Covent Garden performers' model), or by self-support (e.g. Borodin, who was a chemist by trade as well as an amateur - but brilliant - composer). We don't have to buy into the current model of commodifying, professionalising and industrialising everything, including the arts.

As I said, I'm an amateur musician/composer/song-writer myself, albeit not a successful one who stands to lose out from piracy. You're more than welcome to listen to my music for free at http://sites.google.com/site/harveyscorner/songs or download it from http://sites.google.com/site/harveysongs/music.

Excuses, excuses?

So is all this just a bunch of self-justifying excuses so that I can get on with downloading music? Probably. I don't really believe that it's morally righteous and noble to pirate music, but I just don't think it's that wrong either. Let him who has never broken the speed limit or nicked soap from a hotel room cast the first stone. :-)

And let the last word go to 'Weird Al' Yankovic with his superb parody Don't download this song...