I recently had a discussion with someone who was in the process of scanning books so that people could have “free access to any and all books”. He viewed himself as a champion of the people; offering up his valuable time and effort in an act of a selflessness in order to be a provider of free knowledge. I was a bit surprised when he got offended and denied my assertion that he was ultimately stealing and that he was more thief than champion, especially in the eyes of the authors. The outright denial of his thievery, though took me aback, made me realize that his viewpoint is not uncommon.
Rather than beat a dead horse and speculate on the effects piracy has on various industries, let’s instead focus on the rarely discussed truth of what is really going on when you illegally download media. Let us get honest, shall we?
You are a jerk and thief
When it comes to illegal downloads, it is easy to forget that you are stealing. Especially since there is no physical object that is taken from the possession of another physical or perceived individual. People come up with lots of arguments to justify their actions: it’s just a copy, it’s not hurting anyone, it’s not like I’m taking a purse from an old lady, I’m helping expose the artist to people, I shouldn’t have to pay for music because I’m a DJ, I’m sticking it to the corporations and big businesses that are ruining the <insert industry here>, blah blah blah. Bottom line, you are taking something that is meant to be for sale and not paying for it. No matter what argument or justification you come up with, you my friend, are a thief.
You are a jerk because you are robbing the creator of the media and essentially saying, “your stuff is worth having but I’m not going to pay you for it because my desire to have it for free is more important than your desire to make money from your labor”. Despite how you feel about whatever corporations or middlemen that have their hands in the process from creation to distribution or in the overall economic pie, you are in fact taking money away from the creator of the media. Even if it is a paltry sum from that $0.99 song you just stole. As for all you DJs that are getting paid gigs and playing illegally downloaded music, you are thieves, jerks, and a-holes.
You are a jerk and communist
If you take the work/labor of another person and distribute it to the masses (effectively creating common ownership) you are taking part in communism. This is exactly what is happening when you download and distribute digital material. Not only are you a commie but likely a hypocritical one at that, as I highly doubt that you are sharing with the masses the compensation of your labor, your birthday money from grand-ma-ma, or for that matter, the computer you downloaded the media onto in the first place.
Doesn’t it seem like a bit of a jerk move to be like, “I know you wanted to make money from this but I’m overriding your desire to feed your kids with the compensation of your work and deciding that my desire to make it available for free to other people is more important”? I’d like to see how people would react if someone took their paycheck and distributed the money to the masses because they thought they should be working for free. But I guess that is harder than clicking a button, so it must be more wrong.
The truth of the matter
Even if everyone suddenly decided to be honest with themselves about what they are doing, I’m not confident that much would change. We live in a world where the new generations are increasingly demanding that things be given to them for free, yet that they be compensated for their own efforts. Companies and artists are continuously struggling to find new avenues of compensation for their labor (resurgence of physical media a la vinyl production, advertising revenues, ridiculous pricing for live performance, etc) but so far most efforts only seem to further screw the artists, and the fans for that matter. You may be getting that song for free but you are ultimately paying for it somewhere.
Not Your Jukebox 