Legal & Ethical Questions in the PC Audio Age

Frank, thanks for your well written reply. Overall, I tend to agree with you. It's a shame more folks don't think that way about ethics, it would make the world a better place to live.

Cheers,
John

Yes my tone was sarcastic. Yes, I own a computer, stereo, cds, tv, etc. and I am as unethical as the next guy. It's just that with all the terrible injustices in this country and the world, I find it very hard to get worked up about giving away cds.

To me, for one example, hard drug dealers are thousands of orders of magnitude worse than people who give away copies of cds. When the drug dealers are all dead or in prison, and all the stealing, robbing, killing, violence, fear, poverty, human exploitation and moral degradation they cause has subsided, then I will consider shedding some tears for the Rock stars and record companies.

Next, yes there is enough food in the world to feed everyone and how to get it to the people who need it without destroying the local economy and making people dependent on charity is a serious problem. But there are charities that work on this problem ethically and effectively.

I don't consider myself to be a highly ethical person or a role model for anyone. I am as flaweded as anyone on this list. I just thought I'd try to put the problem under discussion into some perspective and maybe redirect some of that moral indignation toward more serious injustices.

Kijanki,
Ethical relativism is still equivocating(sp?). Ethical behavior tries to avoid such things, such as saying well this is much worse. Do we all do things that are less than examplary, probably to some extent. It is the willingness not to that moves the bar towards a better world, not the thought that these scoundrals, thieves and worse are much, far more, worse than me.
Not claiming any ethical high ground just postulating a view that perhaps one can move towards, including me.

Uru975 - Agree. Nothing can excuse unethical behavior but if not for people copying and downloading - CDs would be over $30 (monopoly+demand) and many people wouldn't be able to afford them. This is more to even the field and in this particular case I believe that victim fully deserves it and had it coming.

A couple of responses to a couple of points made.

On the argument that there are more serious problems in the world, so let's not get too worked up about a few cds - agreed, within limits.

To me, the limit is obvious: I either can't or won't do anything about some big moral issues. That doesn't excuse me from small moral issues that come along.

As to why a library can lend out a book or cd: only one person at a time has use of the item, assuming he doesn't make a copy.

The general ethical rule, I think, is - if you're not creating a copy for another party's use, you're ok.

So if I buy a cd and loan it to a friend, I'm fine. If I make a copy first for my own use, I'm not.

Can this get to absurd tiny slices fast? Yep. But just because it can get silly, it doesn't mean you can treat the larger question as unimportant - especially if you're deeply committed to music and musicians.

Finally, a comment: I'm no lawyer, but in my view the act we're talking about here is *not* stealing.

It's more in the realm of violating a civil contract between you and the record company, and should be settled without the moral panic the record companies attach to this issue.

In my opinion, this has never *really* been about casual copying. I believe the record companies' real point was to use the moral panic to impose air-tight use restrictions, so that you had to pay a fee to listen to the item at home, another one to listen in your car, a third for use on your iPod, etc.

If you think this is silly, consider what's going on in the motion picture industry, where you now get 'free' copies of the movie - along with the dvd - to play on your portable player. In fact, the newly reissued dvds with the digital copies are slightly more expensive than the copies they replace.

So to bring it all back around - the reason to not sell the cds you've made copies of is to be ethically ok yourself, and not because you like/respect/have sympathy for the majority of the audio industry.

Scott A.