Bombs over Baghdad

Facinating blog from some guy in Baghdad. Contextually, extremely interesting. A voice from the other side of the wall.

To Kazaa or not to Kazaa: the slings and arrows of a moral dilemma

Poor Chelsea. She wants to listen to the new, unreleased, Massive Attack album, but cannot because she is racked with guilt over the moral implications of downloading the music over the internet. She cites her boyfriend's arguments about "artists rights, copyrights, appreciating the music as intended by the artist and other such things."

On the other hand, I have downloaded the entire Massive Attack album from Kazaa. And yet, I feel no guilt. I feel only the simple pleasure of enjoying some fanastic music.

Should I be concerned about my "stealing" of music?

First, a little history about artist's rights and copyright protection. Copyright was first established in the 17th century in England to protect writers from the near monopoly of publishing that existed at the time. Artists and writers, originally, had to pay for their works to be published, then allow the publisher to make massive profits off their works with no legal recourse. Copyright protection returned the ownership of works to the authors for a limited period of time to allow them to recover the costs of publishing. What the original copyright protection did, and what the intent of all copyright legislation since then has been, is to protect artists from being exploited by other people making money off of their work. Note that the intent of copyright does not say anything about consumers.

Most people still understand copyright in this way, and I believe, most people, including me, feel that it's wrong for people to make money off of artist's work, without at least providing some sort of "royalty" or other form of compensation. The people selling counterfeit CD's or bootlegs are in clear violation of this moral principle. This applies first and foremost, of course, to record companies who, through creative accounting, slave labour type contracts or simple trickery, do not adequately compensate their artists for the profits they make off of them.

I do believe that artists need this type of protection. Even in the absence of copyright law, it would be morally wrong to exploit the work of other people. (Although you objectivists out there might disagree with this.)

In this regard, I will promise to pay artists 100% of the money I have earned from downloading their music.

You see my point? From the downloader's perspective, the act of downloading itself is not wrong according to the intent of the copyright ethic. I'm not making any money off of the artists. I'm not selling the music to other people. I'm not even accepting money for advertising because of the music I have stored on my hard drive. I, as the downloader, am not exploiting the artists in any way.

I think this is an obvious point, but I just want to make it clear. Imagine an alternate universe where everything was the same except that the record companies thought peer-to-peer sharing was acceptable. Nothing else changes, except the attitude of the record company, and consequently any insinuation that downloading is a "crime."

If my downloading is wrong, it is only wrong because the record companies say that it is. If there is any injustice in my downloading, it is due to a lack of coordination between the people making money off the downloading of music (however small that is), the record companies who feel that they should be making the money, and the artists. This is not my problem. I could even make an argument that the record companies should be *paying* Kazaa for providing the infrastructure for the distribution of the music, but that would be on much shakier ground. Either way,I believe the only real injustice in this system from a moral point of view is the stubbornness of the record companies in entering into a fair revenue sharing scheme with the owners of the downloading software. I say, sort your differences out and get back to me.

But, you may ask, don't I feel the least bit of guilt because I know that no money is getting to the artists themselves? If I bought a record or a single through conventional means money gets through to the artists, but by downloading, somebody makes some money of which none goes to the artist. This is true, but I feel, irrelevant. I don't want to spend $20 plus tax to buy an album. In fact, many of the songs I download I would never buy in CD form at any price. TATU is a good example of this. As much as I enjoy their songs, I would never pay for it, but downloading it is worth it for me. You've probably made the equivalent decision if you've bought a used CD. With a used CD, you haven't paid full price, and none of the money goes to the artist. In fact, I would argue that buying used CD is worse from a moral position than downloading it. Not only is a third party profiting off an artist without compensating him or her, but the rise of the used CD store have turned CD's into easily liquitable assets and created a market for real, physical theft.

On the other hand, by downloading music I am simply exercising my rights as a consumer to choose how much I value things. And for peer-to-peer networks, I believe the reason that no money goes to the artists is because the record companies doesn't want this revenue stream.

Let me explain, peer-to-peer distribution networks are in the process of radically changing the value of music. The peer-to-peer system is so efficient, convienent and easy that the value of music per unit is radically changed. You no longer need record stores, record store employees, no physical costs, no transportation costs. All pretty much gone. And as consumers, we recognize this.

I know that pretty much everyone who might read this is a good capitalist, and therefore understands that there is no such thing as intrinsic value in the capitalist system. Things are worth how much people pay for them. Period. With CD's and other forms of physical methods of distributing music, people were willing to pay $1 or $2 per song to own a copy. How much is a song worth in Kazaa? We can estimate this. Roughly 3 billion songs were exchanged last year on Kazaa. I'm not sure how much money Sharman networks made last year, but let's be incredibly generous and assume $100 million. That means that each song is worth 3 cents. And in actual fact, each song is probably worth much, much less. So I can see how artists and record companies are concerned that something that used to be worth $2 is now worth about a penny.

But that's just too bad. If you want to live in a capitalist society, you've got to take your profits with your losses. If a downloaded song is only worth a penny, then no amount of legislation can make it more valuable. The ultimate source of valuation is the consumer. Artists, of course, are entitled to a piece of what ever value is created by their work. But no one is entitled to unilaterally dictate the size of that value.

You can have a piece of the pie, but you can't make the pie any bigger than it is.

The reason record companies refuse to engage legitimate discussions of revenue sharing with those making money off of downloading music, is it would mean that they would have to recognize that the value of their product had dramatically changed. By maintaining their current stance, the companies continue to artificially inflate the value by means of intimidation of consumers (calling them thieves), collusion with other record companies, and monopolistic business practices (by criminalizing other forms of distribution that threaten to be more efficient than their own).

I, for one, am not about to support this kind of what I believe to be immoral activity. I will continue to support peer-to-peer distribution system and refuse to purchase music from record company. I would prefer that the people making money of the distribution system could enter into agreements to compensate the artists for the money they make off of them. But I don't believe this will happen unless the record companies are forced into it. And there's only one way to do that.

And by Kazaaing, end it.