A reader writes:
If possible, could you write a piece on the blog about "Peer-To-Peer
Filesharing".
This has been in the news recently with the Supreme Court decision
especially regarding the liability of Peer To Peer Networks.
If possible, could you address the specific act of filesharing
generally, . . .
Okay, lemme stop you there for a moment. I don’t know that I have any thoughts (at this point) on P2P filesharing that would be distinct from what I’ve already written about downloading music in general (see the moral theology category for those posts). P2P is simply a different method of delivery, but the same considerations apply . . . at least as far as morals go.
There may be other legal and technological considerations that apply. F’rinstance: My impression is that it is quite easy for the record companies to track and sue you if you use P2P systems. I don’t know if they’re any easier to be traced than other forms of extra-legal downloading, but the risks and costs of getting sued over this would be sufficient, quite apart from the moral grounds, to deter me from doing this.
. . . and if possible:
1. Iis there a distinction morally between people who download files
to hear what the song is like, and then go out and buy it immediately
after having listened to it and delete the downloaded file on their
computer then and the people who download songs to keep them without
any intention of buying them.
Is there a moral distinction? Yes, there is. The former is something that I would not see as intrinsically morally problematic. The sin of theft is taking or using another person’s property against the reasonable will of the owner. If you are trying out a song to see if you want to buy it then that does not strike me as against the reasonable will of the copyright owner.
The latter, though, is theft–at least the way the economy is structured at present–since you would be circumventing the reasonable will of the copyright owner by denying him the just compensation for the copy of the music that you are making so that you can add it to your collection and listen to it on a regular basis (as opposed to sampling it to see if you want to purchase it).
It would be ideal if there was a one-play file format that you could download songs in so that you could listen to them once and make your decision, following which the file would be unplayable. Unfortunately, there ain’t such a format at present (at least not in wide circulation). As a result, the record companies and (more importantly) the lawmakers have no way of knowing that this is your intent in downloading, and so the law is crafted so that they can sue you for large sums of money.
As a result, I’d advise you to go to iTunes or Amazon or somewhere that you can simply listen to excerpts of songs and make your decision based on the excerpt.
Even if you guess wrong, you’ll likely only be out 99 cents or 88 cents or 77 cents of whatever the price is of the service you’re using. That’s worth it to me not to have the risk of getting sued.
NOTE FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE WONT TO OBJECT THAT THE ABILITY TO MAKE DIGITAL COPIES AT INFINITESIMAL COSTS SOMEHOW CHANGES THE RULES OF THE MARKETPLACE ON ALL THIS: We’ve already hashed through this subject before, and I don’t want to hash through it again just now, thanks.
2. What about files offered such as the U2 "Unreleased songs" or Live
in Dublin 1989 or Live in Mexico" U2 Concert files which are only
availabe through iTunes if you pay £119.99. They cannot be purchased
separately. How immoral is it to download these songs?
I presume that there are commercially available versions of the same songs out there for purchase. They might not be identical to the ones done in concert in Dublin or Mexico City or wherever, but it seems to me that the fact that there are reasonable approximations of these songs out there makes it (a) within the reasonable will of the owner to not release these and (b) makes it not-worth-the-risk to download them illegally. One should simply buy the standard commercial versions and make do with those.
If one really wants the materials and one has to pay £119.99 for them then, since there is no establishable economic value for the works apart from what the market mechanism will provide, you either buy them or you don’t. You could write the artists or the record companies and say, "Y’know, I’d buy these if you’d come down on the price or make them available individually for download rather than as a batch, and I think a lot of other people would be willing to do so as well. But as it is, I just can’t afford what you’re asking, so it’s costing you my sale and probably a lot of other sales as well." If enough people contact them and tell them that then it will help the market mechanism do it’s job of establishing the optimal price for these.
At least this is the way I’d tend to approach the situation in the absence of some compelling reason that would (a) make it worth the risk of getting sued (neutralizing the legal concern) and (b) make it contrary to the reasonable will of the copyright holder (neutralizing the moral concern).
If there are commercially available versions of the same songs out there for purchase then, even if they aren’t note-for-note identical, it’s hard for me to imagine what such a reason might be.
