Tuesday, March 4

Tried to post something...and failed. let's try again.

MP3s and social norms:

I'm too lazy this afternoon to retype what I did in the failed post, so I'll sum up the thoughts.
What should we, and what does, society think of downloading mp3s. My thinking in this area has been only along lines of Larry Lessig/Legal debates on whether a copyright is infringed. Clearly, a copy right is infringed. But, what does that mean? Is infringment more similar to tucking a new shirt in a bag and walking out of a store...or more like j-walking? To wit: theft, or petty offense?
The standard argument I hear is this: when you download an mp3, you get something that you would otherwise pay for, thus you steal. Is this necessarily the case?
Quickly, my response is no. Stealing necessarily involves one loss for one gain. One stolen shirt is added to a person's closet for each stolen shirt deleted from the display rack at the store. With mp3 trading, this is not necessarily the case. Rather, (in my experience) it is only a gain situation. I download a song, but there is no song being lost from the record store. If i did not download the song, i would not purchase it. Quick example: I downloaded a backstreet boys song the other day. This is, as far as i can imagine, not something i would buy if it were not available online. What has happened is this- i gained a song, but, because i would never buy it, no one has lost the income that would otherwise belong to them. There is no negative result from my positive gain.
Of course, this only works in the my narrow experience. But if stealing NECESSARILY involves one person's loss with another's gain, mp3 trading is not stealing.