Free music or stealing?

WHEN Lucila Crena, a freshman at Emory University in Atlanta, turns off the light in her dormitory room at night to go to sleep, her computer is still working hard.

``There'll be like 30 things downloading at once,'' she says. By ``things,'' she means songs she is downloading illegally using Kazaa, a Napster-like program the music industry is trying to put out of business.

``Right now it's all Christmas songs,'' she says, ``but I've got a lot of swing and tango.'' She estimates she has 1,200 songs on her hard drive.

Her roommate, Jolyn Taylor, agrees that downloading music on the Internet is wrong, but he does it also.

Trent Reznor, lead singer of the rock group Nine Inch Nails, has something to say to the Emory roommates: ``Just because technology exists where you can duplicate something, that doesn't give you the right to do it. Once I record something, it's not public domain to give it away freely.''

Crena and Taylor have technology and the sheer weight of numbers on their side. According to a new poll by Ipsos-Reid, an independent marketing research company, more than 60 million Americans have downloaded music via the Internet - more than one-quarter of the population older than 12. Kazaa, one of the most popular downloading programs (also called file-sharing, because they allow individual computer users to share their files), is growing at a rate of almost 300 percent per year.

Reznor - along with a massive cohort of popular musicians including Missy Elliott, Neil Young, the Dixie Chicks, DMX and Elton John - have the law and morality on their side.

But the side with the law and morality appears to be losing, at least in the hearts and minds of music fans.

The result is the biggest disconnect between the law and otherwise law-abiding citizens since the days of Prohibition. Tens of millions of people are blithely breaking the law - and they know it. And most of the time, they just don't see what they're doing as particularly wrong.

``Some people don't know what's right to do, and some people don't want to do what's right,'' says Frank Breeden, president of the Gospel Music Association. The GMA is one of many organizations that work with the Recording Industry Association of America , which spearheads lobbying, lawsuits and educational campaigns to try to stem the downloading tide.

``People see this as an invisible, seemingly victimless activity, when the truth is it hurts the ultimate small business person, and that's the songwriter,'' who does not collect royalties, Breeden adds.

Randy Cohen, who writes the weekly ``Ethicist'' column for The New York Times Magazine, says he gets regular mail from music downloaders who realize that what they're doing isn't really right.

``They're hoping I can justify it for them,'' he says. But he won't. ``The central moral point is that you can't take someone's work without their permission.'' he says.

But Cohen acknowledges that the widespread nature and extreme ease of downloading music have made it a unique situation.

``People do this who would never in a million years go into a store and swipe a CD. Something a lot different is happening. There are temptations no ordinary human can resist,'' he says. ``And from the point of view of a kid, the music is already on her computer. It's all very good to say it's wrong, but the kids will just take it.''

Indeed, downloading is more a young people's game. The Ipsos-Reid poll found that more than 60 percent of people age 12 to 24 have downloaded music from the Net, compared with 19 percent of those 35 to 54.

``The students do not see anything wrong with it,'' says J.T. Gilbert, who teaches religious education at St. Pius X High School in Atlanta. ``(But) I don't necessarily blame my students for their naivete. To me the parents are the moral guides to their children's life. What we cover at school needs to be followed at home.''

Cohen blames the record industry for allowing matters to get to this point by overcharging for CDs and being slow to set up legal downloading systems.

In fact, just about everybody blames the record industry (except people who work for the record industry).

``I can't come up with an ethical argument to defend downloading, but I feel like I'm ripping off some big corporation, which doesn't feel as bad,'' says Mike Garmisa, an Emory senior. ``Companies are definitely fixing CD prices, and artists are getting such a small percent of the price.''

CD sales are down about 11 percent so far this year compared with last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan, while sales of blank CDs are expected to jump more than 40 percent this year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

Critics of the industry say there's no proven link between declining CD sales and soaring music downloading; the industry says it's obvious what's happening.

In addition to legal remedies - the industry is trying to put several file-sharing companies out of business, just as it did Napster - the record labels have also pushed their artists front and center in an attempt to convince downloaders that what they are doing is wrong.

A new group funded by the Recording Industry Association, called MUSIC (Music United for Strong Internet Copyright) has started a series of TV ads and a Web site (www.musicunited.org) featuring musicians speaking directly to their fans.

``We really look at it as stealing, because ... you're not paying for it,'' says hip-hop star Nelly.

``I'm all for getting a taste of something before you buy it, but when it becomes more than a taste and people begin hoarding the entire work, it becomes piracy, which results in a system in which artists are not being rewarded for their work,'' says Vanessa Carlton, who broke out earlier this year with the hit ``A Thousand Miles.'' Others, from Luciano Pavarotti to Eminem, also sound off on the group's Web site.

Ken Vaux, a fellow at the Center for Ethics and Values in the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Chicago, doubts the campaign will work on kids who have come to expect free downloadable music as virtually an entitlement.

``They'll say Eminem is 100 times a millionaire. Who cares if he doesn't get a royalty?''

The best solution, practically everyone agrees, would be for the record labels to set up their own system, where fans could download music legally for a reasonable fee.

``The record companies have only themselves to blame. They're dragging their feet, hoping they can still charge 20 bucks for a CD,'' says Cohen.

The labels have made a tentative start, with fee-based systems like MusicNet and PressPlay. But the systems still have huge gaps in their music libraries - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Alicia Keys, No Doubt and Billy Joel are among many major musicians not yet available. All are available on free, but illegal, systems like Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster.

``It's still wrong to do this,'' Cohen says, ``but the law has to seem reasonable to people.''

I certainly feel artists are entitled to their revenue from their craft

I do, too, but the mechanism of that revenue generation may be what changes. Rather than funnel a large amount of money through the front end of the recording industry, with numerous middlemen taking their 'cut', artists might be compensated primarily for live performances. Certainly, the possibility of being able to reach mass audiences through free distribution has given hope to a few artists who have not been sufficiently able to kiss the buns of the muckety-mucks in the recording industry.

All markets go through change, the entertainment industry is one that has seen rapid change within the last 125 years, starting with Edison's phonograph, and accelerating rapidly with broadcast means of dissemination. I'm sure that the music industry had a fit when radio became popular, I remember them having hissy fits when cassette tape recorders became cheap and widespread. Even the use of video tape recorders was legally questionable until the Supreme Court ruled it OK for personal use.

In the beginning, was the live performance by the artist. Oddly enough, technology may be returning us to that form of entertainment as the primary means of compensating a creator of pleasant aesthetic output.

"Certainly, the possibility of being able to reach mass audiences through free distribution has given hope to a few artists who have not been sufficiently able to kiss the buns of the muckety-mucks in the recording industry."

I agree there is a very positive side to this,my feeling is that if an artist or group wants to make their material available for free thats great.Ones that do not want to should have the ability to limit access if they want to get paid.

The people who write and perform the songs still have them to enjoy or sell to whomever wishes to buy them.

Let's see.... An artist invests his talent, effort, and probably no less than a few hundred thousand dollars to produce a CD.... But his is not the victim of theft (or more specifically a copyright violation) from the internet music pirates... because he can still enjoy listening to his new CD in his living room?

I'm sure that warms the artists hearts to know that. Real practical.

Fortunately, when the authors of our great constitution considered these issues, they created copyright law and and US patent office. In the Federalist Papers, their thought processes could be seen fairly plainly... Protection of copyrights and patents (limited monopolies) was deemed necessary to provide people/businesses with an incentive to innovate.

In the absence of such protection, where is the incentive to innovate? (Hint... There isn't any.)

The French that sided with the Vichy adhered to the rule of law, those French that protected the Jews sided with the natural order.

Seems you've got it backwards. The people who pirate music take the easy road: Violate a copyright with a small risk (for now) of getting caught, and thereby saving hundreds or thousands of dollars. The people who don't pirate music take the more difficult path... They part with their dollars, knowing full well that they could just violate copyright and save this money. But they don't out of principle and respect for the artists (as well as respect for the law).

And the law is often nothing more than a half-assed attempt to justify the will of the tyrant.

These laws aren't anything new. Copyright law dates back to our original Constitution.

The first amendment doesn't allow for any restriction whatsoever on the dissemination of source code or algorithms.

So are you saying that the patent office and US copyright law (which, btw, dates back to the original constitution) are unconstitutional?

Older copyright law and patent law most certainly does place restrictions upon the dissemination of ideas and information if those ideas and/or information are copyrighted or patented.

And violating the copyright on music CD's, videos, and software is most certainly illegal under old copyright law... It didn't become illegal because of the DMCA.

You seem to be in the unhappy position of trying to prove that our constitution is unconstitutional.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.