Music Piracy

"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his conditions, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expandable over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."

               Thomas Jefferson

 

When Napster was facing lawsuits I remember bands that were on independent record labels were coming together and going out on tour supporting Napster. Bands like New Found Glory, Saves The Day and Alkaline Trio were just a few of the bigger bands on these nationwide tours. Bands such as these were more interested in having people find their music and come to a show. Not only does this help get people to come to their shows but when they come and they like what they see, the new fan will hopefully buy a shirt and tell their friends about them.

 

I’m not going to lie. When Napster in its prime I was addicted to downloading music, I would make a list of bands I wanted to find to download. Napster was a great tool for finding new music, and I took full advantage of it. It never crossed my mind that I was stealing from people. Here was a program that I could download for free, and then use the program to find music. Call it being naïve but I thought I wasn’t doing anything wrong.  Why would this program exist if I could use it? Back then the copyright laws were different, and the digital files weren’t protect like they are today.

 

There are a couple of outspoken individuals that support file sharing. One individual is Lawrence Lessig who believes that people are free to use other peoples work to expand creativity. To see what Lessig has to say on matter watch the video to see his Ted Talks appearance. The other individual is Aram Sinnreich, he wrote the book The Piracy Crusade. In his book he says that the word “piracy” was made up by the music, movie and software companies to label people that were downloading those companies’ products illegally. He also says that “As digital networks have permeated our social environment, they have offered vast numbers of people the opportunity to experiment with innovative cultural and entrepreneurial ideas predicated on the belief that information should be shared widely” (Sinnreich 2013)