Tone Deaf to a Moral Dilemma?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Steve Hoffman, Sep 2, 2003.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    From the front page of the L. A. Times today:


    Tone Deaf to a Moral Dilemma?

    Millions download songs illegally but don't feel guilty. The industry wants to shake up their consciences. Targeting parents is one tactic.


    By Jon Healey and Jeff Leeds, Times Staff Writers


    Susan Philips has a conscience so sensitive to ethical failings that she feels guilty if she leaves her shopping cart adrift in the grocery store parking lot.

    Her influence is reflected in her elder daughter's career choice: Miriam Philips, 22, wants to be a rabbi.

    On at least one moral dilemma, though, mother and daughter are on opposite sides. To Susan, downloading music on the Internet without permission is wrong. To Miriam, it's just what you do when you go to college.

    "My freshman year I was like, 'No, that isn't right.' I wouldn't do that at all," Miriam said at her family's kitchen table, two blocks from the sand in Seal Beach. But by her sophomore year at Brandeis University, she said, she was steering her iMac to free music, collecting enough songs to fill 150 CDs.

    Philips' shift helps explain why the record industry has been losing its battle to shape the public's definition of theft in a digital society. Music labels have won a series of court rulings and poured millions of dollars into marketing the message that downloading free songs amounts to online shoplifting — but CD sales keep sinking.

    Now the record companies are readying their most desperate bid yet to shake up the public psyche: The industry plans to bombard college students, parents of teenage downloaders and other Internet users with lawsuits alleging millions of dollars in copyright violations.

    One goal is to persuade parents to crack down on their children's file sharing before an entire generation comes to expect music to be free. Unlike Susan Philips, many parents see no problem if their kids download tunes, and some actively encourage it for their own ends.

    Some observers argue, however, that the effort is as futile as the federal government's attempt to ban booze 80 years ago. About half of the Internet users in the United States, some 60 million people, copy music, movies and other digital goodies from each other for free through online networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus — a statistic that suggests a culture of piracy already has solidified. Said one teenage Kazaa user, "It's hard for me to see it as wrong when so many people are doing it."

    She reflects the view of many downloaders. They understand that what they're doing may break the rules of copyright law, but they don't see anything immoral about it. In fact, some even argue that copying a song online isn't "stealing" because the owner still has the original track and still can sell the CD.

    Miriam Philips, for example, said that she and her friends at Brandeis knew that their music copying "was illegal and why it was illegal." Similarly, two recent surveys found that a growing number of people acknowledge it's wrong to download songs without permission, but that it doesn't stop many of them from doing it.

    Like countless millions, Philips said she felt no guilt about downloading music from a shared campus folder. Not downloading "is the normal ethics of my life," she said, but at college her ethical meter was, well, recalibrated.

    And she offered no sympathy for the record labels or well-known artists.

    "They're big. They're rich. They can deal with it," she said, adding later: "You can argue that it's illegal but not unethical once they're rich."

    Said Deborah Rhode, law professor and director of the Keck Center on Legal Ethics at Stanford University: "There's a view that no one's really harmed. And that turns out to be one of the major predictors of dishonest behavior, whether people can actually draw a connection between their actions and some concrete identifiable victim."

    Plus, the ephemeral nature of online music makes it difficult for some to conceive of downloading as stealing. Philips, for instance, said she would never download a movie for free. That's not acceptable even by her college standards.

    What makes music different?

    "I guess I don't put as high a value on it," said Philips, whose tastes run from Aaron Copland and Stephen Sondheim to Barenaked Ladies and the Byrds.

    Expressing a common view, she said music was "more of a background thing," providing flavor to her day but not a focus. As a result, she said, it's "something that doesn't feel quite as tangible" as a movie.

    Jonathan Zittrain, director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, also noted that downloaders copy songs without taking them away from the people sharing them. "Normally, we think that sharing is a good thing," Zittrain said. "It's not just, 'Hey, we're all looting.' It's not a looter's mind-set."

    File sharing networks are like groups of libraries that invite people to roll photocopiers from stack to stack. To "share" songs on a "peer-to-peer" network such as Kazaa, for example, users simply put them into a folder on their computer and open the folder to others on the network. Anyone searching for those songs can use Kazaa to find the computers where they're stored, then download copies onto his or her PC.

    The Recording Industry Assn. of America argues that it's illegal to share or download music without permission because the labels' copyrights give them exclusive rights to distribute and make copies of their songs. That view is widely supported when it comes to users who copy hundreds of files, but some legal experts contend that downloading a few files may prove to be legal under the "fair use" doctrine in copyright law.

    "It's far too early in the day to conclude that everything everyone does with peer-to-peer, even when it comes to copyrighted MP3 files, is conclusively infringing," said Peter Jaszi, a law professor at American University.

    In addition, Philips and others argue that their downloading actually can benefit labels and artists. The free songs stoked her interest in pop music, Philips said, and prompted her to buy more CDs than she ever had before. She now owns about 50, many of them from artists she discovered through downloading.

    "There's really no service that provides this," she said, adding that she doesn't usually fall in love with music unless she listens to it a lot. And buying a CD without knowing the songs "is too darn expensive."

    It's a common refrain from downloaders — CDs are too expensive, new releases often contain only one or two good songs, and there's no other way to satisfy their curiosity about unfamiliar bands. Another familiar argument is that they support the artists whose music they copy for free by going to their shows and buying their T-shirts.

    A college-bound 17-year-old named Amber, who asked that her last name not be used, said if she wanted only one song from a CD, she wouldn't buy the disc — she would just download the track from Kazaa. Amber's parents stopped buying music for her when she landed a part-time job, she said, so she has to make every dollar she spends on music count.

    If she winds up downloading several songs from the same record and liking them, she said, she'll buy the CD — as she did with recent releases by Missy Elliott, Ludacris, Tyrese and Bow Wow.

    "In that sense," Amber said, "I do have a conscience."

    Cody Morrow, a 13-year-old Simi Valley skateboard fan, said he had used file sharing networks to locate music he couldn't find at his local record store, such as songs from punk band Operation Ivy. By his logic, his family is paying for the privilege of access to music when it pays for Internet access.

    His mother, Maryann, an accountant, has drawn a clear line: Although reselling music downloaded from the Internet is against the rules, her son's practice of copying music for personal use is fine.

    The notion that record labels would sue individual kids seems to generate more anger than worry. Taking families to court for behavior like her son's, she said, is outrageous. "I'm in America. [Suing] for personal use? I think that's crazy."

    Parents, she suggested, are far more concerned their children may become involved with drugs or violence than with online music.

    "I pick my battles," she said. "You don't want to be nagging and harping, or they're not going to listen to anything you say."

    But the major record companies remain determined to force a shift in families' dynamics. Even as the RIAA prepares to seize parents' attention with lawsuits, music executives increasingly have been trying to call attention to the fact that file swapping networks also are frequently used to share child pornography and other X-rated images. Record executives say privately they're also aiming to use the proliferation of pornography as a means of persuading members of Congress and law enforcement officials to take a tougher stance against the file networks.

    With the debate intensifying, many Internet-savvy parents are forecasting a tectonic shift for the $30-billion global music business. David Philips, Miriam's father, envisions a future "where the key to power is ownership of information and the movement of information." And Philips, a former rock 'n' roll roadie who has no love for the major record labels, worries that copyright holders' power is expanding while antitrust enforcement is diminishing.

    "From the perspective of starving musicians, I think the file sharing networks are a huge plus," said Philips, a civil engineer. "It is theft, but it's probably in the public interest."

    Yet he also says flatly, "If you take something without permission from someone who believes they ought to be paid for that thing, according to Jewish law, that's stealing. And you shouldn't do it ... because to behave unethically is spiritually degrading. You are not as good a person as you were before."

    Susan Philips also condemns unauthorized file sharing, but without any qualification.

    "It's not just the artist who's getting cheated" by unauthorized downloading, but also songwriters and accompanying musicians, she said. And though it's probably true that the record companies are taking advantage of their artists, she said, the artists wouldn't get very far without the labels' support.

    She vaguely remembers talking to Miriam about her music copying practices and telling her, "It doesn't seem ethical to me." Miriam says if the conversation did take place — she doesn't recall it — it wouldn't have affected her downloading.

    After all, that's what she would expect her mother to say.

    Other downloaders say their parents encourage their file sharing and CD burning, either directly or unwittingly. Amber said her mother didn't know a thing about computers, and her father didn't object to her using Kazaa. He even asked her to make a CD for him of songs from Body & Soul, a music channel on cable TV, so she dutifully downloaded a number of R&B classics and put them on a disc.

    RIAA officials hope that the coming wave of lawsuits will prompt more parents to crack down on their teens' downloading. The RIAA plans to sue the people responsible for the Internet accounts used to share files, and not necessarily the file sharers themselves. If a Kazaa-crazed teen is targeted, his or her parents are the ones who'll be named as defendants.

    The lawsuits probably will change some young downloaders' attitudes too. In a recent survey by Forrester Research of 1,170 12- to 22-year-olds, nearly 70% said they would stop downloading music if there was a "serious risk" of being fined or jailed.

    But James DeLong, director of the Center for the Study of Digital Property at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank, said enforcement won't be effective unless the music industry offers compelling legal alternatives to file sharing.

    "If they have the stuff available legitimately, then they can make the moral case that people ought to be paying the artist," he said. "And I think people will accept that."

    For Miriam Philips, free music is a thing of the past. Her ethics meter has been reset since college, she said. Of course, it helps to be back home, a couple of thousand miles away from the daily temptations of the Brandeis computer network.

    "It's easier to refuse to do it," she said, "because you're not doing it on a daily basis."
     
  2. RDK

    RDK Active Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Just read this a few minutes ago in The Times. It's almost funny how many different ways there are to rationalize illegal downloading in one's mind. The issue of "can I get away with it" is also valid. It's like pulling up to an intersection in the middle of the night, with no traffic in sight: you'd probably stop at the red light, but what if the light stayed red and didn't turn green? How long would you wait before "breaking the law" and going through the red light? Come on - we've all been faced with that decision. ;)

    The problem the Industry has is that so few people think it's a "big deal." It's a mindset that's quickly become entrenched, especially in today's youth. I have to admit to getting caught up in it myself at times, though I usually limit myself to downloading unreleased boots or live performances - or at least rarities that aren't available elsewhere. That's *my* rationalization. ;) But I do understand that it's just a rationalization.

    Overall, I believe the digital "genie" has been let out of the bottle - and there's no putting it back. The Industry at some point has to accept the fact that you can't unring a bell. That's not to say that they must accept downloading lying down, but they have to realize that it's probably the way of the future and learn to adjust just like the movie business did twenty years ago when home video "threatened" their existence. So far, the music industry has seemed shortsighted. It's already been mentioned elsewhere how the media congloms have helped bring this problem on themselves: Sony made a mint selling CD players, burners, and blank CDRs even as their music division cries that people are using their products illegally. In some ways you can't blame them (the victim), but in other ways you can.

    There's no clear black and white answer here...
     
  3. Dave D

    Dave D Done!

    Location:
    Milton, Canada
    Targeting parents????? The same parents that are stealing satellite signals?
     
  4. RDK

    RDK Active Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Yeah, that's a concern too. ;) Makes the whole thing sound pretty insignificant in comparison.
     
  5. Rob LoVerde

    Rob LoVerde New Member

    Location:
    USA
    This really can't be ignored by anybody. For the obvious reason that it DOES take away from record sales overall (I believe) but also because it lowers the standard for SOUND QUALITY, doncha think? We're already in trouble on the grand scale in that department, but how 'bout a whole generation of kids who've only heard MP3 files of the music recorded from 2000 onward? Scary thought. And I'm still recovering from the fact that my friend's nine-year-old daughter didn't know what my turntable was when she first saw it...
     
  6. GregY

    GregY New Member

    Location:
    .
    Why not try worring about legal issues and not moral ones? What do I care what the RIAA or record companies think about my morality? I more or less adhere to the laws regarding music copyright but I'll be damned if I care whether or not the RIAA thinks I'm a 'moral' person.
     
  7. MikeT

    MikeT Prior Forum Cretin and Current Impatient Creep

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    This is the kind of thinking that only sees the big picture and not the more "personal" one intrenced within... the lost jobs and effect on the "smaller" employee's of that big, rich record label.

    Yes the artists can be rich, the record labels can be big -- and they will deal with it -- by affecting the lives of those employee's making $30,000 - $50,000 a year (not rich by any means).

    Where and when does it all end?
     
  8. Mike

    Mike New Member

    Location:
    New Jersey
    While it might no be possible to stop downloading entirely, I think it is possible to drive it underground where only computer geeks will be doing it. Unfortunately, the record labels did not act soon enough and allowed the downloading culture to become entrenched. Now kids and even adults think they are entitled to free music. It doesn't help when it seems that everyone at the top of the big corporations are thieves themselves and appear to be getting away with it. Has anyone from Enron gone to jail yet? Worldcom? Etc. etc. When the big thieves appear to be walking away scot free, it is easy for the little thieves to justify their actions.
     
  9. Bob Lovely

    Bob Lovely Super Gort In Memoriam

    Mike & Friends,

    Super point and there is already research being conducted to prove that this one fact represents yet another new vast social trend. Common, every day folks may understand that downloading is 'illegal' but they can also readily justify doing so when there are too many big corporate execs making millions and running companies more to amass personal worth than increase sales or shareholder value.

    Only the U.S. Government has the legal power to prosecute these corporate thieves and, to date, they have done little. This tells the public that is not only OK but, profitable to live your life and have as your underlying motive - "What's in it for me?". Corporations can do it, corporation execs can do it so, why can't we? - because, as it always has been, the rich generally want more wealth and to keep more of the wealth they presently own - as is there right. So, 'they' tell us we are immoral for downloading music while they go on amassing their wealth - another of the great American social hypocrisies. Many folks see the hypocrisy and they feel little guilt as result. Why, because for many of us, we aspire to have real wealth as well. The accumulation of wealth is the American way, is it not?

    Personally, I do not download music because I want the best quality versions, want to be able use the music for my own personal use without restrictions (fair use) and I want to support the artists and record labels.

    I want the record labels to be successful! I just wish they listened more often to all the music fans who are willing to pay hard-earned money for personal use of the music they so love. Running a record label is no easy task in today's marketplace. Problem is - the old paradigm is not really working these days.

    Bob
     
  10. stereoptic

    stereoptic Anaglyphic GORT Staff

    Location:
    NY
    I hope that this isn't thread-crapping:

    How many parents (myself included) check the file sharing on their kid's computers? As soon as I got a cable modem and networked my computer with hers, I turned file-sharing off on my step-daughters computer.

    If two Kazaa users want to download the same file from another user, the user with the highest number of points gets a higher priority. Priority is based upon how many files the receiving user has to share with the kazaa community. So, since my step-daughter does not file-share, she has a very low priority which does not make her very happy. In addition, kazaa and morpheaus load additional processes into Windows startup (check your msconfig) and invite several parasites (run spybot or visit www.doxdesk.com).

    I have downloaded songs from amazon.com or borders.com, or from the artist's web-site, but then I generally delete them if I decide to buy the album or not.

    I know when I was high-school or college aged, I would make cassette copies of albums that I borrowed from friends, but I didn't do it often as I felt (and still do) that if I didn't buy the album I was missing out on the album package and I wasn't supporting the artists.

    Is it just me , or is downloading music another example of a trait that I see in many teenagers - instant gratification. I WANT IT NOW. RIGHT NOW. (I guess that we are all a little guilty of that too, but if I want something, I work for it)
     
  11. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Yup..

    What bothers me is that everyone keeps talking about file downloading as if only teens and college students are doing it. Well, how come no one ever mentioins the millions of adults in their 30, 40, and 50s that do the same damn thing?
     
  12. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I have downloaded music in the past. For that, I am guilty. But, I have started doing my part by discontinuing the practice. I am now seven months legal!

    I don't agree with what the RIAA and the companies are doing at all, but some people ripping off the goods and using the excuse that the record companies are corrupt isn't the way. The companies need to change their business model.

    But, how are you going to convince millions of people the world over that downloading for free isn't a good thing? Maybe the artists should start by running a campaign showing the public how the system actually works and how the artists really get paid. No slogans, just honest information. You would be surprised how many people justify stealing because they say "the company is big or rich enough", or that "they can handle it". To get to the people, you must give them something they can relate to. Most people, at least here in the US, cannot relate to wealth, or have little or no sense of business or capitalism whatsoever. Blunt litigation does nothing to help this. All the public sees this as is rich against the common folk who are just trying to get by.

    And, lest you think it's just music, more people are downloading and copying DVDs anf passing them around, now that the software and hardware are redidly available legally.
     
  13. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host Thread Starter

    I don't download. I don't care about downloading; even if it was legal, it doesn't excite me. The sound quality is abysmal and I am in to sound quality. Next case.
     
  14. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Same here. But I wouldn't say that the sound quality of all compressed files are bad, just the vast majority of them are. Besides, I want a physical product to hold in my hands with artwork and liner notes, and (I gotta pray for it) good mastering!

    If downloading went away tomorrow, it wouldn't bother or affect me one bit. But, it's here to stay. I just hope that companies don't get to the point where all music is in the form of compressed files.
     
  15. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Heh! You'll have to change society to get there.

    Mike, I want to thank you and several others here for making me think further about this downloading thing. I'm leaning towards your view.

    But I still occasionally make custom CD-Rs and give tham to friends on occasion.
     
  16. Mike

    Mike New Member

    Location:
    New Jersey
    I don't think you can say that for sure until the litigation strategy plays out. Check out this article:

    RIAA legal threat cuts P2P downloads by 23%

    The campaign launched in May by the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) to target individual music sharers appears to be scaring punters away from file-sharing services, the latest figures from market watcher NPD appear to show.

    NPD tracks consumer file-sharing activity. It calculated that 14.5 million US households downloaded music files in April. In May the figure fell to 12.7 million, and dropped to 10.4 million in June, the company said today. .... full article at link above.

    Personally, I think there is a difference between making a comp for someone that is your friend and providing your collection to millions of people that you don't even know. Yes, they are both illegal in the eyes of the law but .... ;) As the Spartans said - everything in moderation, nothing in excess. :)
     
  17. I don't use Kaza or Morpheus. Got tired of all that Napster / Audio Galaxy stuff a couple of years ago.

    Music copying laws are different in Canada. We are allowed to make backup copies of our pre recorded music CDs and LPs to CD-R. Why? Because when I purchase blank CD-Rs, blank cassettes, etc., I pay a royalty rate that is attached to the price of the blank media. The CRIA began collecting this money in around 1999. I have no issue with copying music, I guess, because it's legal up here. :)
     
  18. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    It's actually the same here. You can legally reproduce any of your legally purchased music for your own personal use as long as you don't sell it or distribute it without the copyright holder's permission.

    Here in the US, the industry only gets royalties from the sales of consumer products not meant for computer or pro audio use.
     
  19. Evan

    Evan Senior Member

    I have to agree. The sound quality of mp3 files suck. Besides, half the fun of collecting music is hunting down the best versions on vinyl and CD. Downloading files just dosen't have the same charm as browseing a record shop.
     
  20. -=Rudy=-

    -=Rudy=- ♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♫♪♪ Staff

    Location:
    US
    I DO care about downloading, or even streaming...if I can find a way to sample an artist's music at no cost to me. Since radio no longer serves us much quality music, it's no wonder we're having to look around the 'net and look for tunes to download. You'd be surprised, but there are a lot of bands who aren't in the mainstream who actually offer free MP3 files right on their own websites. Sure they're not of a good quality, but they're good enough to see if I like the music or not. When Radio Free Virgin was still free, the couple of channels I listened to resulted in at lesat a half dozen purchases.

    I do believe that some of the downloading problem IS the parents' fault. At my former employer, the VP was telling me about the thousands of songs his son had downloaded to the computer, w/o even batting an eye. Also, overheard in Best Buy a couple of years ago, a 12-year-old was explaining to his dad how he absolutely needed that CD-RW drive to "record all of my napster songs onto CD"...and again, the parent doesn't even think twice about it. It's become way too much of a social phenomenon...too accepted of a behavior. Everyone else does it, therefore it must be OK.

    As a "computer person", I won't have any of that "file sharing" software on my computers. I don't trust it. But that's a different issue entirely.
     
  21. mrstats

    mrstats Senior Member

    I don't either, but I have accepted CD-Rs of very expensive, hard to get CDs. I remember getting my first Maxell tape of Led Zepplin's Physical Graffiti (copied from by brother's album). I didn't feel guilty about it back then; I do now.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine