Legal Question in Technology Law in Michigan

Re: Legalizing Music Downloading

Come now. I'm far from a supporter of the music industry despots who are seeking to control every squeak your computer emits, but fair is fair.

1. Under current law, copying music without paying for it is illegal. Period. It may or may not be criminal, but it is illegal.

2. You may be right that the artist gets some promotion through downloading. Some of them even want this. But many don't; they make their living by selling copies of their music. Giving them away for free is like holding the newspaper box open so that everyone can take a paper for free when only one person has bought one. This presents moral and ethical issues that one cannot simply ignore.

3. By now, most people know that downloading music is not legal. Yes it is easy, but lack of notice is not a justification. But the easiness of downloading is an important factor to consider. Peer-to-peer sharing has filled a void in the media industry.

What all of this suggests is not that it ought to be legal to take other people's property. It suggests that if prices are too high, people will steal. And if music is not available for sale in a convenient, portable format, people will distribute in that format on their own.

It shows a lack of vision on the part of the music industry. Why have they not designed a way to distribute mp3 music at a reasonable cost before now? And why are CD's so darn expensive? By now, our culture has answered these questions. The answer is greed.

It has responded by creating a thriving (not so) black market in dowloadable music. That market has become a lynchpin to the availability of cultural objects (that is, music). It has also filled a gap in the previous sources: It is now much easier to get out-of-print and hard-to-find items.

The music industry's (tardy) response to this development has been to attack it. In so doing, the industry is attacking our culture, in a sense. While the fact that a cultural practice has become embedded in a society does not make the practice moral, it does suggest that the society and its members should recognize what needs the practice is filling before obliterating it. By doing so, the music industry has alienated many existing customers and painted itself as a villain.

A better solution might be for the industry to try to find a way to join in, adding services that are currently unavailable and charging for those. Another alternative would be for the music industry to start charging more reasonable prices for the products it is already offering.