Monday, February 18, 2008

DVD, CD and mp3 Morality

It has now come to the point where it is immoral to buy music or movies.

When an artist creates something, it seems fair that they should be the ones who benefit financially from their creation. This idea is why so many people are for the artist's protection via copyright law (copyright is better called Usemonopoly, for that is both a truer name, and reflects the attitudes of the intellectual property lawyers and discussion).

Musicians have ceased to gain real money from the sales of recorded music. If you wish to help an artist out, go to their concert or performance. For the recorded music industry have succeeded in taking away the money from the musicians, meaning that when you buy music (either online or on a CD) you are not giving money to the art, but to the corporation who reproduced their art. You are fueling the pockets of CEO's and contributing to the growth of already-oversized corporations. It is these rich CEO's and these large corporations who are fueling our desire for more, who are brainwashing us into consumerism, and so who are destroying the earth. It is immoral to contribute to this trend, and so it is immoral to buy music.

The same goes for movies. Of course, if the band/movie is a very small deal, and if the CD/DVD cases look homemade, or if the music is sold directly from the artist's website, then they probably get most of that money. This would again be moral, and it’s not immoral to invest your money in those artists.

At the cinema you'll often see an advert showing a thief steal a hangbag, and comparing that to steal movies. But is this a fair comparison? No. The crucial difference is that after stealing a handbag, the owner of the handbag is left without it. After downloading music or movies, the owner still has it.

Therefore, because it is moral to download media, and generally immoral to buy it, I recommend thepiratebay, isohunt, and these websites (for streaming TV and movies) to get you started. Of course, you'll need a torrent program to download this, for which I recommend the open-source Azeurus (if you have a fast computer), or old versions of uTorrent (for the low-resources option - my personal choice).

Sadly the law has not yet caught up to the morality of the situation. If you vote for the Pirate Party, then it may eventually do so. But law moves slowly, and so for a long time you'll be choosing to either be legal and immoral, or illegal and moral. For the sake of the earth, the poor, and the artists, choose to be moral!

Also see this excellent Harper's article (for a fuller, better essay regarding some of these issues).

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