How much ethical philosophy is the product of guilt?

So does the free culture take on music downloading put ethics at its center? I hadn't thought of it in that light, but ethics must weigh in. Unhindered culture not only produces prodigious material good, but participation in free culture is probably itself an ethical good in the way it [blah blah autonomy blah human spirit blah]."

But you haven't yet addressed the issue of why record company rentention of/monopolies on copyrights are bad things. That is, as it stands my downloading contravenes industry law, which is illegal and maybe slightly immoral. But for my "piracy" to bypass the 'morally neutral' stage and qualify as civil disobedience, you free-culturites must articulate some positive thesis about the good that will come of breaking such copyright monopolies. I think I can see how it might go, but you're the expert(s).

What I'm asking for, I suppose, is a statement of basic free culture principles, adapted to the music debate. If I had finished at OU I would gladly have enlisted in the Free Culture ranks. U-Maryland has no such group, so my libertarian impulses were stymied by my thesis on Truman. I'd like to get caught up.

So, if you please…

– Morgan Hubbard

The ethics of downloading

Wonderful question, Morgan. Who doesn't want all the music they can get? (I "only" have 3,483 songs on my iTunes, an embarrassing fact when comparing music libraries among friends.) But where does the peer-to-peer philosophy fit in with contemporary ethics? On one side, we have a generation of budding technophiles who, earbuds planted firmly in ears, say "let them share music." And other the other side, we have the RIAA who is levying a strategic legal campaign to stop "piracy," which, according to its estimates has cost the industry $4.2 billion per year. So where do we go from here?

First, the argument that there is nothing wrong with downloading music as it stands. Let's call this the "fourteen-year-old boy" argument. It goes something like this: "Dowloading music without paying is illegal, but I want music for free. Therefore, I will download music." Obviously, this is a short-sighted argument and does not concern itself with the economic and legal underpinnings of the file sharing debate. In short, dowloading is sweet! 

Now, let's look as the "industry" argument, which is along these lines: "The MP3 files shared on p2p networks are the intellectual property of the record companies that produce the CD's from which they are ripped. Therefore, exchanging these files is theft." In short, dowloading is stealing. 

To most, the discussion may seem complete, all pertinent arguments having weighed in. But I don't think it's that simple. Binary oppositions are always quite tempting. Human beings seem to be geared toward them. How else would Steven Segal make a living? But we need to push beyond this binary opposition and look at a more refined and nuanced argument. I'll call it the "Free Culture" argument. 

It goes something like this: "Current law says downloading free music is illegal. I believe these laws should be adapted to changing technologies and changing norms. Depending on my personal ethics, I may download music for free now or I may wait until it becomes legal." In short, downloading should be allowed and can be justified as civil disobedience. For more on how to make p2p legal, read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's primer.  

I of course am a fan of the Free Culture argument. I think the "pirates" downloading music right now are not that different from the "pirates" that recorded television shows to VHS (for shame!) before 1984's Sony Betamax decision. 

– Daniel Corbett