This is an old, but interesting, article from Boundless on online piracy. And so I ask (based on Justin Taylor's comment), has this become an acceptable sin to most Christians?
(HT: JT)
Thursday, February 21, 2008
"The Pirate"
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3 comments:
A well-thought out article. Definitely convicting and challenges how we look at intellectual property. (Sorry in advance for the long response, intellectual property is a pretty big issue for IT types).
While I am in favor of information being made freely available, I'm also in favor of artists and authors being compensated for their work. Particularly, now that I have a job, I don't really have the excuse of not being able to afford something. Also, I've found with piracy that the ease of obtaining media makes it worth much less. There are several CDs I've bought and treasured for years, while music that I have downloaded has often gone unlistened to.
While I find the actions of the RIAA and the movie industry to be overzealous and unfair, piracy is also wrong. There is definitely a value and a loss involved, though I don't think it is the kind that requires college students to be sued for thousands of dollars, particularly from an industry that has been proven to engage in price fixing from time to time. I hope we can get to a point where a distribution model can be developed for digital music that respects the rights of the artist and the rights of the buyer to enjoy the music on any device. And reasonable pricing wouldn't hurt.
Until that day comes, I think I've decided its best to show my disapproval of the RIAA and their methods not by pirating but by flat out refusing to buy their products and instead buying from independent artists. (If you are interested in checking CDs to see if they are released by an RIAA affliated company, you can check out riaaradar.com). As far as software goes, there are plenty of open source and free applications that work just as well or better than commercial applications, if you don't want to spend the money. Plus, it's not as if living a life with less media and entertainment is necessarily a bad thing.
lets boycott music...
This blog makes for an interesting read.
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