Blog Post Five Assignment

For your fifth post, I'd like you to apply the concepts covered in our Ethics unit to the common practice of illegally downloading music. Apply any one or more of the ethical principles covered in lecture and in Chapter 14 of your text. Your posts should reflect a sophisticated, media literate understanding of the downloading issue. As always, your post should run 350 words, use college level grammar, spelling and punctuation, and represent a short, but properly structured argument.



Downloading an MP3 is substantially different than any act of traditional theft. As such the ethical violations that come into play must be viewed and weighed in realms of intellectual property and ethical philosphy. This is due to the fact that nothing physical has been stolen, and the act of Peer-2-Peer sharing at its worst deprives the commercial realm of potential profit while benefiting those seeding and leeching the MP3.

Currently the law treats copyright infringement and property theft differently as well. While threat of the theft of physical property is fines and jail time, copyright infringement generally falls under the umbrella of civil disputes that bring to light the damages to the intellectual property and lead to injunctions. This standpoint lends itself to Kant's Categorical Imperative because it is a violation of his philosophy: "the idea of a moral obligation that we should act in a way which we would be willing to have everyone else act." While that philosphy is violated, one that falls hand-in-hand with the copyright law is John Rawls Veil of Ignorance. This ethical principle says that "justice comes from making decsions that maximize liberty for all people and without considering which outcome will give us personally the bigget benefit."

The flip side to the stealing, or pirating music arguement, is that by distributing the MP3 for free over Peer-2-Peer one has increased the value of a physical copy of that music and also increased the cultural penetration of that piece of music. So how would one value those Vs. the potential monotarry lose? Subsiquently this is also the fundimental difference between physical stealing of music and illegal downloading of music. Where the physical stealing is clear cut, the potential value of specific music can't really be calculated because without the cultural penetration of free downloading the music, that music may never have reach a certain level to where it can be distinguished. Where as the music has two possible futures, the illegal sharing forces the music to a fate that completely ecilpses the other.

From a philisophical and ethical standpoint John Mill's Principle of Utility would lend itself to those seeding and leeching the music. Mill's philosophy lends itself to "which will provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people." That would be the consumer community which vastly outnumbers the commercial manufacturers.

While it can't be disputed that illegal downloading doesn't step on someone's toes in a legal sense, the moral and ethical arguements are as varied and separated as the laws pertaining to physical and intellectual property. One thing is certain, and that is that illegal downloading will never be contained or stopped, and the change or evolution that with will force the music industry to go through is on the same level as the newspaper adapting to online news. This process will hurt the market, cost jobs, and incure a fair amount of intellectual violence, but it won't kill music so all that is really needed is time for change to occur.