A musician’s response to Judge James P. Jones
Your Honor,
After reading in the news about your opinion on the United States of America v. Dove case, I just felt I had to react.
Imagine for a moment that I broke into a jewellery store, disabled the security cameras, switched off the alarms, broke the security glasses, maybe took a couple of jewels and then fled. Since I left the store defenseless, there was plundering; several passersby (who had no intention to purchase jewellery when they got up that morning) entered the shop and looted, say, 762 items that were in the store’s inventory.
Now let’s imagine, again, that I was caught, found guilty, and the store held me and the looters responsible for the 762 missing items and demanded restitution, and the Judge gave the following opinion:
Those who loot jewelry from unprotected stores would not necessarily purchase those jewels at the full purchase price.
This, to me, seems to miss the whole point of any type of stealing.
I know that despite the decade-old debate on this topic, many people who download music illegally do not realize that they are “stealing” another person’s intellectual property. The danger increases when the justice system begins to slight the impact of this behavior, commonly euphemized as sharing. The fact that music is not tangible seems to make stealing it easier on the conscience, but this is arbitrary.
The looters in my example have stolen, even if they would not purchase those jewels at the full price, even if they never wore those jewels or gave them to someone else. Again in the above example, I am responsible for all this because I prepared the conditions for looting. All 762 items and not one less. I can not see why illegal downloads should merit a different treatment.
Respectfully,
Doruk Somunkiran
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Reader Comments
People love to use extreme examples in their analogies. Let me help you. Rather than use expensive jewels, why don’t you use packets of taco sauce or napkins or plastic silverware.
It’s out there, given away freely on a daily basis but you can only use it within the confines of what the establishment would consider prudent. If I walk into a Chipotle and grab 50 of their forks and a handfuls of their napkins without buying a burrito, I can see why they’d be ticked off.. but then they take me to court and try to charge me for 1 burrito for every 2 forks and 10 napkins I took.
I think it works better this way.
Matt, the problem with this analogy is that it is based too much on the status quo, just like the court decision above. Our perception has changed so rapidly in the previous decade that this is somewhat understandable. But recorded music is not supposed to be “out there, given away freely” like napkins. It *is* the main product of the music industry; in your example that would be the burrito. People have found a way of sharing burritos freely and Chipotle is trying to stay afloat by offering combo menus and extra value meals.
If the artists were holding the case against downloaders, then perhaps things would be different. I think that a great example of how the music industry is changing is the fact that many artists are now offering their cds for download with the downloader specifiying the amount they would like to pay. The big difference with music and jewels is that, as you said music is intangible, it is not material, and traditionally has always been associated with community ussage rather than with an industry. I am not saying that this isn’t a complicated matter, as musicians, music producers, engineers, even roadies need to make a living, but I really don’t think that fines that are so over the top will solve anything or give any body a more decent living. The music industry has to think of a more creative way to adjust to the paradigm change that the internet brings upon licensing and rights, and it is not the only industry facing this challenge.
Alex, I agree with you in that the industry is changing. Bands and artists are coming up with creative and proactive ways to adapt to this change, while “the industry” itself is still largely on the defensive. I’m not a big fan of the way the music industry worked, especially after the 80’s, so I believe that change is both inevitable and desirable.
The thing that bothers me is the paradigm shift in the mind of the general public. It is true that music has traditionally been associated with community usage, but recorded music has always been different, as long as it remained tangible. The alarm bells start ringing when people start to see it as something that should be freely available. When people don’t pay for recorded music, that shrinks the industry. When the industry shrinks, we will not see as many top-notch recording engineers, arrangers, sound designers, to name a few, who have devoted their entire lives to a career in their fields. These will be done mostly by hobbyists and amateurs, and the music will reflect that.