Giving Away Copied Music Is Stealing!
Even if you make no money from giving away copies of your music, you’re still stealing the music because you’re costing the industry money by giving people music who then, need not buy it themselves. The fact that you’re making no profit from this musical giveaway is no defense. Even though you do not benefit from this musical theft, make no mistake that you’re nonetheless just as culpable for stealing music.
Giving away copies of your purchased music thus, translates into lost revenue for the music industry. Indeed since digital music has become so widely available, and so easily copied, the music industry has significantly shrunk in terms of how much sales revenue it generates. A record company executive on CNN a while back talked of all the lay-offs that have occurred because of this sort of widespread music piracy.
Also, you can’t be altruistic with something that’s not yours to give away in the first place. When you buy a CD (compact disc), you’re not buying distribution rights to that music; only the right to retain, back up, and listen to it yourself. The actual music is not yours to pass around, even though you bought a copy of it. This “kindness” to one group (our friends) is hurting another group (the people who produce and sell the music). Admittedly, few music industry lawyers would come after you for giving copies of music to a few friends. But this giving-is-still-stealing principle still applies. Ironically, though your act of giving away music may be well-intentioned, this giveaway is stealing nonetheless. In short: You should not give away something that’s not yours because any kindness contained in this giving act is more than offset by the wrongness of the implied theft.
Now with all that said, I believe that Apple went too far with its DRM (digital rights management) schemes. DRM as it was prevented us from playing our music on more than a few computers at a time, it supplied audio and video file formats that could only be played on iPods, and it barred us from easily converting the DRM-encoded music into other formats. But I’m certain that Apple had to devise DRM to get the music industry to agree to allow them to sell the music in the iTunes music store. So, Apple was not the only party responsible for the overly restrictive implements of digital rights management of media / music files.
Further, this whole business about having to buy a ringtone from the industry just so you can get a song onto your cell phone is crazy. If I already own the music, why should I have to pay for it again just to get it in ring-tone format?
IMHO, people abused the free availability of “copyable” music, and the industry over-reacted by making it too hard for honest people to manage their music libraries as they wish. I’m glad that the trend is away from DRM. But that won’t last if people keep making illegal copies of music and distributing them to friends. Copying an iTunes library (or any other music repository) is illegal if you don’t own the copyrights to the music in it. You’re not allowed to copy music from someone else, even for a short time.