Don’t arrest me, bro

Downloading music is not illegal

Trevor Bekolay, Volunteer Staff

In last week’s Manitoban, Matt Abra implores us to stop downloading music illegally. Abra fails to comprehend all of the details in this complicated issue. It’s easy to make generalizations and boil the issue down to “music is precious, we shouldn’t steal it, so don’t download it,” but reality is not that simple. File-sharing doesn’t hurt artists, because they make the bulk of their money on live shows. Downloading music is not stealing, because you never deprive the other party of their property, you simply make a copy of it.

File-sharing is just a symptom of the real issue: the music industry hasn’t stepped up and responded to changes in the marketplace. File-sharers aren’t aiding the eventual implosion of the industry, the industry is self-destructing. File-sharers are simply catalyzing the process — and hopefully it happens quickly.

Consider this: if file-sharing is illegal, why are the bulk of file-sharing lawsuits civil cases? The recording industry isn’t interested in jailing potential customers; they just want to scare them into buying their crap again. That they also get financial settlements in these lawsuits is icing on the cake.

It’s more evidence that the music industry is not really interested

in improving the situation. The response to an increase in file-sharing shouldn’t be: “We need to sue anyone who downloads our music”; but rather, it should be: “Why isn’t what we offer good enough that people will pay for it?”

People download music because it’s available in a form that is convenient. Carrying around a Discman is ludicrous now that high-capacity MP3 players are cheap and incredibly convenient. You may say that you can buy CDs and put the music on your device. Yet, if the recording industry had their way, it would even be illegal to purchase CDs and rip them. If that legislation was ever passed — and enforced — it would undoubtedly be the end of the recording industry.

And the funny part is that, despite all this, people are still paying for the recording industry’s meagre offerings. File-sharing has never been proven as a cause of decreased music sales; many people download something to try it before they buy it. Many people download things that they would never buy. It is wantonly ignorant to assume that every album that is downloaded is $20 out of the artist’s pockets.

Abra’s article is based on a falsehood: “In reality, file-sharing can really be summed up in two words: it’s illegal.” It’s not. Downloading music — regardless of where it is downloaded from — is legal in Canada. That’s right, legal. Uploading music is a grey area in Canada, but the law recently has erred on the side of legality. In file-sharing, you do not deliberately upload a file to someone’s computer; you just make it available for others to download. The basis of the recording industry’s case is that making files available for others to download is distribution of copyrighted materials. A federal judge in Connecticut has rejected the recording industry’s “making available” theory, ruling that one needs to prove actual distribution of copies, and cannot rely upon the mere fact that there are song files on someone’s computer and that they were “available.”

It’s funny that Abra states, “I wish that I were a successful musician.” In addition to Radiohead releasing its album In Rainbows for a user-specified price, Trent Reznor, a successful musician, recently released part of the new Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV for free downloading on the Internet, with the option to pay as little as $5 to own the entire album digitally. Reznor has not abandoned the traditional distribution methods: he has revolutionized them. He gives us choices and offers the music in formats that we actually want. The Nine Inch Nails website slowed down to a crawl with so many downloading the new album, and yet the $300 deluxe edition sold out in just over a day, grossing Reznor $750,000 from that option alone.

But the most interesting and important thing that Reznor has done is let fans own the music they purchase. Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike licence.

In other words, you are allowed to copy, distribute, display and perform the work non-commercially as well as make remixes and other derivative works, as long as you license your derivative works in a similar way. Interestingly, this means file-sharers have the legal right to distribute the album freely. While this seems contrary because Reznor is still charging $5 to download the album from his site, he is sending the message that fans who share his music should not be criminalized and that consumers shouldn’t be paying for the right to listen to music, they should truly own the music they buy.

Can any band do this and expect to make money and gain publicity? No, the previously mentioned bands succeeded thanks to an existing fan base. If labels are good for one thing, it is marketing. However, just like I would never let the marketing department create the product, labels should not be the ones dictating how music is delivered to consumers.

Trevor Bekolay is a fourth-year computer science student.