The Piracy Ban--Argument Essay

“You’ll love this band! I just downloaded their CD last night.” Ben’s friend raved at him about the latest band on the top ten list. He sits at his computer and types in the band name on his choice file-sharing websit. Results scroll down the screen. Ben double-clicks on the song he wants, and within seconds, he has a new song to add to his iPod. It’s easy, it’s accessible, and it’s free. America’s favorite word.

They call themselves modern-day pirates. They’re your friends, your family, your teachers, it could even be you. People who’s “loot” is from the many illegal downloads on the internet, music being the treasure. It makes perfect sense to listen to a CD before you buy it. If you buy a CD and realize this isn’t what you wanted, you just wasted $20. You can’t return CDs. With file-sharing, you can try out the music before deciding if you want to buy the CD or not. However, the “testing” usually stops there. After all, why would you spend money for something you already have?

File-sharing is extremely common: it’s barely ever given a second thought as to the morality behind it. But most consider it immoral to break the law, right? And copyright infringement is against the law. What about theft? You wouldn’t steal a car, for instance, because it’s unlawful. Well, some disagree.

I’ve heard this question answered, “Well, of course we would. If we could get away with it.” This is the level that our society has actually stooped to. A mindset so shallow and so low that we’d do anything to benefit ourselves, as long as we don’t get in trouble for it. If everyone in the world followed by that, we would live in a scary place indeed.

The truth of the matter is that file-sharing is stealing. It takes money away from the very music artists we love, but not very much. The money artists get from records are like spare change compared to what they earn on tour and from their merchandise. So buying CDs doesn’t usually even endorse the bands you love, but it does endorse the record store. Since 1999, record sales have declined by 22% and total revenues for the music industry have fallen by 2.3 billion dollars (Marks). This may not seem like much, but it’s the biggest blow to music stores ever. That means businesses going bankrupt and honest people losing jobs, all for short-termed entertainment. It tears our nation’s communities apart.

Besides the direct affects on our economy, pirating music teaches us that we can get away with theft. It’s so easy, younger and younger kids can do it. This leaves little room for moral maturity. According to Hewlett-Packard’s Carly Fjorina, “The sense of right and wrong does not evolve as quickly as technology” (Marks). Who’s to say that if we can get away with stealing music, we can’t get away with other petty crime? The simplicity of it makes this idea blossom in youngsters.

Aside from its effect on our society, peer-to-peer file-sharing is morally wrong. The word “pirate” alone triggers many connotations, mostly from the movie industry. Hollywood has successfully turned a buccaneer into a pop icon. Free and unrestrained adventurers who swordfight and connive, all in the interests of themselves alone. Sounds just like American philosophy, right?

Much like the pirates of today, buccaneers in the past used to outnumber their victims, making success easy and certain. There are so many people who file-share in modern times that it makes reforming the extensive pirating movement especially challenging. In the 18th century, governments fought back against pirates with heavily armed naval ships. Though we can’t bring out the infantry at everyone with a computer, we can crack down on the perpetrators just as forcefully.

In 2001, Napster was shut down by lawsuits of copyright infringement from several record companies. This was a drastic blow to millions of youth in particular who depended on Napster for their music downloading needs. Today, Napster is in business again, but you have to buy songs rather than just download them. If we can do it with Napster, who had more than 25 million unique users worldwide (“Napster”), record companies can sue the countless others until they’re forced to make an honest profit.

At the very core of the issue is the sad moral decay in our society, and it’s starting with our youth. Moral decay is hard to document, but 74% of high school students admitted to cheating on an exam at least once in a 2002 poll (F. Lee). That tells us something about the American way of life. That we want everything we can get for ourselves. The ends justify the means. We’ve somehow created this idea that if we can get away with it, do it. Downloading music illegally isn’t as bad as doing drugs, or committing heinous crimes, but it is a problem. It takes away jobs and money from our economy, but mostly, it encourages and enables people of all ages to break the law—some without even realizing it. We need to get past the Jack Sparrow outlook of piracy that makes it okay. We need to realize that as a society, our duty is to look out for each other, even if we don’t know the owner of the record store that just went out of business. File-sharing is just a small part of a bigger, dark picture that has every potential to become something much worse. It takes one step at a time to change things, and starting with something as simple as banning music piracy sounds like a good place to start.