Do u tink downloading music from the net with limewire is ethically wrong?
I’m sitting in Intellectual Property Law class right now. We’ve discussed this question several times, of course. I would say yes, it is ethically wrong. It is theft to use someone’s intellectual property in a manner other than their intent and it harms their ability to profit from their work and thus lowers their incentive to produce their work. If they want to allow samples or release lower quality versions to be freely distributed, that’s up to them to decide that’s a good way to advertise or not, it’s not up to us to make that decision for them. Still, I was a freshmen in college at the height of the original Napster. I don’t know anyone who illegally downloaded less than a thousand songs that year. We all learned a lot about a lot of music that we wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to and many people later purchased albums they otherwise would not have. Many people also didn’t purchase albums they otherwise would have. Either way, we took the choice of how to promote music away
