Whats So Wrong With Stealing Music?
Stealing music from the Internet is wrong in at least two ways. The first and most obvious way in which it is wrong is the fact that it is stealing and we do usually think of stealing as wrong; at the very least, it is prosecutable by law. The second and less obvious way is in how mp3’s and other compression technologies degrade the quality of the original source. The second objection is then an aesthetic objection, if you will. It is an objection about how a musician’s art is compromised. To address the first point: some might think that downloading music from the Internet is not “stealing” in a way similar to shoplifting or robbery. Moreover, some might argue that even if it is the case that downloading music is tantamount to stealing music, it is not clear that stealing is wrong under every circumstance. If the downloaded music is deemed freely distributable by its creators, then clearly downloading is not stealing. In my own case, I post music on the Internet with the intention of
