File Sharing Is Not a Revolution - It's Theft

I am writing this in response to "File Sharing Rebellion," by George Zornick in the Feb. 11 issue of The Spectrum.

I am writing because I fear too many people of our generation will agree with Zornick simply because it's easier and trendier to be rebellious than it is to think of the implications of your articles.

I ask you readers, what is the difference between walking out of a store with a stack of CDs under your arm without paying for them and downloading a few hundred songs without paying for them?

The answer is that there is no difference between the two; both are theft of another person's property. So why won't the people who download thousands of songs just walk into a store and strip the shelves bare? There is no difference.

The reason they won't do it is because Kazaa provides them with the personal anonymity of the Internet and the moral delusion that they are doing nothing wrong.

The campus has been having problems with cars being broken into, and the thieves - if they are reading this - should pay close attention to the arguments made by Zornick to justify their theft.

He argues, "The only people who may lose out on the file-sharing trend but don't deserve it are the artists themselves - but they shouldn't blame music fans."

This argument is a profound look into Zornick's illogical moral standing. Under his beliefs, the people who broke into those cars on campus aren't the ones to blame - it's actually the fault of the people whose cars were broken into. So if you have had a car broken into in the past few weeks remember you can't blame the thieves!

For anyone who would stand in favor of theft against the "ruthless capitalists who head America's record companies" out of some deformed sense of justice stemming from the prices of CDs, let me tell you that the power rests completely in your hands as consumers.

If you don't like the high prices of CD's, don't buy them! Your "not-buying power" will make the "ruthless capitalists" lower the price of their music.

To prove my point that the "not-buying power" works in reality, I use an example noted by Zornick. He says radio stations, "choose their play-lists based on album sales, rather than musical quality." As people have been downloading music for years now, the effect that these downloading devices have had is already present. Radio stations base their play-lists on the music that people do buy and since you did not buy the CD and choose instead to steal it from the Net, you have told the market that you don't want to hear that CD on the radio. Hence, the stations do not play it.

The "not-buying power" is the most profound power in the hands of the consumer. This should be the tool of revolution used by anyone looking to subvert mainstream corporate culture. File sharing without the approval of the artist is not revolution - it is theft.