[Note: I'm a philosophy graduate, which means I'm used to discussing the ethics of things that are totally illegal, such as throwing a fat man in front of a speeding trolley to stop it running over six people, or killing a homeless man and taking his organs for transplants, or framing and hanging an innocent man to prevent riots. These are all standard philosophical examples (yes, really). You should not, however, take such philosophical discussions as urging you to commit crimes; and that goes for this webpage as well.]
The RIAA and MPAA would have us believe that, if Alice downloads films or music from Limewire or a similar network, she is committing a crime as serious as stealing. Yet any idiot can see that this is nonsense in the case of things she wasn't going to buy anyway. If Alice downloads a CD she wasn't going to buy anyway - lets say Britney's Greatest Hits - she gains something and nobody loses anything. In such circumstances, it's pretty much impossible to construct a sensible argument that her behaviour is wrong.
(This is profoundly different from stealing a physical item - lets say a car - that she wasn't going to buy anyway. In that case, someone loses a car.)
However: in most cases, it's almost impossible for Alice to be certain that she wouldn't have bought the item she's downloading. The fact that she wants it at all is surely an indication that there was some possibility of her buying it. Lets say there was a 5% chance of her buying Britney's Greatest Hits, and that this CD costs £15. In that case, she has robbed the music industry of a 5% chance of gaining £15, which is equivalent to robbing it of 75 pence.
So what should she do? It's not practical to send 75 pence in the mail. But one strategy that might occur to Alice is to keep track of how much she owes the movie and record industries. When her debt to the movie industry reaches the cost of a film, she buys a film she was planning to download. When her debt to the music industry reaches the cost of a CD, she buys a CD she was planning to download.
It might be objected that this plan is unfair to the artists themselves. If Alice - having downloaded a number of CDs - finally clears her debt by buying Avril Lavigne's Greatest Hits, then Avril has gained whatever royalties the record industry is kind enough to bestow upon her, while the other musicians have gained nothing. However, this is no more unfair than the situation where Alice never downloads anything, but has a 5% chance of buying any particular CD she fancies. In either case, one artist will actually get paid while 19 will not.
Alice's plan succeeds in being ethical if nobody is worse off because of her pirating behaviour. This is the key test. So far, I can't see any reason to think her plan fails this test.
Written: 2008-08-17
allancrossman.com