The Ethics of Music Piracy

With the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), there has arisen much debate concerning the ethical implications of downloading music for free. Contrary to what record labels and some conceited artists would claim, filesharing sites like Mediafire and ThePirateBay are not in fact unethical. This is because there exists no finite amount of music files. It would be illogical for any company to expect customers to pay for an item of which there is an infinite supply.

Consider if I were to break into the Roadrunner distribution warehouse and steal a crate of a thousand Nickelback CDs (not that I would want to). This would indeed be stealing, and thus immoral. Because I am taking the CDs, I am in effect eliminating potential profit that would have been made by selling them. However, if I were to download a Nickelback album, (again, not that I would ever want to) I am not stealing any potential profit from Roadrunner because there are an indefinite number of digital Nickelback albums floating about in cyberspace and cannot be profited upon. The cost of producing an online file is zero dollars so downloading an album does not incur any financial loss to Roadrunner Records. Record labels are not satisfying any demand by selling overpriced plastic discs to those individuals who only seek to acquire the digital files therein. Likewise, websites like iTunes must believe their costumers to be imbeciles in order to pay money for something that is readily available for free. It is unfortunate that the US government is trying to shut down or castrate sites like Mediafire.com and ThePirateBay. These sites are not immoral because they are satisfying an economic demand more efficiently than iTunes or your record store do. 

It no longer makes sense to expect consumers to spend money on something of which there is an infinite supply. Just like a business would be unsuccessful in its attempt to get consumers to pay money in order to breathe oxygen, it would be just as unsuccessful in selling movie or music files. With the age of the internet, music has ceased to be considered a finite commodity like Televisions or Computers. Thus, The SOPA does nothing but attempt to enforce archaic and imbecilic ideologies. The fact that record labels are losing money is a result of their own flawed business model.