The one part of the clip from the sweet spot that really struck me was when they were talking about how the music world has changed drastically over the years. The one man mentioned how he once did a story on The Drive By Truckers and they said, “thank god people can’t download t-shirts.” This was really eye opening to me, as I’ve never fathomed something like that. In our society people just don’t do that. But when you think about it, it’s the same concept as pirating music from the internet. In both cases, your are stealing something illegally. For some reason in our society however, stealing music has become a norm that people don’t think twice about. And if anything people who actually pay for the songs they have are in the minority. It’s a sad thought to ponder that we are a generation of people that have grown so accustomed to a specific type of theft. The music world has suffered from this and the book world has suffered and will continue to suffer from this with the influx of E-books. Should clothing companies be worried that they are next- that one day someone may find a way to actually download clothing?
I tend to think that pirating music has become acceptable because at once it wasn’t considered illegal at all (from the consumer’s perspective). As Goldstein indicates, technology evolves fast and law comes second. When people saw they could get their favorite music for free on sites like Napster, they did. Since nothing blocked them, they must have assumed it was all right – just like sharing a CD with someone in person. The RIAA became interested in this technology after it existed and had been practiced for some time. Like just about all aspects of life, ethics and law come second to behavior. I would ask the reverse of your question: why is it that sharing music is equated with theft?
I agree that it is nonsensical that people believe it is okay to pirate music. Most people who are guilty of pirating often have rationalizations for their theft (it’s easy, it’s free, no one is losing money, etc.).
It’s hard for people often to equate downloading music with stealing because there are hardly any ramifications and it doesn’t feel like steeling because they are not taking a physical copy of anything off of a shelf.