ethics challenge

more daring than making cakes, ha!

9/7/08

For the sake of acting in accordance with principles i can be proud of, and having defensible reasons for the exceptions i make, I’m going to try to follow the law re: copyrights/IP.  I’m doing this because it’s the issue at hand at our school right now, and I’m being forced to think about how I can justify my behavior as an adult to children/teenagers and the example I would want to set for my own kids.  I think about that in abstract terms whenever I think about having kids, and here is a chance to practice.  Breaking these particular laws is something i’ve done on a regular basis – so i don’t have to talk about this in hypothetical terms, i can just go ahead and put my opinions about it into practice and confront the things that make doing so difficult.

I think there are arguments to be made for breaking these laws in an ethical way, for example for educational purposes, or for the sake of open access to information and facilitating progress in a community of scientists or artists – though admittedly i think these are stronger arguments for changing the law than for breaking it as individuals with no additional effort/activism.  I don’t honestly believe any of these justifications apply to the way i violate the law most of the time. I think the main reasons I violate the law are out of greed (not wanting to pay) and laziness (not wanting to go to the trouble of working around not having the program I want, even if it is possible).  I don’t want to be a freerider, and I don’t want to let myself do things only because I know I won’t get caught that I know i wouldn’t do otherwise.  Seneca says to imagine “a master whose life, conversation, and soul-expressing face have satisfied you” (epistle 11) and to act like you would in his presence.  This is sort of a variation on WWJD, but it isn’t what would he do, but what would you do if he stood beside you?  How would you justify your behavior to someone you truly respect/who has a stronger sense of ethics/wisdom than you?  Of course all this is moot if you’re not interested in becoming a “virtuous” person in the usual sense or if you are an anarchist, and I understand that my basic premises are that the law is valuable/worth following for its own sake (not the only rational view out there) and that working toward more ethical behavior is an important and practical/real life goal for me.

I have an illegal copy of microsoft office suite on my computer and I don’t believe i would tell Seneca or Jesus or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Thomas Jefferson or anyone else that I have a right to it, either naturally by virtue of being human or as part of my due as a member of a society governed by laws.  So I deleted it.  I also deleted a folder i copied from a friend’s ipod of songs i wanted to listen to in case i want to keep them.  This is not as hard as deleting songs I know i will miss, but it is 10.24g of potential pleasure.  On the upside, my computer was running out of room and this will free up a long of space, and save me the time of sifting through it all!  I have two CDs out from the library, that I would have just copied to listen to on my ipod later and see if i like them.  I’m not going to do it.  If I don’t listen to them before they are due, too bad.  Maybe I’m not missing much, or maybe I’ll rediscover them at some moment in the future when they will be more meaningful/appreciated.  If i’m going to be totally honest, I do that a lot (copy library CDs for the sake of discovering new music), but it’s not true that i often go out and buy records if I DO like it, or that i convince other people who wouldn’t have otherwise bought it to do so.  and i often keep music even if it is mediocre.

My first goal is to change my future behavior or find ethical reasons not to do so. I haven’t resolved what i’m going to do about old stuff that is important to me.  One idea I had is to look to the play count on itunes, and maybe only let myself keep songs that i’m supposedly “trying out” for a certain number of plays, then either delete it and accept not having it, or go buy it.  In the old days before mp3s, I spent a lot of time in record shops and I found all kinds of deals.  At that time i had way less money than i do now, but it was a  priority so i naturally made record shopping significant part of my budget.  If music is so important to me, shouldn’t i be willing to make sacrifices for it?  If it isn’t worth paying for, maybe it’s not work compromising for.

I’m not going to just delete all the songs i have and start over, because i’ve paid for some of this stuff, copied it from cds, etc.  some of it is so important to me that it will take me time to prepare myself to part with it.   In the cases where i copied songs from a cd i don’t own, but i do in fact have them on a record, i think its ok to keep them because the result is the same as if i hooked up the record player and made mp3s of the songs.  I can honestly say that the audio quality is not the deciding factor.  People who know me well have seen me abuse my records on occasion, and also take the greatest pleasure in listening to a horribly scratched and full-of-pops and hisses record.  I can hear past those imperfections, and I actually kind of like them because I think they’re like wrinkles on a person who has lived a full life.  The more worn a record gets over time, the more evidence that it has given people pleasure.

The changes i’ve made today are relatively easy.  The idea of trashing yoko or arthur russell mp3s or mix tapes from tina is too much right now.  Also i am realizing that i have sentimental attachment to the actual files – the fact that i got something from a particular person at a particular time – even though it isn’t physical property, and knowing how much i’ve enjoyed those 40 plays or whatever the ticker says – has meaning for me, and I’ll have to consider that too…

I’m not doing this to tell the world about how great and ethical i am, but to challenge myself to actually declare what i do publicly and let whoever wants convince me to behave otherwise with their rational arguments.  If you care to comment on my reasoning or values, please consider whether you are putting as much thought into your comments as I am putting into justifying my beliefs publicly.  If you know me and want to talk to me about this in private or via email, please do.  I’m also happy to be used as an example of right or wrong action/reasoning for the sake of discussion as long as i’m allowed to defend myself/refine my position as necessary!

stats today:

• no illegal programs
• one copied font that i’m using for work for two more days (we have 5 licenses and i’m only aware of 3 others in use so i believe it is legal)
• 4715 songs in the itunes library.  I don’t know how many are illegal, but i’m sure it is a significant number.  Going through each of them and deleting them if i’m not willing to buy will tell me for sure if it’s true that “i wouldn’t have paid for it anyway” as we like to say.

In the spirit of supporting artists whose work deserves compensation I’ll tell you about Orishas – my little bro just gave me two of their CDs for my birthday and they are great! I’d heard of them before but didn’t have any of their music.  Cuban rappers with sort of 90s hip hop beats crossed with traditional cuban and other latin american styles.  they sing in english, spanish, and some other language(s) that I can’t understand, but i’m listening to it for the third time.  Instead of making you a cd, check out their songs for free here: http://www.myspace.com/orishasthebest (I especially like “Reina de la Calle”) – Thanks Jesse!