Excuses, excuses

Illegal copying of material has become some commonplace that, apparently, many people don’t think of it as a crime at all. People are quite open about making copies of stuff illegally, and can’t pretend that I’ve never done it myself.

So I can’t take the moral high-ground, and I won’t. If you’re copying stuff illegally, you’re probably just as nice a person as me. And I’m a very nice person.

But that doesn’t stop me getting pissed off about it.

It’s not the fact that people are downloading stuff without paying for it that pisses me off, it’s the excuses that people seem to think they have to give for doing it. For example:

“But, when you pay for music, most of the money goes to the wrong people anyway.”
So? If it that were true, you have to admit that some of the money goes to the creative people involved. Plus, all the other people involved in putting together that song, film or TV show. So, in some way, you’re stealing from those people, and no matter what your feelings are about the fat cat media moguls creaming off the profits, there a people involved who don’t deserve to be stolen from.

“But it’s not stealing.”
Okay, so you’re not reaching into their pockets and pulling out wads of cash with a hearty “yoink!”, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not a thief. Perhaps the problem here is that the word thief has the wrong connotations. It suggests that something has been physically transferred from the victim to the perpetrator. When you take a copy of something that you didn’t pay for, the original still exists, no harm no foul, right?

Wrong, it’s still stealing, it’s just by a more circuitous route. If you don’t like being called a thief, invent a different word for what you’re doing and we’ll add it to the dictionary. (Definition: see “Thief”).

“But everyone else does it!”
That one doesn’t work. Ask any MP.

“But you can’t get this TV show any other way!”
So? Just because you can’t get something by legal means doesn’t make it right to get by illegal means. In fact, I’ve not seen a single situation where a little sprinkling of two magic ingredients won’t resolve this kind of issue.

The magic ingredients are patience and money. For example, virtually every TV show comes out on DVD eventually, and you can wait and pay for it. If it doesn’t, well, see my next excuse.

“But I need it NOW!”
No, you don’t. You want it now. Nobody needs to see the latest TV show now. Chill out, go for a walk, read a bloody book, watch something else on the telly. Amazingly, you won’t die.

“But the laws are stupid and restrictive.”
That’s a maybe. I sometimes think it’s stupid that I have to drive at 40 miles an hour along the long straight road to my house, because that’s the speed limit, even at 2 in the morning. That’s because laws are blunt instruments, designed to be morally right in the majority of situations. In this case, it’s morally right to expect payment for something you’ve created. The laws that defend that right may be “stupid” in places, but if you’re worried about that, fight to change the law.

For info, downloading stuff illegally isn’t fighting to change laws, it’s just ignoring them.

There are probably a lot more excuses that I haven’t thought of, but they all seem to boil down to the same basic statement: “I don’t want to pay (or wait) for the content I’m consuming, and people have made it easy for me to get it for nothing, so I will.”

That’s not an excuse, it’s a reason. If you use it as your reason, rather than pretending that somehow you’re fighting the good fight against restrictive copyright laws and evil media corporations, then I’ll respect you for not fooling yourself or trying to fool me. But don’t pretend that it’s a good reason. It’s just a reason.