I've gone into this debate many times, and let me tell you, there are no winners.

Napster: Illegal? Immoral?

Maybe. Napster /can't/ be illegal, because it doesn't do anything by itself; the illegal activity is purely that of the Napster users. To shut down Napster because it can be used for piracy would be equivilant to shutting down Scott Paper because you can pirate books on the product they make (Napster isn't non-profit; they are a for profit company).

Some say that trading data isn't immoral because it costs nothing to reproduce data. I cannot agree with this: while it is true that reproduction of data is trivial and free, production of the data is not. It takes effort, time, and money: Photoshop did not appear out of thin air.

In my opinion, I think that the economy and society need to be scrapped. We live in a time where we have the ability to elimiate scarcity of information, yet we make arbitrary laws to protect the ways of the economic dinosaurs (the record companies). They deal in scarcity, which is no more. Now, I ask you, why do we appease and humour these companies? They have no constitutional right to exist, and in my opinion, if they cannot adapt to the new market (not to be confused with the 'new economy'), they should rightfully die.

Aside: Please don't call 'copyright infringment' 'piracy'. Stealing money from someone that they never had cannot held in the same light as murder and larceny on the high seas.


Worm"So very tired"wood