Editorial: Don’t steal arrgh music

People often refer to the college-aged as a volatile mass of risk takers, pointing to the stages… People often refer to the college-aged as a volatile mass of risk takers, pointing to the stages of human brain development, the low rates of contraception use during intercourse and students’ willingness to consume $5 pizzas at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday as evidence. For those who argue that a flirt-with-danger attitude pervades campuses across the country, perhaps “music piracy” can now be added to their card deck of accusations.

According to International Business News, a recent study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found that regardless of legality, college undergraduates view music piracy more favorably than shoplifting music. Published in the March 2011 edition of Psychology, Crime and Law, only the study’s abstract was available yesterday on Pitt databases, so specific breakdowns cannot be reported.

According to the IBS report, students responding to the idea of stealing a physical CD “expressed various reasons [for not stealing the CD], such as morality influence from family and friends, [and] fear of getting caught.” But when it came to illegally downloading music, fewer students cited similar concerns. For college students, using the Internet to steal is somehow less morally perplexing than using your pocket.

If it’s remotely possible, for just a moment, to put aside the moral concerns, legal consequences and the economic costs of file sharing — the Institute for Policy Innovation found in 2007 that it might cost the U.S. economy $12.5 billion per year — the broader effects of hyper-available, digitalized music has not been entirely negative.

For one, although CD sales have plummeted since the ’90s, the Internet has opened up a new source of income for artists and record companies alike (at least for those artists and companies that license their work to pay-per-download music providers like iTunes). The Recording Industry Association of America reports that between 2004 and 2010, revenues from digital sales jumped 1,000 percent.

The prevailing free-music mindset — even if it were put there through nefarious file-sharing means — has resulted, we think, in not only enhanced consumer freedom but also an unrivaled publicity opportunity for artists of all genres and popularity levels. The free-music mindset has prompted more artists to post free, downloadable samples on their websites or stream them on YouTube, giving music consumers the chance to instantly pass judgment on some of the music before whipping out their credit cards for the rest of it.

Despite the efficiency with which the downloading culture has endowed the music market, intellectual property should be vigorously defended. Respect for copyright laws is essential to a healthy democracy. Governments and universities clearly realize this — students should too.

After revisions were made in 2008 to the Higher Education Act, all American colleges and universities were required to implement plans to “effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by users of the institution’s network.” Like any higher education institution keen on keeping federal funding, Pitt fulfills its obligations — it maintains a policy that does not permit file sharing within its network, advertises the policy at freshman orientation and follows a carefully defined procedure in response to evidence of Web-based copyright infringement.

However often we catch that lust-for-free-stuff virus so contagious among us college students, we shouldn’t let our youthful frugality supersede another’s rights. And if we do, at least we should be ready to face the music.