Stealing music

Hello everyone, sorry for being a bit slow on the updates lately! Seeing how we've talked about the music industry and how all that is changing, I figured I should talk a little about something relating to that.

Last year we had a huge debate in Sweden over a new law that was about to be passed, called the "FRA-Law". It basically gives the government the power to monitor people's e-mail traffic and network usage. People were worried about their privacy being invaded, and quite rightly so, but I felt that a lot of people used the privacy-invasion as an excuse for their anger at no longer being able to download music illegeally without potential consequences.

Thousands of young swedes joined a fringe political party called the "pirate party", who support file sharing and are against these sorts of privacy infringements. However, like I said, a lot of people I know were not very informed on more than the fact that their illeagal downloading might come to an end.

I've downloaded music in the past, although I do tend to go out and by a CD if I like it. It's not the worst thing in the world, and I believe that the record industry are going way too far in their pursuit of downloaders. However, it also angers me when people seem to have the attitude that they're not doing anything wrong. I think you are.

There are many aspects of this, and I believe that filesharing over the internet may sometimes help artist spread their music, but it should be their choice. If they don't want thousands of people downloading what they've worked hard on for free and that then happens (when they could get a little bit of money from it), I think they have every right to feel offended. And to connect back to my FRA-point, it angers me when people hide behind other reasons when the real reason as to why they disagree with policy is that they want free stuff (this of course doesn't go for everyone). Just be honest and say that, I would respect that more.