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[ 17-10-2003 ]
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[ Mass Media ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/byfield.html
Musical morality
By TED BYFIELD -- Edmonton Sun
October 12, 2003
Well, well, well, what d'ya know? The music industry has suddenly discovered the existence of something called morality.
They seem to have been singularly unaware of it before. In their exuberance to extol unrestricted sex, violence, rebellion and everything else they imply by the word "freedom," things like right and wrong didn't figure prominently in their product lines.
For years, in fact, the same industry has urged 12-year-olds and up to do whatever came into their heads. The message always was: The hell with authority. Do your own thing.
Now they have discovered that they need morality to stay in business. Through the Internet, people can easily acquire their products without paying for them. Or they can buy the CD and distribute scores of copies of it free to their friends.
So the industry has begun a vigorous advertising campaign, lecturing youngsters on the need for honesty. "Real Fans Get the Real Thing," says one ad. "You may not think you're doing anything illegal," it intones. "The fact is, however, that when you do this sort of thing you're taking something that doesn't belong to you... You are stealing."
It continues: "Stealing music is against the law. Stealing music betrays the songwriters and recording artists who create it. Stealing music stifles the careers of new artists and up-and-coming bands. Stealing music threatens the livelihood of the thousands of working people - from recording engineers to store clerks ..."
To which the youngster, schooled by this same industry, might well reply: "Well, ain't that just too bad?" In fact, I could even write a song myself about it:
I stole the hottest number of the week.
Well ain't that just too bad?
They say I'm a dumb-ass and a thievin' freak.
Well ain't that real sad?
So you don't find it thrillin'
To miss that second billion
Now ain't that just too bad?
A friend of mine, somewhat closer to the music market than I (meaning that he's 50-some years younger), also came closer to the point:
Sorry, man, about swiping your new song, We're only doin' what you taught us all along
This problem, we're told, affects not just music but the whole entertainment business. Through the mysterious powers of networks like Kazaa and Morpheus, entire movies can be readily downloaded and distributed free. On occasion even first-run films have been found circulating as freebies before they got into the theatres. Music theft is running to an appalling 2.6 billion files per month, says a press release.
Policing this is all but impossible, so the music industry has been reduced to the extremity of these unaccustomed moral appeals to the same youngsters whose consciences they have worked so diligently to destroy.
I find great difficulty feeling sorry for these people. They don't seem to realize that the authority behind the moral principle, Thou shalt not steal, the one they now advance as sacrosanct, is exactly the same as the authority behind the principle, Honour thy father and thy mother, or Thou shalt not commit adultery, the ones they have spent the last 25 years jeering at.
The music industry, however, is only the first sector to find itself so ensnared. There will certainly be others. Capitalism, whether you consider it good or bad - and I consider it good - is very much the product of Protestant Christianity. One of its first apologists, Adam Smith, knew that it would function properly only when combined with a strong moral authority.
For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries its practitioners were fully aware of this and were careful never to challenge its religious underpinnings.
The smartasses of the late 20th century almost universally have rejected that principle. Banks vie with high-tech companies to rid themselves of hoary old rules and proudly proclaim themselves liberated from the "intolerances" of the past. Now one industry, probably the most lucrative one, finds itself totally dependent on those rules and its clients utterly contemptuous of them.
So ain't that just too bad? You're absolutely right it's too bad, and it will probably become a whole lot worse.
Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@edm.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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