Quote from jem:
If the country you live in says downloading is not illegal - is it still stealing.
If a country makes a law which 70% of the people break... is it really a crime.
Should it be a crime.
Does law have to be just
Should gov't represent the people?
Why should you not be able to take pictures of art and not music?
Why can't you make copies of organized digits? Why are some works in the public domain and other not?
When to morals, ethics and law intersect.
Is it wrong to download music or just illegal?
Here's my view on it. When you buy music, you have an explicit or implicit contract i.e. a license just like for software. It allows you to listen but not to copy the music (except for reasonable personal use) or distribute it or play it commercially.
So, if you buy music with such conditions, and you then upload it to to file-share, you are breaking the law AND you are breaking your contractual agreement. So I think it's reasonable to prosecute for that.
However, the people downloading the music are doing nothing morally wrong. They have not made any agreement with the artist or record company, they are no more doing something wrong than someone who sees a stolen Van Gogh which is placed in the street, and enjoy looking at it or take photos of it. They are not stealing, because the owner of the music doesn't lose it when another copies it. They are not even necessarily making illicit gain, because many download music for free that they would not have bought if it cost money (demand at $0 is higher than at >$1-$10).
Now, to dissuade this in the past, content creators along with lawyers made up a law called copyright. No morality behind it (copyright as a concept did not exist in any morality in the world before the printing press came along), they simply were of the opinion that they could get away with implementing it, and make a lot of money out of it. One government agreed (tax revenue for them), others copied, and so it became widespread.
It is a bit like speeding laws. Clearly it is not immoral to do 71mph instead of 70mph. It is wrong to drive dangerously at 20mph and not wrong to drive safely at 100mph on an empty road in the middle of nowhere. Speeding has just criminalised something because governments find it easier to handle traffic enforcement if they can throw a blanket charge at someone and make it stick, without actually having to prove that any dangerous driving was taking place. I.e. speeding is illegal but not immoral (unless it's dangerous speeds).
It's basically a utility law, not a law based on morality. People in general know the difference, and generally only obey utility laws out of fear of being caught and punished. They don't have any moral qualms about breaking them, as can be seen by the widespread breaking of speeding laws every day by billions of people. Ditto for file-sharing.
Utility laws aren't necessarily bad, but there is no sanctimonious argument in their favour (if anything, moral arguments count against them as they infringe liberty). They are just a tool. In the current environment, utility laws enforcing copyright have, as a tool, become near useless. Any such laws restricting free flow of information purely for utility reasons will be unenforceable, so these governments are trying to hold back a dam breach by sticking in their thumb. Might work a bit for a while, but eventually it'll fail miserably.
Meanwhile, restrictions on information that *are* morally justified, have widespread support e.g. bans on child porn, leaking of critical military secrets (assuming it's not some tyrannical regime, or evidence of war crimes etc), naming spies in hostile countries etc. So, I don't see any major problem here. Governments and business just need to recognise the changing reality and adapt to it. In 30 years people will look back at this and laugh at these people. They are today's equivalent of the weavers who went out smashing looms in protest at losing their jobs. Yesterday's men, becoming a pathetic spectacle by trying to turn back progress.
