We need to end music copyright. I have written about this before but following many debates with people I have written a full list of the reasons why we must end music copyright and why downloading unlicenced music should be allowed.

Although the industry would have you believe something different, downloading music is not the same as stealing. One has to concede that although there are similarities it is fundementally different from stealing. If I steal your car you no longer have your car. If I download music, I have the music and so does the original bearer.

It is perfectly easy to understand that if someone downloads music it does not mean that if they didn’t have the means to download it for free they definitely would have bought it instead.

Record companies and musicians are very violent. They lobby our government to take people from their homes, kidnap them in state prisons, and saction stealing your property or money in compensation for their alleged loss. This is unacceptable.

The ability to upload and download music accross the Internet has radically changed the music reproduction industry. Change is change. It can can be bad for some but history is clear that change is good overall. Change does not neccessarily mean that something should be reversed. The music industry as it stands will likely be damaged but that is no justification to continue as we are. Things change. A lot of people would have jobs digging our roads but no longer do it because we have mechanical diggers.

Let’s be clear about exactly what we mean by music. Only in the last few decades has music also meant something entirely different than its meaning through all of history. Music is the sound of people singing or playing instruments. This has always been true and is still true. Today it also covers the results of audio reproduction.  Read more...