Also, what should be my mindset especially with gray area, such as movies you own or friends own, or music you can easily grab off of Youtube, or stuff that you can't find in stores?
Well, I think those who have commented bring up great points! And so to add to the bigger picture of this question, I wrote a friend who has a friend in a band you might know, Death Cab For Cutie. This band member, a non-Christian who plays in this secular band wrote this back:
here's my response to the question below:
my feelings are very cut and dry on the matter: downloading music that is intended and available for purchase without paying for it is stealing. if we as artists didn't want you to pay for our work, we would go to the trouble of manufacturing CD's to be distributed to stores or uploading them to itunes, we would simply offer them to you for free at our shows or on the internet. therefore, as a general rule i would say that if an album is as available for purchase with the click of a mouse as it is for free, the 'right' thing to do would be to pay for it, not steal it.
out of print work is a tricky area, though. i often have a hard time locating some of the obscure music i'm looking for on itunes or at the record store. therefore, i don't take issue with the trading of such work on the grounds that it is not available for purchase. here's an example: we made a split 7" with a band called fiver almost 10 years ago. there were only 500 copies pressed and they sold out almost as soon as they came out of the factory. the only way to hear that recording is to a) bid for a copy on ebay or b) download a burned-from-the-vinyl copy somewhere out there on the web. as the creator of that piece of music, i would LOVE to see it available in all its glory on CD or itunes, completely remastered, cleaned up, etc. (mostly because I would like a good copy :) ). but until that day comes, i can't fault people for downloading that song for free because we have not made it available to date. i would rather my out-of-print work be traded and kept alive than have it be unavailable to our fans.
does that help?
ben
Yup, that is that "Ben" the lead singer of the band.
I asked for this because I really wanted us Christians who want non-Christians to know and love Jesus to think about what a non-christian band member really thinks. What kind of witness are we setting for non-Christians when they have stronger convictions about stealing than us. Instead of looking to us as models, they will look down on us and I think lose respect when they see us stealing music and videos. Let's consider the bigger picture. I know I struggle when I hear that people steal music. Let's honor those who have worked hard to make music we enjoy by paying for it.
Mark 12:17-18
17 Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they marveled at him.
I think Easton's comment pretty much sum it up: I'll include the whole thing here.
Perhaps its cause I was looking to go into the recording industry, and my some of my friends at school actually are, that I know a bit about the copywrite laws behind this, and have heard of all the effects that pirating has done to the industry itself. Essentially the major record labels are going bankrupt because of it, the recording industry is on it's deathbed, music will still happen somehow, through advertising or some other means of making money through it, but yeah we killed the industry as we know it today. So yeah here are the copywrite laws boiled down into a few sentences. It is illegal to both steal music and share music and movies. But you can share them with members of your household(immediate family). So no internet pirating; you can't share movies or music with your friends; you can't grab stuff off of youtube, they are violating copywrite laws putting it up there in the first place. If you can purchase it somewhere it probably isn't free, and you are stealing it if you take it. As far as stuff you already have already stolen or shared, the media industry has stated several times in the past that they won't press any charges if you delete all of stolen or shared stuff that you have and don't do it any longer. I think that is a pretty good deal. So yeah there really aren't any gray areas as far as I am concerned, and we should probably stay out of those anyway as a Christian, since we are to be "pure and blameless" and "shine like stars in the universe". I'm not sure if it gets any clearer then that. The ten commandments say don't steal. According to federal law piracy and sharing copyrighted materials is stealing. Therefore we are breaking one of the ten commandments if we steal or share music. If you want some more proof on the copywrite stuff, you can ask me any questions via e-mail at eastgoingeast@gmail.com. I have some friends that just went through a music business class, where they had to read through all of the legal stuff, I am just telling you what I heard from them. But I can ask them and they can tell me for sure if there are any doubts.
Well, hope that helps.
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