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Go to School and Steal Stuff
Stealing intellectual property is OK according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, because: 1) it’s really hard to stop; and 2) it’s not nice to “bully” thieves. In an op-ed article in The Washington Post, a senior EFF attorney complains that “universities are pressured to punish students” for stealing music and movies over university-owned internet lines and explains how cheap and easy it to store and distribute large quantities of stolen music.
EFF’s claims that the “only solution is a blanket license that permits students to get unrestricted music and movies from sources of their choosing.” The advocacy group ignores the fact that providing students with unlimited, easy-to-resell entertainment products would not fairly compensate artists or the companies that record, film, and distribute them and could decimate large chunks of the entertainment industry.
Of note, EFF fails to explain why college students, a segment of the population that is disproportionately young, white and well off, deserve special rights privileges in obtaining movies and music that would not be available to the rest of population. EFF claims that illegal downloading “is a fight about money, not about morality.” They are wrong. While the money is important, particularly to those it is stolen from, exempting some of society’s most privileged members from the laws that bind the rest of the public is flat-out immoral.
EFF’s “solution” would provide for legal discrimination based on a university student status that is significantly tied to race, class and age. Any acceptable solution needs to be fair, fair not only to artists but also to the rest of society.
See EFF op-ed
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