Music downloading: practices, legal issues, and cultural impact

Social Capital and Intellectual Property Rights: Ethical Standards of Downloading Music From Free Web Sites

The prevalence of the influx of free information through the new media, the Internet, has provided opportunities for people to gain access to almost every idea or commodity distributed and produced under the capitalist economy of the 21st century. In today's information age, the most sought-after commodity is information; yet, this information is produced not without a price or appropriate cost or price. Indeed, protests against "piracy" or the illegal use of commercially-available goods, commodities, and information is now an issue that affects the business and civil sectors of the society.

In this paper, the researcher argues that piracy is a social issue that must be dealt with the full force of the law. This means that piracy is illegal, and its offenders must be punished from stealing information and commodity that other people would pay to gain access or ownership to. This unfair distribution of information as a commodity is argued based on two important concepts that every individual must become aware of: first, the concept of intellectual property, and second, the concept that information is a social capital.

The researcher argues that information, being both products of intellectual property and social capital of individuals that are also members of human society in general, must be exchanged for what the creator considers as its worth in the arena of the free market of goods and services. Hence, piracy should be enforced in order not to disrupt the smooth flow of exchange of goods, services, and/or ideas in the capitalist economy.

The concept of intellectual rights is an old argument used in this debate about piracy. However, as in the case of free information retrieved or obtained through free downloading sites like the Kazaa, it is vital that Internet users consider the right of the creator of a particular information or commodity to earn from what he or she has produced due to her talents, knowledge, or skills. The argument for intellectual property is rationalized by describing the process in which the product or commodity goes through. For example, a new song is the intellectual property of the individual or individuals who have created it. Record companies go through the expense of buying the rights to the new song, mass producing it, and marketing and advertising it so that the public will know about this new 'product' because of the value that they put to the creator's right to his product, which is an intellectual property.