File Sharing Gets Two Thumbs Up

I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person. I know right from wrong, received my high school diploma and served as a board member for my local School District a few years back.

As the mother of two, I tried to instill in my children the same positive qualities that my parents had taught me such as share with others and spend wisely. I would venture to say, although I have no statistical evidence at hand, that a majority of parents pass these same lessons on to their children in all parts of the world.

Thus, I am constantly amazed at the great length the music industry has pursued in recent years to prevent computer users from "sharing" music with others. I recently read that Japanese firms plan to cut off the Internet connection of anyone who illegally downloads files. In 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced similar plans. The most mind boggling of all crackdowns, in my modest opinion, hails from the United States where a single mother in Minnesota was ordered to pay $220,000 in October for sharing 24 songs online!

My biggest quandary with all the talk of "file sharing" has been trying to understand how or when sharing music became wrong. As both a teenager and adult I have on many occasions taken albums, cassettes and CD's to a friends house to "share." Long before modern technology made "file sharing" a reality, I recorded selected songs from my music collection onto cassette tapes to share with friends. I'm sure I am not the only one to have done so, which makes me wonder whether the movers and shakers in the music industry and members of their legal teams shared some of their favorite tracks with their friends when they were young.

If I am to believe that sharing with my friends in this manner was wrong then I am left wondering for what purpose did my dual cassette tape stereo's manual provide instructions for recording from one cassette to another. Why would top-notch manufacturers provide consumers with in-depth written instructions leading to an illegal act? They wouldn't, of course.

Having raised two children, I can readily recognize the signs and symptoms of a temper tantrum, which is never a pretty sight. The music industry's behavior in recent years brings back to mind the days I spent enduring my children's "terrible two's." Instead of developing sound marketing strategies to address their profit margin issues, as all businesses must do from time to time, the industry has launched the mother of all temper tantrums with it's campaign to abolish sharing, a concept encouraged by parents, teachers and educational programs such as Sesame Street, Barney and Telly Tubbies..

Yes, I am aware of the fact that music labels and their clients are experiencing a lower profit margin as a result of today's user-friendly computer technology. Of course, I don't support making a profit from "sharing," in fact, if money changes hands the concept of sharing flies out the window and instead becomes a business transaction, however, I do support my right, and those of others, to share.

I am not naïve enough to deny that some are making a profit at the expense of the music industry. However, to reinvent the wheel at this stage of the game seems underhanded. I ask again, why was sharing not a problem when cassettes were being passed around? The only answer I've been able to come up with is that distributing cassette tapes resulted in a minor disruption in profit margins, which the music industry chose to ignore. Now that computer technology has made global sharing possible, causing a larger disruption in profit margins, the music industry is doing a 360° turn-around.

Thankfully for those who read my stories, I am not so greedy to try and prevent others from downloading or emailing them to friends and families. In fact, I encourage sharing, which should please those who worked diligently to instill the quality in me as I was growing up. Share this? Please do!