If you’re the owner of a piece of property, you can sell it under whatever conditions or with whatever limitations you desire. In the case of the music industry (well, the traditional music industry; things are changing), they sell the actual property (the recording of the song) in the exclusive format of a physical album/cassette/CD. They allow you to make a copy for your own usage. But they mandate that copies not be made for others; effectively they bind the intellectual property to a piece of physical hardware, and then mandate that only what they produce be sellable. It’s their property, and they can set the rules. If you don’t like their rules, you are free not to buy their product.
Is this a scientific poll, or your local CD swapping group? And exactly what wording did you use to ask? Remember there is this thing called “fair use”; if I buy a CD and make a tape so I can play it in my car, it’s perfectly legal so long as I don’t sell the CD. So if you just ask “Do you think it’s morally OK to copy CD’s?”, you never really addressed the topic.
I suppose you think pirating software is perfectly OK, too.
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We are not talking about if it is right or wrong. We are talking about if it is moral or immoral. I agree that it is wrong. I’ve stated that already. Does a child who steals an apple become an immoral child? yes or no?
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This I agree with you on. Stealing a $4 bottle of wine that you’ve had in the family for 50 years is much worse than stelaing $80 from someone.
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Neither. It was the 38 people who make up Customer Service and Technical Support at my company. A broad mix of people, although all of them do work with computers. My exact words( although I don’t think I asked it exactly the same each time) “A person buys a CD, but likes only one song on it, so he makes an MP3 of it, then sells the CD. Do you think this is immoral?” And I don’t think that pirating software is perfectly OK. I should have made my argument a little clearer. I believe, (with not much evidence) that the majority of Americans have no problem with the above situation. That makes it not immoral to do so. If they did, IF AND ONY IF THEY THOUGHT IT WAS IMMORAL, would it be immoral.
OldScratch said:
But what have you taken? After the MP3 is downloaded, the record company still has everything they had five minutes earlier. Provided that you would never have bought the album in the first place (or could not have, if it is out of print), they have lost nothing–you are not denying the record company any of thier property, an essintial compnant of theft.
Don’t get me wrong-I think that downloading MP3s is wrong, and definitly illegal, but it is illegal and wrong because it is copyright violation, not theft. They are related, but they are not the same thing.
Of course, you can rarely say that you are 100% sure you would never have chosen to buy a particular album, but in cases such as the pulp comics discussed above it is hard to get one’s nickers in a wad about copying such things–the owners of the copyright are not one penny poorer, than they were–there is not even the loss of a potential profit.
So if I buy some software, make a copy, and sell the original, what’s the difference between that and a CD? Or don’t you call that “pirating”? (Or is it “moral” but not OK?)
So an act is now “moral” if I think it’s moral in my situation, regardless of what anybody else thinks. What happened to the “society norms” definition of morality that you were espousing?
You didn’t take my whole quote. Sorry if you couldn’t understand it. Let me repost then refrase.
Now to me here, the “they” clearly refers to the majority of Americans. Let me redo it.
I believe, (with not much evidence) that the majority of Americans have no problem with the above situation. That makes it not immoral to do so. If they did, IF SOCIETY DICTATED THAT IT WAS IMMORAL, then it would be so. Since society has no problem with it, it isn’t immoral.
My interpretation of “if they did” was more toward an implied “if they as individuals found themselves in that situation”, mostly due to the now seemingly redundant “if and ony[sic] if” phrase. My mistake.
What of the software piracy issue? Is that immoral because society views it as hacker activity and therefore bad (vs. copying CD’s which everyone and their mother knows how to do)? Isn’t it essentially breaking the same law?
I didn’t actually state that piracy was moral or immoral. Let’s step back for a second on the issue of morals.
- Breaking a law is not automaticly an immoral act.
- By breaking certain laws, you are commiting an immoral act.
- Laws do not determine what is and isn’t moral.
- What then determines what is and isn’t moral.
- If it isn’t laws, it must be societal pressures.
- Societal pressures change over time.
- What is and isn’t moral changes over time.
- If society thinks something is moral, it is (according to society).
- For the purposes of debate (since this wasn’t posted in IMHO) we must determine what society thinks is moral and what is immoral. What an individual thinks is irrelevant. The OP was not asking for individual opinion.
- Can something be neither moral or immoral. (I would state yes)
- Does society call people who perform the action in the OP immoral people. (no, regardless of what Bill H. says, unless someone can give me a sudy that shows the majority of people do in fact disaprove of piracy).
Just to toss my $0.02 into the Moral/immoral debate. yes, morality is just the opinion of mainstream of society. It was mentioned earlier that the dictionary definies morality as “pertaining to good character”. So it all depends on whether or not you view a person who copies music as a bad character. Since a large number of people copies music, they will not view it as a bad character flaw. hence, they will not see it as immoral.
Now, on to the OP. Is making a copy of a song and then selling the original CD unethical? Well, there are people, like Garth Brooks, who feel selling the CD is unethical whether or not you make a copy of the song or not. Why? Because instead of coming to the artist for the CD the second-hand buyer is going to a third party. So there are two owners for the price of one CD instead. In reality, that is $14 that copyright holder should have recieved and didn’t.
So is it unethical? Yes. Is it immoral? In my opinion, that issue is much more complicated. Because you then get into debates about whether the copyright holders are being ethical in their pricing practices. (eg. the case of 5 major distributers being accused of price-fixing). Also there are the issues of who truly owns that CD and what a user can do with it. Also, would the new buyer have actually paid the full price for the CD? I know in my case, I don’t buy CDs if they cost over $7-8. I have budget to keep and CDs are not a necessity. So in my case, that money would have never gone to the artist anyway.
So morally, the issue is too clouded to make for me to make a definite determination.
In law school, I was taught there are two kinds of illegal acts, in legalese known as malum in se and malum prohibitum.
Malum in se means “bad in itself”, and refers to such things as theft, murder, etc.
Malum prohibitum means “bad because prohibited,” i.e. it’s illegal because the legislature says it is, examples being speed limits (just because you’re going 60 in a 55 zone doesn’t mean you’re going to hurt anyone) or the law limiting the amount of home brew you can make each year.
So, I can certainly agree that simply because something is illegal that does not make it immoral.
I don’t know if I can agree here.
WRONG! the OP says “Do you think this is immoral?”, which certainly looks to me like it’s asking for an individual opinion.
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As for 10 and 11, I agree.
However, oldscratch, I certainly don’t have to be happy about #11, and I certainly do not agree with your points #9 and 10. I determine what I think is moral and immoral, not society (and as a fellow atheist, I can’t imagine that you’d want “the majority” determining morality either). A democratic society can determine legality, but morality is determined by each and every one of us.
And to address the OP, do I think it’s immoral? There are lots of shades of grey when it comes to morality. If someone bought a CD to specifically copy one track and resell the CD, I’d consider that worse than someone who bought a CD, found that one track was OK and the rest of them sucked, and then made the copy. Illegal, yes, under the copyright laws. Immoral, well, probably on the order of parking in front of a fire hydrant, but not as bad as double parking.
This is really the debatable point. You are subscribing to “moral relativism”, a relatively recent philosophy. The older philosophies of moral realism and moral rationalism are closer what I hold to–that there are basic absolute moral rights and wrongs (ie. it is wrong to murder, steal, etc.), and from those axioms extend a logical code of morality. The basics remain unchanged–only our application of logic changes over time, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. Sure there are still grey areas, and this topic is on the fringe of that, but morality is much more tightly defined with this method.
I have heard the arguments for relativism and remain unconvinced. No doubt you would be unconvinced by my arguments. I have no desire to force my version of morality on you. We are therefore at an impasse on that point and the OP, so we might as well drop it now.
Ok, Now how about a new CD morality question. Say your friend has a tape you like and it gets eaten by their tape machine. You ask if you can have it and they look at you like you are nuts and give it to you. You take it and then download the MP3s. Is that in any way immoral?
Is it immoral to download MP3s of songs you have on worn out vinyl and tapes or scratched CDs?
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yeah. you didn’t buy it, you don’t have the license: illegal and immoral.
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no. if you bought the media NEW.
although you might get hung up about the downloading part. if possible, dub 'em yourself. plus, it depends if storing MP3s on your computer is legal. RIO, yes, computer…?
But the license was given to him in the physical media of the magled tape. It is perfectly legal to give somone a tape or CD; once you have given it to them they have all the associatecd rights. How could it be otherwise?
If #2 is OK, then #1 is, too.
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I’d be interested in finding out what you believe defines morals.
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Well in that case it should have been posted in IMHO if he was looking for an opinion. Maybe the OP would like to step in and xplain what was meant. If it is just individual opinion there is no point in even debating. People can chime in with “I think it’s moral” “I think it’s immoral” without ever defining the terms or looking at it from a broader standpoint.
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I can understand you don’t have to be happy about #11. Just as a gay man living in 1950 doesn’t have to be happy about society thinking his conduct is immoral. Likewise a pedophile today doesn’t have to be happy with society believing that his behavior is immoral. He might think it moral and just. And societies do determine more than just legality. They determine morality. Like it or not. your opinion could differ. But society has a definete impact. For example if you are performing an act that is considered Immoral by society you are unlikely to brag about it in public conversation.
A good example is homosexuality. In the bay area it is not considered immoral. People are likely to be open everywhere they go.
In a small town in Wyoming it might be considered immoral. As part of that society, you are unlikely to be open about your orientation.
Societial pressures about what is and isn’t moral affect our actions.
True, every person should have an indiviual sense of what is and isn’t moral, and this can definetely conflict with what “society” believes. But, there is a broader definition of morals, that needs to fit under a societal umbrella.
Exactly what I thought! I have a mangled queen tape (hubby vacuumed it) and I was upset until I downloaded My fave songs from it.
The problem with your view is that it is impossible to hold it without eventually resorting to fideism and belief in God. As an atheist, I have no desire to travel down that path. Hence, I will stick with my ideas. Which actually have been around for about 2000 or so years. Just not that popular until recently.
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I’d say individuals define their own morality. Granted there are “societial norms,” which are constantly in flux. What is the norm today wasn’t the norm 50 years ago. The norm in Wyoming isn’t the norm in San Francisco. I doubt there are many, if any, base level “morals” held consistantly across time and globally. Maybe matricide/patricide, as witness Orestes and Clytemnestra, but even Zeus started his career by bvumping Saturn off the throne.
Actually, I somewhat agree. This did impress me more as a IMHO topic, given the way the OP was phrased.
And I again agree. What ‘society’ considers to be morally acceptable does affect our actions, but that’s primarily because ‘society’ has us outnumbered, not because society is right. At Chicagofest, I can walk around in public drinking a beer, whereas in downtown Tehran, bad things would be likely to happen to me.
Trying to define something like “what is moral” is on the order of trying to define “what is truth,” we can discuss it all day long, or for millennia, but we will still be discussing it come doomsday.
However, to get back in the direction of the OP, I would say that one of the best gages for a societal norm for morality is probably the laws a society enacts, with the exeption of some regulatory laws (not many people would say that getting a ticket for an expired parking meter carries any moral stigma.)
On expired parking tickets carrying moral stigmas, look here.
And it looks like we are pretty much in agreement. There are individual morals and societal morals. Neither one is explicitly right or wrong, they just are. However, you can gauge what society’s morals are. Since this was in GD and not in IMHO I attempted to do so.
Yep my mistake on the dating, as this shows… The idea has been around at least 2400 yrs, but a wider acceptance only in the last couple hundred, probably interrelated with atheism drawing wider acceptance, hmm?
IIRC, our last major conversation was about on communism, so I guess this makes our arguments along the classic lines of capitalist pig-dog v. the godless commie. 
I suppose it could be worse–we could have nukes pointing at each other.