Morality of Piracy

If asked the question "Would you steal from a store?" most people would say "No, of course not." What most anti-piracy want to do is make you think stealing from a store is exactly the same as downloading copyrighted material from the net. This led to the creation of the very annoying commercials put on many DVD's today, that do just that, tell you that you wouldn't steal from a store, and downloading the same content is the exact same crime. Where this may be true from a legal standpoint in certain countries, it raises a very interesting ethical question, is it the same? As a Guardian of freedom, I say no, it's quite different. Most people would argue that CD's and DVD's cost far too much, and the corporations creating them are exploiting there fanbase to turn a massive profit. Unfortunatley conventional methods of protest aren't effective against money driven juggernaughts, and they would rather ignore and abuse their fanbase instead of losing what is a trivial profit to these wealthy corporations. So what are we left with? The age old failsafe known as civil disobidence. The usage of civil disobidence to remedy a system's inadaquatcies has been contested through the ages as unethical as well, but the sad truth is, sometimes civil disobidence is the only way to get done. How else could slaves in The United states tried tio change the political system? They had little representation form whites, had no way of voicing their suffering, and furthermore did not have the right to vote. Running away was a form a civil disobidence, but others condemn it becuase they are overly paranoid, and belive that it will ultimatley bring anarchy. Most people will agree that civil disobidence was perfectly acceptable for slaves, but then other will followup with the absurd statement that it has no practical usage in contempoary society. They are however wrong in there observation, and internet piracy has been the solution to a previous issue, why can't it work again? For thouse who are unaware of how it has solved a consumer crisis, they need only to look to itunes, and similar services. These services were spawned in the wake of Napster, which was created becuase CD's were far too expensive, especailly if a person wanted only a single track from an album. Many people were more than willing to cough up a buck a song, from an extensive collection, such as the one they enjoyed from Napster before it's fall. Continuing this fight CAN help us fight the still outrageous CD prices and the even more outrageous DVD prices (especially Blu-ray disks) If everyone one day decided that Blu-rays were too expensive to buy, so they would just rip any high def movies of the internet, Blu-ray prices would drop so fast that you might see a price drop article on CNN and wonder if they hadn't lowered since you read it. The prices aren't as high as they are becuase it costs an extraordinary amount to make, they simply know that they can charge that much and still sell them. A lot of people hesistate to Pirate copyrighted material becuase of the actors and artists, and feel that they are being treated unfairly. However take a moment to think about it, These actors/artists and their represenatives obviously don't care about you very much, becuase they are charging you riddculus and unafforadable prices, without any regard to how this will affect you, their supporter. So next time you hear your favorite artist/actor say how much they appreciate their fans, you might wana take into consideration how much they dont care about your wallet