Sharing. . . Or Stealing?

by Rachel

Hey, have you heard the brand new Animal Collective album?  Next question: did you pay for a legit copy, or did you find a digital copy somewhere for free?

We’re still wrestling with this dilemma, and I for one think we should talk about it.  People who make stuff — authors, directors, musicians, artists, producers, publishers — want to get paid for the stuff they make.  But the Internet makes it so easy to share digital media for free.  So what do you think — should we keep trying to restrict access to movies, books, artwork, etc so that people who make art can still earn a living?  Or should we just try to come up with a new (legal) way to share artwork that won’t be at odds with the nature of the internet?

I’m not going to pretend to have an answer.  But there is a pretty high-profile case in the works that you might want to check out.  Four guys in Sweden were just found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison and massive fines for ‘assisting in making copyright content available’ via their popular torrent-sharing website, The Pirate Bay.  However, the charges were then partly dropped when it was discovered that at least two of the judges had ties to the Swedish Copyright Association.  What do you think — is The Pirate Bay helping people steal, or just share?

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