To the Editor:
I read with great interest "RIAA Threatens Music Downloaders" (March 29) and Ben Selznick's op-ed, "The Responsibility of the RIAA" (April 3). Both pieces will be required reading when I teach a first-year writing seminar next spring. The tentative title for the seminar is "Addiction, Obesity, Pollution, Thievery, and Other Music-related Topics."
Perhaps I missed it, but where is the column that speaks of the responsibility of those who are downloading music? A student who chose not to divulge his name to the writer of the news article volunteered that "maybe [downloading music for free] is a serious illegal offense." The writer suggests that our brave anonymous downloader "decided that his love for music was worth what he perceived as a small risk of getting caught."
I fully understand and sympathize with this gentleman, which is why I am surprised that Selznick did not hit upon the more appropriate analogy for downloading: violating the speed limit. Selznick's arguments that the RIAA should have done more to curb illegal downloading when it was less widespread sound to me like those of a speeder who maintains that his automobile and the road together were engineered for speeds in excess of the posted limit -- and besides, everyone else around him is doing it, so that must make it permissible.
The RIAA pre-settlement agreements, like speeding tickets, are fines. We can debate whether such fines deter repeat offenses or encourage others to follow the law. The question of whether the individual violated the law is beyond debate.
I will leave to the economists in our community to determine if viewing music as free ultimately devalues music. I have my opinions. At the same time, I cannot imagine Dartmouth students and alums sitting idly by while their income streams were being siphoned off by illegal activity. And I would wager that there is at least one Dartmouth alum who works for the RIAA.
Rather than turning a big corporation into a bogeyman (and consider: many of you will end up working for big corporations), let's discuss how we have arrived at a point in our lives where downloaders cloak their activity with verbal justifications and technical obfuscations. Let's have Thayer and Tuck and the undergraduate majors that feed into those schools come up with creative ideas for paying music content providers. And let's abandon the notion that music is free. Anything worthy of true love demands sacrifice, and music, if it truly means something to us, ought to cost each and every one of us something more than nothing.
