Tele is making some incisive points here.
That is why I opened this thread. I have been thinking about this subject so much that my brain is shutting down. I wanted to hear other people chime in, to show these issues in a fresh light.
But I do know that the people saying that downloading is automatically theft on Catholic Answers are beginners in moral theology. I was there; I know what it is to see things in black-and-white. But it just doesn't work in this case.
Breaking the secular law is not always a sin. We break them every day. Do you always cross at the crosswalk? Follow the exact speed limit? If you are downloading the latest update of Adobe do you read through all the legalese when it tells you to "Read this and click continue if you agree"? If you don't, are you lying? It is the spirit of the secular law that matters, just like the spirit of the divine law.
Here is the proof. Take driving in the fast lane on the freeway. If you are going under the speed limit in Los Angeles, you could get pulled over for going too slow, yet you are perfectly within the law! You could actually get punished for following the letter of the law in that case... I think God shows us these things for our instruction. He doesn't want us to just be a bunch of automatons.
Mater, when you go on YouTube, would you watch a conspiracy-theory video that uses recorded music but doesn't credit the artists? If you do, aren't you participating in "theft"? ( Yes, using snippets of songs is part of fair use, but what about the whole song? )
As for the example of your CD that someone hands to someone else... What if that second person never would have heard of you otherwise? Do you see that downloading music opens as many opportunities, or more, than it closes? Do you think so many bands could have such huge audiences around the world without it? Not that that is a good thing, but you know what I mean.
If it's theft, that doesn't mean it's right, even if it benefits you ultimately. But downloading music just doesn't meet the qualifications for theft. Tele makes another good point when he says that there are many people who would download music who would never steal. That shows that even if, in their gut, they feel something is wrong with it, they may not think of it as clear-cut stealing. There may be a part of them that says, "Well, I want to live with this for a while to see if I want to buy it..." Or they may intend to keep it, while knowing it isn't as good as a hard copy because it lacks the art, lyrics, the satisfaction of owning the "official" product, etc. They may think of it as sort of like stealing, in a way that's hard to describe, but not in the same way that going into someone's bedroom and taking their wallet is stealing. Or they may think of it as stealing and not care. But like with NFP, it seems it depends on the intent. That's the best way I can figure it.
Just because the recording artists and their studios want to control the information by releasing a little ditty here, a little ditty there, to entice us to buy the entire CD, doesn't mean that it is a sin to go against their marketing plan. Again, to make this simple, would you say it is wrong if someone CLEARLY downloads an album to listen to it once and make a decision if it's good? Why should he have to buy an entire album on the basis of one or two hit singles when more information is available? And if it's not wrong to listen to it once for the purposes of investigation, then can you say it's wrong to listen to it ten times? Twenty times?
If downloading an album on this basis is stealing, it is also stealing to borrow a CD from someone and listening to it all the way through over and over. The people who download it to sample it just may not happen to have a personal friend who has a copy.
You can say, no, because in the case of the CD being borrowed, someone bought it. Well, someone also bought it and put it on the Internet to be downloaded... It's not a difference in kind, but in degree. More people have access to uploaded CDs on a file-sharing program, and thus it seems more dramatically wrong, because so many can listen free of charge. But in effect, it's the same principle as borrowing, if such is the intent of the downloader... And theoretically, someone can borrow for a long time before deciding to buy.
Where it becomes wrong, I would say, is in the intent. From what I can tell, it becomes wrong when you decide to keep the burned CD and give up any and all prospects of ever buying it. But even then I'm not sure, because a downloaded CD is not the same as having the actual product. I can imagine someone who downloads music, with the intent to never buy it, but who feels that it isn't as good and that if he had the money he would buy it, to have the artwork and the concrete product in his collection. He may not think of it as stealing but as a temporary fix due to having no money. Therefore his culpability is lessened, even if it is objectively stealing.
But that is just my opinion; I want to hear what some priests have to say. I also want to know if restitution is necessary for those who have downloaded AND uploaded CDs. Some people have thousands of CDs on their hard drive and they are being downloaded hundreds of times every day... How would you make restitution for that, if it is a sin JUST to upload?
It can't be a sin just to upload or download. That is a morally neutral act, because it is possible to download for the purpose of merely sampling. In the same way, a tank top is a morally neutral article of clothing. It can be worn under the clothing, in which case it is part of a woman's modest dress; or it can be worn on its own, exposing too much flesh, in which case the wearing of it is sinful. But the tank top in itself is not sinful. It is how it's worn that's sinful.
Same with downloading / uploading. Or the same with NFP -- it is a morally neutral act in itself that becomes sinful or not sinful depending on how it is used ( the conjugal act using NFP is the same for a poor couple about to be evicted from their home, and for a rich couple who have a mansion that can comfortably house a small nation of children, yet the morality of its use is not the same in each case ).
The sin is in how you make use of your download. That is how I think of it at the moment. Perhaps this is why those on Catholic Answers never speak of reparation for the supposed "theft." They say it's enough to just give up their collection of burned CDs. Perhaps that is because, by giving them up, they no longer have the intent to keep intellectual property without paying for it... But do they have to go back and pay for this intellectual property that they enjoyed in the past? So many factors to think about here; it is utterly mind-boggling.
The next step for me is to get into the notion of probabilism, meaning that when you are unsure about something you can safely take the PROBABLE course rather than the course that is absolutely and unequivocally right... But the post is already too long.
Topic: Agonizing moral theology question -- (Read 7102 times)