Ethical aspects:

I had an interesting discussion today on Twitter with Ron Marz (the most triumphant writer of truly excellent comic books – including Witchblade, my main comic read). It was about downloading – in his context comics, but I was probably thinking more about music. I also take a detour into a more general discussion about ethics and philosophy – one aspect, at any rate: my take on the true role of philosophy, which is rather real-world, rather than ivory tower.

Ron’s view is a (very defensible)  black and white one: if the creator/copyright holder wants to make their work available for free, they can do so, but without their permission, it’s not ok to download/upload … steal … their work. For the sake of argument I raised the unavailability issue: what if you can’t find it to buy? (for example deleted/out of print cds … like the Bangalore Choir cd I did manage to find eventually on eBay 8) ). Here I will (partially) quote Ron: “tough shit”.  That made me have a think – although I do buy rather than download: I <3 iTunes, and 80sTunes, and eBay .. because with my predilection for hair metal, most record shops just don’t do it for me So if I already agreed with Ron, why did it make me have a think? Because Read more [+]