Is it stealing or not?

When the first Spiderman movie had just opened in theaters, a young man dear to me mentioned that he and his girlfriend were going to watch it...at home on a DVD. Knowing it wasn't out on DVD yet, I asked where he got it. He said he got it from a friend, but he didn't know if that friend was the original source. It was a copy created by somebody taking a digital movie camera into the theater and filming what was on the screen.

"Um, that's stealing" I said. He was shocked that I felt this way. To me it was simple, but the concept of this act being a theft seemed completely foreign to him. This is a man who would never contemplate for one fraction of a second stealing a packaged DVD from a store shelf or sneaking into a movie theater. Yet here he was watching something for free that he should have paid about $8 for at the time ($16 if you count the girlfriend).

This event led to several conversations with people about the subject of downloading music and movies from the Internet. The most interesting response was one girl who felt that the music companies were actually the ones stealing when they asked $16 for a CD, when it only costs about $1 to make. Granted, she had not yet had any education in economics, free markets or business. But no matter how I tried to explain the cost and risks of doing business, the concept of intellectual property and the workings of a free market economy, she just did not get it.

Another of this same girl's points was that if the music was not meant to be shared in this way, why was it so easy to do? Um, if you take a bag of ice from the outside freezer at a gas station without paying for it, is that not stealing just because it was easy?

I hadn't thought about this for a while until I read Dr. Kelly Hollowell's column about how the movie companies are worried about theft of their product. Dr. Kelly's point is that the movie companies have profited immensely by contributing to the decline of society's values, and that pirating is just one of the results. It's hard to argue with that.

You know my feelings about this. If you feel differently - that it is OK to download or copy music and movies that are not intended for distribution in this way - then tell me I'm wrong in an email. But don't just tell me I'm wrong; make your case and let's talk about it. I won't publish any email contents without your consent.