On File-Sharing Networks and Civil Disobedience

A Christian perspective

I've had many people try to convince me that trading copyrighted music or movies on file-sharing networks (Napster, Gnutella, etc.) is okay. Many of these people are Christians. I have a reputation as a bit of a stick-in-the-mud for my apparently legalistic views on the issue -- I disapprove of it and won't participate. Here are the common arguments I hear, and how I would answer them if I were better at thinking on the spot:

It isn't breaking the law unless you sell or charge money for the copies. This one is easy to dispute because it is flat-out wrong. Making copies of copyrighted music for other people is a violation of copyright law, whether they have to pay for them or not. The reasons this law exists are pretty plain -- given a choice between a free copy and a copy that costs money, which are most people going to choose? And what implications does that have for the person who's trying to charge money for the copy? Think of copyrighted music as a book -- you can loan it to people, but only one person can have it at a time.
Compact discs cost less than $1 to make but they sell for $15-20! I won't support such an outrage. First of all, this argument (as stated) is usually flawed because if you ask those same people whether they feel it is immoral to not pay for other things because they are overpriced, they change their opinions. A regular 12oz can of soda costs about $0.05 to make, can, store, and sell, but people at my school routinely choose to pay $0.75 for it rather than stealing it. To pick a better analogy, many people think that $7 is pretty ridiculous for entrance to a movie -- but most feel it's immoral to just sneak in without paying, even though there is no extra cost incurred by the theater because you are there. The situation is very similar with "file trading" networks, except no one catches you doing that. It does not cost record companies anything when you make an illegal copy. But if everybody started going into the theater without paying, the theater would have to shut down -- and likewise, enough freeloaders will cause financial problems for the entertainment industry.
Albums these days have two or three good songs that they play on the radio, and when you buy them you find out that the rest of the songs are no good. I won't pay the full album price when all I want is few songs. While it's true that this is a real problem, it doesn't justify the given response. If you don't think that albums are worth the purchase price, don't buy them. It's as simple as that. You don't have to have that one song. We live in a capitalistic country -- the reason albums cost so much yet are full of mostly lousy songs is because people are willing to put up with it and pay for it. Again, the wrong actions of the record companies in not providing quality albums or allowing sufficient samples for you to make a buying decision do not justify the wrong action of taking their music without paying for it.
The RIAA isn't really losing money because of file sharing -- so I'm not hurting anyone. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter -- you're still breaking the law. Suppose the government made a law that you always had to put on your left shoe first. This might be a needless annoyance for a lot of people. As Christians, ought we to follow it? By all means, yes. The first few verses of Romans 13 make a good case for this. Our government has been established by God, and we ought to obey its rules unless they conflict with God's rules. Putting on your left shoe first might be annoying, but it is no real hardship. Likewise, the current audio and video entertainment market is pretty ridiculous, and I agree that the MPAA and RIAA need to learn to deal with this century's technology rather than trying to legislate it away. But as ridiculous as it is, the most we are foregoing is our own pleasure from listening to the music or watching the movie, and that is no real hardship at all. Is the pleasure of entertainment worth the moral price of lawbreaking? I don't think so.
I have bought more CD's since I have been able to download them first/it's okay to download the music since I'm planning to buy the CD. Congratulations -- you're a minority. This is an interesting argument, since it asserts that the entertainment industry is actually benefitting from the use of file-sharing programs. If everyone acted that way, then certainly the proliferation of file-sharing programs should be marked by an equal proliferation of sales of CD's and movies. Unfortunately, this is not the case. While the industry doesn't have any convincing data to prove that sales have gone down since Napster and its relatives hit the scene, it certainly hasn't been selling significantly more, either. Most people, once they have all the music from an album, are not likely to buy the album itself. In this respect, copyrighted file-trading is like many activities -- while a minority of people can perform them responsibly, if the majority performed them, bad things would happen, and so the government outlaws the activity. This isn't good for the few responsible people, but it is good for society as a whole. Ideally, we'd like laws that would let the responsible people have more freedom, but for the moment we're obligated to obey the laws we have.
I recognize that it isn't right to do it, but it doesn't really matter that much. Yes, it does! There seems to be a pervasive opinion among Christians that sin is okay as long as it's small, everyone does it, and they can't see any immediate consequences -- all of which are the case for illegal swapping of copyrighted material. Certainly all sin makes us into sinners, but honestly, as Christians, what is our goal with respect to sin -- to enjoy it as long as we can justify it, or to pursue righteousness? As slaves to righteousness, our faith should spur us on not only to passive non-involvement in sin, but active involvement in pursuit of holiness and purity.

In sum: the wrongs of the music and video industries don't justify our committing wrongs against them, and I cannot see how, as Christians, we can in good conscience break the law of the government God established in order to experience the pleasure of entertainment.