Here is one of my rare outside linkposts.
File sharing is one of those activities that I recognize as an illegal activity, but feel very strongly that it should not be.
1. In my opinion, and according to law, file sharing is not stealing, and therefore should not be grouped in the same moral category. As a contrast, consider the moral equivalence between a) copying a single song from a CD, b) posting a comment that a song is bad which discourages one person from buying the CD, and c) surreptitiously going into someone's online bank account and taking the price of a CD out of it into your own. The RIAA would have you believe that a) is more like c) than b).
2. Paying for "copies" of something in digital format is anachronistic. Not that making money off of a creation is anachronistic, just the concept of making money off of the idea of copying it.
3. When vast industries find themselves without a sustainable business model, they turn on the people to suppress legal and moral activities. That's when the real ethical violations begin. For this reason alone, I advocate blanket protection to copy, but not resell, digital works.
Yehuda
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