[Mambo]

I heard about Amazon being second in digital Music sales after iTunes music store. What I've read in a comment really insulted me, so much the more that it is true:

"You should also be aware that Apple is trying to [sell music DRM free]. Rather, the record labels are preventing Apple from doing so. Only EMI has allowed Apple to sell Music DRM free. The other labels have stated that they are allowing other vendors, such as Amazon, to sell DRM free music because Apple currently has too much control of the music distribution business. They are trying to grow other players in the market at Apple's expense.

My personal feeling is that this attitude of not allowing Apple to sell DRM free music is only contributing to piracy and hurting their own bottom line. Similarly, this competition that they are creating forced Apple to drop prices for the 256bit AAC downloads from $1.29 to 99 cents. Once again, the record labels are shooting themselves in the foot. That would be business as usual for them."

If record labels are allowed to do nasty things and grow certain businesses in expense of others then this changes the situation. They can effectively steal money and profit from Apple by not allowing it to compete against Amazon, but we single individuals would be bad if we download things from the Freenet. I mean who cares about Apple, but imagine if they would do this to your company.

So all in all, IMHO you don't have to have better morals than anybody else around you. Don't be sheep, if you see that others try to abuse you using your morality against yourself. I am very moral e.g. would not hurt anyone or cheat on my wife and any other things like that, but somebody else who - being an average guy in the world - could have done all these, should not tell me or anyone of you that you are on the dark side if you download something from the internet that you have found downloadale for free.

Also I think (1) piracy (and arguments in favour of it) should not be a taboo on this forum, because it would be against the freedom of speech, which is of a havier weight (2) if we talk about morality of piracy, let's not take out the discussion from the context of morality in general as if piracy would be the only wrongdoing. Downloading is not the only wrong thing we commit every day - there are many wrong things committed by everybody incl. those who hate piracy - so let's not pretend that somebody who downloads books from the free internet is worse person and has worse morality than anybody else.

That's my view, how about you? And please note that I don't encourage you to steal as long as you keep all the other 'commandments' as well out of the ten (incl. one that relates to all forms of sex outside marriage). In this case if you are perfect in all these areas you will have a moral status to tell me that I or anybody else should not 'steal' (which means downloading books found with the active assistance of Google, which did not warn me that it is not free so I acted upon the assumption that it was free and hence downloaded).