[freflellalafe]

ive seen david reference this before, and you know its the one thing ive disagreed with him on so far. i agree with david on many things, but on this i feel he has taken something that is opinion based and has inadvertently taken it out of context.

it boils down to this. say you worked a very long time handcrafting sculptures, and you put them on the table for sale, and someone comes up and takes one without paying - thats theft. now this person that stole that item, goes to a passerby and says hey buy this from me. thats whats happening in the entertainment industry. when you buy music or video or text, it goes to everyone else (call them group a) but the artist(group b). and these people are charging exorbitant amounts so they are ripping off both the artist and the consumer.

this part gets into opinion and just that - is it theft when you download music without paying group a - especially when essentially they are selling you nothing. they didnt do anything for you, they are not giving you an equal trade. you are not receiving anything that comes from them. but roundabout, is it not theft when you download for free, because even if an artist gets .1 cent out of that 16.99 cd, its the principle and not the amount... you are still taking from the artist. so the [rhetorical] question here is is it not theft when taking from group a.... but is when taking from group b?

in my personal opinion - not agreeing to pay group a's prices is standing up and saying "i wont be enslaved to your thievery". there is no karmic imbalance for that. to take directly from the person who did the time, labor, and craftmanship - there is bad karma. to me, the solution then is to buy directly from the artist when at all possible. and it is possible, thanks to the theory of complex adaptive systems - which is that when one thing becomes too large (and usually negative) it collapses upon itself as a new system emerges and evolves into a higher level.

thanks to the internet, we now have artists who can sell as directly to the consumer as possible. they upload their music to an online store and the consumer buys directly from that store. a prime example of this is actually divine cosmos - david is the artist here - and he put his material up directly for sale. we are the consumers - we buy directly from him - and therefore outside of costs of maintaining the store, david receives the money directly. it doesnt get passed from hand to hand with everyone taking a little here and there.

in fact i saw one video promo done by a band saying that you could go to their store and buy their album for like $7.99. you could buy the single for .99. then if you get the single, and decide you want the album, you can get the album at lesser cost - because you already bought the single.

thats the solution here. buy directly from the artist. do not buy from any other source.

on a final note, i would feel its naive or a little too impulsive to say it has negative karmic consequences because its simply the law. in this case we are referencing whose law here? not the universal one - but the one made by man. and just because its law does not mean its a morally correct one. just for example, we now have a law that they dont need a warrant to come into your house. do we say its the law and leave it at that?