The Theft Economy

It is amazing, all the supposed punditry floating around espousing the marvels of stealing intellectual property as technological advancement. It appears we have come to believe that theft is at times a necessary ingredient of popularizing a technology.

It does appear that most of us have, at least for a time, checked our ethics at the door. But despite the tongue-in-cheek name of my blog (Why Does Everything Suck?), I am an optimist. I do believe it is possible that the justifications for the theft we are engaged in is nothing more than temporary cognitive dissonance, and that we will indeed come to our senses.

I believe this because the consequences of deciding as a society that teaching our young children that stealing is OK is ultimately too dire. We will ultimately come to understand it is impossible to create a viable or credible ethical framework that separates stealing a song from stealing a loaf of bread. In fact, stealing the bread may be more justifiable if you are hungry and yet intuitively most of us know, no matter how hungry you are, that stealing the bread is still wrong.

On the other hand, we steal entertainment content with guiltless reckless abandon, and you certainly can’t eat a Foo Fighters song. There are statistics that suggest that plagiarism in college is up substantially, and I would not be at all shocked to find that there is a correlation between the mindset of stealing a song vs. stealing a paper.

The permissive and even supportive attitude of thought leaders in our industry on this subject is poisoning the minds of our children and we need to stop it. Ethics matter, and there is no way to explain to a child that theft is OK when you are “mad at the man”, and “big corporations are evil.” Our brains don’t work that way.

The psychology of our youth has already been irreparably damaged, but I do think we can turn things around, at least for the next generation. And we must. There are those that will suggest that because we can steal, that we will. They believe that we are no more ethical or honest than our circumstances will allow. I do not subscribe to this theory of human nature. I think we are all villagers, and we will for the most part adhere to the mores of the village. If it was considered wrong to steal music or movies or software, and there was actual shame associated with it, people wouldn’t do it.

And so my prescription: Think about how your parents might react if you told them you’d just stolen 1000 songs from Wal-Mart every time you play your ill gotten MP3 collection. If you are a parent, and you see your kid has a 1000 song MP3 collection *you* should be reacting like they stole it from Wal-Mart.

All it will take is just a little bit of shame.

This article was authored by Hank Williams who is a New York-based entrepreneur who recently launched a new blog: Why Does Everything Suck? exploring the tech marketplace from 10,000 feet.