Alan Pickersgill - The View From Here

(June 17) - I don’t steal songs. I used to, but not any more. Several years ago, Roy Orbison’s widow caught me at it and forced Napster to cancel my account. All because my turntable died and I couldn’t play my old vinyl copy of Running Scared. That, and the fact that I was too cheap to go to the mall and buy his greatest hits CD. Other file sharing programs were magnets for spyware, adware, viruses and the other trash found in the ditches along the information highway.

Then, after a while, my CD player also died. My computer became obsolete. Technological upgrades came into the home in the form of a new beast with a hard drive big enough to hold all the software a family could ever want plus more songs than Roy Orbison could ever have written. Run some long speaker wire through the computer room floor, across the basement ceiling joists and back up through the living room floor and Bob’s your uncle. The stereo is connected to the computer. You don’t need a CD player, unless you’re a sensitive audiophile. If you want to hear the pin that fell on the recording studio floor, running music from your computer isn’t the way to go.

My technological upgrade went hand in hand with an upgraded sense of social responsibility. No more pirating. Barbara Orbison had made an honest man of me.

It might sound like it, but I wasn’t stealing everything that wasn’t tied down. There were rationalizations I thought made sense at the time. The Kramdens don’t have a lot of money, so I bought Quiet Collision. The Rolling Stones do, so who cares if I get Sticky Fingers without paying? Other than them, I mean.

The trouble is that sticky fingers are found all over the Internet. If you can find something, you can take it and keep it and multiply it and give it away to all your friends.

There are people who think they learned everything they need to know in kindergarten. When they get on the Internet, their principles become governed by the number one rule of the playground: finders keepers, losers weepers. Or, in the harsher language of the 21st century: you snooze, you lose.

Try this in the bank one day. If the teller goes to the toilet and leaves the cash drawer unlocked, help yourself to a fist full of twenties. Then explain to the police that you were allowed to take it because it was there and who cares anyway because the bank has loads of money.

Moral justifications used on the Internet fall apart behind the marble pillars of the banks. Quite often, moral justifications are neither.

There are a lot of talented singers and song writers in Guelph. A lot of them hold down regular day jobs to buy the groceries and pay the mortgage. They still find time to create beautiful music. The next time you’re downtown, go into Ground Floor Music and buy a copy of Lucky Blue by Tannis Slimmon. It’s as fine a piece of work as anything made by any skilled cabinet maker. People who make music are as entitled to earn money from it as are people who make furniture.

Last week, the federal government introduced amendments to the Copyright Act that set hefty fines for piracy. Like most things coming out of Ottawa these days, it is harsh. Those people who think the Internet should be an unregulated free for all are whining because they might be forced to pay for music. They shouldn’t cry. They’ve no one to blame but themselves.

They should remember kindergarten, and what the teacher did when one kid took another’s lunch money.

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Speaking of the federal government, Prime Minister Harper got something right last week. The apology for forcing native children into residential schools was an overdue recognition of the deep injustices in our nation’s past. It’s been a long time coming.

Now we need to see what happens next. Words alone, no matter how eloquently spoken, can’t erase the past. Neither can money. What we need is concrete action to recognize that Native Canadians have seniority rights in this country.

Let’s hope this turning point helps bring a healthy conclusion to disputes about natural resource rights on Indian land, and support for strengthening the political and social infrastructure of their communities. That will put flesh on the body of the apology.