The Best Things In Life May Not Be Free After All

I was reading yesterday about how the music industry is trying once again to crack down on pirated songs on the internet. What gets me is that the audience they're targeting really has no reason to 'steal' the songs.

Thousands of college students got a rude awakening in their email boxes recently when the RIAA sent them a letter saying pay up (in the area of three GRAND) or be sued for stealing songs off the internet. Can you imagine getting that call from your college student? 'Hey Mom, I need three grand.' Yeah right. Well they have to pay it. The thing is places like Napster and others have been giving students songs for FREE. Totally legit, totally legal, totally free--there are a few catches. The songs have to remain on the students computer (no downloading to ipods, or burning to CD) and they only can have them until they are finished with school. If the student wants to keep the collection after leaving school they have to pay for them.

So because of those restrictions students (in general, not all of course) are choosing to steal the songs rather than abide by those rules.

Give me a break. What spoiled attitudes do we reflect in this society? It's the same thing for writers. People don't want to pay for reading work, they expect it free. There has to be a stop to it. I want to say we have to do something to make the work more valuable in people's minds. The free atmosphere of the internet has hurt in a lot of ways with that. I mean even I when I need information on something immediately turn to the internet rather than going to the library or the book store. Just about everything can be found online. Still--I'm not at all opposed to buying books that I want to read. So perhaps it's not the internet atmosphere after all...

We have to stop teaching our young people that the world owes them. That things should be free. That they don't have to pay for something if they can figure out a way to steal it.