Academic

A nagging question about MP3s and married couples

By Tung Yin

While starting the pretty awful task of packing our house for the move to Portland, I noticed that my wife and I had two copies of two CDs.  Which was kind of weird, because we have somewhat similar tastes in music -- a lot of overlap in 80s and 90s pop/rock.  I would've expected more duplicates, but the Post Office lost most of my CDs in 1996 when I moved out to Oklahoma City for my second clerkship.

Anyway, I set aside the two duplicates for consignment (more likely, donation, though).  That got me wondering about what the RIAA thinks that married couples who both have MP3 players should do when both want to install a song that they bought once, whether a physical CD or a MP3 file.  Just to be clear: this is merely a hypothetical within our family, since I am the only one with a portable MP3 player.

In other words, let's assume that I buy into the RIAA's normative position that one "ought" not to steal artists' intellectual property by violating the copyright on songs.  Some easy examples would be -- (1) it's clearly okay for me to install an MP3 that I paid for myself; and (2) it's clearly not okay for me to sell MP3 files ripped from a CD that I bought.  A harder example is -- (3) it's probably not okay for me to let my good friend borrow my CD to rip the MP3 file for his/her own MP3 player.

But where do married couples fit within this?  Example (3) falls out the way it does because if my friend likes the particular song enough to install it on his/her MP3 player, he/she should just go buy it.  Helping my friend save $0.99 is really just stealing $0.99 from the record label and the artist.  I find that argument persuasive as far it goes, but there's a significant difference between a good friend and a spouse, no?  I find it a little hard to believe that if my wife and I both wanted to put a song on MP3 players, we're supposed to buy two copies of the song. . . .

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on July 05, 2009 (boomark / email).