Agreed. In the 80’s, it was all the rage to record music directly from radio to cassette and my Dad all the time recorded his albums onto cassette for me all the time. If only used for personal use, you aren’t stealing and I would consider it to be stealing if you are illegally make it available to file sharing servers that people aren’t paying for.
I remember that. Pop in the cassette tape and record what was playing on the radio, back in the days when radio DJs wouldn’t talk as much, especially at night, and they’d play full albums.
Or how about VHS tapes, when copying them was a big thing? What if I recorded something off of television?
Or let’s say things from the library, when I rip a CD from my computer that I borrowed from the library. Is ripping music from a CD for personal enjoyment theft, and a sin? Are any of these a sin?
I’ve wrestled with this in my mind for a little while, and really can’t come up with a conclusion. I have a good bit of illegal music on my computer, I will say that. But that being said, I haven’t sold any of it. Some of it is live performances recorded that were never sold in any capacity. Others old records issued on vinyl/CD that currently cannot be bought in digital format.
Has the church come out with a definitive statement on digital media and stealing? I feel like it’s such a gray area. On one hand going on the internet and simply downloading all of the music you want to listen to for free seems like theft. On the other hand, if that’s theft then we would also have to judge videotaping live television programs, ripping CDs borrowed from other people, recording things off of the radio, letting someone else make a copy of a CD for enjoyment, all to be breaking the 7th commandment?
Very confusing.
When I made this decision recently, I had half the mind to go through all my songs and write down the names so I could still listen to them legally. But instead, I just stormed through and deleted every one without looking. It’s a fantastic penance.
