Is it a sin to break a silly law?

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Hi, I know my question is probably already answered by the fact that I’m asking it, but I figured I’d give it a shot.

Basically, I used to download music illegally. Then, my conscience got the best of me and I deleted all those files, opting to pay 99 cents for the songs I really wanted from legal download services. Much to my dismay, however, those legal services (COUGH iTunes) put software (or whatever you’d call it) on the files you download so that you can’t use them on a non-iPod mp3 player. That right there seems unjust.

I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. I paid for the song, and 99 cents is a fair price if you consider that most CDs have about 12 songs and cost around 13 dollars (take packaging into account for that extra buck if you must). I should OWN that file and be able to do what I want with it (I don’t mean illegal things like putting it back onto those illegal download sites, but just being able to play it on my cell phone which can play mp3s). I was so angry about that that I found a program that strips the files of the DRM (the stuff that disables other mp3 players) so that I could put the songs on my mp3 player.

Now, I know that in stripping the files of their DRM, I broke my license agreement, and therefore technically broke the law. But I PAID for these songs, which was a moral hurdle for me in and of itself; I think that law is ridiculous and wrong. I know there are other silly laws that some places have (for example, it’s technically illegal to put on a window puppet show in New York City as a recent commercial informed me), but people pay no attention to those and probably don’t sin in doing so.

Finally, the question: Is that sinful (meaning do I now need to take all these files I PAID FOR off of my mp3 player)? Ugh. iTunes is so greedy to force you to buy an iPod.
 
I’d say you can break whatever this law is; you tried to abide by the law, but they’re trying to coerce you into buying their product, for hundreds of dollars more, outside the terms of the contract. The contract is void; take the stuff you purchased in good faith, and use it as you expected to be able to. That doesn’t make it okay to, say, go and download 10,000 songs from a free site; but it is okay to take what you thought you’d be getting.

A simpler method might be burning the songs to an audio cd (where they’ll code as normal cd tracks) and then re-ripping them, so you won’t have that embedded code. I think; they might be able to make it stay.
 
Respectfully, I need to disagree with the previous post.

Let’s remember that these songs are owned by the person that created these songs and/or the company that he/she/they sold them to. When you “purchase” these songs, they are granting you the right to USE their songs in the manner that THEY establish for the price that THEY establish.

Since these songs are not considered to be a “necessity of life” (food, clothing, etc.), the fact that they charge unreasonable prices and/or set unreasonable terms does not enter the picture – it is still THEIR property and you are ENTITLED to it ONLY under THEIR terms and conditions.

Anything else would be illegal AND sinful.
 
jtaski said:
Hi, I know my question is probably already answered by the fact that I’m asking it, but I figured I’d give it a shot.

Basically, I used to download music illegally. Then, my conscience got the best of me and I deleted all those files, opting to pay 99 cents for the songs I really wanted from legal download services. Much to my dismay, however, those legal services (COUGH iTunes) put software (or whatever you’d call it) on the files you download so that you can’t use them on a non-iPod mp3 player. That right there seems unjust.

I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. I paid for the song, and 99 cents is a fair price if you consider that most CDs have about 12 songs and cost around 13 dollars (take packaging into account for that extra buck if you must). I should OWN that file and be able to do what I want with it (I don’t mean illegal things like putting it back onto those illegal download sites, but just being able to play it on my cell phone which can play mp3s). I was so angry about that that I found a program that strips the files of the DRM (the stuff that disables other mp3 players) so that I could put the songs on my mp3 player.

Now, I know that in stripping the files of their DRM, I broke my license agreement, and therefore technically broke the law. But I PAID for these songs, which was a moral hurdle for me in and of itself; I think that law is ridiculous and wrong. I know there are other silly laws that some places have (for example, it’s technically illegal to put on a window puppet show in New York City as a recent commercial informed me), but people pay no attention to those and probably don’t sin in doing so.

Finally, the question: Is that sinful (meaning do I now need to take all these files I PAID FOR off of my mp3 player)? Ugh. iTunes is so greedy to force you to buy an iPod.
Click to expand...
You know that on iTunes you can buy a lot of their music in DRM-free versions for $1.29?
 
Sir_Knight said:
Respectfully, I need to disagree with the previous post.

Let’s remember that these songs are owned by the person that created these songs and/or the company that he/she/they sold them to. When you “purchase” these songs, they are granting you the right to USE their songs in the manner that THEY establish for the price that THEY establish.

Since these songs are not considered to be a “necessity of life” (food, clothing, etc.), the fact that they charge unreasonable prices and/or set unreasonable terms does not enter the picture – it is still THEIR property and you are ENTITLED to it ONLY under THEIR terms and conditions.

Anything else would be illegal AND sinful.
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The OP already paid for the song itself; Apple’s trying to force them to buy the iPod too. Sorry, but if they try to rob me, I don’t have to respect any contract I made with them.
 
When I bought my first MP3 player (not an iPod), I used to buy songs from iTunes, burn them to CDs (which also worked as backup storage, in case something happened to my computer), and then ripped them off the CDs to put on my MP3 player. That always worked for me.

(Of course, now I have an iPod, so I don’t have to do all that anymore…although I still burn the songs onto CDs.)
 
Hastrman said:
The OP already paid for the song itself; Apple’s trying to force them to buy the iPod too. Sorry, but if they try to rob me, I don’t have to respect any contract I made with them.
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The OP already paid for the song itself **under the terms established. **He also DIDN’T buy the song but a RIGHT to USE the song – again, under the terms that THEY established. The software (or whatever you’d call it) on the files you download so that you can’t use them on a non-iPod mp3 player is PART of THEIR CONDITIONS. THAT is PART of the CONTRACT which you LEGALLY and MORALLY are REQUIRED to abide by.
 
Sir_Knight said:
The OP already paid for the song itself **under the terms established. **He also DIDN’T buy the song but a RIGHT to USE the song – again, under the terms that THEY established. The software (or whatever you’d call it) on the files you download so that you can’t use them on a non-iPod mp3 player is PART of THEIR CONDITIONS. THAT is PART of the CONTRACT which you LEGALLY and MORALLY are REQUIRED to abide by.
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Not if they require unreasonable things of you in order to use the product sold as you might reasonably expect to use it. “You will only use this MP3 in an iPod MP3 player which you’ll have to buy from us” is not reasonable (not to mention not part of the contract), therefore it is not legitimate.
 
Hastrman said:
Not if they require unreasonable things of you in order to use the product sold as you might reasonably expect to use it.
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It is THEIR product. Unless they are providing a “necessity of life” (food, clothing, etc.), which they are NOT, they can require ANY terms that they wish no matter how unreasonable.

Unless it is a “necessity of life” – no one have a RIGHT to their product. If you want it, it is to be under their terms or not at all. Anything else is illegal and sinful.
 
A couple thoughts come to mind:
  1. It is completely legal to burn the songs onto a CD, then convert them to mp3s with DRM removed. The software you speak of is just a shortcut to this legal end result.
  2. Now that music is available without DRM, it seems hard to argue that it is wrong to remove the DRM for one’s personal use on songs purchased before this change of policy. Just buy the non-DRM songs in the future. iTunes is clearly happy to take people’s money for songs to be played on non-iPod hardware.
  3. I doubt that Congress’ purpose in enacting DRM-related law was to prevent people from putting purchased music on one device of their choice.
 
It’s nothing to feel too horrible about. You are not trying to steal the music or distribute it illegally. You just bought it and want to listen to it on your mp3 player.
 
Sir_Knight said:
It is THEIR product. Unless they are providing a “necessity of life” (food, clothing, etc.), which they are NOT, they can require ANY terms that they wish no matter how unreasonable.

Unless it is a “necessity of life” – no one have a RIGHT to their product. If you want it, it is to be under their terms or not at all. Anything else is illegal and sinful.
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While they do not have right to require “any” terms (there are things in terms of services that many end up violating laws if enforced or simply could not be enforced under the law), they do have the right do put the DRM on it so you can only play it on an ipod. You don’t have buy an ipod, just pay 30 cents more for the DRM free version which itunes usually sells as well.
 
But now that I have already purchased these DRM-ed versions? I did find out about the DRM-free versions, but one only came up on one of my later searches, so I didn’t know about it until I had already bought a bunch of the other ones (which weren’t offered in that format, or else I didn’t understand what the difference was or whatever).

Mike’s arguments made a lot of sense to me. I don’t know, I think I’ll be a total dork and ask my spiritual adviser what she thinks about this issue.

Thanks for all the helpful replies so far, guys. And SirKnight, I’m glad you’re presenting the other side of this…which I think is totally necessary to consider when trying to make a judgment like this one.
 
Sigh, she said I should err on the side of caution here.

I’m taking that to mean that I should remove the music from my phone/mp3player and then just use it ON my computer as if I had never tampered with the files at all. Does anyone think that THAT would still somehow be immoral/sinful?

I sure hope not…I paid for those tracks! That’s my plan of action, I guess. Sometimes it’s exhausting to try to do the right thing. Thanks again for all your help guys.
 
Click iTunes Plus on the sidebar. It should tell you on that page how to pay 30c a song to convert to DRM-free.

And, though I have never gotten a straight answer from Apple, I can tell you that I have read the License. You may burn it to up to 5 disks, but do nothing else with it. It is NOT ALLOWED to convert the burned files to MP3, sorry to burst your bubble.

I care about this sort of thing. I’m all for music rights. The Copyright Royalty Board is trying to silence Internet Radio at the moment. I’m not letting them take away my Pokemon music. Just, no…
 
I don’t know why so many automatically assume that breaking a law = sin. Or to put it another way think that man’s laws = God’s laws.

It is my understanding that unless a law is at the same time a violation of God’s law i.e. breaking one of the 10 commandments then it’s not a sin. It’s only a sin if it violates God’s law. The idea that breaking man’s law is equivalent to breaking God’s law or a “sin” would IMHO be making a false god out of man, breaking the First Commandment and a mortal sin. Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser’s, and give to God what is God’s. What is Ceasar’s? What did Jesus have the Pharisee (or was it a Saduccee?) hold up? a coin with Ceaser’s image. This is what the Lord said to give to Ceasar. There’s alot more to the story as well, but I won’t derail the thread with that just now.

So in that sense, we should obey the law, but it does not automatically make it a sin if we fail to do so. It might not be smart, but I doubt it’s a sin.

Now as far as the situation of having already paid for the item, then I would be hard pressed to think of it as “stealing”. For example, I like to buy framed art at thrift stores and garage sales. Not for the art, but for the frame. I’m not stealing because I intend to use the purchase for something other than it was intended since I paid the asking price. I’m sure there are better examples, but I think you get where I’m coming from.
 
Firefox said:
Click iTunes Plus on the sidebar. It should tell you on that page how to pay 30c a song to convert to DRM-free.

And, though I have never gotten a straight answer from Apple, I can tell you that I have read the License. You may burn it to up to 5 disks, but do nothing else with it. It is NOT ALLOWED to convert the burned files to MP3, sorry to burst your bubble.

I care about this sort of thing. I’m all for music rights. The Copyright Royalty Board is trying to silence Internet Radio at the moment. I’m not letting them take away my Pokemon music. Just, no…
Click to expand...
Um, there’s a converter thing in iTunes that allows you to convert stuff to MP3 or AAC format. I don’t know if it works on iTunes products, though, or just on CDs you’ve ripped to your computer via iTunes. But that’s not the point.
 
God did say “Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser’s, give to God what is God’s.”

In otherwords, unless a law goes against morality, we should follow it. No matter how unfair we think it is. The problem with acting on what people think is fair is that it is not uniform. Maybe I think the work you do isn’t worth what you charge. Does that mean I can just not pay you for your work? No.

And don’t anybody bring up “But the singers are already so rich!” Guess what? Anybody who’s buying music for their iPod is rich compared to people in India. You should be thanking God that you have plentiful enough that you can afford such luxuries as well as necessities that many people go without.

:rolleyes: I know, it’s the “Eat your peas, there are starving children!” lecture. I’m becoming my parents. :eek:

❤️
 
andy120 said:
While they do not have right to require “any” terms (there are things in terms of services that many end up violating laws if enforced or simply could not be enforced under the law), they do have the right do put the DRM on it so you can only play it on an ipod. You don’t have buy an ipod,** just pay 30 cents more for the DRM free version** which itunes usually sells as well.
Click to expand...
There you go 👍
 
Yeah the 30 cents thing sounds great. Except that none of the songs I bought are available in that format yet, according to the iTunes Plus part of the store and all. It’s okay; I love God more than my music.
 
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