At any cost

This morning i awoke from my slumber and as i am inclined to do checked the forum i am a member of, to my dismay an injustice had occurred while i slept, a cheat had used foul means to climb the ladder, incensed i cried out for justice, and this led me to think about the ways in which we as a society are undergoing a radical shift towards the immoral and unjust.

To the uninitiated I am a keen player of a trusted xbox 360, when 'gamers' (and i use the term loosely to describe myself) play 360 games they unlock achievements for doing certain things, these can be finishing a level or finding a secret room. Most games are given 1000 achievement points and some may be worth 20 points while some are worth 100, anyway you get the picture. Now to be clear I know it shouldn't matter, i know i should play the game to enjoy it, especially considering that the points don't earn you anything, but there is a certain sense of satisfaction in getting those silly points & an even greater sense of accomplishment if you succeed in getting the full 1000/1000. Now to the ladder i mentioned, on the forum I'm a member of there is a league table where members Gamer score's are ranked in order, again this is childish, but the natural competitive nature of humans means that we take some gloating satisfaction at being above people on the ladder and look with envious eyes towards those above us.

There are ways in which gamers may cheat the system, boost their scores, there are ways to fool the xbox that you have played a game, got 1000/1000 points without ever putting the disc in the drive, and it is by these dark deeds that i was so incensed this morning. I tell myself this is a crusade for what is right and true, but i wonder if its just the hours i spent finishing Lego Star Wars that this cheat didn't, yet on paper we have achieved the same thing.

This led me onto where else we cheat, why we cheat and how we can justify it to ourselves so easily while moaning about the decline in good old fashioned values. Take for example the downloading of material from the Internet. We log onto our torrent sites or P2P sites and we grab what we want be it music, books, films, TV shows or software. We don't stop to think about the consequence of this, we don't consider it theft & yet that's exactly what it is.

My good lady, as mentioned before, has an ebook reader and as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow she will be found downloading books, for nothing, to enjoy. Yet i know her well enough that she wouldn't go into a book shop grab something off the shelf and run out without paying. So i wonder where the difference is? She, along with a lot of people, agrees that shoplifting is wrong and should be punished, yet she feels no remorse or guilt over her cyberlifting. I once asked if she considered the prospect that as more people download for nothing, thus giving no royalties to the authors it would lead to those writers taking up bus driving to earn a living and not write books anymore as it didn't earn them an income. Although she could see the argument it didn't stop her downloading more books.

In the music industry, one of the hardest hit by the cyberlifting revolution, many have been vocal about the evils of the Internet culture. Lars Urich, drummer with metal band Metallica was a huge voice in the closure of pirate music site Napstar. He argued that although the downloading of music wasn't theft in the typical definition, by where a physical product is obtained without payment, it basically took the food out of the musicians mouth. Many people called him dramatic and accused him of being unrealistic, but i have to agree with him. Musicians, Authors, Software Programmers and even Actors do what they do to earn a living, in the same way you get up and go to work to pay bills so do they, yet we view them differently as if their work should be obtainable for free.

It is my opinion that the downloading culture is going to kill the arts on two levels -

1. As less and less people buy books, less and less will be earned by authors. This will lead to a situation where people don't write books anymore because there is no money in it. Publishers will not put books out because the return on their investment is so poor. Printing works will go out of business. With no books anymore what will be the need to teach people to read? Que the film 'Idiocracy'.

2. At the opposite end we will be inundated with rubbish. In the music industry many people slate record labels as the devil incarnate, money grabbing faceless suits not 'into' the band the way real fans are. Just stop to think off all the bands we are not subjected to, because the record labels acted as a buffer. My 10 year old could release an album, he cant sing very well, but with the joy of the Internet there is nothing to stop him recording on a Walkman him singing metallica and releasing it on the world. I think it would be adorable, but i strongly suspect I'm in the minority.

So next time your in HMV or JBHIFI and you think rather than buy season 5 of Lost or the new Metallica album i will just download it for nothing, remember that you are part of the reason those bands may not bother with another album, or cant afford to play a gig in your town because they didn't get any income from their last release. When your sitting enjoying the latest twilight novel on your ebook reader, fresh of the press at Demenoid, remember that Ms. Myers didn't write it for the enjoyment of writing, she wrote it to earn money & if she doesn't then where is the incentive for her to wrote another book?

You may be able to justify theft to yourself, but next time you read about a teenager stealing your BMW and driving away, think about the example of protection of property that your setting while you listen to your stolen MP3 files while reading your Stolen novel after watching your stolen copy of season 5 of 'Lost'.