Commentary

Mitch Wagner
Executive Editor, Community  

Media Piracy Begins At Home

Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman's own kids are music pirates, he admitted in an interview. "Naturally, his kids were forced to cough up thousands of dollars to the RIAA to keep from getting sued. Right?" Ars Technica asks rhetorically. Of course not -- Bronfman says he disciplined the kids (he says he prefers to keep the details in the family) and gave them a talking-to about stealing music.

Of course, music piracy is wrong, but the problem with the current system for dealing with piracy is that punishments are far too draconian. Casual music piracy is morally equivalent to shoplifting -- but we treat it like grand larceny, dragging people into criminal court and ruining their lives. Bronfman understands this principle when it comes to his own children.

Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman's own kids are music pirates, he admitted in an interview. "Naturally, his kids were forced to cough up thousands of dollars to the RIAA to keep from getting sued. Right?" Ars Technica asks rhetorically. Of course not -- Bronfman says he disciplined the kids (he says he prefers to keep the details in the family) and gave them a talking-to about stealing music.


More Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

Of course, music piracy is wrong, but the problem with the current system for dealing with piracy is that punishments are far too draconian. Casual music piracy is morally equivalent to shoplifting -- but we treat it like grand larceny, dragging people into criminal court and ruining their lives. Bronfman understands this principle when it comes to his own children.


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links