This was my first real manifesto which I wrote a few years ago. Since then, I have changed my music collection, but the sentiments remain.

I’d like to confess something to you: I’m a criminal.

Now I feel better.

Please let me explain, and while I trust your invocation of a reporter’s shield law if need be, I cannot be sure that my identity will be kept secret under judicial threat or subpoena. Therefore, I must resort to anonymity.

I am (dare I type the words?) a downloader of music.

I have, at this time, over 2000 mp3 files on my computer – some of which I ripped from purchased or even borrowed CDs, some which I copied from bands happy to establish an online presence and eager to get their music heard and many of which I downloaded over various peer to peer networks. The selections range from sound effects to classical to rock to spoken word and comedy. My hard drive is a veritable library of stolen sounds, a cultural sourcebook with its black heart of theft worn on its sleeve. I’ve never sold this music to anyone, or presented it under a false light, but I have made it available to others so that they may enjoy music.

I know. I’m bad.

I also have a music collection of some 700 cassettes, 500 vinyl LPs and 600 CDs. Most I paid for, others were gifts. I figure that I have, over my lifetime spent enough money on music to pay for a good chunk of someone’s college education. I admit, though, that instead of converting cassettes to digital, or rebuying the same album in digital format, I have found it easier to download the song. I have discovered that instead of spending the cash to buy an entire CD when all that suits my taste is one song, I can find someone else who spent the money. And in return, he can take a single song from me after I’ve bought a thirty-dollar double CD set. Neither of us gets liner notes, artwork or anything else other than the pleasure of listening to a song we like.

And you know what the real rub is? I spend most of my time listening to the radio!

I used to copy songs off the radio but I’ve found that radio playlists aren’t as deep as they used to be, and their selection of music that suits my taste isn’t as comprehensive as I would like it. Songs on out of print or rare (read “expensive”) albums, alternate takes, live versions and such don’t suit the mass market need and therefore don’t get airplay. So instead of taping from the radio I copy them from someone else’s computer.

I know that there are myriad arguments splitting all the fair-use hairs and applying copyright issues, royalties, fees, business issues and the like, but the bottom line is that sometimes, I don’t want to pay full price when I don’t want the full product. I go to the library and not the bookstore, and I even photocopy articles from magazines at the library before replacing them on the shelves! I borrow movies when friends have rented them and don’t have to return them till Thursday. Sometimes I eat food that a friend bought and cooked and sometimes I have friends over and cook for them. Do the food providers, the authors and the filmmakers have the right to complain that we are enabling each other to avoid spending full-fare? Sure. And I think that, often, those product creators suffer more monetary damage when I don’t chip in my fair share than the music artists and record companies who lose my purchase price to online song providers. I occasionally even wish that I could buy more albums so that they would be happy. But time, money and interest preclude that; the harsh fact of life is that I will continue to tape movies off of cable, copy my co-worker’s $600 software that I intend to use but once and make my music collection available to others who want to know what is out there before or even instead of plunking down their hard earned cash on the one CD that they can afford, thus missing out on the four others that they would enjoy.

I am not going to take a sanctimonious route and claim it isn’t a crime, or that it is victimless, or that it pales when compares to the other wrongs in society as yet left unmitigated. I won’t make myself a victim of an unjust system or a culture of greed, nor will I justify, rationalize or excuse my actions, and attack the wastefulness of the RIAA’s subpoena parade.

I will live my life quietly, as a criminal, unconcerned with the precedent I set, the role model I become to my children or the lesson I present to others. I will drive 70 in a 65 zone, make Xeroxes without mentioning the TM, jaywalk with impunity, and download Prince’s version of “When you were mine” instead of combing through the back of Goldmine and shelling out $40 for the vinyl 45.

Somehow, society will have to survive.