Stealing Music

I'm in Charleston SC (my FAVORITE city) on business. I've been visiting locations and talking with sales reps. I did the same thing last week in Raleigh, and discovered that lots of people think nothing about stealing music off of the internet. I was asking sales reps what they thought of a partnership that the company I work for has with Rhapsody - attempting to find out if they're selling it and what their roadblocks are.

I shared with them how much I love it and what a great value I think it is - three devices for $14.99. Every one of them looked at me like I was crazy. They don't pay for music. Why would they when they can pull whatever they want from the internet for free?

I pointed out very plainly that what they're doing is stealing. Taking some one's artistic and intellectual property without paying. None of them seem to have any qualms of conscience about this at all. I asked them how they'd feel if it was their music that was being stolen. Most of them said that they'd be happy with concert sales and ringtones. Yeah, right. I believe that psychologists call that rationalization.

Where am I going with this? I don't know. I know that we all rationalize some things at some times. I hope that when I rationalize that someone is kind enough to point it out so that I can stop it. No matter what, there are some things that are wrong - and wrong under any circumstance. I want to know when I'm wrong - especially when my error hurts someone else.