Your music collection used to stand as both an accomplishment and an investment. Each album recalled a specific time in your life - maybe the summer at the beach when you bought that Bon Jovi CD and listened to it every weekend, maybe riding in your friend's car when you first decided that you really liked Rage Against the Machine.
What's more, each part of your collection represented a specific choice; you weren't about to blow $15 on a Harvey Danger album just because you heard one good song on the radio in '97 (or maybe you did do so and regretted it forever).
These days have given way to an era in which people's music collections are sprawling, gargantuan, and worth virtually nothing. The ubiquity of CD burners (and the availability of blank CDs at 40 cents apiece) has made it easy and cheap to amass binders full of hundreds of illegally burned CDs.
Once, great thought would go into your every purchase; burning an album costs so little, however, that you might as well copy anything on the off-chance that you might like it. It's possible to become overwhelmed by your own collection, to own pages and pages of stolen CDs that you haven't even listened to.
Yes, stolen. Burning a CD is the same as stealing it. You're getting recorded music - something that you're undeniably supposed to pay for - without a single penny going to the manufacturer, the distributor, or even the band. Paint your own CD-burning habit as anything you like, from something harmless to an act of civil protest, but the facts remain. Duplicating a copyrighted recording violates both the law and the spirit of capitalism. Intellectual property rights are as important as physical ones. It's still a theft even if you can't be caught.
So justify your habit however you might, and be content with it if you have to, but don't insult everyone's intelligence by saying it isn't stealing.
CD burning falls into the same category as cheating over the MBTA by putting a handful of pennies into the exact change turnstile on the T. You may feel that the full price is a cheat, you may not see the face of the people you're ripping off, and there may be no chance of being apprehended for your crime, but it's still a petty and immoral theft. It's also an unsustainable method: if everyone got on the T for 17 cents, it would fall into a worse financial hole than ever. Likewise, if everyone burned their CDs, there wouldn't be any to burn in the first place.
People justify CD-burning in all kinds of ways. In particular, many point out that the record labels pay the artists so little that the companies have been effectively cheating both the bands and the consumer for years - implying that it's then fair somehow to cheat them out of their money.
Citizens of the happily-capitalist USA should remind themselves that no one is forced to purchase CDs. If you think that music is too expensive, you don't need to buy it (and no, stealing the CD is not a valid alternative, even if you think that your favorite musician is getting a raw deal). If you choose to buy a CD for $15, you can't pretend you were cheated. You knew full well how much you were paying and what you were getting.
Some artists have undermined the public's sense of intellectual property by admitting that they hardly care if people burn their albums, especially if it gets more listeners to come to concerts. Don't take this as a legitimate blessing upon CD burning, however; the artists have no legal authority in the matter. The artists don't have control over the record companies' copyrights, and while they make little from record sales, they rake it in at live shows. The interests of artists and record labels aren't at cross-purposes, but they aren't always the same, either.
Even if you're actually angry at the labels' treatment of musicians, screwing over the record company by not buying your favorite band's album isn't going to get your message across. In fact, it's only likely to get the band dropped for poor sales. Bear in mind that however much you imagine the record company as a bloated, faceless demon, it's still the reason that you have recorded music to listen to at all.
When is it legitimate and fair to burn a CD? You're justified if you're making a mix for yourself of music that you already own: you paid for it, and you're keeping it. And, though technically illegal, it's fair to burn CDs that are unavailable commercially - things like out-of-print albums, unreleased material, or even concert bootlegs. If you can't pay for it in the first place, there seems little point in feeling guilty about getting it for free or for paying the wrong people. How much of this is out there? The "latest" from Dave Matthews Band and the Smashing Pumpkins will never be available in stores. Burned copies of Neil Young's 1974 album On the Beach can sell for $50, and people pay for it. It's out of print in vinyl and has never been released on CD; there's no other way to get it.
With so much burning going on, the lack of zealous activists against CD burning is surprising. Those moral-high-road diehards that keep buying their music at full price end up paying for their "frugal" counterparts with burners, and they should be outraged. If you still buy your music, you should be outraged. Your friends may be cheap, but that's no reason to help them out.
For those people who ask that their burners be pried from their cold, dead hands: Don't lie to yourself. You don't burn CDs for politics. You burn them because you don't want to pay for them, and that's not exactly a defensible position.
And for the people out there who keep buying music and can stand up to the jeers of their freeloading friends: keep buying what you want, and don't loan out your collection. There's no reason to be someone's chump.
