The Laws of Downloading

I have decided to start downloading again from my hiatus. Reason is because I believe I might previously have taken an extreme stand against downloading. Thus the notion nothing shall be downloaded has now been changed to some things can be downloaded. But rest assured I will never return to that state of lawless and unrestricted downloading anything from anyone. You can say I am justifying, but justifying is better than no justification, which admittedly, was my former state. So I venture to lay down the principles of downloading as closely as possible to the laws of objective truths, and where areas are unfortunately grey, I leave it to my own good conscience. The laws, therefore, are:

i. I will only download things that are shown on television or any other media, which are, by nature or by rights, provided to me free-of-charge in the first place, so that I do not deliberately steal or deny profits of any organizations or persons.

ii. Those things which I have downloaded according to the principles of (i), I shall declare myself of no rights whatsoever to retain it for future or repeated uses, or any other use except that one-time use which I would be entitled to.

iii. In the cases of which things ought to be paid for, or any form of media which is not available in my country or which is not available free-of-charge, I shall not attempt to obtain it through illegal means of downloading.

iv. In the case of (iii), it is just and right to pay for talents, abilities, creativity, gifts, and worksmanship involved, and to 'do unto others what you wish others would do unto you'.

v. Hereby these are written according to my good but flawed conscience, and are by no means to be fixed for eternity. If I shall find any flaws in my reasoning, or if a kind soul shall enlighten me that there is much injury caused by the means of that which I now accept, the principles shall surely be changed to conform more to the standards of objective truth, to which my conscience is eternally bound.


Okay. If we take away the formal terms, basically means... I can download Lost. I can download Prison Break because they are shown on TV, free of charge to a Singapore citizen. I would be unlikely to catch every episode on TV, but if I can watch it through downloading I think it is alright. But just as the show is delivered once for all, so also I do not have the right to retain it (as if I own the DVD, which I do not). The entire process should resemble my rights as closely as possible. Thus the ends is the same, but the means is different. At this moment, I do not think the means of obtaining media is wrong, but I might possibly be. I still stick to my stand that I ought not to download any music, or videos, or any other forms of media which is not available to me, and recognise that there is much intellect, creativity, and talents in the works of people, and these should be recognised by paying for it.