"Music Should be Free!"

You see this more and more. Some manifesto. Some brilliant philosophy. Some new "Internet thinking" from somebody who probably never graduated college.

The idea is that music is communication and we should all share each other's knowledge. Something like that. So, conveniently, any music, any movie, any new computer program, should be given away for the common good. Shared. Without permission.

How nice to see so many people embracing Communism. What else do you call a plan by which copyright is ignored, and human freedom disdained?

The people behind "Music should be free" are almost never musicians. The few musicians who believe this crackpot notion either are so rich they don't care anymore, or so unknown they'll do anything to get attention.

Here's a better idea, kiddies. "Health care should be free." "People should be free." Not so easy, is it? You'd rather sit around being so radical by stealing other people's property, than join the Peace Corps or volunteer your time to teach a child how to read, or to protest Darfur or the current conflict on the Russian border.

Some doctors with a conscience and a heart, donate their time to a free clinic. But nobody kidnaps doctors, forcing them to lose money treating the poor. Kidnapping, after all, is a crime Isn't it?

Yet the bloggers and forum dwellers and P2P fanatics who take without asking, or who post some ridiculous legalese remark like "File for promotional or review purposes only, remove from your computer in 24 hours" are arrogantly, childishly or maliciously making a decision they have no right to make.

None of these "music sharers" want somebody walking into their homes and making copies of their CDs, or dupicating their DVDs. The word "Library" or "Open, Come In, Copy Anything I Have" don't appear on their doors.

Yet they have nothing better to do than create a conspiracy to get everything free, and if they destroy the lives of musicians, store owners, and others, "so what."

Hitler had his "Mein Kampf." He thought he had a brilliant plan to decide who should be allowed to work and who should be denied rights. If you have the monumental stupidity or ego or cruelty to take without permission, and kill sales by giving away what is legally not yours to give away, then put a swastika on your blog, put up the SS symbols, or the skulls, or devil tattoos and the rest of it, because you are far from the truth, far from intelligent philosophy, and just a little Hitler.