Why I Steal Music

One night last week, I almost ripped off a parking lot. It had one of those honor systems where you're supposed to slide your payment into a numbered slot that corresponds to your parking space. I was late for dinner in San Francisco, and I didn't have exact change. It was late, and I doubted that anyone would bust me, but I still ended up jogging across the street to a convenience store and buying a box of Tic Tacs I didn't want just to break a $20. Then I spent the next five minutes folding eight $1 bills into stick origami and squeezing them into the sneering slot.

Why? Well, like the former President said, I am not a crook. I've never stolen anything — anything, that is, besides music. But I confess to being an unrepentant ex-Napsterite, now a LimeWire artist. I can find almost any tune online. I download songs to my computer and then off-load them to my MP3 player or burn them onto CDs to play in my car. Like tens of millions of others, I don't consider myself particularly immoral.

So why is it that otherwise honest folks blithely steal music? For me, it started with Napster. I was desperate to hear an old Loudon Wainwright III tune that hadn't yet been rereleased on CD. I found it one day online — someone had converted the entire record into MP3s and kindly uploaded the songs. I downloaded the tune and then helped myself to a rare Duane Allman rendition of Please Be with Me. I had begun my descent into hell, or wherever it is that music pilferers go at the Final Download. I'd have been thrilled to pay for them, I rationalized, but at the time they weren't available on CD.

In a recent e-mail survey, TIME asked downloaders why they steal online. Each had a similarly convoluted rationale. One said he wasn't stealing but was "simply borrowing from friends I don't know all over the world." Many resented buying an album when all they wanted was one song. One raged against the Man, saying it's "payback time" against venal record companies. Only a few owned up to what I suspect is the real reason: it's virtually impossible to get caught. While few of these people would, for example, help themselves to books or stereos if they could hack into amazon.com, music is different. It's ephemeral; you can't hold it in your hand. I suspect this is a problem that even Steve Jobs can't solve.

Josh Quittner is editor of Business 2.0