Security in Computing 5th Edition by Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, Charles P Pfleeger, Jonathan Margulies

Exercise 4

Prepare an argument for or against the proposition that the following is ethical behavior. You and some friends decide to share music from CDs. You copy some to your computer and then burn identical copies for your friends. Does the argument change if the exchange is done with unknown people, through an anonymous file-sharing service on the order of Napster?

Step 1 of 2

Ethics of sharing music

The problem speculates on the ethics of sharing music offline or over the internet. While copying music from a disk to other storage devices such as hard disk for personal use is legal, it is highly illegal to share music in any form. Thus, burning identical CD copies for peers is both unethical and illegal. Most disks carry specialized warnings for users about the legality of such activities. Thus, sharing music between friends is not ethical behavior.