I was in the mood for some groovy, upbeat, gospel-style harmony tonight so I logged on to Blubster, and within 30 seconds I was singing along to "Jesus is Just Alright With Me" by the Doobie Brothers. The irony of the situation hit me like a ton of Bibles, just as heavy and as painful as bricks, but more morally challenging. Is Jesus just alright with me? Or would he forbid such wanton file sharing?

My first inclination is to side with the recording industry and the law. Copyright laws are around because without them there would be no incentive for artistic, scientific or any other type of innovative progress. Instead of getting into the messy area of deciding which arts to fund, the government gives temporary monopolizing power to anyone who asks for it and lets them make money if they can. It seems wasteful: if some guy can write a song at almost no cost, that song be available to anyone who wants it, why not? The classic economist's answer is if that guy doesn't get paid, he doesn't write that song. But does he?

One of the ways I've justified my long playlist of unpaid-for songs is that artists want to share their art, and that it's not about money. Economic models assume that no one does anything for the pure joy of creating something beautiful. Models predict that artists would just stop creating art when they stop getting paid, and that's just not true. I'm going to use my own model, namely, the Britney Spears-Led Zeppelin Model (BSLZ). If BS stops making "music" and LZ continues to do so in a file sharing world, then I proclaim file sharing to be moral and good.

BSLZ make money off of things other than CD sales. The record company that owns them stands to lose the most when the market for CDs drops off the face of the earth. Worst-case scenario, no more BS or LZ CDs are ever sold. This is a problem for BS, because without glitzy promotion and zillions of dollars of special effects from the record company at her shows, she is exposed for the no-talent colon polyp that she is. LZ, however, is able to entertain with very little equipment and promotion, and their songs would circulate through the internet quickly for free. The number of people attending BS or LZ concerts would be proportional to the amount of talent that each has.

Some people would argue that there is a "market" for glitzy pop stars, that people are made happy by being blasted with promotion and then being given what is being promoted. To me, the ability to create a market out of thin air is one of the most disgusting and troubling things about capitalism. The irony is that the same people who would argue that there's a market for glitzy pop stars, and think that that's a good thing, are probably in favor of filesharing. Right now, the record companies are so huge that they are acting in restraint of the free market by spending probably billions of dollars advertising. By giving music back to the people, filesharing will allow people to think for themselves, and music will be produced MORE efficiently, not less.

There does remain the free-rider problem, which is that, while bad music will be completely squeezed out of the market, maybe even the quantity of good music will be diminished, which would be an inefficient outcome. The Rolling Stones might survive, but would the Postal Service? I think that the resources diverted from promoting and consuming Britney Spears will end up subsidizing good artists.

Record companies should understand that changing technology has suddenly made their services unnecessary. When they lost their jobs, workers in Flint, Mich. were told that part of capitalism is change. Because they can afford lawyers, record companies are going to fight the forces of capitalism, but ultimately they will lose because file sharing is the "moral, economic, intellectual, social and emotional superior" (taken from Kelly Tripplehorn's infamous letter this summer) to CD sales.

It is possible that the quantity of good music produced will go down if the CD market disappears and any musical recording is immediately available for free to anyone. I think three factors will increase overall utility in this country, however. First, artists will continue to make their art regardless of profit. Second, if even a fraction of the dollars spent on Britney Spears is spent on good music, the free-rider problem will be overcome. Finally, and most importantly, Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne and O-Town will not exist in this free-recorded musictopia. That sounds like a good idea to me.

Joseph Caissie '05

Respect due to local workers

It's easy to get upset about unfair overseas labor practices. Companies like Disney, Nike and Wal-Mart regularly subcontract jobs to factories that grossly violate human rights. These massive corporations care nothing about the communities of workers they exploit. To them, the quality of a subcontractor depends on market forces; jobs go to factories that provide a decent product for the lowest price. Because the owners of these factories need not consider basic human rights, we end hear horror stories about women being forced to work 20-hour days and sleep under their sewing machines. We hear of mass firings when workers attempt to organize. We hear about assassinations of union leaders. These horror stories have the power to move us to action, but they also have the power to paralyze. Both the magnitude of the human rights abuses and their physical distance make them incomprehensible to us. We know there are no easy solutions, so we simply become accustomed to the idea that the things we buy each day may have been produced under conditions we find morally outrageous.

It's even easier to ignore the less obvious, but no less real economic abuses occurring closer to home. Right down the street, the majority of Wal-Mart employees are paid poverty level wages, literally unable to feed their families. Even closer to home, consider what kinds of economic decisions our own college makes that affect this community. When it came time to hire a contractor to renovate North and South Dormitories, the College side-stepped community standards set by the local crafts workers union and hired Monaco Restoration Co., Inc., a regional conglomerate that pays low wages and offers no health care or retirement benefits to some of its employees. Now this is not anywhere near as serious as the horror stories I mentioned above. But imagine for a moment what it's like to have children with no access to decent healthcare or to grow old with no source of income, and you begin to see why local crafts workers are willing to get up at 6 a.m. every morning to stand on Route 9 and picket the College's decision.

The College has decided to side-step this issue, calling it a problem between the protestors and the subcontractors. But those subcontractors are now working for the College! Does that mean Nike is not responsible for the conditions in the sweatshops they have contracted to make shoes? By taking a passive position in this conflict, the College has decided to accept short-term benefits, while helping reduce community standards, undermine economic wellbeing and polarizing earnings over the long term.

In the last issue of The Student, the College called its procurement process "merit-based," where contractors are given "equal opportunities to bid." "Merit" here seems to be determined by procuring a decent product for the lowest price, ignoring the fact that this lower price may be achieved by mistreating employees. According to our college, unhappy masons could just quit and work for other employers. But how are more humane employers supposed to hire these workers when they are losing contracts to companies like Monaco who don't conform to the same standards?

Amherst College is not Wal-Mart in Honduras or Disney in Bangladesh. We are an integral part of this community and we have the potential to take an active role in making Amherst a better place to live and work. We can't influence everything that happens on the planet, but we do have an impact over what happens in our own college. Let us make the bold statement that there is value attached to the quality of human life. Let's show that we can respect the lives of our workers and our neighbors enough to factor their well-being into our economic decisions.

Sarah Sorscher '05