Yours, mine, and ours

Amanda and I broke into the new millennium this Christmas when her folks got us matching 4gb iPod Nanos. I've never been a huge audiophile, but this little musical wonder has me all motivated to get my digital music collection in order. I'm well on my way to having everything tagged with the right artist, album, genre, and so on. One thing I've realized as I've been working on this is that I have lost a ton of music over the years. Everything from the Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch CD that I got for Christmas in 7th grade, to most of my sweet "alternative" discs from high school, to a bunch of the Christian albums I picked up in college.

Typically I agree with the "file sharing is stealing" crowd. If you are listening to someone's music, the artist should be compensated (however indirectly) for their work. It just seems fair to me that way. However, my once-was-bought-but-now-is-lost music collection has me thinking. In this day and age there are plenty of outlets that I could go to in order to try and rebuild my music cache without paying a dime for it. Aside from the risks of downloading a virus to my computer, and risking getting sued by the hyper-active RIAA, I am wondering if downloading my lost Sixteen Stone album would be morally wrong.

In most cases stealing is pretty easy to identify. If I steal your car, you can no longer drive it. I am depriving you of the use of something that you have paid for. If I have it, you can't use it. If you have it, I can't use it. Digital audio files don't work like that. If you have a copy of Metallica's black album, you can duplicate the files and give them to me. Now you and I can both sing along with Lars and the boys on our iPods. So, if the owner of the item being shared isn't being deprived of its use, is it really stealing?

You could argue that the one being stolen from here is the original artist, but I'm not sure I agree. They were fairly compensated for their work when I bought the CD. What difference does it make to them if in the course of a dozen moves since high school I lost the CD on which the audio files were available? Do they deserve to be compensated again just because I'm retrieving those exact same audio files that they've already been paid for?

I'm curious to hear what others think. Is this a gray area? Am I rationalizing? Are the RIAA cops going to come break down my door ten minutes after I publish this? What do you think?