Online Porn voted more sociably acceptable than Pirated Music

A market research firm in New Zealand, UMR Research, has conducted a survey and published its findings, namely that more people find downloading or watching online porn to be less morally reprehensible than pirating music. Now, while this is a sensationalist and attention grabbing headline, it does raise some important points. If this is truly a widespread belief, then it seems that music consumerism is making important strides towards digging out the tumour of music piracy from its insides. Piracy is, in many ways, the biggest obstacle standing in the way of emerging artists. The naivety of those who argue that art should be the property of the masses is staggering – how much do they think it costs to record an album and who do they think pays for it? What will they think when they realise that their new favourite band can’t afford to tour? Because every illegally downloaded song is, in reality, a profit lost by the record label. I have no sympathy with the shareholders or the fat cats, but then they won’t be the ones to suffer – the smaller artists will though. It’s all well and good for established acts to not object to piracy or Napster’s offspring, but then they have already made their millions and won’t get their tours cancelled due to lack of funds.

Then there is a serious problem with this statistic as I would wager that the majority of people do not pay to watch porn online, which is in itself piracy. Again, I am not going lose sleep over the fat cats of the porn industry losing money. But then porn has flourished since the invention of the internet, as anyone can access it without braving those sleazy, backstreet shops and running the gauntlet of dirty old men in trench coats, hands thrust deep in pockets. Also, let us not forget that Silicone Valley is a massive business and that the established porn stars are paid very well – the problem is the sickening abuse of new initiates into the business, the up and coming performers. However, then it could be argued that pop music marketing is only a step away from soft-core porn in the way that it markets young girls as sex objects under the guise of sexual liberation: whatever happened to clever popular music such as Madonna’s Open Your Heart which reversed the voyeuristic male gaze from the setting of a disused peep show booth? It says something about the state of the industry that she now dry-humps radios in her videos to get by.

However, this survey is overlooking one fact, which is that both actions are exploitative. In this cyber-world, an absence of consequences has created a de-sensitisation to digital right and wrong in internet users – the irony of weighing one form of exploitation against another is a strange and very modern dilemma. Neither is right, but the anonymity of the internet has created a huge market for both porn and music pirated or not, otherwise this survey would not even have been taken. Whether downloading porn or music for free, you are taking advantage of the exploitation of others. So perhaps it is time for the cyber generation to grow up and develop a conscience - just because no one knows it’s you, it doesn’t make it ok.