I received an e-mail, sent through macrumors, the other day from a fellow macrumors member - someone I didn't know (a brand-new member, zero posts). Briefly he (and it was a he) wanted me to e-mail him an mp3 file of a piece of difficult-to-obtain piece of music that he had correctly presumed I owned; he wanted it "as part of a compilation he was creating to play at (his) friend's funeral". He had tracked me down, by Google, from a specific thread I had started here, relating to putting this piece of music as background on a web site I was constructing.
My initial response was to oblige - always try to be helpful, me, especially to someone from this community - but then I knew that to do so would be illegal. So I could ignore his e-mail completely - why I should get into contact with anyone, especially unknown, who was asking me to do something illegal? (it really is illegal, isn't it?) Or I could respond in some suitably polite manner, expressing regret but inability to accede to his request. In case he was some sort of Performing Rights person or some such agent - always paranoid, me - I used one of my totally anonymous e-mail addresses to reply. Once I had sent the mail off I felt a tad like a sanctimonious prig for declining to send him the file using the illegality reason.
I did provide links in my reply to where the track could still be purchased and also the holder of the copyright on the music.
I am sure that if a friend asked me the same thing, I wouldn't really have a problem in handing it over, especially if it was wanted for the funereal purpose. And I think that I may well have not too many problems if one of the well-known, "reliable", macrumors members here asked me the same thing, although i would think long and hard.
Would you have done things differently and would you have any conflicts with double standards with respect to friends/trusted people asking the same thing?
My initial response was to oblige - always try to be helpful, me, especially to someone from this community - but then I knew that to do so would be illegal. So I could ignore his e-mail completely - why I should get into contact with anyone, especially unknown, who was asking me to do something illegal? (it really is illegal, isn't it?) Or I could respond in some suitably polite manner, expressing regret but inability to accede to his request. In case he was some sort of Performing Rights person or some such agent - always paranoid, me - I used one of my totally anonymous e-mail addresses to reply. Once I had sent the mail off I felt a tad like a sanctimonious prig for declining to send him the file using the illegality reason.
I did provide links in my reply to where the track could still be purchased and also the holder of the copyright on the music.
I am sure that if a friend asked me the same thing, I wouldn't really have a problem in handing it over, especially if it was wanted for the funereal purpose. And I think that I may well have not too many problems if one of the well-known, "reliable", macrumors members here asked me the same thing, although i would think long and hard.
Would you have done things differently and would you have any conflicts with double standards with respect to friends/trusted people asking the same thing?
