THE BURNING QUESTION

	I'm turning myself in. I have willfully 
broken the law nearly every day for the past 
two months.
	Or at least I'm pretty sure I have. I 
bought a new computer with a CD burner. 
	My life of crime began with digital 
downloading into my old PC. I'd log onto 
Napster (later Morpheus) and grab .mp3 files 
of new songs I hadn't heard, or old ones I 
was never able to find.
	But that computer, manufactured in 1995, 
took a half hour to download each song. To 
do so, I had to pick another song to delete 
because there wasn't enough hard-disk space. 
And once it arrived, the song could only 
play at my desk at home, where I don't like 
listening to music anyway.
	Now, thanks to a $700 refurbished 
desktop, I can download a tune in 5 minutes 
onto a CD that plays in my car. 
	It began with homemade Beatles bootlegs I 
gave to friends, but quickly escalated when 
I thought of albums I always wanted, but not 
badly enough to buy.
	The very first Billy Joel album, 1971's 
"Cold Spring Harbor," is supposed to suck. 
Nevertheless, I always wanted to judge for 
myself. Something about paying $16.99 for a 
potentially sucky CD, however, never 
appealed to me. And it was a rare one to 
find on record shelves anyway.
	In the early days of digital downloading, 
proponents claimed it functioned as 
advertising, whetting your appetite to go to 
the record store and buy the genuine CD.
	But technology has advanced to where you 
don't have to. Within 15 minutes of dialing 
up Morpheus, my search flagged all 10 "Cold 
Spring Harbor" tracks, indicating that other 
users had logged on willing to share the 
files.
	I downloaded the cover image from 
Amazon.com -- ironically, from a page 
advertising the CD for sale. And I printed 
it on glossy paper purchased from Comp USA.
	The only thing I couldn't figure out how 
to get is the inside of the CD booklet and 
the back cover. But big deal. I would have 
only read the liner notes once, and I made 
my own back cover by typing in the song 
list.
	Such CDs aren't merely just as good as 
the originals. They can be BETTER -- or at 
least more tailored to your taste.
	The Beatles originally intended to 
include "Strawberry Fields Forever" on "Sgt. 
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," for 
example. So why not slap it on there?
	Indeed, "Cold Spring Harbor" does suck 
(except for "She's Got a Way"). But it's 
totally worth what I paid for the blank CD-
R, jewel case, printer ink and paper. For 
approximately 62 cents, my Billy Joel 
collection was now complete.
	And once I discovered how to use my 
burner's CD copying function, my crossover 
to the dark side was complete. I realized 
that I could go to any public library and 
return with hundreds of CDs to duplicate -- 
back covers and all!
	It was just like that recurring dream 
where the world suddenly freezes in time, 
and you can sneak into any store and take 
whatever you want for free.
	OK, maybe I should see a therapist. 
Whatever.
	Within a week I owned perfect copies of 
R.E.M.'s "Murmur," the Rolling Stones' 
"Their Satanic Majesties Request," Steve 
Earle's "Copper Head Road" and 30 other CDs.
	The Beverly Hills Library was my Tower 
Records of iniquity, containing untold racks 
of classic albums. I could only check out 
six at a time. But if I owned a new laptop, 
I could have gotten around that 
inconvenience. During each visit, I spotted 
tables full of people ripping songs into 
their hard drives right there, before 
placing the CDs back on the shelf.
	It's all catalog stuff, I rationalized. 
The artists have already made their money 
from these old CDs. And I certainly wasn't 
ever going to buy them.
	"People always feel a need to tell me 
they're doing this," said the clerk at the 
Redondo Beach Library, to whom I admitted my 
intentions as I cleaned out their 
comparatively small collection of everything 
that remotely interested me.
	Indeed, the guilt nagged, and still does. 
Am I doing something wrong?
	Sure, Billy Joel and R.E.M. are rich 
enough to sustain any harm I can impose. But 
what about the struggling musician who can't 
sell a CD because her entire hometown has 
circulated it for free?
	On the other hand, technology is also a 
good thing for struggling musicians. The 
Internet allows them to market directly to 
consumers without getting fleeced by the 
record industry, and CD burners make it 
cheaper for them to get their music out, 
too.
	And is burning a CD really any different 
than when you made a cassette copy of Meat 
Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell" in the 7th grade? 
Does the lack of quality degradation really 
transform this into a moral issue?
	This feels like the place in the article 
where I'd normally ask experts to help clear 
things up. 
	Not this time. Experts don't even know. 
The pertinent federal laws are ambiguous, 
and few helpful court decisions exist. Some 
authorities insist that copyright is only 
breached if the copied music is sold. Others 
insist it's illegal to copy any CD, no 
matter what the intended purpose. 
	And where they stand depends largely on 
from whom they make their money, or stand 
to: the recording industry or the Internet.
	So I consulted an impartial party to help 
navigate this moral impasse, the very person 
who originally taught me right from wrong.
	"Don't use that language with me!" my 
mother used to yell.
	"Don't hit your sister!"
	"Don't pick caterpillars off the ground 
and stick them up your nose!"
	These were all fairly cut-and-dried 
principles.
	True, mom never yelled, "Don't deprive 
your favorite recording artists of the right 
to have their labels make a 1200 percent 
profit on the CDs you're able to copy for 
free!" 
	But, I figure, any problem I have 
deciding about morality is simply a glitch 
in the software I was programmed with. So I 
dialed up technical support.
	"I would think if there's a program that 
allows you to do it, and they sell the 
program, then there's nothing wrong with 
using it," my mother said. "You're not 
responsible for having an entertainer earn 
money from a CD."
	Guilt relieved.
	"Oh, by the way," she interrupted 
herself, "Daddy said we got the Cher CDs in 
the mail. Thanks."
	That's right, I suddenly remembered. My 
mother's hardly an impartial party. She's my 
co-conspirator. When she found out I owned a 
CD burner, she requested copies of every 
Cher album I owned.
	"Are you gonna print that?" she asked. 
"Fine. Don't ask me to be a part of your 
articles anymore."
	Album sales were down 2.9% last year, and 
record companies blame thousands of people 
like my mother and me. Now, according to 
reports, they're spending their declining 
profits to develop CDs that refuse to play 
in computers.
	Of course, maybe the industry is in 
trouble because, since about 1985, it's 
focused more on crafting hits than building 
artists. 
	Maybe it's in trouble because so many new 
albums have only one good song on them.
	Maybe it's in trouble because of 
brilliant thinking that leads to decisions 
such as paying Mariah Carey $28 million NOT 
to record for you.
	And maybe it wouldn't even be so bad if 
the record industry did take a big hit from 
CD burning. If music ceased to be highly 
profitable, then that would force out all 
the people who are in it solely for the 
money. 
	Can you imagine if the only people 
involved in music were those who loved it 
more than money?
	Still, the guilt nags. 
	It's almost enough to curtail my next 
trip to the Beverly Hills Library. 
	ALMOST enough.