Thou Shall Not....

Imagine spending years writing about your heart breaks, disappointments, and other personal life experiences, essentially pouring your heart out onto paper and eventually transposing it into song. You spend months perfecting, promoting, and selling an album that you poured your soul into. Then someone takes your hard work and posts it to a forum for the entire world to download without your permission or any compensation. Pilfering, pocketing, pinching, and pirating are all words describing one corrupt action, stealing. Every day, millions of songs are illegally downloaded though the use of Napster, LimeWire, 360 Share Pro and hundreds of other “sharing” programs. The average person does not walk into F.Y.E., For Your Entertainment music store, with the intent to steal several songs or CDs; however, that same person may very well leave that store, return home, and illegally download hundreds of songs. Because of all the information available via the internet, it is important to remember the morality of stealing another’s work. Several elements in John S. Pritchett’s editorial cartoon, The Eleventh Commandment, address this prevalent issue, including the financial and moral issues of piracy.

The Eleventh Commandment shows Moses coming down from Mount Sinai to recount the commandments of God to the Israelites. As the title implies, the cartoon Moses, dressed in a cream, brown belted robe and a red jacket with his staff, gives one extra commandment, “AND FINALLY, NUMBER ELEVEN: THOU SHALT NOT DOWNLOAD MUSIC OFF THE INTERNET.” The fact that the artist used the scenario of Moses with the commandments, a highly revered point in biblical history, conveys the severity of the musical piracy. A commandment condemning stealing, “THOU SHALT NOT STEAL” is already established in the original list of the Ten Commandments. Piracy is such a big concern that even though it is already covered by the stealing commandment, it needed to be targeted again with its own commandment. In the year 2008 alone, forty billion or ninety-five percent of downloaded songs were downloaded illegally.

In the cartoon, Moses displays a stern, parental facial expression adding to both the seriousness of the topic and the humor of the cartoon. Combined with the facial expression, the lightning bolts in the right hand corner plays upon the well known adage of a person being “struck down by lightning” because of sinful behavior. These components stress the implications that occur if piracy continues to be an issue. When lightning strikes a person or object, it is likely that the person will die or the object could burst into flames or simply be destroyed. When people choose to pirate, they are cheapening the artist’s work and essentially destroying its value. Although it is highly unlikely, one could theorize that piracy could eventually demolish the entire music industry. When people steal from artists, obviously the artists do not receive any money or credit from their main commodity, the music; therefore, they lose a critical incentive to create music for the public. Assuming an artist does not quit the music industry, he or she may decide to enter other industries and make music secondary to other projects, lowering the quality of the music the artist may be publishing.

Pirating may provide enjoyment for the pirate, but it damages the business of the artist that provides the pleasure. When a song is illegally downloaded from the internet, not only is the song being stolen, but so are the songwriter’s years of hard work and finding the right words to express his or her feelings. This cartoon suggests that we should consider the consequences illegal downloads and if they are worth being struck down by the hand of God.