RSS
Twitter
Officials In Hong Kong Arrest 14-Year-Old For Music Sharing
from the how-dare-you! dept
TorrentFreak has the story of how a 14-year-old boy in Hong Kong has been arrested for sharing Cantonese pop songs online. He may now face up to four years in jail. As the author of the story notes, when he was 14 he had plenty of music on cassette tapes that he would share with friends, and how ridiculous would it be to think of going to prison for that? Kids share music -- it's part of what they do, and in most cases it's because they love the music and want more people to hear them. They're not "stealing" the music (and, at that age, probably can't afford most of it anyway.) They're simply expressing how much they enjoy the music -- and now at least one may go to jail for loving music too much. This isn't to defend unauthorized file sharing, but to simply question the response to it, compared to what's actually happening. Something does not seem properly aligned when kids who are expressing their love of music by trying to get others to listen to it are facing jail time.
