Posted on March 19, 2006
The article recently published concerning Guatemala seems to be ill-researched and naïve. While the author may only be repeating what she was told, she should gain some situational awareness and try to verify some of her information before blaming America for an entire country’s plight. When you blame America for Guatemala’s suffering, you are inherently saying that a freedom-loving people who do the most to help the world are destroying a country. If you have legitimate claims against a mining or plastics company, research the specifics then target them. Not the entire country of America.
Therefore, I am cynical when I hear how America is responsible for large amounts of suffering, thus I showed the article to U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers via professionalsoldiers.com. Everyone on this Web site who has “Quiet Professional” as his or her screen name is a verified Special Forces soldier.
For those of you not familiar with the U.S. Army Special Forces, these soldiers are trained to become experts in foreign culture — learning language, history and economics, basically everything they can about their area of responsibility — in addition to advanced military training and the art of teaching their knowledge to indigenous forces.
Here is the question I posed to them and the responses of several U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers. I hope these men can dispel some of the fallacious reasoning so definitively stated by Jess Novak, and encourage her and others to do their research before writing into a newspaper read by intelligent people with good situational awareness.
Don Davidson, senior biology major
As a recent JMU grad, I know what it’s like. You have limited money, and a shortage on free time. You have Highlawn cover charges to pay, Kline’s ice cream to buy and, of course, the very beloved Valley Mall to hit up every now and again. Who has time or money to go to the store and buy CDs? Besides, it’s so much more convenient to download music from the dorm room...and it’s anonymous, right? Wrong.
I’m sure you are hearing about students much like yourselves all across the nation who are getting busted for illegally downloading music from servers including, but not limited to, Limewire and Kazaa. While the legal penalty is $750 per song downloaded, some are getting off easy with settlements of $3,000. That’s a lot of Dining Dollars.
The recent article on the front page of The Breeze from March 15 has prompted me to encourage you JMU students to see it for what it really is: stealing. Your downloading a song here and there is the same thing as going into a record store and walking out with an album under your purple and gold hoodie.
In response to Preston Eberly’s comment that he doesn’t “think that the artists are being adversely affected” and that “some artists are actually appreciative of the visibility that piracy gives them...,” it completely does adversely affect the artists, and quite literally, the entire music industry. Don’t try to justify stealing by saying you are doing someone a favor. Especially the starving songwriters, hardworking promotions teams, store owners, legal music distributors, and many others who aren’t getting their due pay definitely do not appreciate it either. A much better alternative is iTunes.
Respect intellectual property. Don’t get caught in a downloading scandal. Keep JMU’s great reputation. And if you’re looking to hand out $3,000, either send it to JMU or send it to me.
Julie Kupelian, alumna, class of 2006
