Utilitarianism at its finest

What if everybody did that which made the most people happy? Would society be benefited as a whole, and would everybody be happier? Not necessarily.

Let's talk about file sharing. File sharing over peer to peer networks takes place all day long, every day. The files shared include music, videos, games, feature films, and actual documents. It happens at AU so much, for example, that the Office of Information Technology has actually had to cap the amount of bandwidth that the residence halls receive during normal business hours, so that academic users during the day time can still perform their work.

Utilitarianism is denoted by the "greatest happiness principle," in which individuals are supposed to act in a manner that creates the 'social utility,' i.e. common happiness. File sharing makes everyone involved happier, doesn't it? Well, not necessarily. Nelly is involved in a sense, because his music is being shared. Is he happy about it? Not at all, I would suspect. But let's think about it: does the number of people who benefit from file sharing, create enough happiness to counterbalance the unhappiness created by the RIAA and by Nelly? Or would the amount of happiness found in the world if no file sharing took place be greater than that which is found when it does? If you answered "no" to both of these questions, then congratulations, you are essentially a utilitarian, or at least, you have taken a utilitarian stand point on this issue.

So we can justify file sharing because it creates more happiness for people than if we didn't do it. This, my friends, is utilitarianism at its finest.