Korean Brothers Arrested For File-Sharing Site

HarlanC writes: "This story discusses the arrest of two Korean brothers who run a website [warning, page requires Korean language support] that allows peer-to-peer file sharing. Note that the Recording Industry Association of Korea reports local companies lost $154 million in sales in 2000 due to use of the program, even though sales increased to $31.5 million in total sales in 2000 from $29.2 million in 1999."

Comments

No. Not my definition.

[nyet]

Theft is depriving me of the thing YOU stole, not the *potential* loss of value of something I already own.

And people HAVE been arguing that one is less morally offensive than the other for as long as copyright laws have existed in this country. You clearly read /. regularly, so I am somewhat taken aback that this suprises you. People have already pointed out that "losses" due to *potential* sales not happening are completely bogus. You know this, I know this. Just because somebody got something for less than *you* sell it for does not mean they would have paid for it had they not had the opportunity to get if for less. And it doesn't mean they "STOLE" the price difference from your pocket. If price competition is "theft", why bother with a capitalist economy at all?

Information has the unique property that you *can* copy it without "destroying" the original. Why not harness this property, rather than make it look like a limited good?

The purpose of an economy is to distribute a limited good fairly and equitably as possible. Information is NOT a limited material resource. At worst, it is a common good (in the economic infrastructure sense), and at best it is a completely unlimited resource. In both cases, it has zero mariginal cost.

In short, the following is a valid *opinion*: "Copying information is not as morally offensive than stealing my physical property, or depriving me of my freedoms."

You may argue that this opinion is false, but you certainly can't tell me it is NOT a topic for debate.

Are you unaware that our founding fathers debated this topic as well?

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.

- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813

Those are some pretty impressive figures...

[achurch]

Note that the Recording Industry Association of Korea reports local companies lost $154 million in sales in 2000 due to use of the program, even though sales increased to $31.5 million in total sales in 2000 from $29.2 million in 1999.

So they're claiming that they were expecting $185.5 million in sales in 2000? A 535% increase over the previous year? And I thought the RIAA was stupid...