Slashdot Mirror
The Crime of Sharing
John Perry Barlow has an editorial piece on recent developments in law and file-sharing networks. Most slashdot readers have read this sort of thing before, but sometimes it's nice to see how different people approach the same sort of persuasive argument, to bolster your own persuasive ability.
It's quite a stretch to equate the *voluntary* dissemination of HTTP, TCP, and other widely used technologies by their creators, with the *involuntary* sharing (theft) of the property of authors and musicians.
The sad part is that my kids are growing up in a time where the message is that it's ok to steal what you don't want to pay for, if you feel the price is too high.
"That's why I'm stunned that so many kinds of sharing have suddenly, without public debate, become criminal acts. For instance, lending a book to a friend is still all right, but letting him read the same book electronically is now a theft."
This kind of statement has always stunned me. The division between lending and copying is pretty clear. If I lend something, then I don't have it any more. The value of the object is preserved (or nearly). If I print copies of my favourite books, and give them to my friends, then I still have a copy, and the value of the object is divided by (some fraction of) the copies made. The justification of Napster is that people go out and buy more music because of it. Even assuming that's true, will it be true in 10 years? 50 years?
If you can't afford a car, because of collusion and price fixing, is it OK to steal a car from the dealer? Not liking price fixing is obvious. Not stealing is also obvious. I'm clear that when I copy music, I am doing something that is both legally and _morally_ wrong.
Well, let's say you have a train ticket, good for unlimited travel for a day on the London Underground. You finish with it, but it is still valid for several hours, is it stealing or sharing if you give it away to someone? If you sell it to someone? If you enter it into a turnstile and you and a friend squeeze through? If you buy a ticket most days, but not today, and climb over the turnstile?
These are all things to consider, because contrary to the article, the act of "sharing" is subjective, and not inherently good.
It seems to be a religious debate at this point
Most worthwhile debates do take on a life similar to religious debates. People have a fundamental feel for what is right and wrong - and no matter what evidence is put forward they don't, on the whole, change their minds.
Thats why a debate is required, because if you say to most people - will we ban people squashing their dog under their car for fun on a friday night - most will say 'of course' but a few will say 'hell no! thats all I have left since you banned squirrel baiting'.
Ask about sharing music and you get a 50:50 split of people who think its great, and people who think its a first step twards lawless anarchy!
Because nobody has ever prosecuted a private-sharer. There is no practical difficulty in sharing. Only companies that seem to profit from the sharing are harassed. That's why the public isn't making a fuss, because nobody is treading on their toes. Not too much, at least.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Two overlapping graphs in the New York Times last April 1 (in an article called "Paperback Music") made the point vividly.
Unfortunately, April 1st is not the best date to be citing newspaper articles from.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
The opposites are true too: the Internet makes it possible for individuals to distribute other non-consenting individuals' creations directly to "consumers" (the most prevalent use of Napster). At the same time, the Internet could cause intermediaries to lose the ability to extract a fee from every single piece of content they used to sell (the death of the media giants).
Until someone can create a system that accurately models the way "real life" ownership works, we will have these kinds of "reality disconnect" problems, where you can loan a book to a friend, as long as it's not an e-book.
People take for granted the way physical ownership works, with all its limitations, and the unspoken rules of ownership that go along with it. When you transition to a wide-open medium like the internet that takes away the physical limitations but leaves the old rules of ownership unmodified, the old rules become insufficient. Big media is scrambling to come up with a way to re-implement the old physical limitations of ownership in this new medium, but the results are pretty weak. So in the meantime, it's legislate legislate legislate! However even that is harder to enforce in this new medium than it was in the old.
This is a very thorny problem, and I don't think it's going away any time soon.
... that, in my opinion, loads of people who downloaded Morpheus or Kazaa don't do it to be able to share music, but just to get stuff without paying for it. When they see their favourite freeloading tool under attack, they're screaming blue murder.
Don't get me wrong, I'd hate to see p2p go, and I'm ready to do something for it (EFF, here I come...). I just don't expect millions of other users to do so. Sad, innit?
I gave up sigs almost a year ago.
Yeah, the whole sharing-ideal is great. But if the rightful owner doesn't want to share it, that's it. The choice of sharing or not should still be his, not so?
I suppose it is ALSO greedy to want to have something without having to pay for it. Or force someone to share without him having a choice.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
You talk about "stealing" and "theft", when in fact you seem to mean copyright infringement. Please don't confuse these, they're totally unrelated. (I'm not saying that copyright infringement is okay, but it's not theft!)
Serious question though: How is "theft" defined in U.S. law? Im my country, it only applies if you take something away (sorry, link to German site), which is different from copying something.
Oh, way to spread the FUD. Judge Garrett Brown dismissed the Felten case because there was no longer any case to answer. As he pointed out, he was obliged to restrict himself to the immediate and ongoing threat of prior restraint to Felten, and to consider larger and theoretical consitutional issues.
Don't get me wrong. Judge Brown appeared to be incapable of understanding the issue, and would possibly have ruled incorrecly if there was still a case to answer. But there wasn't, so the EFF's assertion that the Felten dismissal was a ruling against First Amendement is a bare faced lie. Their FUD disappointed me at the time, but the fact that they keep harping on and on about it is really starting to piss me off. The EFF are trying to paint what was actually a small victory as a crushing defeat to whip up sympathy and anger. That's the kind of crap I'd expect from the MPAA/RIAA, not from the white hats.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
The sad part is that my kids are growing up in a time where the message is that it's ok to steal what you don't want to pay for, if you feel the price is too high.
I assume that you are referring to software and music here. Why might your children think this way?
There is a fudamental difference between stealing, say, someone's TV, and downloading music from the Internet. In the first case, the owner no longer has a TV. The original owner loses something, you gain something. In the second case, the original owner (the artist) does not lose anything, but you gain something. Let's make this clear - when you download music from the internet, the artist does not lose anything. They don't gain anything either, but absence of gain is not a loss, a basic point that often confuses people debating this issue. You have not taken anything from the artist, nor have you given them anything.
So don't confuse your kids "stealing" music or software off the net with them shoplifting or pickpocketing. They are completely different. Your kids understand this difference, which is why they don't feel bad about doing it, and they are right to feel like that because from a moral viewpoint what they are doing is an extremely petty "sin" (for want of a better word - I'm not talking in a religious sense).
Your kids probably have sound moral judgement. Most kids do. Don't corrupt them with your own confused ideas about right and wrong.
The funny thing about copying is you can't predict the loss in sales. Who knows if the person would have bought that item if they couldn't get it for free!
Who wants to buy a whole album just because they like one song that's played on the radio 10 times a day. Or the Music is just not available on CD. ( I know I'm clouding the issue by making a specific example, but this is the only reason I have downloaded songs)
Napster existed for a long time with illegal sharring effectively stopped. Hey, isn't this what the whole Slashdot crowd claimed to want? It's a fileshare and there's no illegal swapping, so shouldn't you guys have loved it? Nope, you all moved on to Kazaa and Bearshare. I've yet to see anyone provide an actual reason for filesharing other than to pirate copyrighted material. Everything legitimate is already available on the web and ftp. It makes no sense to get all mad at the RCAA simply for trying to protect it's profits. If someone was cutting out 33% of your salary (if you have a salary, hah) would you be like "Well I can't infringe on his rights..." or would you do something about it? The record industry isn't trying to stop you from trading Linux binaries or whatever you claim to be using File Sharing for. They're just guys trying to watch their backs. Yes, I agree that most of them are overpaid whores, but that really doesn't matter. Ok label this as a troll. It's a different viewpoint! Ahh!!! I bet he even runs Windows!
We carry little metal disks and (mostly) green pieces of paper around. They don't have a whole lot of intrinsic value, but because they embody the concept "legal tender" we assign them a greater value depending on how they look. They are not the only way one can spend or transfer "money" as shown by EFTs and other such digital flows where nothing physical moves around, except bits in a computer get changed. These transfers are much harder for a criminal to intercept and modify than the practice of train transfer of gold or currencies was.
Likewise, the "original" medium for movies and music (video film reels and wax records, respectively) also had a physical/intellectual link where the value was the information and not the medium. If the RIAA and MPAA choose to keep themselves chained to the thought that the product they sell is physical (a CD, cassette, VHS tape or DVD) and not the information within, they will find themselves drowned in the swelling tide of digital transfers. And no legislation or fancy technology will be able to save them-- except to embrace the new model of business.
Do you like Japanese imports?
The funny thing about copying is you can't predict the loss in sales.
Indeed you can't even predict that the next effect will be a loss...
"I read this great story about an old fisherman, written by some Ernest dude, do you want to hear it?"
"Sure I do, but I don't have time now, could you type it up for me so I can read it later?"
"No problem, just get me a typewriter, or I could dictate it to a tape for you"
"That would be so cool, then I could listen to it when I go to Europe next week"
"Actually I have it here on my computer, I could burn it to a CDROM for you"
"Dang, my CD drive is kaput, could you give it to me later"
"Well, I could put it on my webpage for you, then you can read it anytime"
"Wow, that would be fantastic! Thanks, you are a real friend"
...
Now, tell me where does 'fair use' end and 'copyright infringing' start?
Publishers are just another communication channel. Before the internet, the only effective way to distribute large amounts of information was to stamp it on physical media and move it to the buyer. Back in college, a classmate calculated the effective bandwidth of a semi-truck delivering a truckload of books.
As with other communication channels, consumers pay for the information delivery service. No more, no less.
If you believe in market economics, the widespread communications capacity glut is going to depress the prices on all communication channels. Further, this is probably only the second time in human history that this has happened. As with the first time -- the invention of the printing press, it will take some time for prices to settle to an acceptable level for the public and the companies trying to serve them.
One might ask what am I getting at after all this babbling. Basically, as with the printing press, when enough content is created to fully utilize the communication capacity available prices should start to stabilize for all involved. A proactive measure of the publishers would be to increase the amount of content in their products to the point where the communications capacity is fully utilized.
For example, if CD's contained not only the 10 songs of so so material, but also maybe twenty or thirty hours of recording studio material/concerts. Many fans might not want just the 10 songs. To get the full CD, many might not be willing to upgrade to T1 lines just to get it.
Interesting artists with many interpretations of their songs might actually have a fighting chance in this scenario vs. one-hit wonders of the day. I think I would be more interested in what Sting really thinks about his songs or other approaches that he considered but couldn't get to work.
In a world of gigabyte/sec communications, giving the consumer less than 1 second of information for $20 seems pretty paltry.
Freenet is a distributed network with anonymity built in. In a nutshell here are the features:
It can't be monitored effectively
It can carry any kind of media
It is anonymous
It is written in Java
Napster style clients exist (also written in Java)
All OSS
It is crawling with all kinds of undesirables because of the above.
If the users of existing filesharing networks were to move to something like this the record industry would be screwed.
e4 e5
IANAL (or an American) so can't answer that specifically. However, I do remember hearing that historically Anglo-Saxon law classifies theft (or stealing) as permanently denying the owner of a physical item.
This is why, in the UK, if you are arrested for joy-riding you are charged with "Taking and Driving Away" rather than simply Car Theft, because a possible defence exists that you were intending to return the car. A "temporary" theft is not realy theft (in these terms). Hence the need for a new law to be made (TADA)
It seems to me that under the same criteria copyright infringement cannot be classified theft. You might argue that it's depriving the artist (or studio, or shop) of revenue, but certainly not the physical item (the CD) Whether it is right or not is another matter.
I don't like the infringement of fair use rights that the media companies are trying to force on us. However, I realize that unless people look at this as a moral issue and stop giving away someone else's work, the media corporations will do whatever it takes to prevent theft.
Theft is not copying music that you already own. If you ripped it from a CD, chances are good that the artist was compensated. You may not like the terms that the artist gets, but then again, you're not the artist, and you didn't sign the contract. The "moral" highground of not paying for CD's because you don't like the way companies rip off artists is not moral at all; in fact, you're contributing to the devaluation of the artists' career by refusing to pay for the music at all.
Theft is taking something that's not yours. Now the analogy about ideas does not apply here - an idea is something ethereal, spontaneous, and without significant form. Transforming that idea into music, movies, source code, or a book is work, and herein lies the crucial difference. Sure, I cannot own an idea - as soon as I divulge it to another, we both share the idea. However, you can reproduce that idea with no more effort than it takes to think. Reproducing music, or a book, is a little more difficult. I can't possibly remember all of the ideas represented in a book, so thus, I need a copy of the book as a reference when I forget. Same thing with music - I may learn a song, but I will never be able to sing as well as the original artist. This is what we pay for, folks. It is the effort that another went through to produce the music, the movie, the source code, or the book. It is not the idea .
Granted, in electronic form, the work can be reproduced for almost zero cost. However, this fact doesn't put food on the table for the artist or author. If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief. It is the right of the producer, not the consumer, to set price. If the artist or author wants to give away his work, that's their right. It is also their right to charge for their work. As a user of the Internet, you have a responsibility not to abuse the system; treat the work of others with the same respect you would expect yourself.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The division between lending and copying is pretty clear. If I lend something, then I don't have it any more.
But - when you lend a book, are you just lending a physical object or are you allowing a friend to copy the information it has with his brain? If it's a Stephen King book doesn't he experience the same experience of a story as you? If it's a book that explains how to fix a sink, does he automatically lose that knowledge when he returns the book to you? Is it stealing if he continues to fix sinks without the book?
I'm clear that when I copy music, I am doing something that is both legally and _morally_ wrong.
I have the ability to reproduce music in my mind's ear perfectly if I concentrate enough. Is that stealing? If I play my guitar along with the CD, is that stealing? Or if I turn the CD off and continue to play and sing the song myself, am I a thief?
Brains copy. They do not make perfect copies, but neither do radios or MP3 rippers. If fact, any perception a brain has of any object or sound is only an approximation, dependent on attention paid and ability to percieve. In short, copying is unavoidable, and no copy made of something can be percieved as a perfect copy by any human.
So - which copies are permissable and which are thieving and how do you possibly tell the difference? It's legal for me to record a song off the radio and turn it into an MP3 - but it's illegal for me to download the same song from the net. Never mind that you won't be able to tell one from the other.
So - I have an MP3 of "Already Gone" by the Eagles on my hard drive. Is it legal? Is it moral? Why that depends on if I recorded it off my tape, off the radio, or copied it off the net - but how will anyone tell? And if no one can tell the difference, why does it make a difference? The anti-copying philosophy will eventually result in a situation where people cannot prove if what they have is legal or not, unless they save the reciepts - and even that's in question if you have a good enough printer.
The end result of all this will be a absurd state where just about anyone can be "guilty" of copyright violation.
Why isn't the public making a fuss? Why, at a time when the most basic principal of society-the right to know-is being turned into a criminal act, isn't there an army of outrage fighting to protect the free flow of human creativity?
A public outcry is useless if there is no one to hear it.
It has been demonstrated over and over again, especially in the last 5 years, that Congress and the courts hold the "rights" of corporations to continue doing business in higher regard than the Rights of the people. They do not care about us; and in fact, if we attempt to exercise our Rights in any visible way, we are arrested. Ask Jon Johansen. Ask Dmitry Sklyarov.
The battleground has changed. We can no longer fight our battles in the open, using the due process of Law, because the Law has been corrupted by money. So we fight in the darkness. Our file transfers are private and secret, just like their back-room deals, their bribes (they call it "lobbying"), and their good-ol'-boy networking.
Morpheus is one of the most popular downloads in the history of cyberspace. Users have retrieved more than 40 million copies since July.
If that isn't "the public making a fuss", then what is it?
And the funny thing about the "evil MPAA corporations" is that they're probably spinning the MP3 thing in their favor when they pitch to unsigned artists.
:)
I imagine it goes something like this: "We're the only ones with enough resources ($$$) to develop digital anti-theft technology to protect your recordings from unauthorized distribution. If you went out on your own you'd never make a dime because of all the file sharing."
I keep clinging to the dream of a site like mp3.com or Emusic that will eventually allow artists to publish themselves. Forget $15 CD's, think of PayPal minipayments. Even with minipayments I'll bet the artists could make more money in the long run. Yeah, they lose the promotion and up-front production money, but they retain some control and put their music at a price point where even Pentagram might pay for it.
Now if only they could filter out the total home-brew crap... sigh, now I'm getting into double-standards. Okay, at least set up the "Aspiring Amateur Musician" section.
If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief.
Firstly let me point out that I did not take any moral high ground that copying is ok. The jist of my argument is that copying digital works is a much lesser immoral act than stealing physical goods.
Let's pretend for a moment that there is a quantitative scale for immoral acts. Let's say murder scores 100. Acts of violence might score 50. Stealing someones TV on this scale might score, say 15. Personally I think that copying Madonna's greatest hits off the Internet would score about 0.01, if that.
We all have our own moral systems. All of us do things that would score tiny scores on our own personal immorality scales, every day. What annoys me is when I hear people talk about things like music copying as if it were a terrible immoral act. It is a immoral act, but it is a tiny little one. You are a thief on the same scale as a married man who admires another woman is an adulturer, or as someone who smokes in a public space is a murderer.
The same arguments get rehashed here over and over. I don't believe anything you said in the beginning and am not smart enough to argue the later part, and i am fairly certain you won't change your mind with anything i said, but still
"However, if that person who downloads music for free would have bought the CD had it not been available for download, then yes, the artist has lost something."
This is most certainly not true. Many have pointed a fact out here, though i can't find any today. This is that the artist will get more funds directly from a person if that person knows their songs and from knowing their songs wants to here them performed live, goes to the show, likes the music, buys the t-shirt, gets the 7" (not of industry cock), gets on the mailing list. The artist is more likely to see this cash direct, as opposed to shelling out $22 at the HMV (that is how much a random cd i picked up out of the racks at the HMV RnR Hall of Fall cost) and the artist getting their $1-$3.
"in fact, you're contributing to the devaluation of the artists' career by refusing to pay for the music at all."
No. In fact I am contributing to the devaluation of the segrams, vivendi, emi, whoever the hell stranglehold on music distribution , production and selection. Music is going to be there. It is not as if once the majors topple things are going to dry up and no one will put out records and no money will be made. All it will mean is that corporate radioband will not make millions off of haircuts, cliches and marketing.
Other points, duly taken.
The "moral" highground of not paying for CD's because you don't like the way companies rip off artists is not moral at all; in fact, you're contributing to the devaluation of the artists' career by refusing to pay for the music at all.
Yes, but in the absence of buying cds I am able to save more money and then spend it on live concerts and conert t-shirts where I know the artist will receive a bigger margin from than if I bought the cd and then wasn't able to attend the concert. And depending on the artist I will fork over more money to get better and better seats.
I am not spending money on a record company so they can compensate for their loses. I am spending money on the band which I feel has earned my money.
At a restaurant you tip the waiter/waitress according to the service you received. I have received no service from the record company and the goods that I have bought from the record company are tainted and are useless to me. Whereas the concert provides an outlet of emotion and energy for usually 3 hours including the intro band. This I will pay money for. I know what I am paying for when I go to a concert - I might not get to hear my favorite songs, but I went into it knowing full well I might not. With buying a cd I do not know if I'm going to be able to play it now.
I do not own a standard cd player. So the cd is useless to me and I paid $18 for the useless product, which in itself is a ripoff since it costs them $1 to make the cd.
So am I contributing to the devaluation of the band by not buying the cds but instead going to the concerts? I don't think so.
Maybe I don't value the one song I like on NewBigBand's Album at $20. After all, the $20 would make me a lot happier by going to the movies with my S.O. So, I go to the movies instead of buying the new Album.
OTOH, if I could get the one song for say, $2 bucks (the cost of my time to download it on a slow 56k connection), then, yes, I'll download it, because I want a copy.
I just don't want the copy when it costs $20. I do want a copy when it costs close to $0.
Simple economics.
There are a couple things here that need challenging:
In the end, this all comes down to the fact that we have allowed ourselves to conflate copyright with natural property rights. They are NOT the same, nor were they ever meant to be. Copyright requires an explicit tradeoff between access and ownership. Think about it: if I really want to protect my idea, I should never tell it to anyone!! If I want to protect my song, I should never perform it!! But, for certain kinds of businesses, if I want to make money on my idea, then I must reveal it, or its expression. So, a compromise has to be made: control over ideas and their expression versus the desire to make money. Governments step in and legislate a compromise. And, if they get it wrong, we ask for a new compromise.
The technology is here - the new compromise should be made - the fact that a new technology undermines a business model based on intellectual property should NOT be sufficient to outlaw the technology - maybe it's the business model that has to change!!!!
The buck stops with the artists.
An artist has the choice to sell out or be free.
Selling out means imposing a copyright on their work and then transferring the copyright to a large, monolithic, investment-driven organization that will surprise nobody in its mercilless drive to squeeze a buck out of the work.
Being free means playing music, writing prose, etc., without attaching any strings. Period.
If you're the Backstreet Boys, you sell out, because it'll take a huge branding campaign and monopolistic distribution to saturate tween minds to the point of addiction before anyone would listen to, much less pay for your music.
If you're actually a true force of creativity, you stay free, as selling out would hurt the health of your work. This used to (rightly) be called "Alternative" or "Underground". You give your work to the public domain and don't charge, except maybe for shows and equipment, and then only to cover costs and go out for a movie.
Us users, on the other end, should reward the artists and ignore the rest.
Vote with your Voice. Vote with your Feet. And Vote with your Wallet.
What *exactly* is someone else's work?
) ) { exit (-1); }
... if I read their code in a book at a PUBLIC LIBRARY ... and I start using their code ... did I STEAL their intellectual property?
... and I make a list of the features, ... and then I re-write my code so that my program acts EXACTLY like the original program, did I STEAL their intellectual property?
... in saying that you can not share, it is saying that YOU CAN NOT STORE A CERTAIN SET OF 0's and 1's ON YOUR COMPUTER ... does that not violate free speech? Do I not have the right to store whatever 0 and whatever 1 I want??
.... next thing we know, people are gonna copy right words, phrases, common day expressions.
... and we must exercise our rights, and store whatever bit whereever we want!
Suppose that someone writes the single line:
if(!somePtr=(someStruct*)malloc(sizeof(somePtr)
instead of checking for !=NULL on a different line
Now, if I see a good piece of software, and I play around with the different features that it has
Now, if I have this program that works EXACTLY like another program, and I'm distributing it to my friends, and I accidentatly sent the other copy, which for all necessary purposes, is indintinguishable from my own, am I STEALING property?
IMHO, you got this point wrong
I mean, what would life be like if you had to pay someone royalties to use certain words, to utter certain phrases
The time is now
The issue really has little to do with theft. The issue is that big media companies are no longer needed to distribute the music.
The RIAA have been keeping our eyes and minds focused on this side issue, that of theft, and quite successfully keeping our attention off of the fact that they are simply no longer needed.
If we really want this issue to go away we need to do the following:
- Come up with a way to pay for recording studio time.
- Come up with a way to filter out artists that suck.
- Come up with a way to pay the artist.
- Distribute the music. (either via Napster or CDs)
The problem here is that the established media companies provide 1-3, and get paid at #4!-Ben
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The band, however, has the right to decide how to distribute its music, not the fan. If a band wants to let people copy and freely trade their songs, that fine. They have made a decision on how they can best market themselves and make a living. Some do that quite successfully - such as the Dead.
If you don't like the price of CDs, don't buy them. But to say it's OK to copy music without paying for it becasue you may go to concert or buy a T-shirt, ultimately giving the band more money is just a way to try to rationalize your actions.
Suppose I decide that the real value in music is added by the people that market and package it, and that the band is just some easily replaced random collection of musicians - is it ok for me to sneak into a concert? After all, the band plays the same wether or not 1 more person is in the room, and I might buy a CD, helping out the record company, as well as the band, who gets a cut?
In fact I am contributing to the devaluation of the segrams, vivendi, emi, whoever the hell stranglehold on music distribution , production and selection. Music is going to be there. It is not as if once the majors topple things are going to dry up and no one will put out records and no money will be made. All it will mean is that corporate radioband will not make millions off of haircuts, cliches and marketing.
If free distribution of music creates enough demand to support musicians, then it will happen. Stealing to strike a blow against a company you hate doesn't help the musicians on bit, it just cost them money.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
In a balanced economic environment the producer DOES NOT and CANNOT determine price by fiat if they have any expectation of selling their product. Price is set by negotiation with the purchaser (more or less). The current music system is run by a monopolistic group of companies that are actively seeking to choke supply to extort money out of customers. The counterpoint that we can choose to not buy their music is empty because we cannot participate in modern society without buying from monopolists (MS, Time-Warner, etc).
Quite frankly, I don't being extorted. I feel badly that some artists will lose money on their music*, but I do have issues with paying ridiculous sums of money for a product that has a negligible production cost.
* I do feel bad that artists don't get paid for their music, but I also have no problem paying for a live performance either. And, perhaps we shouldn't be looking for revenue from broadcasting/distribution per se where its unreasonable to collect fees (think about the use of unenforceable laws in general).
This is a true story, which I was reminded of by the post pointing out the difference between *real profits* and *potential profits*:
There was once a hard-goods store that I bought lots of stuff at. The store was sold, and the new owner raised all the prices, then walked around admiring "how much money I'm making".
Naturally sales plummetted due to the newly-increased prices. The store shortly went out of business -- apparently I wasn't the only one who quit shopping there.
I've been told that the new owner blamed his "lost profits" on light-fingered employees.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Agreed, but the problem with your mindset is that it leads directly to the "Tragedy of the Commons". For example, using your scale we might have 100,000 people x 0.01 = 1000.
The same logic (or lack thereof) applies to other "harmless" activities like littering, watering the lawn during a drought, etc.
I was talking about a scale of morality for the individual. It does not make sense to do maths with it, just as it doesn't make sense to say ten force-ten earthquakes are equivalent to 100 on the Richter Scale. Obviously it is nonsensical to compare 100,000 people copying Madonna's Greatest Hits with ten murders!
"Over the last several years, the entertainment industry has railroaded a number of laws and treaties through Washington and Geneva that are driving us rapidly toward a future in which the fruits of the mind cannot be shared."
What burns me about this kind of "sky is falling" statement is that it is completely rooted in the same false assumption that is driving the policies of the industry: that corporations have some kind of monopoly on content, that, like the diamond cartels, they can keep the market all locked up.
As the technologies of creating words, music, and film become more and more accessible this idea becomes more and more obsolete. As long as this argument is defined by the idea of THEIR restrictions on how we get to utilize THEIR intellectual property, we've lost the argument before we've started. Because in the end, despite being misguided and fundamentally flawed, recent legislation like the DMCA really just attempts to make the existing notion of copyright enforceable in the digital age. The basic notion of the copyright owner's rights are unchanged.
One of the big flaws in the middle of all these arguments is the notion that there is a strong, clearly stated principle of Fair Use in copyright law. There isn't. Fair use is a concept, in its literal presentation in the law, mainly geared at institutional uses and extended to a limited range of personal applications by precedents. And while recent legislation and trends are attempting to restrict even those limited definitions, it only weakens the case of fair use to try to argue that it extends to things like the widespread distribution of someone else's intellectual property over a P2P network.
The arguments of information freedom advocates are also not helped by outright falsehood. The article gives an unqualified interpretation of the Felten DMCA case that is simply untrue.
Creators have the right to produce and distribute their work any way they want. What is needed far more than revisions in legislation is for enlightened consumers to seek out creators offering their work in a rational, unencombered way. As the content kings spend more and more to make their products les and less versatile in the face of increasingly versatile technologies, individual creators and collectives have the opportunity to offer a more and more valuable product at a lower and lower cost. If we focus on this opportunity, then there is a rational, constitutionally defensible wedge to drive between the need to protect creators' rights to profit by their work, and the industry trend to control and define the individuals experience of consuming the product of that work.
As long as the focus of this dialog is the consumer's "right" to infringe copyright (which is not the same as "stealing" incidentally - that's why it has its own legal name and definition) neither the rights of creators nor of individuals will be protected Find something legal to protect and a lot more progress will be made.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Yes there is, its called Fairtunes
Most of the "intellectual property" arguments we see sound like variations of a free rider problem, so-called because an early version of it concerned what damage might be done to a railroad system if riders could freely take unsold seats. Then why would anyone buy a ticket? Few people would, there would be little incentive to build trains, and society's need for transportation would be underserved. Someone (gov or the railroad bull)has to control the free riders.
Now, what social needs are unmet if "too many" people don't pay for their CD/mp3/copyrighted music? Would there be less music? At what level? Would fewer musicians create, or would fewer CDs (or other royalty-producing copies in whatever medium) be cut. The threat we hear is that musicians would stop making music if they couldn't be paid (inplicitly by the corporations whose valuable servcice is the risky one of promoting and marketing them).
And of course the threat that the distributors see is the threat to the channel. They would be happier selling 10 million COPIES of one song than a half million each of twenty (even if it takes 175 years to do so, since the "Bono Bill" gives them that opportunity). More music = more copies, not more songs. So they naturally want to lock out the free riders at the copying level.
Ironically, one of their favorite tools is a prohibition against people distributing there OWN creations. Dmitry Sklyarov, Edward Felten, and Jon Johanson are in trouble for sharing their own creations.
Mod this meandering, redundant.
What is this "would have"? How can we argue about realities, as if you or I could say what someone would do if the world were different.
Under the "They would have bought the CD, so I lost money" argument, you could also sue say, Ford Motors, for laying off someone who -- if he hadn't lost his job -- "would have" bought the CD. Hey, that's a lost sale; and it's Ford's fault. So pay up!
The argument shouldn't be framed in terms of property being "stolen", because no property is stolen, because intellectual output is not property. The debate should be framed in terms of "How can we offer sufficient incentive to an artist to continue to do art, if they cannot derive revenue from controlling the publication?"
Article 1, Section 8 says (paraphrased) "Congress shall have power... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". It doesn't say Congress must. It doesn't say this is the only way to achieve that aim. For goodness sakes, six billion people on this planet, can't someone come up with a mechanism that rewards artists and breaks the stranglehood of artificial distribution monopolies?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Umm, no. The price of something is set by the interplay of what the producer wants for it and what the consumer is will to pay for it. The producer can set his/her "asking price", but all they are doing is that, asking. The consumer sets his/her buying price. Until these agree, the sale does not occur and the thing in question is essentially without value.
We act as if only one side or the other is important here. Although I see slashdotters go whole hog for their way, the trend started on the other side: The Content Cartel wants you to believe that there is no copyright bargain; that copyright means only the rights and powers held by the producer and that the recipient is a powerless and valueless pawn, good only to consume. It ain't so.
There is a dialog between the two. Right now it's mostly drowned out by cries of havoc and disaster, but behind the scenes, the two sides will reach some accommodation through the dead hand of Adam Smith, should we fail to excercise our intellects.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Taking this argument another course, maybe a sale of a cd didn't happen because someone downloaded an album off the net. The artist was robbed of his money right? I mean this argument all comes down to money. But what if the person never had an intention of buying the cd to begin with. Was there money lost? No loss means not stealing as far as i can tell.
Here's another problem i see. Many well known artists are complaining that people share their music. But when you have contracts to allow stations to play your music people can record it off the radio and listen to it for free too, right? I mean before we had mp3s, that's what people did with cassetts. Was this a big problem then? Unknown artists should be happy to have their music distributed. It's called free advertisements. More of a fan base means more money. Metallica started this way, so i'm sure there were other bands that also got it's roots from free distribution.
Another fact, and yes i do call it a fact, is that mostly all the artists aren't talking out against free distribution. Only a hand picked bunch of sellouts which were paid one way or another thought this was a bad idea and protested. Other sellouts joined the napster side. It comes down to some artists being money whores and others who are in it for the music and the fun. The only ones who are fighting this for their lives are the record companies. Their whole livelyhood is the raping of musicians and selling their music. Now the artist recieves compensation from distributed music because of the extra fan base or maybe a purchased cd down the line which would not of been purchased, but distributing music cuts the record company's profits. Should this industry really exist the way it does now? How many musicians do you hear on popular radio stations that don't have a record contract? Of course this all comes down to money as radio stations need advertisements to make money.
Of course the argument that i haven't heard is how does the internet make sharing illegal? It was designed for sharing. If a friend makes a copy of a cd he has for you, gives it to you physically, how is that any different than doing it over the internet? If the copy was for personal use only, i don't see any legal ramifications from doing that. Under the home recording act of 1978 you can do this legally. Somehow the judges and lawyers think that doing so over the internet makes it different. I disagree.
/rant
In the US and many other countries, you are allowed to make copies for acquaintances, as long as you have no expectation of compensation for doing so. This may not apply to filesharing, because the expectation of compensation comes in the form of getting other material in return, but in the case cited, it certainly is legal to do so, regardless of what the recording industry would lead you to believe.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
IANAL, but the intent part is very crucial here. When most people download a song or movie, their intent is probably not to screw the copyright owner but to get the media for the least possible price (though I'm sure some do it just to screw the RIAA/MPAA).
Of course, this isn't that useful since copyright infringement is also a crime, and would probably be the charge and not some form of theft.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
Cool, so if you go on a 3 week vacation, I can use your house for my own puposes, as long as I move out before you get back? You didn't lose anything (you were gone), but I gained something, because I was homeless, in need of a place to party, or whatever. No need for to ask permission, right?
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
However, if that person who downloads music for free would have bought the CD had it not been available for download, then yes, the artist has lost something.
WRONG! Market share isn't a moral right. Maybe Ford has no incentive to make cars unless they can lock out the Japs. Maybe letting in the Japs deprives Ford of sales. Welcome to the real world
WRONG again. Mozart was paid for that too, but somehow that didn't mean a eternal monopoly on downstream copying. This is not about compensation for what anyone did, but a percieved right to controll peoples copying behavior after the cat's already out of the bag. Sorry, but you don't have that right even if you think you do.
If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief.
DEAD WRONG. I enjoyed looking at those two gilrs in scant cloths on the beach the other day. Sorry, I did not force them to reveal themselves, they chose to do so by their own free will. I owe them nothing. Maybe someone told them they were entitled to compensation for my pleasure. Sorry they're not. Maybe someone told them it was their right, sorry it is not. Dam, maybe I would even like to, but it is not a right. It just goes to show how such derivations of just value are delusional if not socially psychotic.
Cool, so if you go on a 3 week vacation, I can use your house for my own puposes, as long as I move out before you get back? You didn't lose anything (you were gone), but I gained something, because I was homeless, in need of a place to party, or whatever. No need for to ask permission, right?
That's a crap comparison.
If I could duplicate my house at zero cost, then I would be happy for you to live in one of the copies. In fact, I would house the homeless of the world.
No, the sad part is your children are growing up in a time when people think that knowledge can be "owned". If pythagoras were alive today and had patented "x^2 + y^2 = z^2 where would we be? If someone wants to make money off of "intellectual works", let them become a teacher.
I totally agree, the fact is that copying is not coercive or fradulent. It never ceases to amaze me that someone could think they're being violated when they're not. (Sorta like the days where plantation masters thought they were being stolen from and violated by the underground railroad) It is really a sick attitude about property. The problem isn't file sharing, the problem is individuals who think that they have some type of moral right to derive value by restricting the copying practices of others. It is like a vine that has been growing more and more intrusive for 200 years, and will not relent in choking off our freedoms untill we attack it at the root. In fact, I would argue that defiance and civil disobedience are not just OK, they are a duty because this threat is so imment to the personal liberties of us and those we love.
The sad part is that my kids are growing up in a time where the message is that it's ok to steal what you don't want to pay for, if you feel the price is too high.
No, the sad part is that your kids are growing up in a time where the message is that imaginary and intangible things are as important, or even considerably more important than real things.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
However, if that person who downloads music for free would have bought the CD had it not been available for download, then yes, the artist has lost something.
This is child logic, and it's sadly becoming more popular these days. "Could have" is not valid, especially in the face of new technology. Elton John would have died at age 15 due to pnumonia if it weren't for antibiotics, so does that mean he should be executed? Madonna would have been a penniless Burger King manager if it weren't for the recording companies, so should we take away her money? Acme Buggy Whips would have gotten a lot of business if it weren't for the invention of the automobile, so by your logic, the profits from GM and Toyota should all be funneled to them.
Theft is not copying music that you already own. If you ripped it from a CD, chances are good that the artist was compensated. You may not like the terms that the artist gets, but then again, you're not the artist, and you didn't sign the contract. The "moral" highground of not paying for CD's because you don't like the way companies rip off artists is not moral at all; in fact, you're contributing to the devaluation of the artists' career by refusing to pay for the music at all.
Wrong and wrong. Chances are the artist ISN'T getting paid. Chances are he's being ripped a new one, and he probably doesn't even understand what is happening to him. In the long run, by HURTING the record companies, you are doing the artists all ove rthe world a huge favor, becuase you'll be giving them less leverage (i.e. money) for passing laws that work in thier favor and making them less attractive to new artists who may decide to distribute thier work without the record companies and make some real money.
Reproducing music, or a book, is a little more difficult. I can't possibly remember all of the ideas represented in a book, so thus, I need a copy of the book as a reference when I forget. Same thing with music - I may learn a song, but I will never be able to sing as well as the original artist. This is what we pay for, folks. It is the effort that another went through to produce the music, the movie, the source code, or the book. It is not the idea.
Again you are wrong. We don't pay for the music, we pay for the distribution. If we actually paid for the music itself, we would be paying directly to the artists.
Granted, in electronic form, the work can be reproduced for almost zero cost. However, this fact doesn't put food on the table for the artist or author. If you believe that you should be able to enjoy someone else's work without justly compensating them for it, then you are a thief.
If I take a picture of a beautiful woman on the street, your logic says that I am a thief. She worked hard to look that good, and all that hard work is being "stolen" by me for free. Just because an artist feels the need to make money from his work doesn't mean that he should automatically get it. If an artist wants to sell his work, he needs to do just that, sell it! OTown has yet to send a sales representative to my office...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Your analogy is interesting, because of all of the postings above it that address replication vs. transfer. Although I don't need to use the green paper and metal disks to transfer "money", I'm still transferring it (the value, that is), not replicating it. If instead I copy my "money" (even digitally) so that when I'm done both I and my beneficiary have it, I'll go to jail as a counterfeiter, or a fraud.
Virg
> Copyright infringing' starts with the line: "Actually I have it here on my compuyter, I could ..."
...assuming that friend #1 didn't password-protect the page. At this point, he's made the work readily available to the world at large, which is outside the bounds of fair use.
Most fair use cases have allowed for copies distributed only to acquaintances without expectation of recompense, so this isn't literally where the infringement begins. Where it begins is...
"Well, I could put it on my webpage for you, then you can read it anytime"
Virg
Which law notwithstanding, you've touched on the heart of the argument. On one side are the "intellectual property" people and on the other are the "no intellectual property" people, and the debate is whether sharing information is stealing or not in the first place. Since God hasn't yet publicised His stance on intellectual property, we are left to decide for ourselves.
Virg
This is *not* theft. It's copyright violation. The two are completely different articles legally.
Copyright violation is *not* theft.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
One of the things that struck me the other day was how much two apparently disparate issues are going to converge shortly.
What I'm talking about is this:
- Issue One: Freedom to Share Digital Data (MPAA, DRM, DMCA, etc.)
- Issue Two: Right to Individual Privacy (doubleclick, direct marketing, etc.)
I see where those advocating strict controls on how copyrighted material is distributed over the net can share an interest with those who advocate that commercial entities not have unrestricted ability to exchange data about individuals, the kind of data that makes up profiles in the direct marketers' databases.In one case you might be talking about Metallica MP3's being traded by individuals and the other case you might be talking about YourBuyingProfile being traded by corporate entities. In either case, you could argue about who the data really belongs to and what fair use of that data constitutes.
If complete digital freedom to exchange data exists, then will you ever have any hope to restrict the data that is being gathered about you every day from being exchanged? Maybe you don't need or care to restrict the data flow, but you have to admit that restricting or liberating it for one purpose makes it fair for another purpose.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Start talking about filesharing technology and the folks obsessed with yesterdays news start ripping into each other over whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.
Fact is, folks, this argument is already over with, and file sharing won. It won a long time ago. You can whine all you like, throw a tantrum, scream "illegal!" or "theft!" and it doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference. Your opinion on a done deal is completely and utterly irrelevant.
Dying media giants will continue to pass, and succeed at passing, laws trying to bolster their 20th century monopoly, but it's rather clear that these laws don't mean jack to most of the folks inclined to copy. And nobody - nobody - can convince me that the 45 million or so people in the U.S. *alone* who occasionally copy music are all evil, morally-bereft pirates. If you honestly think that's the case you need to get off your moral high ground and have your head examined. Only a loon could make a claim like that and actually believe it.
Copying is here to stay. That's just the way it is, laws or no laws, slashdot whiners or no slashdot whiners. So rather than trying to roll things back to the 20th century - an effort utterly doomed to failure - perhaps you might think of ways that the artists could still be compensated while copying continues.
The old system is creaking along on failing legs, and anyone with half a brain can see that it's about to collapse; no amount of handwringing, no stack of useless laws, is going to change this fact. So, if those of you who worry about the 'poor artist' are serious about your concerns, rather than just mouthing meaningless platitudes to support your inane position, perhaps you could come up with an alternative system for artist compensation that might survive the early years of the 21st century. That is, do something constructive for once.
Oh, and I did say 'artist compensation', not 'RIAA compensation'. The RIAA are part of the dinosaur and fated to die, thank the gods. Supporters of the RIAA would be worthy only of pity, if they weren't so deserving of contempt.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
That's not really true. They don't have the right to say "the distributor can't sell it to record stores owned by non-whites." They can't say "This CD cannot be transferred. Opening this CD signifies agreement to the following license stipulation; this CD may not be resold."
Clearly you don't understand copyright. It is a limited right that means "You are encouraged to create music by being given the exclusive opportunity to make money off your creation by granting you the exclusive right to make new copies; you may assign that right to others in any way you wish. But once you sell a copy, it is not yours; you abandon all rights to that particular copy."
What Barlow properly laments is that the public has willingly abandoned their freedom in exchange for nothing, all because their feeble understanding of "intellectual property" equates a limited set of rights designed to encourage useful commerce in ideas and expressions with some kind of ownership of a thing. Frankly, it means to me that most people are now incapable of reason and willingly abandon their love of freedom for their love of property and defend their claims of property with arguments that the average fourth-grader sees as spurious, greedy, and stupid, such as when the relatives of a dead victim of terrorism attempt to COPYRIGHT the phrase "Let's roll!", an act that has approximately the same meaning to the defense of freedom that the guillotine had to the promulgation of fraternité, that is, a sad and cynical mockery of human ideals.
Barlow succinctly says that it's sad how these tendencies have wormed their rotten way into our legal system without any public pause, and with the majority of the public nodding their heads in addle-pated consent. But the way I say it is a lot more fun, because if the sensless iceberg is winning the battle, I'd rather be making farting noises on the tuba than rearranging the deck chairs.
Sneaking in to a concert is a weak analogy; if you are in, then you are occupying the room that someone else would have taken. Unless, of course, you advocate ignoring fire safety rules. You don't, do you? And no, you can't touch my monkey.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
You never studied economics, didn't you?
In economics, the absence of gain when you should have gotten a gain is considered a loss and is called an "opportunity loss". This is standard Econ 101 stuff.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
When you buy a CD today you are actually paying for services provided to you by the music industry:
a) value created by composer/performer (add here orchestra/sound engineeris etc.).
b) value created by maker of the medium (actual cost of CD plastic, manufacturing process and CD technology licensing fees).
c) value created by distributor, including wholesaler and the actual record shop where you bought the CD. (transport, inventory costs and shop electricity bills).
d) value create by a marketer (the guys who pay for MTV clips, promo tours, posters, A&D of new bands etc. etc.). If not for marketer you wouldn't know that piece of nice music even existed.
Now, it is clear due to technological change, price of "b" and "c" is falling like a rock. Nobody questions value of misic itself, and nobody should question value that marketers ("d") provide for us, because without them we would have no MTV etc.
My point is that industry wants to make its problem our problem.
As a consumer all I care is to hear the music I like. I don't need *a CD* of Frank Zappa. I would like to invite him over, get a beer and listen him play his guitar. Unfortunately, the guy doesn't want to play for me (because he is dead), so I am prepared to seek a substitute for live music. This is gonna be some digital medium like CD, MP3 etc.
The sad fact is that CDs from the record shop are becoming inferior medium. They are inferior because cheaper alternatives exist - MP3s, digital copying etc. Another sad fact is that marketers and authors from the music industry (who provide valuable service) can get paid only by controlling distribution channel of CDs.
But it is not my problem as a consumer. I am seeking a medium through wich get access to a music, and if technology offers me cheaper alternatives to CDs in a shop - I am taking it. Let music industry devise a way to charge me today. It was easy with CDs - you won't get is unless you pay in the shop. Let them invent how to stop me copying CDs on my 100GB hard disk... And my girlfriend's hard disk... And my friends' disk at Morpheus... what was that guy's name...
You get the point? I am not afraid to be caught, it's just one side of a business transaction with the music industry: "Hey, Mr Sony! I just got delivery of your song through MP3 file. Wanna send me a bill? Don't know how to do it? You don't even hear me? Sorry. You may take your song back any time if you want!".
Just stop that moral agonizing and calling it "stealing"! An average consumer is still prepared to pay for the music, but much less than industry used to. And now he wants to pay to other people (like paying directly to authors, or to some alternative musical cirtic who runs a website). If the industry has not come up with the solution how to collect the payments (and to downsize itself) - why some people are making it *our* problem and pushing us towards inferior technology and inferiority complex?
--
I agree that the existence of "IP" is an interesting and often amusing debate. But that's not relevant to why certain laws are passed. I think that if you carefully review many of the different facets of IP laws, you'll find that in some cases, the dissemination of information+"creative works" is strictly protected, while in other cases it's almost completely unregulated. Plot that on a graph and realize that the big business interests are the ones who decide when something is property and when it's not.
Thought experiment: Suppose we are all imbued with a fanatical belief that information is property. However, we decide that moral rights could never be sold -- that would be akin to slavery. Suppose, further, that ownership could only reside with the direct creator -- no corporate ownership and no works for hire. Note that this just applies the same rules that many companies impose on end-users (you can rent but not own) to the companies themselves. Or, suppose that we applied the sherman act and other anti-monopolist legislation automatically to all "major" owners of patents/copyrights. Or that we taxed IP assets in the same way that we tax property.
I think that suddenly you'd find IP laws becoming much less important, and much of USC 17 slipping into obscurity. And this discussion wouldn't even be taking place here, but in some obscure german philosophical quarterly. The real debate is about protecting consumer rights, limiting competition, and controlling the distribution/sale price of goods. IP is just philosophical cover.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Well, I guess that part of my argument sucked ... Why'd I pick them? I don't really have that MP3. But I've already got some Aphex Twin, thanks.
It perplexes me why there is always the assumption that the files being shared are propietary. As if everything being shared over Napster, Morpheus and Gnutella is propietary, and thus p2p only exists for a black market.
"Well, a lot of copyright violations go on". Well guess what the top 3 words on search engines like Google are - sex, mp3 and warez. Sounds like plenty of "copyright violations" are going on over the web, should the web be shut down as well? There is too much tacit acceptance that p2p is somehow criminal. The first major p2p application I can recall, the distributed.net rc5 cracker, had a flap over whether it was exporting encryption or not. It seems you can barely stand up and take a leak without some corporation or army telling you what you're doing is illegal. I've used Morpheus and Gnutella to download many speeches. I've used MojoNation to download (and publish) Gutenberg texts. Freenet (and Frost) allows web page publication and chatting over it's p2p network.
I spend a lot of time developing p2p apps. I am not doing so so that 2 kids can trade the latest Britney Spears mp3. I see networks in two forms - authoritarian and democratic. In an authoritarian network, you pay a web hosting outfit money to host your stuff, and the more popular it is, the more you pay. If this is the situation, you have no choice but to commercialize whatever you created in order to distribute it. In a democratic network, there is no authoritarian middleman between you and others. Most of the network is authoritarian, and large, powerful corporations are trying to shut down networks where people deal with each other directly. Note - they are trying to shut down the networks, not go after people who deal with each other directly. I guess American corporations have sold this mentality to it's citizens through good PR, but now they are using their muscle to shut down P2P networks based in other countries like FastTrack. It's quite a shame, if they win it will just be back to where only those with money can publish, and any small person who wants to publish will have to go through an authority and be charged a lot of money. People who want to deal with each other directly are accused and tainted with criminality. This is an old story, far older than the rise of p2p networks.
No, I know what "if" means. I was denying the tacit assumption that the proposed hypothetical had any relevance, moral or otherwise, to the argument.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
The whole concept of "intellectual property" in general is an arbitrary construct, originally implemented to maintain royal monopolies and keep the peasants in their place at the bottom of the pecking order. Through good fortune and great courage the version enshrined in the US Constitution (article 1, section 8, "to promote the progress of science and useful arts") helped create much of our modern way of life, but if anyone thinks the tyranny of the old guard is dead and defeated they're sadly mistaken.
If the pendulum swings back to medieval greed, you may well find yourself kowtowing to a new and vastly more dangerous royalty - the corporate elite, kings in all but the name.
It's not "stealing" though - it's counterfeiting. No one has denied that copying can have negative effects. The occasional copied software *does* result in a lost purchase. Copied money devalues the currency. And while current studies show that Napster-alikes improve music sales, I fully expect that trend to end when the common "your grandmother" is more comfortable burning her own CDs.
But to call it "stealing" is mislabelling it. To call it "piracy" is to claim that people are storming other people's ships - pistols and cutlasses drawn. Call it "copyright infringement". That's what it is.
Last post!
You're absolutely right in your assertion. I only want to mention that I'm trying to stay out of the IP debate, and the reason I brought it up here is that it's the delimiter for the original poster's comment. He comments that we shouldn't use the law to decide if we're doing wrong, but to avoid sin. My reply was to demonstrate that whether copying is a sin is the crux of the argument.
Still, thank you for adding your insight to my comment. Although it's a bit tangential to my post, it's still important that it gets said, and you said it well.
Virg
Artificial scarcity has its uses, but the "Intellectual Property" concept as presented DOESN'T SCALE optimally.
The reason why sharing _could_be_ wrong isn't because there's such a thing as "Intellectual Property".
It's a wrong because some people believe things should be a certain way and are hurt when other people don't act as they wish.
However what I am trying to point out is there could be a GREATER WRONG - more people hurt because of this concept which limits greatly what people can do.
Why it doesn't scale:
The sad and scary part is that in one of the likely futures, your kids or their kids will be growing up in a time where they can't communicate with each other as fully as technology would allow. They may not even be allowed to remember what they see. Some may not even be allowed to have children without permission.
Say there is a way for many to have photographic memory - e.g. stored multimedia indexed by brain pattern, genetic engineering or some other treatment/training.
Then say there's a way for people to communicate most of their thoughts wirelessly - telepathy or cybertelepathy.
But then all those people preaching "Intellectual Property" won't like any of that. Even though I believe most people would still like to experience things with their own physical senses and be willing to pay for it.
Say in the future some people get DNA treatments. Then because of "intellectual property" considerations they may not be allowed to have their own children without permission - unauthorised reproduction of "intellectual property".
You sure that this won't happen? My fear is it will happen if this IP concept continues to grow in strength.
There are already ways to reward the creators directly without resorting to very lossy methods. E.g. the ox treading the grain gets some grain without the asses owning the whole farm.
Hmm things might get interesting if someone makes machines that can cheaply copy/create food given some cheap and plentiful raw material and energy and starts giving the machines away.
Maybe things would be a lot better if everyone believed that we don't own anything - God is just letting us enjoy his blessings for a while.
If you copy money and try to pass it off as real money, you are doing something wrong - it's lying.
If you copy money and say it is fake, then it might not be wrong.
However it may be in your country, a lot of people (with authority given by lots of other people) have got together and agreed that no matter what copying money is wrong, then maybe you should respect their wishes. Even so, I believe you should still consider the results of your actions before deciding whether it is bad or good overall - it may still be justifiable.
until somebody else uses you music to sell out.
Interesting view of sell out, though.
I always defined sell out as somebody who changes there creativity for a buck. meaning, you play a song, and some company says, if you change thist this this and thism will pay you BIG BUCKS! you've sold out, but if a company says, we wantr to distribute oyur music, as is, heres some BIG BUCKS you have not slod out.
thats one of the problems with vague terms like sellout, there..so...vague...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on