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Kazaa: Happy In the Global Legal Briarpatch
Steve0987 writes "The Washington Post has an article on the entertainment industry's atempts to close down the file-sharing system Kazaa. I agree that copyrighted material shouldn't be freely distributed from an ethical standpoint. However, the entertainment industry has been acting in an arbitrary manner trying to impede anything remotely impinging on their industry. Go Kazaa."
Free.
So they shut down Kazaa. The Consumer available models of file trading are all gone? No, more effort put into efforts like freenet, or Edonkey, or much more sophisticated methods that are decentralized, encrypted, and much more difficult to shut down?
No, witness DC++, which is 99% warez, and no efforts to shut that down.
What they don't realize is people want this, they can get it, and their efforts truly are being wasted. At least the Motion Picture industry is attempting to head them off at the pass with their own service ramp-up.
For music? It's too late, they have lost the battle for distribution. And to think, if they had their own distribution model in 1998, we would likely all be paying for it, and be happy!
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Theres two options.
Option A, people who make something always own what they make forever.
Option B, people who make things share what they make with all of humanity.
The same arguement which claims we should have software be open source because it benifits the whole instead of one part of the whole is the same arguement we use with file sharing.
More people benifit from file sharing than those who dont, the purpose of technology is to benifit the people.
When deciding what is more ethical, I look at patents as something mythical in my world, I do not know anyone who owns a patent in anything. I know musicians like my mother or my father who both make music but never made any money.
I make music but I never make any money. I know artists who when they make art because they have to begin to not like drawing anymore. Some things are meant to be an art, and some things are meant to be a business.
Its not very logical to try to turn bits of information into a product, it doenst benifit the majority of the people in this world. People in africa cannot buy medicinee because of this. People in afganastan cannot get educated because of patents on books. People in the USA cannot learn programming or be productive in todays society because of patents.
Why do we need patents? So a few hundred people can make billions of dollars? How does this help me? IT doesnt, I benifit more from Open Source than I do from closed source because I have no money.
I benifit more from file sharing because if there were no napsters and gnutellas of the world I simply wouldnt have the money to listen to music AT ALL, PERIOD.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Is a way to protest against laws that you don't agree, usually associated with passive resistence.
This means keep doing whatever you have always done ignoring the law, and of course paying the consequences. It works as a colective form o protest.
Let's suppose that the speed limit becomes 20 mph at highways. If everybody ignore this limit then the police won't be able to fine everybody.
The same happens here, if a considerable number of citizens ignore the way copyright works today it will be impossible to sue everyone, and of course they won't sue none of us!
That's how it should work, passive resistence.
While civil disobedience is fine, that is far from what this is. Kazaa (and most other P2P systems) are built on the concept of being anonymous. That means the current P2P technology is built around not being caught and not being punished, which is anything but civil disobedience. If you want to use P2P as civil disobedience, you have to make sure the law knows who you are and what you are doing. Try using your real name as your user name. Share not only MP3s, but a file with your name and address that says you know what you are doing is illegal, and if the RIAA wants to come after you, here is where they can find you. Unfortunately, 99.999% of the people using P2P have no interest in civil disobedience, they are only interested in getting stuff for free. P2P isn't about anything but getting free shit for most people.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
While we're at it, let's ban Colt semi-automatic pistols, Saab cars, and Hitachi VCR's, because they're all specific examples of technology that can be used for bad things. That'll set an example, and everyone will stop making and using that technology and we can put the genie back in the bottle, right?
Alternatively, we could live in the real world. Remember Napster? When that was destroyed, people moved to Kazaa. Destroy Kazaa, and people will move to Morpheus. Destroy Morpheus, and they will move to (e.g.) Gnutella. Destroy Gnutella (how?) and they'll move to Freenet. Destroy Freenet and, well at that point we've destroyed the internet in its current form. Let's give ourselves Ashcroftian superpowers and pretend we can do it. Do that, and people will go to BBS's or to Neighbourhood Area Networks. Do what you like, people will keep sharing.
Are you getting it yet? We can't put the genie back in the bottle. So go ahead and destroy Kazaa if it makes you feel good. The War on Sharing is about as winnable as the War on Drugs or War on Terror. They all have the same purpose anyway: making the hard-of-thinking feel safe and happy and protected. So you enjoy your cozy little fantasy world. Send us a postcard!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
No, that's what your narrow definition of civil disobedience is.
Civil disobedience simply means peacefully disobeying the laws. That's what people of Kazaa are doing. Why shouldn't they be anonymous? Anonymosity is a good thing: it protects our privacy. Getting a law to be changed due to massive non-compliance with that law does not require publicly disclosing who's disobeying that law. Ref. prohibition. But, oh wait, according to you, all the people who drank during prohibition were wrong b/c they didn't do so openly and "accept the consequences". Of course, that's absurd: the law was unconstitutional and should never have existed in the first place. There is nothing good or noble about allowing one's self to be punished by an unjust law.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If that's the way we're talking, then the RIAA have already won. There are plenty of legitimate circumstances to distribute a lot copyrighted material -- and that's not even getting into fair use yet. Consider examples in software, or other types of media.
It's not an issue of copyright per se, it's an issue of what's permitted by the license.
DNA just wants to be free...
I agree that copyrighted material shouldn't be freely distributed from an ethical standpoint.
Well, I don't know about you, but I don't agree with large corporations making money off artists 90 years after they died.
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