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Pew Study: File Traders Don't Care About Copyright
An anonymous reader writes "A recent poll by the Pew Internet and American Life Project focused on that portion of the file trading community that is over 18. The major finding is that two-thirds of all file traders in this age bracket are not concerned about violating copyright laws. This remained consistant even when they split up the respondents by sex, income, and race."
You mean the death of meaning of the Constitution's language "limited times," effective eternal copyright on software and media, along with excessive laws that provide jail time for what would be a minor property crime in the physical world have eroded respect for copyright law?
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
It's no big surprise to discover that most people who violate copyright laws aren't concerned about violating copyright laws. I'm more surprised by the other third - do they represent the traders of legal files (new Linux distros, freely tradeable music etc.) or the truly stupid?
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Bring on the revolution!
Seriously though, we live in a democracy, congress gets to set the limits it wants. If life + 90 years is 'reasonable' then so is a day. Copyright protection is a matter of practicality, not morality. If it's impractical in it's present state, then we should change it.
Note to RIAA: we will dance on your grave.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Furthermore most really free stuff can be easily downloaded from special websites.
So, I wonder about these guys who need a poll to get the result that people who are circumventing copyright laws don't care about copyright.
Usually you would suspect that every person on this planet has something called "common sense".
Next we'll see from these guys:
- Thiefs don't care about property.
- Phyromaniacs like fire.
- Drug dealers don't care about the health of other people.
- Bush invaded Iraq for Oil.
- Communism is a oppressive dictatorship.
- Linux and FreeBSD are for free.
But on the other hand, not everybody can be as clever as me.Owner of a Mensa membership card.
... of the political process, which may be subverted temporarily by injecting enough money, but in the end the political process will always revert to majority rule.
Therefore, the public *owns* the political process.
When the RIAA says they want to educate the public about the law, the public may eventually lash back by educating the RIAA about what it means to be at the receiving end of the public's wrath.
...for most people.
In most people's minds, this is a crime in exactly the same sense as going 5 clicks over the speed limit. People just don't even think about it.
And when they do they just don't think its important. This is the reason that the more the RIAA ramp up the legislation and bully-boy tactics, the more they will get up the nose of Joe Average.
Everyone agrees that, in the abstract, speeding can kill people, just as in the abstract, people agree that musicians need to get rewarded. However, no-one thinks THEIR teensy, weensy breach will really hurt anyone.
well i totally agree with the poll that most people do not care about copyrights et al, but one should not forget that these polls do not reflect the recent riaa attempt to sue everyone and everything that has something to do with down or uploading contraband.
these scare tactics will work in my eyes, as people will get educated by the laws that are being introduced slowly but surley by the riaa and its henchmen...
surely a handfull of people wont care and continue and it will take a lot more than a few laws to eradicate the filesharing scene, since its roots are deep..but at the end of the day the normal non-geek user will stop and start using itunes and its clones and start paying...
at least thats what i think...
Drug dealers don't care about the health of other people.
I have pharmacists in my family. Please don't knock the profession.
Bush invaded Iraq for Oil.
Are you sure? I seem to recall that the government had evidence that Iraq was getting ready to attack the United States. The forces in Iraq may not have found a smoking gun, but there was still enough evidence to warrant an invasion under the previous United Nations resolutions.
Communism is a oppressive dictatorship.
Perhaps as misimplemented by Joseph Stalin and his followers, but I've read that even Vladimir Lenin didn't like the direction the government was going under Stalin.
Linux and FreeBSD are for free.
In other words, you confirm that your time is worth little to nothing.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think the majority of Americans understand this as all some stupid game and one side has already bribed the referees.
Ex1: Disney's obvious bribing of Congress to get the Copyright length extended.
Ex2: AOL, Microsoft etc bribing state politicians to pass DCMA even though it is as anti-consumer a law as you can get.
and so on....
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
but in the end the political process will always revert to majority rule.
The people may control the republic through voting, but the broadcasters control the people to a large extent. TV and radio advertising paid for with campaign contributions from broadcasters seems exempt from FCC "equal time" regulation. MPAA movie studios own all major U.S. commercial broadcast networks except NBC. Get the picture?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I can go snag a book from the library for free, copy it onto paper, and give it back. There. I have it, without paying for it. Without being sued for copyright infringement. Same deal with music, only I'm using a machine to copy it.
You can't stop it. What are you going to do about it? Stop selling music? Hah. If you can hear it, you can record it. Give it up.
Don't think I don't buy music, though.
The copyright system has traditionally been a system that concerns professional authors and professional publishers and distributors. The general public has never really had a need to pay any more attention to copyright than to many other business-to-business issues or issues that concern a narrow field of profession.
Now basically every individual who can access the Internet can distribute works in massive quantities. Any person who makes their own web page and has a few hundred visitors has done what was very hard for an average person a decade ago. Publishing is no longer an expensive task that only traditional medias such as newspapers and record companies can afford.
The copyright system will eventually go through a major reform. The current form is simply designed for a situation where there are few authors and few publishers and then the general public that isn't either an author or a publisher. That situation no longer matches the reality which is why a new copyright system (if there will be a copyright system at all) will need to handle copyright as an issue that concerns each and everyone.
Well, lets see, RIAA sets up a cartel, overcharges for CDs (and still does), gets convicted for it, and uses bribed politicians to get out of it with 50 cent coupons for purchase of more inflated priced music.
RIAA buys more laws with more bribe money not to charge customers to copy the above music 50 cents per violation (like they got away with above), but rather to hit them with multi thousand dollar lawsuits.
RIAA then buys more laws making copyrights to be infinate in length (effectively).
Then some wonder why people have no respect for copyright laws as they are now. Uh... why should we? The current laws were all bought and paid for, and represent the interests of 'we the people' in no way whatsoever. So screw them..
If CD's sold for $5 per disk (which is what they should sell for without all the cartel and payola action), the problem would pretty much go away, as most people wouldn't have a problem buying CDs for that price rather than hassle with looking for downloading them.
In the beginning, books could only be reproduced by carefully copying it line after line, like monk did. It took very much time to make a single copy. Every copy had a great value... But anyone with enough time and knowledge (not everyone was able to write) could do it... without being prosecuted.
Then came Gutemberg. He found a way to make numbers of copies of a single work much faster. The initial work was still a long process.
Now, anyone can have a copier at home and copying of paperwork became available to anyone. But "production" costsof a copy and the finish of that copy are still quite expensive in comparison to "commercial" process. And duplicating a book damage the original and is still slow.
There are some "pirate" distribution of books, but having a book scanned in PDF or in TXT is not similar to hving the real thing.
For the music, the way was a little bit different...
At the beginning, there was NO way of recording music. Bands were paid to play. Then came the firsts recording, which were process unavailable to people (a little like Gutemberg press) and there was a protection which was mostly between companies (not companies vs individuals). This is like what we have for books.
Then, new media appeared, beginning by big tapes on a wheel, then the tapes we still use today, then the CD and now, computer formats like MP3.
The biggest difference is that, where it's still more expensive, destructive and less appealing to copy a book by an individual, copying a song is (very) cheap, don't damage the original recording and with color printers and scanners, you can have a CD-box with a copy of the original artwork or some custom artwork. Only the on-cd picture can't be done.
So, even if the law protecting both a book and a music record is the same, we have 2 distinct situations.
Add to that the fact that many musician complain about recording companies, that even if the manufacturing costs have dropped, the cost of music has increased (the cost of books has DROPPED).
One more is the fact that record companies are introducing more and more "one-shot" artists (making new stars from nothing, using mass advertisement and such). When you like some artist which make new musics of equal (or similar) quality over the time, you are more willing to buy its CD than when it's some "jack out of the box" artist you don't know and which won't last past the summer. You can be willing to support some artist you like, but when it's a one-shot artist, you are NOT given that opportunity.
And you can add to that the fact that many songs are unavailable at stores because the recording companies found that these were too old or that there is no interrest in these. While you can rent a book at the local library and won't probably read it again and again, this is not true when we are speaking of music because when you like a song/tune, you'll listen to it again and again nad will need to keep it. and if you can't find it at your local music-store, you're left with only ONE solution : copying it.
We have a similar problem with films. many films are NOT worth the price you've to pay for them. and, when you've paid to see it in a theater, you could find it incorrect to have to pay for it again to see it at home... not speaking about the many films which NEVER find their way out of their original country because of lack of interrest.
For films, we see more and more films with nearly no story but loads of known actors and of special effects. This lead to lots of "junk" with little interrest, which cost more and more to produce and is less and less worth it's price... and while the actual manufacturing of the film support (VHS or DVD) is less and less expensive, prices have actually gone UP.
Both for music and films, the people feel that it has a "real" value which is constantly decreasing and a price which is increasing... Add to that the wories like protected-CD (well... these are not really CD as they don't conform to the standard)
Is that it exemplifies 'legality' and 'deviance'.
For a quick lesson in socialogy, legality is whether the law has determined something to be wrong. Deviance is whether or not it is against societal norms.
Speeding is and example of something that is NOT deviant, but is illegal. EVERYONE speeds, if only a little bit, despite that the law says you arn't supposed to. When a situation like this arises, usually the law is repealed, the punishment is slack, or there is leeway when enforcing the law. That is why cops tend to be lenient with speeding tickets. Cops will let you get away with 5-10 MPH over, while someone who is doing 35+ over will almost certainly come down hard. Prohibition in the 20's is another example, except in this case, the laws were repealed. (there are probably more recent examples, but IANAL, or a socialogist, so I havn't done much research)
This survey shows that amoung (american) internet users, file-sharing(downloading) isn't deviant, despite it's illegality. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'd say in most of the world, file-sharing isn't illegal, and it certainly isn't deviant. Even if laws are passes to severly punish the users, the judiciary system will almost certainly strike them down if the behavior is relativly harmless (nobody is getting killed), and it isn't deviant.
It is amazing to see how the people are always right, ahead of the politicians.
Since "intellectual property" is not a natural law, but was introduced only to increase productivity, one cannot help feeling that IP law, in its current form, may have outlived its usefulness.
What does the society gain by protecting the IP of music publishers? Do we risk underproduction (or extinction?) of music if the IP "rights" of Sony Entertainment are not protected at all? Or would that rather restore some sanity and the value of culture? IP is becoming a tool with which major corporations tax average joe and small business startups, not unlike emperors used to tax salt.
In the software field, for all I see, dispensing of IP would stop corporate lawyers from trying to destroy honest developers working in companies without huge legal departments, and would even encourage sane re-use of software and thus increase the general welfare, the Linux way.
Well, the "democracy" entry mentions rule by majority vote, and the "republic" entry mentions rule by elected officials according governed by a body of laws. According to this, we in the U.S. currently live in neither.
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
What is the practical effect of forever copyrights? Lack of creativity. Copyright holders concentrate on protecting the value of their current copyright rather than think up new things to copyright.
... I wonder if it's coincidence that the trend before rock n roll was for each generation to come up with their own kinds of music sooner and sooner ... ragtime, early jazz, swing .... then rock n roll came along, and has dominated ever since and shows no signs of going away. The Roilling Stones still going after 40 years? Bizarre! I bet if their coyrights weren't still in force, there's be much different kinds of music ruling the airwaves now.
Imagine if Disney had had to keep on thinking up new characters and ideas, instead of the same old mouse and duck. Those would have been retired, new ideas would have come into play, and Disney would stand for new ideas every few years rather than tired variations of the same old mouse products. There would be no incentive for others to mimic the mouse and duck, because it would be so out of fashion, no one would care. Every generation would have their own Disney memories.
When the same stuff gets repeated over and over, the public just doesn't care. That old stuff becomes part of public history whether it's copyrighted or not, a de facto public domain.
I wonder if rock n roll is the same
Infuriate left and right
I am a member of a fairly successful American university choir. We record all of our performances for our own use, but can't sell--or even distribute for free--most of them, because of copyright laws. Keep in mind nearly all of our repetoire was composed before 1917.
Last fall we performed Mozart's Requiem Mass (composed 1791), and many of the singers wanted to make and sell/give away a recording... but we found out to our dismay that we couldn't. Why? Because the [i]scores[/i] we were using were covered by copyright. This is a bit absurd--of all the people who deserve to earn money off that performance, the typesetters and editors are the last on the list. We already paid them for their work, dammit: we paid $1000 for a hundred copies (plus orchestra parts) of something that should be public domain.
We have many recordings we'd love to publish on the Internet (publicity and all), but can't.
There are two CD's which we have secured copyright permission (from the score publisher--neither work itself is covered by copyright) to sell. While I'm not involved in the finances of the choir, I do know that the CD's cost $10 and we make a $5 profit off of each. Now, where does that other $5 go? Jewel cases, inserts, and the costs of CD replication are no more than $.50-$1, so [i]someone[/i] is getting $4 royalties from each disc--almost certainly the publisher of the score.
Modern copyright law isn't necessarily friendly to the "small artists". We'd love to put up our recordings on the Internet, or sell more CD's at concerts (the two aren't mutually exclusive!) for a greater profit... but we can't.
And all of us would be tickled pink if one of our recordings showed up on Kazaa.
~~~
The truth is likely that Americans understand politicians are corrupt and in the hands of big business. The problem is that rather than that generating a force to change things for the better it has given politicians lease to do even more against the best interrests of the public without fear of being singled out.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Consider this, though. If what you say is true, that "Society's laws grow from its mores", then can't we expect the same results as the Romans? The "mores" of Greed, Power, and Lust surely will overwhelm those of responsibility, honour and bravery. The former are "natural"; the latter -- they must be forged through much discomfort.
I think that you might actually be wrong. I think that people actually still (for this and perhaps one more generation...) have respect for the value of "a work", even if it is easily distributable. I think people still have at least a vague sense "payment for value"; What the masses are actually rebelling against is the extraction of wealth that occurs between those that Invent, Dream, and Create, and those that enjoy the results of that creation.
Generations of Management Schools have produced a stratum of society that cannot Create, but can only think in terms of Arbitrage -- Buying Low and Selling High -- who are prepared to feed the lusts of those in power, as long as they promise to protect these Manager's ability to ride the industries from which they derive their wealth. Adding nothing, but taking a slice of everything.
Unfortunately for this great mass of "Middlemen", the internet is becoming the great solvent of unnecessary power structures. When the mass of Creators and Enjoyers can be brought face-to-face with virtually zero cost and delay, the only thing left for the "Nation of Salesmen" to do is something -- anything -- to prevent it.
Well, those of us that are both technical and creative must fight back. Not with a bit of file sharing "freedom" (remember, the RIAA still holds most artists by the short and curly, and they *will* squeeze), but with a real, practical mechanism to provide direct, instantaneous compensation from the user to the creator.
You want to break the backs of those who provide nothing but Arbitrage? Then create a system that provides a stable, reliable market for the exchange of ideas and value. Create a system that pays the authors more than RIAA, and the artists will abandon them. On the other hand, if we continue on the path we are on, the artists will only hold on more tightly to their only semi-reliable source of income -- the recording industry.
The future of the creative commons is in our hands.
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
From the original article:
The RIAA is inflicting a pogrom against file traders? They are using death camps instead of lawsuits? Such extreme hyperbole does not call the policy of the RIAA into question as much as it does the judgement of the author.
When O'Reilly publishes a new book, I should buy it, scan in the pages into an electronic format and put it on the internet for the whole world to copy. After all, "copyright doesn't make sense in a world where things are easily and cheaply copiable", and all I did was easily and cheaply copy a book.
Whoa, hold on there. I can see the point you're trying to make here, but your analogy is flawed. Have you ever scanned a whole book? If that's your idea of cheap and easy, then the folks over at Project Guttenburg would like to talk to you. Ripping a CD (or even a DVD) is an order of magnitude easier then scanning an entire book. Especially any book on perl. Can you imagine the OCR software trying to figure out PERL source code?!?
teeker
With Mozart's Requiem I can possibly understand to some degree, because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the work--I'm sure the publisher did have to do a significant amount of arrangement to pull together the various pieces written by different people. But for other pieces where the original score is complete, there is absolutely no logical or ethical reason a publisher should have any IP rights to the performance. No, the publishers aren't in it for the fun of it, or for the betterment of society. They're in it for profit. That's why they sell scores, instead of giving them away. They perform a valuable service by recopying original manuscripts, extracting orchestra parts, and printing and distributing scores. None of this, in my opinion and that of many others, is entitled to copyright protection other than "don't photocopy this." In many other languages, French for example, "copyright" is rendered "right of the author". That's the [i]author[/i], not the author's typist or proofreader. If Bach, or Handel, or Brahms were still alive, then I would hope that they [i]would[/i] receive royalties from paid performances of their works. That's what the system's for! But giving royalties to those not involved in the artistic creation of the music (either its composition or its performance) strikes me, and many others, as wrong. Yes, this goes against what the law says. But the situation is the same as with other objections to copyright law: a large number of people believe the law is unjust, but cannot change it because the current political system favors business over individuals. (Keep in mind the chilling statistic that more Americans have used Kazaa than voted for Bush Junior.) So, having no other recourse, people lose respect for the law... which is a dangerous thing. When I buy the sheet music to a composition which is not itself protected by copyright, I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with the knowledge I gain from that music. (Copying it is another issue, of course.) If I discover a new, patentable invention using data obtained with (say) gas chromatography, I do not and should not have to share income from the patent with the inventor of the gas chromatograph. (And, yes, I realize that patents are different from copyrights. It's an example.) Interesting sidenote. In music history, the professor told the following story: The Church had a tradition concerning a 100-200-year-old piece (I forget which) that the score should never be released outside the church, so that no performance could occur without the Church's permission. Mozart, with his incredible memory, attended a church service at which the piece was performed, went home, and copied out the score. The professor's opinion, and that of everyone in the class, was that he had done a Good Deed for Music and for Humanity by making a beautiful piece of music available to everyone. Nowadays he'd be prosecuted. Music needs an equivalent to Project Gutenberg: downloadable, public-domain scores. There is no reason for public-domain information to cost more than the price of compilation and reproduction, which in today's society is essentially zero.
If what you say is true, that "Society's laws grow from its mores", then can't we expect the same results as the Romans?
Fortunately I did remember to say mores, as opposed to "impulses" or "instincts." We do generally have a shared sense of ethics, even when we all flout it. Whether or not our better qualities will triumph over the prisoner's dilemma is another discussion, although invoking the ancient Romans (or the Greeks) is never a bad idea these days.
I think that people actually still (for this and perhaps one more generation...) have respect for the value of "a work", even if it is easily distributable.
We have always had this kind of respect, and I hope I didn't foul up badly enough to suggest otherwise. I don't think it's going away, either. Rather, I think it's growing. It just has nothing to do with "property" or even "sharing."
People love their artists as they love life itself. They support them extravagantly - hence the Arbitrage-fest! With the king dead, copyright was just the first stab at replacing patronage, and I think you've got the next one nailed down.
The nightmare that keeps RIAA board members awake at night is a "pay the person who made this file" button. Of course, making a workable micropayment system is far from easy. I'd say we have our work cut out for us. But take a minute and really imagine the results.
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