The Semantics of File Sharing

ethericalzen writes "The LA Times has published an opinion article about the legal semantics and analogies of file sharing. The article includes arguments from those who believe file sharing is theft and those who strongly disagree. As it points out, the common analogies to theft are often incomplete or inaccurate. The author states, "balancing the interests of content creators against the public's ... is a much more complicated task than erecting a legal barrier to five-fingered discounts." He recognizes that it is not a trivial concept, and that the clamoring from both camps about definitions and moral boundaries will dictate how businesses and users function in the future."

Comments

Re:No better then /.

[Gideon Fubar]

The difference is, of course, that everyone already knows about it on slashdot, and has a dedicated opinion. This is the LA times, a somewhat more mainstream publication, ne?

Re:Let me share the contents of your laptop

[LuYu]

Excellently put. Let me just add a little about why privacy is different than copyright:

If I shared the contents of your PC with the world, would that be OK?

That's a privacy issue. It's completely different.

The main difference between privacy and copyright is that copyrighted materials are not secrets. Copyright seeks to protect the materials after they have been published and disseminated to the public. Copyright does not and cannot influence information that is not shared publicly for profit or for free. Copyright does not restrict whether information can be shared. It restricts who is allowed to share that information.

Privacy is about protecting one's personal business from the outside world. Originally, this was just the government and neighbors. Now the scope has grown to include corporations and other malicious multinational entities. In other words, privacy is an opposite of copyright because no one seeks to share their private secrets while copyright would be meaningless in the absence of publication and dissemination.

Think of a video. One might film a video of an interesting story and sell or share it. It would make no sense to keep something like that locked up as the creator already knows the story and could easily just imagine it.

On the other hand, who would want to share a video of a secret love affair. The leak of such information would be devastating to both lovers.

Copyright proponents also often seek to violate privacy. DRM systems often include schemes which allow copyright holders to scan and sometimes even delete files on your computer from a remote location. Publishers also often compile lists of who reads what books and sell those lists for a profit (I hope you did not buy Catcher in the Rye from Amazon).

Can anyone still have any confusion about the difference between copyright and privacy?