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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."
So in other words its just an article that is what Slashdot is like every time an *AA story gets posted? Some calling it theft and others saying its not?
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
The last resort of the desperate Internet argument.
Still, this will either a) finally put down on paper that file sharing is not theft, or b) put down on paper that the exchange of copyrighted information is, in fact, theft, and then everyone is in a world of poop. My old VHS recordings of Red Dwarf and The Muppets will suddenly become a complicated legal quagmire.
Now, quagmire is semantically defined as...
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
This is very much worth the read. It is surprisingly erudite for a newspaper and it is also pretty nuanced. The critical points are illuminated (theft as deprivation of a good or theft as an unjust enrichment), the debate is balanced and excellent sources are used. Well worth the click away from /..
Some things really just need to be explained in terms of themselves. Computer networks are not highway systems. They're not houses. They're not cars, or floor waxes, or dishwashing detergents. They do a totally unique thing, using technologies and paradigms that didn't even exist before computers were invented to make use of them.
OF COURSE analogies don't work.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
It always amused me how the popular analogy from the other camp was "Oh, so if you want a car, it's okay to steal it is it?" So they can get all high and moral. But when you break it down and say "Okay, I'm going to make an exact duplicate of your car, never once depriving you of the usage of it. It will not inconvenience you in any way." The argument rather falls flat on it's face.
The whole "filesharing = theft" equation is almost entirely down to MPAA, RIAA and other organizations brainwashing people. Saying something a 1000 times doesn't make it true. If it did, downloading WOULD be theft by this point. But it's still copyright violation, which is why these groups, with their large political donations, have made copyright violation are far FAR harsher crime than theft ever was.
I break into your house and nick your Transformers DVD, at worst I'd probably go down for 30 days, unless I'm haibitual. Small fine probably. The charge will be breaking and entering, theft etc... I download Transformers from you instead, we BOTH face tens of thousands of dollars in fines, and many years in jail.
You're better off, from a jailtime perspective, heading into your local WalMart, nicking a few DVD's, then rape the cashier on the way out. You'll serve less time than if you get caught downloading the movie.
The semantic aren't really the issue here, as the powers that be want to have their cake AND eat it too. They want the association in the public eye to be IT'S THEFT! IT'S NO DIFFERENT THAN STEALING A CAR! But in the back rooms they know this is bullshit, and continue to push on with copyright violation punishments being exponentially increased.
What you or I call it is irrelevant.
"Downloading a movie off of the Internet is the same as taking a DVD off a store shelf without paying for it," adds the Motion Picture Assn. of America.
If this were true, the punishment would be the same.
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
Any time you find weasel words and bad analogies going unchecked, follow the money trail. This isn't about artist's rights. If anyone gave a crap about that there'd be an uproar about unfair record contracts and middle men getting all the money. Basically in this case you have:
1) Artists who hope to get rich by gaming the system (as a few artists certainly have).
2) Middle men going to extreme measures (like bankrupting or jailing people, draconian drm) to protect their "right" to collect most of the money.
3) Lots of people who are happy to take content without compensating anyone for it.
There are exceptions but the status quo is pretty bad. Still, the human race has bigger problems. Pollution. Overpopulation. War. Disease. Compared to that this is all petty bullshit and a waste of words. All these people just need to stop grubbing for every last dollar and accept that sometimes life isn't going to hand them what they're due, what they're worth, or what they've earnt. Other people will take you for all that you're worth if they can - it doesn't give you the right to adopt the same attitude.
In other words: Life ain't fair. Get over it. There are many more important things than the latest film or pop song. Stop penalizing everyone you can to protect your own money grubbing arse.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This article brings out the common observation that copies of files are, in theory, unlimited. If this is true, it means that the way music (and movies, and books, etcs.) are sold must change.
BUT this does not mean that music should be free--it means that today's "a la carte" method of selling music is obsolete.
A rough comparision would be to the cable industry. When you subscribe to cable, you are not forced to pay for each television show that you watch (think iTunes), you simply pay a flat rate and watch as much as you want. This is how recorded music must now be "sold." Selling music one file at a time does not reflect the "fluid" nature of digital media and is rightfully held in low regard by filesharers.
Looks more like, "Cue the trolling and stereotyping. Brought to us by our favorite, the ignorant anon. cowards. Stay tuned now for logic, followed by flamewar, Only on Slashdot!"
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I think what's really positive here (besides the very good article) is that these ideas have finally hit mainstream. There's at least acknowledgement of a debate, and I think that will really help to move things forward. About the only point that's missing is that the temporary (I use the term loosely) monopoly provided to creative works should be set so as to balance the production of work with the public interest. We've seen several lengthenings of copyright, but there was no discussion of whether or not these were a good deal for the public at large. Greg London's Bounty Hunters (http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters) gives a good picture of this side of the issue.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Seriously. The copies have value (otherwise, why would you spend the time to get them?). When you download something, the result is that more people have these valuble copies. For some kinds of things, this may even increase the value of copies that other people already have (anything that has network effects). So by downloading a copy of something, you create value. The only catch is, the copyright holder isn't able to take out their cut.
Copyright violation is not theft. Period, and end of story. There is no semantical issue here, its simply not true.
Now, that said it may ( or may not ) be a civil offense, and even may become a criminal offense if the IP industry gets it way, but its not by definition theft nor will it ever be.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yes, there are some who will make various intellectual arguments for why it should always be legal to rip the latest Disney movie for free. In the end, it's for the common good that we have created an artifical set of rules that allow creators to be compensated for their otherwise easily copied works. The guy on the street overwhelmingly agrees with this, just as he also agrees on an artificial speed limit for his car.
But there is room for serious dispute over where that artificial line is drawn, and how the rules get enforced. The problem isn't that copyright makes piracy (aka "sharing") illegal. It's that technological enforcement of copyright via "digital rights management" (DRM) just goes too far in restricting human nature. And such attempts to force universities or ISPs to police their students from committing piracy is draconian (plus so lame).
The hard problem isn't to decide whether or not to have copyright law. It's how do we let Disney be paid for every copy of a movie, while still allowing the common man to make a backup copy of his DVD library, or lend a movie to a friend, or use a clip in a remix?
No.
Theft is Theft.
Copyright infringement is Copyright infringement.
Both illegal, but both very distinct and seperated.
Why do people not get this?
Why do we need analogies? Why do we need to find similarities? It is a simple case of two parties, one of which is accusing the other as the source of their financial losses. It does not matter what do you call it. If one side can prove that their losses were because of the actions of another, that's it. Copyright violation is already a crime. If I make a VHS tape of the Seinfeld episode, they will have hard time proving that I incurred significant losses on NBC. If I made a torrent out of it and put it on the seeder it's another issue.
See? No need for bad or any analogies.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I have a word for "file sharing": I call it "speech". I have the Right (as in God-given, inalienable, fundamental, and/or natural -- take your pick) to repeat any speech that enters my realm of experience from any source.
Before the internet became popular, copyright did not very significantly encroach upon the territory of Free Speech. Now, no one can reasonably claim that copyright does not restrict Free Speech and education. Obviously, Free Speech is more important than copyright, just as Democracy is more important than monopoly privileges.
File sharing is Free Speech.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Clearly, you've never had an idea that you could sell.
1178161 is prime...
Every illegal download is a lost sale.
Their entitled to THOUSANDS OF TIMES THEIR ACTUAL LOSSES from every infringer they haul into court.
You can absolutely identify the infringing user and computer from nothing more than an IP address and a timestamp.
There is no other explanation for the overall decline in CD sales.
We're only doing this for the artists.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
No. Theft is Theft. Copyright infringement is Copyright infringement. Both illegal, but both very distinct and seperated. Why do people not get this?
Either way, you're getting something you haven't paid for, so the distinction is lost on most people.
"No, having a copy of this CD isn't stealing because it's intellectual property!" doesn't make sense to most people.
DATABASE WOW WOW
No. Theft is Theft. Copyright infringement is Copyright infringement. Both illegal, but both very distinct and seperated. Why do people not get this?
Either way, you're getting something you haven't paid for, so the distinction is lost on most people.
"No, having a copy of this CD isn't stealing because it's intellectual property!" doesn't make sense to most people.
How about "No, having a copy of this CD isn't stealing because I didn't take it away from anyone!"?Excellently put. Let me just add a little about why privacy is different than copyright:
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?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
This article gives a surprisingly nuanced and fair overview of the issues at hand. We've been over these things a million times on Slashdot, of course. Still, it's encouraging to see the greater public getting their heads around what really is a complex issue.
The one point I don't think gets mentioned nearly enough is the potential value of free copying to society. We hear plenty about the supposed cost. But in a world with liberal sharing of creative works, those works will get into the hands of many more people, including people of limited means. People will be exposed to amazing works they might have otherwise missed. Works will have to compete for attention based more purely on their content, rather than on the marketing muscle behind them. New works will be created that are inspired by, and in some cases built from, the numerous creative sources made available through sharing.
Best of all, free copying creates a worldwide decentralized backup system for these works. Many works will be saved which might have been otherwise lost because they were copyrighted for far longer than they were profitable.
We are witnessing the beginning of a new era, where creativity spews forth from all corners and mixes in many unexpected ways. Much of it will be crap, but some of it will be mind-blowingly fantastic. An environment of sharing with few restrictions will make this possible, and it will preserve the best of what is produced for generations to come.
Then perhaps you'd like to purchase the rights for public demonstrations of the "happy birthday" song that you will inevitability sing when something increments their age count.
Yes the "Happy Birthday" song is copyrighted and still collecting fees to this day from radio stations, etc. It's set to expire in 2030 apparently (i'm sure copyright extensions will prevent that).
The real question that should be asked is, at what point does a piece of music become part of the public domain culture? What's next? A patent on Christmas?
For an awesome (legal download) documentary on piracy, copyright, etc I highly recommend Steal this film 2.
I like this quote:
Put this way, it seems obvious that the sharing of ideas (and intellectual property is essentially ideas, isn't it?) is free speech. So, the question is: Is free speech free as in beer, or free as in... my head hurts.
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear,.. ah crap..
That's retarded.
...and I replicated myself a nice new car, just like yours. Then I go and find Linus and replicate the uber-badass laptop I imagine he must have, and finally I go next door and replicate my neighbor's candybar. Is that illegal? Hell no.
The argument doesn't hold up because bread is physical. It's a collection of atoms. You can't wave a magic wand and have an exact duplication of that bread. Data is more ethereal. It's easy to duplicate.
The real argument goes like this:
If you come over to my house and take my candybar, you are in possession of a candybar and I am without.
That's theft.
In the digital age, if you come over to my house and take a copy of my CD, you are in possession of a CD, and I am *STILL IN POSSESSION OF MY FUCKING PROPERTY*, you just have an exact duplicate.
It's not theft.
The music companies want you to believe you have harmed them out of their fair share.
But what if tomorrow I invented a replicator just like you'd see on Star Trek.
I'm not against the *AA because I want free music, I'm against the *AA because they are trying to legislate against one of the basic things about computers and data. It's easy to duplicate and they don't want it to be without paying them money or fines or whatever.
They can get fucked.
There's no place like
I've seen this argument before, verbatim. It's bunk, of course.
The contents of a CD, DVD, or book have been released to the public already; they're copyrighted materials. The contents of my bank account or computer, are more akin to trade secrets.
In short, you fail at analogy.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
The internet IS a peer to peer file sharing tool.
expandfairuse.org
have been giving away free content since inception. this is of course supported by advertising. the business model works just fine
business based on the distribution of books, dvds, cds, etc., meanwhile is based on the control of tangible media you need to manufacture, put on a truck, and ship to a store
what the internet did was force the radio/ tv economic model on the book/ dvd/ cd distributors
it's disruptive technology defined. and, unfortunately for entrenched business interests based on distribution of tangible media, completely irreversible and completely unstoppable
meanwhile, all of the moral arguments are complete bullshit. it's just a business earthquake, plain and simple. pointing to morality is merely crocodile tears on the part of some very powerful, but dying businesses
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Here's an analogy for you:
Supposing the leader of country, lets call him Hitler, made it such that all the german cultural productions couldn't be sold or broadcast unless they went through an organization of his. This organization diddled the originators out of what money they thought they were going to get. Furthermore the artists basically wanted to have their works heard by all the people, but the government decided when and what people could listen too, except for the wealthy who could pay to have their own copies of the large bodies of work.
The money raised by this organization was used to persecute a minority based on their choice of a religion that was a foundation of Christianity which is the dominant religion.
So if a person copied a piece of their culture so that they could listen to it when they wanted to should they be bankrupted for the rest of their lives?
Answer: Of course! They are a pirate, and that's how the law says we treat pirates. You want to obey the law right?
You might argue about how it depends on the use of the money. Well ok, I guess the people working for the RIAA need to open up their uses of the money so that we can judge if revenue from our culture is being spent appropriately or not.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
What the real problem is is the view in our society that monetary value is the ultimate achievement, that piece of paper with the number on it or the number in your bank account has no more real value than the ASCII code of the song you download. In theroy a random number generator could produce any of the songs that are downloaded. Would that still be considered stealing, to randomly create a code that is translated into the song? No matter how you want to place a value on an object (be it money or materials or work done) it is easy to say that for a real object, but ideas should be free flowing because if everyone adds something to that idea then they will all have paid for it.
That's crap.
Stealing is a verb. It is an act that involves taking something to which you're not entitled. That's it. You are, once again, conflating theft (a legal construct which involves deprivation of property) with stealing (a verb). THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING. You are also conveniently ignoring the fact that the onus under the law is on the person committing the act, not the impact on the owner.
It doesn't matter that the owner has more, even if there are infinitely many more. You aren't punished because someone has lost something; you're punished because you have committed a transgression against someone. We don't care, as a legal matter, whether you took a dollar from a dishwasher or from Donald Trump, who'd never even know it was gone. It's something that is legitimately and legally for sale, which you acquired without paying for. You have stolen. Idiotic semantic arguments (which use 'steal' and 'theft' interchangeably, but try to split hairs on fractional parts of hand-picked definitions) notwithstanding, there's no issue here.
This is worse than the utterly moronic "piracy is only on boats" horseshit that is scattered around Slashdot. Newsflash, Dexter: 'piracy' has been used in the modern sense since the 1880s. It's a word more deeply established than "computer".
The real problem here is that the RIAA exists in it's present form in the first place. Why should the distributor make most of the money? They aren't a hard working group of people that earn a small honest margin spreading the word about musicians, they are a cartel that controls the music industry. If I download, they have effectively done nothing anymore. They have offered no service, no physical media for my convenience, nothing at all. Why should they get any money? The one tiny thing they do for the artists is obsolete, only their totalitarian control of the industry keeps them where they are, and they are frightened because they know their currently existing power is the only thing keeping them around. If we bought direct from artists at several times what they make now from the RIAA, we'd be paying next to nothing for music, benefitting the artists more, and be exposed to more varieties of better music. I say steal from the RIAA until they rot and die and their bloated carcass has to be dynamited after washing up on the beach, just send a few $ to the artists.
If that's the assumption we're working with, then ok, sure.
I don't think i've bought an album without hearing what's on it in a long time though, and i'm really not likely to either. I prefer (morally, if you will) to support artists i like directly, and that's because i know the money won't actually make it to them otherwise.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
Oh yes it would be!!
If such a replicator existed, then the manufacturers of cars, candy-bars and computers absolutely would be claiming copyright (or whatever kind of "intellectual property" they could muster) on their products.
Sure it would be a stupid idea, and sure it wouldn't work ... but since when has that stopped people?
Simple: if it was theft they wouldn't need copyright law or DMCA to prosecute file sharing etc, they _could_ choose to use the various laws covering theft for that. Not saying they would but they could.
:).
Of course, if they convince enough people and the courts that it's theft, then legally speaking it'll be theft, BUT that hasn't happened yet, so meanwhile, the rest of us are going to keep saying its not theft
What's closer to theft is the Corporations convincing the government(s) to _retroactively_ take stuff out of the public domain and make it theirs.
When that was done we lost a lot of access/use of those stuff, stuff that we used to have the right to use freely.
What filesharing does is it makes the Corporations lose a lot of access to our money. But the last I checked, they didn't have an automatic right to our money.
There is no such thing as "illegal downloading".
There is, actually. When you download anything, you necessarily make new copies of it. Making copies of copyrighted works without authorization or an applicable exception is infringing. Take a look at 17 USC 106(1), the definition of the word 'copy' in 17 USC 101, and the Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry case (in which the court discusses how it can be infringing to browse web pages that, unbeknownst to you, someone else put online unlawfully).
And, no one can tell for sure whether some data is copyrighted if they can't examine it.
That's irrelevant; copyright is a strict liability statute. If you infringe, then you infringe, even if you didn't mean to and could not have acted more reasonably.
Your uploading argument is even more fantastic. While you may know what you'd like the law to be, you clearly haven't got much of an idea of what it actually is.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
OK you have two types of things property, it just is at the founding of the US that potentially included other people but it was something had. The right to own property and keep is is a basic fundamental right, it can be taken away via the courts or via eminent domain but otherwise it's yours to do what you please with.
Copyright created IP and is supposed to last for a limited time only to foster the creation of more creative works. We started going down the slippery slope when it got extended further and further. As people had control over things via copyright for longer and longer it looks more and more like property.
There needs to be a balance between the two competing forces some copyright holders have lots of money and have been buying congress critters for years (Disney and others) to keep expanding the scope of copyright. The people who have a lot of money as a whole but little on the average have a desire to be able to use things freely after copyright has expired. It would appear that the people in general ignore copyright it does little for them in there view. Striking a balance does not seem to hard music more than a few years old is past it's peak same for movies. Software is a bit of a special class as it's iterative so lets put that as maybe a few years without updates. To some extent go back to requiring registration of copyright but add a copy be sent to archive at the library of congress in it's most complete form (copy's of the original film or studio master as released, binary and source for software). Mix in the freedom to format shift copyright material. Allow the import of materials legally acquired in the source country. Ban any technical/contractual means restricting the application of users rights. After thats done you could look at making personal copyright infringement a minor criminal infraction like j walking or speeding nothing to go to court for and leave egregious forms like mass duplication of fake DVD's where they are. You might end up with a working system at this rate IP is the prohibition of our age it looked good on paper but not in application.
No sir I dont like it.
goes the familiar RIAA/MPAA-endorsed jingle...
And you know what? They're right. But neither would I attempt to steal the artist's living through creative accounting. I think the point they're trying to make is that they're far bigger jerks than you could ever hope to be, so don't mess with them.
Next time someone talks about filesharing as if it's stealing, remind them that you lose money on every download. You have to pay for the bandwidth, the equipment, and - by golly! - that all gets very expensive. By the time you're done, you just don't have anything left to pay the record companies... sorry!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
What the real problem is is the view in our society that monetary value is the ultimate achievement, that piece of paper with the number on it or the number in your bank account has no more real value than the ASCII code of the song you download
Apparently you don't understand money. Yes, some people may value the piece of green paper, but it's not the paper or what's printed on it that is important.
The important part is what the money represents.
Yeah, I could trade you 10 cows for a new car, but what if I don't want your car. What if I simply want to give you the 10 cows for the promise that you will give the car to whomever I denote. It's really a standardized form of bartering.
There's no place like
Obligatory car analogy in comic form.
Thus, I can only conclude that you weren't talking about mere legality, in which case I maintain that no transgression has been committed against anyone (in any but the most basic legal sense). Quit trolling. Quit dishonestly accusing people of trolling just because they disagree with you. First and foremost, the free section on Craigslist is a section where individuals with title are offering to transfer it to you for the low, low price of coming to pick it up. The Pirate Bay is a web site where individuals are offering to transfer files to me for an equally low price. "Title" is irrelevant here because we're not talking about mere legality. Second, "taking the free one" isn't done without permission and contrary to the law, because they're offering it to you. Taking the free album off a torrent site isn't done without permission either: everyone else in the swarm is offering it to you. (Once again, "contrary to the law" is irrelevant here because we're not talking about mere legality.)
Now, you might point out that it's being done without the permission of someone else who isn't party to the transaction, namely the copyright holder. But that's true of the microwave too! Sears certainly didn't give me permission to get a free microwave somewhere else instead of buying one from them, and neither did any of the people selling free microwaves on eBay. Of course, their permission doesn't matter; they don't get to veto my craigslist transaction just because they'd like to sell me a microwave.
I contend that the copyright holder's permission doesn't matter either: they shouldn't get to veto my Pirate Bay transaction just because they'd like to sell me a copy. If I can find someone else who's willing to give me the product for free, whether it's a song or a microwave, I should be able to take them up on that offer.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
You're both quite correct.. Money is supposed to be a representation of personal bartering power, and it is also becoming increasingly abstracted from the physical medium it's used to represent. These two things aren't mutually exclusive at all, and that poses some interesting issues.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
Copyrights have a certain commercial value, which is derived from the saleability of whatever the copyright applies to, and the fact that the copyrighted work should be unavailable from anywhere else. You can buy and sell them as much as you want, but the copyright will be commercially worthless unless its potential for money-making is used. that potential is in the form of sales, where money is handed over in exchange for a copy of the work. Value is exchanged for value.
Every time you pirate a CD, you are undermining the copyright. You have created another source from which copyrighted works can come, which eats into the value of the copyright itself. You are gaining the value of the copyrighted work, yet there is no equivalent exchange. The copyright holder ends up with a slightly depreciated version of what he owned before you pirated the work. You are stealing value from the copyright holder for your own gratification.
But that's just the way I rationalise it. I can see why people would not see piracy as stealing. I was pretty sympathetic to your viewpoint right up until here:You have. They have entitlements to their fair share, being the ones who have and who are paying for those copyrighted works, and their distribution. They are the ones lowering the barrier of entry for artists. They spend lots of money promoting artists, encouraging them, and risking their all important finances (they're a corporation after all) in doing so. They at least deserve some money if you like the music.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
(8) Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up, (9) "Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?"
(10) Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." There was plenty of grass in that place, and the men sat down, about five thousand of them. (11) Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.
(12) When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." (13) So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.
sqrt(-13) For thirty pieces of silver, the boy told the Bakers what Jesus did. Then the Bakers went out and began to plot with the Fishermen how they might kill Jesus, for they thought to themselves "How are we going to get money to eat if he gives food for free?"(a)
(a) All ancient authorities do not contain verse sqrt(-13).
The principle that "a person's work is his own and it is not for others to take without consent" is pure fiction, at least when applied to works which are composed of information. We use other people's work all the time, without obtaining their permission first, and no one bats an eye except when those works happen to be the kind that are sold on shiny plastic discs. Once again, you're dropping the issue entirely. Individuals on Pirate Bay don't have any right to offer the work of others to you. You don't have a free speech right to the verbatim work of others. You mean the law doesn't recognize my right to speak the verbatim work of others. Aside from the law, I have exactly the same right to speak it as I do to give away a microwave: it's a voluntary transaction for everyone involved, so I have the right by default. You don't have a right to co-opt someone else's work, waiting until their labor has produced it, and then take it as your own. The only way to "take it as your own" is to claim authorship, and I agree, no one has the right to lie about having written something that was actually written by someone else. Some random person can't agree to give you something that isn't theirs to give, whether it's a microwave or a movie. But it is theirs to give; it's right there on their hard drive. Just like the microwave, they may not have designed or built it, but that doesn't mean they can't give it away. It's simply not possible in a society valuing individual autonomy and privacy to argue that one has a right of any kind to the work or thoughts of others. What a bizarre thing to say. Of course it's possible, and in fact it's quite reasonable to argue that everyone has a right to share information.
Privacy doesn't even enter into it, because we're not talking about information that was meant to be kept secret. If you offer some information for sale to the public, giving it away to every stranger who shows up with money in his hand -- and especially if you give it to radio stations to be broadcast to millions of people who didn't even request it -- you can't claim that it's somehow still "private" after all that and expect to be taken seriously. It would be possible if such works were without value, but because they unquestionably have value, there are boundaries to it. The value of a copy is approximately zero, since copies can be made for next to nothing. The true value is in the labor that went into producing the works in the first place.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
If you went into somebody's house while they were at work and copied all their CDs, would they be angry??
I think the answer is "only if you made a mess or broke the door lock".
If you left everything just as it was, most people would just shrug it off.
If they called the police and said "somebody was in here and I think they copied some CDs" I'm betting they'd just shrug as well.
Favourite quote FTA: "I like the MPAA's logic that downloading a movie is the same as stealing a DVD. That would mean that those folks who get caught should be punished the same way as you would punish someone who physically stole a DVD or CD. Submitted by: Mark"
At the moment the punishment for file-sharing is much greater than the theft of physical CDs. How is this possible?
No sig today...
What was the RIAA doing in the 70's and 80's, during the explosion of home taping where everyone and their mothers were making mix-tapes for their friends and relatives ? Did they run around suing everyone that just happened to own a dubbing deck ?
The problem is that today, the concept of "friend" has expanded far beyond the dozen classmates and neighbors. On the internet, everyone is your "neighbor". The music industry was not prepared for this social shift, and the retail world doesn't have any idea how to adapt - it's quite likely not even possible. Distributors, wholesalers, retailers, they've all become obsolete overnight. Who needs a middleman when you can service the customer directly and all it takes is a free (or cheap) web host ?
The internet effectively disembowels a trillion-dollar industry with a single mouse click. If we must use analogies, then how about the farmer's market ? You go directly to the producer, pay a much better price for fresher produce. The grocery chain gets nothing, the truck drivers get nothing, the ad agency gets nothing... but the farmer's market, unlike the internet, is tied to a very specific physical location. You can't buy fresh tomatoes unless you live near the market. On the web, you can buy anything anywhere from anyone, and that's why the RIAA is in trouble. It's one company vs the world.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
It used to be that if you wanted to hear music you had to;
A. Learn to play or know someone who does
B. Wait for someone who was able to play to come by.
Since we live in a capitalist system the way to get them to come was to pay them. Been that way since forever really.
Up until about 1950 or so being a Musician was a respectable profession. You could make enough to live on. And you didn't have to go on tour, the speakeasy or night club paid you well enough.
Then along came Record Companies.
Now if you know a Musician, he or she is treated kind of like a Junkie without the fun of the Heroin. They have to have second "REAL" jobs. Artists are in the same boat. People had real paintings on their walls and you could make a real living at it. Oh and Actors too, don't forget them. And Stagehand, Ushers, ticket takers, bouncers, barkeeps, cigarette girls, hatcheck girls, etc etc etc....
Record Companies threw all these people out of work but thats ok, because they could hear music on phonographs and radios, watch TV and Movies in the theater and the productions values were much better but the plots kept going down hill. You get the picture. If not watch a movie called That Thing You Do! (1996) Pay attention and you will understand what I am getting at.
Fast Forward, but before the Computers and CDs, then DVDs. Most of the people who threw those people out of work back in the 50's realized in the 70's that they were next. Nobodies could make their own music and publish in on cassettes. DIRECTLY TO THE PUBLIC!!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning:_Parental_Advisory
Hello RIAA/MPAA
Well they claim that downloaders are putting people out of work, but how come the Chemical Brothers shows are always sellouts and the never get airplay? Celine Dion and Barbara Streisand tickets sell for $200 a pop. Bands don't make money from records anymore, they make if from shows. Like they used to. The ones I know (I'm from Seattle) like it that way. Give it some time, well do in the MPAA too. Seriously Hollywood blows chunks.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Ok, ok, so it's not theft, using the definition you cite. I can understand that you and others feel as though you have to be in possession of something tangible for something to be considered theft. And I also understand that you feel that for an action to be theft, then the victim then has to be without said tangible object.
It doesn't mean it's not a crime. And if it's not a crime, it's at the very least wrong, by any stretch of the imagination. And even if you don't feel it's wrong, it's a violation of the rights of the entities who sell the licenses to listen to that music.
What you're paying for when you buy music is the right to listen to that work. It matters little whether it's digitally downloaded, on cd, or whatever. You are paying for a license. That license gives you the right to do what you want with that music, so long as it's used for your own private purposes. You can play the song, you can even play it for your friends at a party. You cannot, however, transfer that license to anyone else. They have to buy their own license. Meaning you can't give them a copy, at least not legally. Unless you have the rights, given by the distributors of that license, to do so, which I suspect you don't.
When you listen to music on the radio, your license to listen to that music is paid for by advertisers, or in the case of XM, by your subscription fees. If you go see the band perform live, your ticket price gives you license to see and hear the performance of that music. That's why when you sneak in to a concert, you can at the very least be thrown out.
So when the RIAA or whomever wants to prosecute, ok, it may not be a criminal act, so they may not have legal rights to do so (although I'm thinking about the FBI notices at the first of my DVDs, so why is music different?). However, they have more than enough legal ground to sue you, and they should. They are bound by the agreements with their artists to protect the artists' interests, and although I know the argument can be made that their track record isn't great in that respect, the duty still exists. And the fact remains that the record companies paid good money to have the music recorded, hire producers, engineers, pay for studio time, packaging, promotion, and loads of other costs, and they have every right to see to it that they can recover those costs and make a profit on top of that. And you, by not buying a license, are infringing their rights to recoup those costs and make that profit. So they have been damaged, in a legal sense, and the court can and will "make them whole". Which means you can be sued.
And whether you want to cite existing laws, make analogies, convict the RIAA, stand on principle, it's stealing, in the truest sense of the word. Someone has created a work, released it, made it available for purchase, and if you circumvent the part where you pay for your enjoyment of what they created, you have stolen. And here's to your bread analogy: yeah, you didn't steal bread. But you've, in essence, stolen bread from the artists' mouths.
Think about this as well. The more people download music without paying for it, the more the RIAA perceives value in their product, and the more dogged they will be in stopping downloaders. If you don't like what the RIAA is putting out enough to pay for it, don't download it either. And if you don't like what the RIAA has to offer, explore independent music, and purchase from entities who guarantee that the lion's share goes to the artist.
What irritates me is that for some reason, there is a large group of people out there who think they have some right given to them by someone to share things that should be paid for.
Pay for the music. It won't hurt you. It will hurt the artists if you don't, and will ensure that fewer artists get to do their thing. It's a symbiotic relationship that music fans are hurting.
Don't have enough cash to pay for it? Then get a better job. I don't have enough cash to pay for a Ferrari, but I'm not about to go for a joy ride in someone else's. I just have to work harder so I can buy my own.
But have you really? The cost to copy and distribute a digital copy is essentially zero, or close to it. Otherwise everybody and their granny wouldn't be able to get everything they want off bittorrent in the first place. Any share of zero, fair or otherwise, is neccessarily still zero. These companies are trying to claim a non-zero "share" out of a zero-sized pie. It just can't work.
Now, if you'd said that the content producers, the artists themselves, were being denied their fair share then you'd be right. But lets face it, the artists have already been denied their fair share by the very companies that are supposed to represent them. That's why they make most of their money from concerts and whatnot. They're the ones that deserve some money.
I'm not trying to justify the flagrant copyright breaches that do take place. But it certainly isn't stealing, because there simply isn't anything to steal.
Santa's suicide mission go!
that is not true. you don't steal the music from your neighbor - but you steal the music from the musician. if you buy a cd - you buy the plastic and the information (the music)- if you buy a download you only buy the information - which is the intellectual property of the musician. you can copy that for your private use - but the musicians make a living from their work - if you want to own the piece of intelectual work they did (and that's immaterial) you should be so fair and pay him (and forget the music industry - it's like in other branches too - the suply and want money for it - ok - shall be) i think it is ok to think that they take a too big share but that doesn't excuse intellectual theft. all the best rainerklang
"becoming increasingly abstracted from the physical medium" and being a "representation of personal bartering power" go hand in hand. Increasingly abstract.
Personally, I consider money to represent "favor surplus". Bartering power is too related to an exchange of goods in these service-based times. The more money you have, the more favors can you call in from the world. If you're net worth is negative, you are owing favors to the world.
Mind you, this means I disagree with gold-backed currencies. An increasingly efficient (read: abstract) currency should not be bound to physical goods.
I lost my sig.
1) I never buy The Killer's Hot Fuss. I hear their music on the radio, and I enjoy it, but I don't want to spend the money on the CD.
2) I download a copy of The Killer's Hot Fuss. I listen to it daily.
In neither of these scenarios does anyone associated with The Killer's get any money from me. I've harmed them as much in scenario 2 as I have in scenario 1. In scenario 2, they probably don't even know that I've downloaded their works.
The last quoted line of yours is the telling one. They don't deserve anything just because I like the music. They don't even deserve anything just because I listen to it, or just because I have a copy of it which I can listen to on demand, except for the fact that absurd laws claim that they do.
I'm not against copyright in the least. I think that we wouldn't live in the culture-rich world we have if it wasn't for them. But I can't abide by the tricks that the media cartels have used to increase their stranglehold on media. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_Term_Extension_Act says it best: This law effectively 'froze' the advancement date of the public domain in the United States for works covered by the older fixed term copyright rules. Under this Act, additional works made in 1923 or afterwards that were still copyrighted in 1998 will not enter the public domain until 2019 or afterwards (depending on the date of the product) unless the owner of the copyright releases them into the public domain prior to that or if the copyright gets extended again. Laws like this and the DMCA, which allows companies to arbitrarily remove certain of people's rights, are simply unacceptable. The major content producers who lobby for these laws aren't playing by the rules--why should we, as consumers?
Well, the OP went wrong in that slavery is forced, while SK chooses to write. But at a higher level, if writers in general cannot get paid for their labor, they will out of necessety have to do something else.
Some may still write, many won't. The end result is that we have far less literary works, which is a net loss for society, since some of those works would be thought provoking and may cause changes in societies thinking. For example, 1984 had a fairly large impact when it was first released, an impact that had lasted for quite sometime.
As humans, part of our existence is having some kind of shared culture. Art in all its forms is important, otherwise we're just little more than animals. May as well go back to hunting and gathering.
It is always illegal, but it is generally a violation of civil law rather than criminal law, which is a very important distinction. In countries like the USA and UK, some forms of copyright infringement are indeed crimes, but IIRC that's generally reserved for cases where someone is actually running a commercial counterfeiting operation or something along those lines. The exact threshold varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
* Unlike theft, which is always a crime. You may draw your own conclusions.