I believe that I have a right to sell goods, services, the product of my labor, intellectually, and creatively. I can determine the conditions under which I choose to sell.
You may choose to buy or not to buy under those conditions. What I believe that you don’t have the right to, is to obtain the fruits of my labor (intellectual or otherwise) under conditions that I did not agree to.
You don’t have the right to cheat off me on a test. You don’t have the right to take fruit out of my garden w/o my permission. And, if I’m selling tape recordings of my lovely voice singing “Kid Rock’s greatest hits” (after paying the appropriate royalties to those who own the rights), I don’t believe that you have the right to sneak over to my house and place a microphone next to my window and record said piece.
YM obviously varies.
We’ve argued the moral position, and taken different sides. Of course, to date, the law agrees w/my position (AFAIK).
If I download a song so I can listen to it at any time, how is that different in practice than being able to walk next door and listen to my friend’s copy at any time? In both cases, I can take advantage of the artist’s work without paying for it. I’m enjoying the song without paying the artist.
Since whether I have a copy on my disk has no effect on my ability to use the artist’s work without paying for it, why does it matter whether I have a copy on my disk?
Content merchants have always assured us that we aren’t buying the medium, we’re buying the information. How do you even define whether information is in your possession? A knowledgeable musician could “take possession” of a score simply by listening to a performance. Is he breaking the law by having a copy of the score in his brain, or by writing it down when he gets come from the symphony?
I agree that those are legal. My point was that file sharing (at least in many instances) is equivalent to those legal activities, in terms of the benefit received by the listener and the compensation received by the artist, even though it may not be legal under our current laws.
Why is it not “stealing” to listen to the music without compensating the artist, but it becomes “stealing” the instant you make a copy? The potential sale has already been lost; the artist isn’t losing anything more just because I don’t have to go next door to listen to the CD.
Ummm, no. As long as I don’t say so, It is not theft. Now, I’m not totally obnoxious to all the statements you and others made mind you!
Take these two examples:
A big rich evil multinational corporation (BREMC) reproduces the plans for the cold fusion powered flying car from a poor polish immigrant leaving him the original plans. I consider that theft of intellectual property.
A five years old kid dying from stomach cancer in somalia downloads “We are the World” in mp3. I do not consider that theft of intellectual property.
Sure, i deliberately exagerated the examples beyond the reasonable (and possibly the unreasonable). But the only difference i wanted to point out is that the poor polish scientist (why is he polish anyways? make him french so we won’t feel as bad for him) was obviously stripped off all the potential benefits he could have enjoyed would he have sold his invention.
While the BREMC (which also has the rights to “We Are the World” by the way) doesn’t lose anything by letting that poor poor dying little angel listen to a stupid song.
So, in the one hand, you have the theft of confidential IP and on the other the MISUSE of a BROADLY distributed product WITHOUT any kind of re-distribution, reselling, etc.
everything concerning piracy falls within these two extreme examples. It all depends on number figures. How many little somalians? how many little americans who buy the song?
And if anyone tells me that $100 bills are broadly distributed products and that stealing them and not using them {ie:buying something with them) is still theft, i will…umm…I don’t know…there must be some kind of difference!
I wouldn’t necessarily have to walk, I could call him on the phone and say “how about playing that Eminem track for me?”
Or if I wanted to be really ludicrous, he could set a boom box on his windowsill, and I could reach out my window with a broom handle and press “play” whenever I wanted to hear the song.
The bottom line is that I can take advantage of the artist’s labor without compensation, even if I don’t have a physical copy of the song. A physical copy makes it easier to take advantage of the work in most cases, but not all - which is easier, searching through boxes in the attic to find old Beatles records, then praying that my record player still works, or just going next door?
For that matter, what about downloading copies of tracks that I already bought on cassette or LP? If I’m buying the information and not the medium, surely I must have the right to obtain that information from somewhere other than the original medium.
So which is the immoral part: taking advantage of the artist’s labor without compensating him, or making a physical copy of his works from an unofficial source?
wring, one problem I have with your position is the resources that need to be employed to enforce these laws you support. I claim that it isn’t worth the cost to society in terms of tax dollars spent on enforcing that which, in my opinion, should be the province of the businesses themselves.
Furthermore, this is not private theft, this is just a change in available technology, that just so happens to screw over an industry. I imagine the automobile put a lot of people out of business when it came out, too. The only difference here is subtle and profound: Nobody is making money off this. Think about that, because that is what our public policy now boils down to.
I say phooey to that line of thought. I don’t want to suppress technology. I like seeing the Shawn Fannings of the world creating exciting new products that change how we interact with it, and if some companies lose their market share, so be it. Thats capitalism. I believe corporations have a responsibility to ensure their product has a viable market. If technology comes along and changes the landscape of that market, I don’t believe it is the governments job to suppress that technology. It is the corporations job to deal with it.
As a side note, if the idiot RIAA had just let napster continue, they would have insituted a subscription system, paid them royalties, and everyone would live happily ever after. Instead they drove napster out of business, fragmented the P2P market, and now have an even bigger problem since they have to shut down dozens of P2P networks.
And FTR, the reason the law agrees w/your position is because they are run by and for businesses, not the public.
Scope. A library has a very limited amount of any particular CD, often, just one. Once it ends up on Kazaa, there is the ability for millions to sample it. So assuming you don’t copy the library’s material, you are indeed paying for its use (libraries are not free, you just aren’t directly charged when you borrow).
I thought I covered this under ‘Fair Use’. Same as two roommates using one CD. The problem comes when one makes a copy so that both can enjoy simultaneously.
Now let’s move from the white area into the light grey. In my previously linked thread, I mentioned how some 20-odd years ago we had a 5 member LP buying club. I realise NOW that what I was doing was illegal (and I’m not going to say that had I realized then I would not have done it - that was then, this is now). Up until a day or three ago, I felt it was borderline Fair Use, because I never researched the subject. Looking at it, thanks to other posters research, I realize it was not Fair Use, and indeed I was infringing on the rights of the copyright holders. [aside]I’ve replaced the vast majority of my tapes and LPs with CDs legally purchased over the years. Doesn’t negate my actions at the time though[/aside]
However, the scope was negligible. Move forward a score of years, instead of making a degrading, imperfect copy (cassette tape), someone rips a perfect copy to post on Morpheus not only for his five friends to enjoy and avoid paying for, but for five million others to potentially also avoid paying for.
I also feel that knowledge of copyright infringement is more widely known now than it was 20 some-odd years ago. (Actually, I believe teenagers today are far better informed than when I was that age, and I considered myself fairly well informed) I’m fairly certain I speak for most of my little group when I say we didn’t know that we were infringing on the copyright, and I know I wasn’t making excuses to justify it. {I know, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse”}
Of course there’s a difference. The difference is that with the former, I have a physical object that I can point to and say “that’s mine, you can’t take it.”
My question is why that difference is relevant to the morality of the situation, since the possession of a physical object (produced at no cost to the artist) seems to be the only difference.
The artist is unaffected by whether or not I have a physical object that contains a representation of his work. His bank account and his listener base are exactly the same, whether I listen to my friend’s copy every morning or whether I listen to my own illegal copy every morning. The artist’s labor was invested in producing the song–the information–not the disc itself.
tulley, my thoughts against piracy are most decidely not a vote for the RIAA. I’ve likened them to a dinosaur that won’t evolve and yet refuses to go extinct. Smart thing would have been to embrace and adapt to the new technologies from the outset. They’re idiots trying to refight a battle they already lost. That does not make stealing from them right.
Gozu, the problem is not the one poor dying child. The problem is the 5 million users who also has access. Slippery slope argument approaching, but if everyone is getting something for nothing, why should (the figurative) I pay for it? Games, software, music…as long as one copy gets out there, why should I have to pay if you’re going to receive the same benefit for free? Either I somehow force you to pay or get it for free myself. Wash, rinse, repeat. This is the danger I see. The cat is already out of the bag. At what point do we decide to put him back in?
tulley ‘no one’s making $$ off of it’? There’s no bootlegging going on? riiiiiiight. Also, some people most decidedly are making less money because of it.
I’ll ask for a cite from you regarding this
or feel free to retract it as unsupportable rhetoric.
You don’t like the record co’s. Got it. Doesn’t make it right to steal from them.
When I said no one was making money off it, I was referring to the P2P technology. Thats what I meant by the ‘change in technology’ in the lead sentence of the paragraph to which you were referring.
I’m not going to spell out every instance of government complicity with businesses. It happens every day, just read the paper. You can start with a search on Enron and work your way down. I may have overstated the case, but not by much. Government is a tool for business. They contribute to the election campaigns, and they don’t do it out of the kindness of their hearts.
Furthermore, its a little annoying that you chose to ignore the substance of my argument and pop off on the more recondite details. I’d ask that you actually read what I wrote before making flippant remarks. Comments like “You don’t like the record co’s. Got it.” which have absolutely no relevence to the argument I made don’t help this discussion.
well, refusing to support your claim that the law agrees w/me because it’s controled by business (“Just read the paper” ?!?!) demonstrates that whatever you post you’re not willing to attempt to support it with substance.
I didn’t want to bother because it was really a tangential point to this whole discussion. But since you’d rather quibble over minor details and ignore the main argument i guess we really are done.
and I asked that you prove it or retract it as rhetoric.
(hint, your better option would have been to say, ok, I was exaggerating for effect)
your first attempt at ‘proof’ was the statement that I should ‘read the papers’. And now, you link to two stories linking Enron to the Bush administration, and another about Bush’s ties to the Anderson group.
You’d still be better off admitting that you were using rhetorical hyperbole.
Neither cite proves your contention that laws are run by businesses not ‘the people’. I agree that big businesses can indeed influence some legislation, however, even that doesn’t come up to the level that you’re claiming. Copyright laws can be (and have been) used by the “little guy” to protect their ideas etc from being stolen (see threads here about plagerism). And, of course, it was the judiciary who shut Napster down, not the executive or legislative branches.
If you wonder why I’m not ‘addressing your main arguments’ or whatever, this is an example. If you wish to be taken seriously, you shouldn’t post hyperbolic crap and when called on it make these lame attempts to substantiate it.
No, the owners aren’t getting compensated but since I’m not keeping the MP3’s I don’t think they aren’t getting robbed either. They’re still making as much money as they would have done anyway. They’re just not making as much as thet could be making by doing what they are doing now and ensuring that the average consumer has little insight into what it is they’re actually buying. I find this dishonest and disingenuous which is why I find it prudent to investigate the CD’s before they buy. All I’m doing is levelling the playing field. All you are doing is defending the uneven integrity of that playing field.
Now, as I’ve stated repeatedly in this thread, the way I use the software doesn’t actually cost the companies or the artists. I feel it is important to distinguish between them not making as much money as they could be making through disingenuously keeping me in the dark about the quality of my purchases and them actually losing money. Before my purchase their company has a dollar value X. Now, my perusals do not cause that dollar value to fall one iota.
I am asserting that the moral obligation is on their shoulders to ensure that their customers are getting a fair deal.
Well those ‘alternatives’ are sorely lacking. To recap they were:
a) Cuts off the radio - This is inferior to file sharing since I can only listen to it once. Therefore it is not a viable alternative. Anyway, there’s nothing to stop me taping the song off the radio and from there transferring it to my PC. Therefore radio’s are avenues to piracy. Since I am misusing the format to create copies for which the author is not compensated, should we legislate against radio? Or should we conclude that the fact that people misuse some equipment and software is not grounds for legislating against said equipment and software? Common sense argues for the latter.
b) Borrow from the Library: This is also inferior to file sharing. Tell you what. Next time you are at your library look for the following artists:
Dominic Miller
Pinback
Super furry Animals
Underworld
Cradle of Filth
Starsailor
The Coral
Idlewild - Look for the title 100 broken windows
Eminem (Pre “The Slim Shady LP”)
Katheryn Williams
These are all albums in my record collection. They do not exist as far as my local library is concerned. Therefore libraries are not a viable alternative to file sharing either. At least, not from the consumers point of view. However, according to your reasoning as I read it, the consumers point of view isn’t worth two bent pennies anyway.
Also, file sharing offers other benefits. For example, I downloaded a studio demo for the REM song Beachball which isn’t available on any CD anywhere. That studio demo is so damn good (seriously, I’m not making this up) that I decided not to download anything else from that album and bought it the day it came out. You’d never, ever, ever hear that studio demo anywhere else but on the net and also the companies would never have made any profit out of it anyway. Maybe we can change the rules when it comes to studio demo’s? I find that, at least, in line with your reasoning.
3) Listen to cuts in the store - Well, since the cuts in most record stores (and I’m thinking mainly of stores like Virgin and HMV here, I don’t know if they’re too prevalent in America.) are composed of 90% teeny bop garbage they are not a viable alternative either. Also, they hardly ever play the whole song.
So, while there are alternatives to theft, they are not only inconvenient, they do absolutely nothing whatsoever to give the consumer any insight whatsoever into the product they are going to buy when compared to file sharing. They are not ‘alternatives’ in any way, shape or form, they are merely stopgaps. The word alternative implies that they are just as good as file sharing. They are, as I’ve just demonstrated, utterly inferior in almost every important way. They playing field is still uneven. The consumer is still having to rely on guesswork to get what he or she wants. In short, we are still not being offered a fair deal. That is what is immoral.
For your argument to work you need to find a legal alternative to file sharing which is as effective as file sharing in giving the consumer insight into what they want to buy. You know as well as I do that this is patently impossible.
Why on earth should the owner be compensated for what I’m not going to buy? Let’s just carry that logic all the way through and introduce a CD tax, deductable from source each month.
No, I’m just not helping him. I am denying him money he would have gotten by trying these ‘legal’ ways but since I see no reason why I should have to pay for things I don’t want and therefore see no reason to pay for seeing which albums fall into this category, I see nothing immoral about this. On the contrary, by deying me the opportunity to find out what I actually want (which they do since the ‘legal alternatives’ are woefully inadequate, not just inconvenient), then demanding that I buy based on no knowledge of what I want to buy, they themselves are committing an immoral act. It is an exact reverse of the situation you presented me with. Under the current system the situation is win/sometimes win and win/sometimes lose. However, in this instance it is biased in the record companies favour. Why is it immoral if this is biased in my favour but not immoral when it’s biased in their favour? As a hint, the answer “because it’s their property” doesn’t answer the question. It’s my money.
It most certainly does. If I am asking their cash in return for the product rules should be laid down to ensure that the consumer is not swindled. Currently there are standards applied to CD’s that are not applied to other products. If you want to buy a pair of shoes, you are allowed to try them on first, to see if you like them. If you are buying a book you are allowed not prohibited from flicking through the first few chapters to see if you like it. While the authors have been financially compensated once for a copy of his book (or five times for five copies, or whatever) doesn’t change the fact that potentially dozens of people could read through their work effectively for free. Would you support the creation of an official website which compensated the author for, say, a few hundred copies of a song on MP3 and then allowed me to test them out for free? This is the exact same system operating in our bookshops. You’ve said as much yourself. Regardless, there is no such system in place whatsoever for CD’s. Well, actually there is, it’s called file sharing but for some reason it’s immoral in this one case only. Let me ask you, if shoe shops and bookshops removed this right to try what you buy first, would you feel ripped off if you bought something you either found uncomfortable or unreadable later? Of course you would. Whether the record companies are under a legal obligation is a question for the lawyers but whether they are under a moral obligation is unquestionable. They most certainly are.
But I am arguing that what is currently a want (the desire to check what you buy before you buy it) should be a right. The fact that it currently isn’t shouldn’t be used to justify the fact that it currently isn’t.
By the way, there was an argument in my previous post which you didn’t comment on. It was:
Do you have any comments in respect of the idea that just because some people use file sharing to download with no intention of buying, that shouldn’t be used to discriminate against the people who use it with the intention of merely exercising some customer discretion?
Hmmm, dying of stomach cancer you say? - I need more information about the child; what is his name, favourite colour, date of birth and lucky number - you see all of these criteria are just as relevant to the question of whether it is theft of intellectual property.
This strays a bit from the OP, but you have claimed a number of times that the media companies are trying to accomodate new technologies, but that it takes time, thus their draconian stance on file-sharing, et al. This isn’t really true, though. The media companies aren’t trying to come to terms with new technology, they’re trying to kill it. Napster came along and revolutionized P2P file sharing. The record companies had it shut down. Even though there were very legitimate uses for such a program, they killed it. When that Russian programmer found a way to defeat the copy protection for one of Adobe’s products in a way that DIDN’T EVEN CONTRIBUTE TO PIRACY (it was in order to allow the blind to use the product), Adobe had him arrested, because it was technology that, in their eyes, potentially could help pirates. Adobe is routinely in the business of buying technologies that could hurt their monopoly and then burying them (I work with some ex-Adobe employees, so I get to hear the horror stories). This is what you call “making an attempt to catch up with techonolgy”? I call it “trying their damnedest to keep technological advances from happening”.
Jeff