In that case, you’d better go after Haley Joel Osment for stealing our hearts in A.I., and Rickey Henderson for stealing 130 bases in 1982. Stealing is stealing, right?
Hey, you’re the one who wanted to use legal definitions. Is a cite from Janet Reno good enough for ya?
Not unless Janet Reno has joined Congress and passed a law equating theft with copyright infringement.
From the context of that article, it seems clear that she was using the word “theft” to add weight and connotation–the same way it’s been used in this very thread. She wasn’t proposing that pirates would be convicted of theft.
She does make reference to the “No Electronic Theft Act”. However, violating that act doesn’t make you a thief, any more than violating the “Patriot Act” makes you unpatriotic.
Ok, on behalf of the pro-filesharing contingent, I would like you to disregard every post made by Mr2001 and just scroll back to the last Sam Stone post instead.
With that said Coldfire’s “Common Sense” comment is laughable. There IS no common sense on this issue. That’s why it’s so hotly debated, both sides have logical arguments. In this particular thread more were presented by the pro than the con side however.
Let’s look at the facts.
All the anti-sharing statistics are released by the RIAA.
Multiple pro-sharing statistics have been released by numerous artists, and marketing agencies.
RIAA statistics show widely shared albums such as Eminem - The Eminem Show, Moby - Play, and Radiohead - Kid A, that albums released on the internet long before their release oftentimes go on to be the number one album, even when they are albums we would never expect, or if not number one sell a whole hell of a lot of copies.
the RIAA controls traditional radio, and now internet radio. Filesharing is the only viable source for downloading of music and hearing a cross section that is not controlled by the RIAA that is left to us at this point.
There are numerous legitimate uses of file-sharing, such as downloading a digital copy of something you purchased on tape or album, downloading obscure back catalogue material (I don’t care if the record label objects to this one, their usury is not my concern).
Independent labels are woefully under-represented in this issue. There have been no statistics released about independent labels, and I know many labels that are doing much better now than they were in 96.
Electronic music fans were one of the earliest adopters of file sharing, which is why it is so easy to find even extremely obscure electronic music and file sharing programs cater specifically to it. Electronic music is a style of music that had a very small market share prior to file sharing, and it’s downright mainstream at this point.
The RIAA uses bloated statistics such as mention of Britney Spears and Mariah Carey, who’s sales dropped, but were both “trends”, and everyone knew they would have no longevity. Everyone laughs at Michael Jackson suing Sony for lack of album sales, why don’t you laugh when the RIAA claims that Britney Spears and Mariah Carey’s sales were due to file sharing rather than the natural order of their decline.
The RIAA does not release statistics based upon trends regarding the shelf life of music based upon genre. If they did we would realize that Mariah Carey and Britney Spears both enjoyed a much longer shelf life than their predecessors, such as New Kids on the Block, Marky Mark, Vanilla Ice and the Spice Girls.
On to the topic of stealing.
Let’s look at this from two angles. Legally and Morally.
Legally: enough said, it’s stealing.
Morally: This is one that gets bandied about that doesn’t make sense to me. How is filesharing immoral? Did you ever feel guilty when your friend made you a mix tape in the past? I am the “worst” type of filesharer, I share and download full albums almost exclusively. However, when I was full time gainfully employed I oftentimes brought home 5 CDs in a week in addition to my file sharing activities. And trust me, I was filesharing before it was even a hotbutton issue, and I was downloading full albums then too. I’ve also promoted CDs that I’ve been interested in as much as I can, and gone to MANY shows, dragged my friends to those shows, and convinced many of them to purchase these albums.
I understand the idea of intellectual property very well, I’ve studied it and I think it’s a necessary facet of society. The idea of intellectual property was designed with progress in mind. The idea was to give the rights holder a monetary incentive to develop their product for the betterment of society. What happens when intellectual property rights begin to hinder this idea? Where does the morality issue come into play there?
Now last, at what point in our celebrity obsessed culture decide that musicians DESERVE to make millions of dollars? I still view it that musicians are LUCKY if they get to survive off of what they do. I am a musician and I do it for free, in fact I don’t even show my friends what I do most of the time, no matter what aspect of my art it is. I’ve even had people who I did show say that it was really good. So this kind of refutes the idea that artists will not create anything without a financial incentive doesn’t it? What about all those artists who have spent more money on expensive equipment and DIY’d it and haven’t recouped the money they’ve laid out, let alone started making a handsome profit? I think that saying that artists will stop producing without a payment incentive is really insulting to these guys.
So if you’re going to say it’s common sense, that’s a fine cop-out, but we’d prefer if you had some backup for that, as much has been provided to say that common sense is exactly the opposite of what you’re saying.
There was a lame ad-hominem somewhere in this thread regarding the artists who wrote lengthy articles about this subject in the pro category having label disputes. Label disputes are common with a record label, and how does this deny a well thought out rebuttal to what corporate America is shoving down our throats as “common sense”?
I’d like to reiterate my point about independent labels, because what I think is happening is that mp3 filesharing is causing independent labels to get more exposure and THAT is eating into the market share of the RIAA, moreso than illegal downloads.
Erek
P.S.
If you’re an artist and you can have exposure to 10,000 people with 50% of sales to those people or exposure to 100,000 people with 10% of sales, which would you choose?
mswas - the decision on whether or not a song is made available to the public for free should be made by the artist, not by any joe blow who bought the artist’s CD. Which is my main objection to systems like Napster.
Who says that an artist can’t make his albums available for download, if the artist wants to? No one in this thread that I saw.
Arnold: That’s reasonable. Would you please address the moral issue regarding the download of intellectual property. Where does it become a moral issue? Is intellectual property some inherent right? Do we OWN our thoughts, even after we put them into the public sphere? Or are those rights to the ownership of our thoughts granted through a well-reasoned desire to inspire you to use them for the betterment of society?
My thought on this is that it cannot be that rigid, while yes intellectual property is the cornerstone of our market, I think that philisophically we must treat it more as a strenuous suggestion, as opposed to an rigid code of conduct.
Then again my laissez faire view of morality has disgusted many on this board.
Erek
Read the whole paragraph, Mr2001. It concludes: “No one in this thread that I saw.”
Please direct me to Public Enemy’s record label’s post in this thread. I must have missed it.
mswas - Since you want to know my opinion on intellectual property - yes a person should have a right of “ownership” to their intellectual property. When I create a painting or a poster, and if I tell Coca-Cola “I don’t want you to use my image to sell Coke” I should have the right to say that. If I want to tell Nike “I don’t want you using my song to sell sneakers” I should have the right to say that too. And finally I should also have the right to say “I want to make a living by selling this song, so I don’t want anyone to make copies of my recording and give it away for free.”
Mr2001 - then Public Enemy should change their record label. If Public Enemy wants to make their music available for free but it is too difficult for them to change record labels (i.e. they would suffer a financial penalty from doing so), they can take out a one-page ad in Rolling Stone saying “fans - use Napster! Put all our songs and albums on the internet! We give your our permission.”
It should still be up to the artists, not to anyone who has purchased the CD.
How is downloading a music file to evaluate before purchasing the CD any different from my going to library to check out a copy of that same CD?
The difference is that Libraries are considered a ‘public good’, and are therefore given more leeway with how they treat copywritten materials. Hell, they even have photocopy machines in them so you can copy passages of books you need.
How many people don’t buy books because they can go to the library and borrow them and read them without paying? Is that immoral?
And I’m old enough to remember when the record companies tried to get albums removed from libraries, too.
My point is that file sharing networks are a public good. They are an important innovation that allows ‘web’ browsing of large binary files. Music is but only one thing that can be ‘shared’.
In any event, there is also no evidence that file sharing does not hurt record labels, and for damned sure isn’t hurting the artists. There is plenty of evidence that it really helps the smaller artists who can’t get radio play.
The real intent of the RIAA is to shut down a line of distribution that they don’t control. Give artists an alternative, and maybe they won’t want to sign multi-album contracts with such bad conditions that they will not make a penny from them unless they sell millions.
If you want evidence of that motivation, look what they just did to internet radio - a distribution medium which was perfectly willing to pay the exact same royalties as broadcast radio. The RIAA instead demanded usury royalty rates that would have been impossible to meet.
mswas, I agree with you almost entirely. However, you can’t just dismiss Mr2001 either. He raises valid points, and as one who DOES, in fact, create something and give it away freely, I think his opinion is perhaps even more valid and relevant than the rest of the people in the thread (myself included).
Now here I have another disagreement. If I purchase a cd, then I will do with it as I please. If that means lending it out, playing it out my window, putting the tracks on my computer, etc, I will do so.
What we have is an industry that wants to have its cake and eat it too:
When I buy a cd…
Did I purchase a thing? If I buy a chair, then I can copy it, give it away, resell it, burn it, whatever I want, because I bought it and it’s mine. If I break it, I have to buy another one.
Did I purchase a license to use the music? If so, and the label wants to control my use of it, then I should be entitled to replacement media when I break it, like when I buy a computer program. I should not have to pay for another one, since I already paid the licensing fee once, and that is enough. The media are only to deliver the product, and immaterial to the product itself.
But when I buy a cd, they want to control my use, as though it were a license for the music and the media were only packaging, AND if I break it, I have to pay for it all over again. It seems to be some strange thing/license hybrid, where the label retains all rights and the purchaser has none. If I have no rights regarding the music I buy, then I want the damn thing for free.
You can’t have it both ways.
The quoted section was from Arnold, of course, not mswas.
Joe_Cool: That’s something I never thought of regarding the licensing, that’s a great point.
As for Mr2001. It’s not that I think he has no point, I just think he’s presenting it in a very spurious way, that makes it seem less legitimate.
Erek
Doesn’t the copyright law apply to public broadcast as well? So isn’t DJing a track in a club technically illegal as well?
Erek
Mr2001:
If a felony charge doesn’t equate copyright infringment with theft then I don’t know what does.
Well, if it did, then you’d be right. But nowhere in your quote does it say that copyright infringement is theft. It provides felony punishment for reproduction within specific parameters, but it does not equate it with theft at all. Doesn’t even mention theft, in fact.
Maybe there’s a paragraph you left out?
Or are you saying that murder, rape, battery, etc can be equated with theft, since they all carry felony charges?
My hope was to move away from loaded words like theft.
I see the word theft here just like the word murder in an abortion debate: a way to distract readers from the real issues. An abortion debate where one side repeats “c’mon, admit it, it’s murder” isn’t going to get very far.
Of course, since this is the Pit, maybe it doesn’t really matter.
Mr2001: Heh, well I think Abortion is murder, but I am pro-choice. Wrap your mind around that one. 
I also believe that file-sharing IS theft.
However my question is not whether theft is wrong or not, but are there certain occasions where theft is beneficial to society as a whole?
I think this is one of those occcasions.
I’d like to see that also. The word theft is inaccurate to describe copyright infringement. (even though both can be felonies under the right circumstances).
But even worse, is the phrase intellectual property. Because there is no such thing under the normal meaning of those words.
Copyright is a government granted monopoly on commercial exploitation of an idea/expression in exchange for sharing the idea/expression with the world (and eventually, for the idea/expression to go into the public domain).
Is not property in any sense of the word, and the courts have expressly rejected arguments in the past that attempt to equate it explicitly to the body of law governing property.
The term intellectual property is commonly used primarily because large copyright holders have waged a concerted campaign over the years to convince people that ideas can be property. Why? Because once you convince someone that an idea can be property, then it’s easy to convince him that it is proper for a copyright to have long, or even infinite duration. Just like property.
Call it what it is: a monopoly, and people intuitively understand that it’s a mixed good/bad thing that should have limited duration and carefully controlled scope. Any enforcement of copyright law is a restraint of free speach, and as such, should only be allowed when it can be demonstrated that the good outweighs the bad.
As a rule, any use of copyrighted material that doesn’t reduce the incentive to create is allowed. And certain uses that might reduce the incentive to create are still protected to insure a balance of the tension between 1st amendment protection and the copyright monopoly power.
Permanent copyright would be hugely damaging to long term creativity, but could be very profitable for copyright holders in the short term, and so this idea is very attractive to corporations that have large holdings of existing material, and don’t trust their ability to create anything new. What they want, more than anything is to be allowed to charge rent on their current holdings in perpetuity.
i.e. they want copyrights to behave like property, even though they aren’t, (and the constitution doesn’t allow them to be). But if they convince enough people that copyrights are property, the battle to get them to be treated legally as such is half won.
For too many years, a few large copyright holders have been purchasing unconstitutional and damaging changes to copyright laws. Don’t help them by using their misleading terminology
I urge all of you in the interest of speaking clearly, to purge the misleading term intellectual property from your vocabulary. Call it what it is: intellectual monopoly.