# Is there a historical precedent for the current digital filesharing situation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 17, 2008, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520 "2008-12-17T04:49:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2009, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520/181 "2009-01-07T19:21:55Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > A proposal I outlined in another thread was to suppose we had a popular recording artist like Madonna who we wished would make another album. So we create a fund that people donate to, anonymously or otherwise (I don’t think it matters), and if Madonna thinks the fund compensates her for her efforts, she produces and takes the money. If not, then not, and we can pull our money out at any time. After she creates her work, reproduction rights go to whoever can reproduce it, be that me on my computer or not. It seems likely to me that this sort of escrowed patronage will become the de facto method of paying musicians before too long. There are some coordination problems to be solved, but the end result won’t be that much different than things are now, except that compensation will be effectively shifted by one release. Since there’s no way to know whether the work you are going to pay for is any good, you’re essentially paying for the previous released work. That’s certainly already the way that release sales work. People starting out will still pretty much work for free, and those with an established reputation will be able to make plenty of money. This has the added effect that one-hit wonders probably won’t rest on their laurels. They’ll release at least one more song/book/movie because they want to capture the income generated by the popularity of their previous work. ---
**Author:** ![1010011010](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/ea666f/32.png) [@1010011010](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1010011010)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2009, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520/182 "2009-01-08T03:08:55Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > How is that fair to the person that spent significant time and money creating something? They get paid to create things. They don’t necessarily get paid every time someone listens to, looks at, or uses the thing they’ve created. If you kept tabs on the various schemes put forth by various corporations to whom we grant copyrights, they plan to use those rights to charge you every time you listen to, look at, or use the thing we’ve granted them temporary rights over. Corporations cannot create anything themselves but they can commission “work for hire” where a creator is paid to create something, but they do not receive the copyright over their creation. An interesting side effect is that occasionally a creator will continue creating, but their future creations violate the copyright on the contracted work for hire. If the corporation to whom we have granted copyright is uninterested in further work, the creator is essentially blocked from further creative progress in their original vein. There are reasons completely unrelated to a desire to infringe copyright (via filesharing) for viewing the claims to rights by corporations as illegitimate and without authority. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2009, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520/183 "2009-01-08T03:55:23Z")
> [@Dan\_Norder](#): > > Wow, talk about an argument that’s completely off the rails. By your argument murder laws won’t work, general theft laws won’t work, and, in fact, no laws will ever work. Think about what you’d have to do to steal your neighbour’s stuff, and the risk involved. Compare it with the difficulty of stealing a copyrighted song, and the risk involved. There’s a reason why a large part of the population is stealing copyrighted songs, and a way smaller part are stealing their neighbours’ stuff. Be sure that if it anybody could download your stuff by clicking on an anonymous link, you wouldn’t have anything left in your house, whether you like it or not. And believing, as you seem to propose, that all music-downloaders can possibly be found and punished is just a pipe dream. At some point, you just have to adapt to reality. At ---
**Author:** ![Crazy\_Canuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazy_canuck/32/5282_2.png) [@Crazy\_Canuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazy_Canuck)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2009, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520/184 "2009-01-08T23:57:38Z")
> [@Dan\_Norder](#): > > Wow, talk about an argument that’s completely off the rails. By your argument murder laws won’t work, general theft laws won’t work, and, in fact, no laws will ever work. You are correct in a sense. If a law is unpopular enough that a large percentage of the population breaks it **without consequence** than that law doesn’t work. The large group breaking the law freely part is crucial. Theft and murder don’t fall into that category. > [@Dan\_Norder](#): > > You can stop greedy bastards by fining them so they have less money if they copy other people’s stuff, because it hits them in the pocketbook. Repeat, serious offenders can be thrown in jail if necessary. People who won’t learn will be punished, and all the people who are capable of learning from other people’s mistakes will see they can’t get away with it. At that point they either learn to pay if they want it or to go without it. Simple. It’s the foundation for law enforcement the world over, and something anyone who has paid attention to the world at all should understand. Not even close to feasible. Disregarding encrypted anonymous filesharing systems like freenet, which would make the problem of finding them even harder, there is no way you can even scratch the surface of this issue without collapsing the court system. We are talking about millions of violations annually, many happening across international boundaries with different laws. Good luck applying good old law enforcement to this problem. I think a pipe dream comes pretty close to describing it. > [@Dan\_Norder](#): > > Unfortunately the “I want things for free, wah, wah, give it to me” crowd refuses to acknowledge how simple it is because they want to try to justify their greediness as something the rest of the world just has to accept. Screw that. You can be greedy all the want, but that doesn’t entitle you to anything. It’s funny how you can miss the point so thoroughly. The “gimme it for free crowd” doesn’t want to change the system. They like it the way it is, because right now you can get free stuff easily. Any copyright change would have to figure out a way to get money to the artists from the consumers in some way, shape or form to be acceptable to society. Whether through ISP or blank disc taxes or even some other exotic scheme, it means paying for it, so the free crowd likes things the way they are. The people who want to change it just see that it is broken, and wonder how we can fix it. I don’t think that heavier enforcement is the solution. Heavy enforcement of drug laws hasn’t changed drug use one bit, why do you expect this to play out differently? Like someone said upthread, it’s not the severeness of the punishment, it is **how likely you are to be punished**. And I don’t see any changes to that likelihood coming. ---
**Author:** ![Jamicat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c67d28/32.png) [@Jamicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jamicat)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520/185 "2009-01-09T16:41:40Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > You’re a musician. You spend years perfecting your craft. You work at a low paying job so you’ll have the time to practice your instrument and work on your songs. After several years you hone your skills and come up with an album of great beauty and originality. You make $0.00 off it because everyone gets a free copy. You say “fuck this” and go to law school. Yea pretty much that :mad: ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520/186 "2009-01-14T06:26:36Z")
> [@jessesheeran](#): > > I used to be a paid member on this message board named bookbuster. If you have not already arranged for the change in username with an Administrator, I advise you to do so immediately. [QUOTE=Registration Agreement] [Only one screen name is permitted per user. If you wish to change screen names please email an administrator. Use of multiple screen names is grounds for revocation of your right to post under ANY screen name.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=423183) [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![1010011010](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/1/ea666f/32.png) [@1010011010](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/1010011010)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520/187 "2009-01-15T10:57:59Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > If you have not already arranged for the change in username with an Administrator, I advise you to do so immediately. Strange reason to bump a thread. How exactly do y’all go about authenticating people who show up and say “I was **$username** years ago… can I have my account back?” via one of these requests? I’d interpret that clause to be about users posting under new accounts after being suspended or operating multiple accounts simultaneously (i.e. sock-puppeteering), not an effort to tie a unique individual to their collected posting history throughout all time. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520/188 "2009-01-15T21:38:57Z")
Say that you hear someone singing a song in a public park. You are fairly astute musically so that you can readily remember and sing it pretty much as you heard it. Now you yourself are in a public park much like the one you were previously. You are inspired to sing what you previously heard. Did you steal that song? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-historical-precedent-for-the-current-digital-filesharing-situation/477520.md?page=9)