Time for a renewed fracas on Illegal Downloading (Re: Thomas Verdict)

[Musicat]

@control-z

I still don’t see how they can ever prove that she even posessed the songs in question, that she used Kazaa, and that she was the one operating the computer sharing the songs. Without finding them on her computer where’s the case?

Check this thread for answers, but briefly, the RIAA downloaded the songs from her using KaZaA, so they know she made them available to the public thru that program’s functions. They could not prove she was the one who ran or installed the KaZaA program, loaded the songs on the computer or was present when they were downloaded. None of that mattered; she was found guilty of violating a law that says “you may not offer them to the public”.

I don’t agree with the decision, I’m just stating the facts as the court saw them.

[Indistinguishable]

@Bricker

Still, if we can simply assume, as a matter of law, that the apple droppers are dropping apples illegally, that they have no right to do so… and then remember we’re punihsing THEM, rather than the innocent one that reaches for a single free apple… then we might be closer to a useful model.

Perhaps. But the question still arises as to whether it’s worth it to invest the resources it takes to try to put an end to the apple-rainers, if it’s so extremely easy to rain down apples all over the world. That is to say, we might question the use of the particular matter of law at hand here, pointing out that it is not much easier to enforce than the alternative law which would punish those who picked up apples.

[Peter_Morris]

@Martin Hyde

A bit of an aside, but haven’t most musicians always made the lion’s share of their take-home pay from live performances?

As I understand it, and I’m by no means an expert, even The Beatles and Elvis only got a tiny fraction of the money from record sales. The record company takes most of that.

However, artistes get paid a royalty every time one of their songs is played on the radio or TV. That’s where the profit lies.

Then there’s things like merchandise, or product endorsements, which are a big moneymaker.

[Princhester]

@Mr2001

Nope, just pointing out the obvious: there already was a route to economic reward.

What the heck route are you talking about?

OK then, stop dancing around and let’s hear it. “Even though it deprives artists of income just like file sharing, buying and selling used CDs is still morally acceptable because _________.”

It’s a minimal thing. There’s only a one to one ratio between copies sold and the number that can be on-sold and realistically each copy isn’t going to be on sold that much. These things make it self limiting. A bit of freeloading isn’t immoral. But a lot is. There’s no magic about where the line is drawn, but since our democratically elected governments have chosen a line, it’s moral in a civil society to try to stick to that.

If you truly wouldn’t have bought a copy otherwise, then downloading will not reduce scarcity or devalue anything. When you say “you wouldn’t have bought a copy” but you actually mean “you might have bought a copy after all”, that’s obfuscating.

Quite. Which is exactly what people will do, anywhere outside of La La land, as I said. And as you recognise in your next paragraph.

…we can indeed expect that the price would drop to zero as people break the law to obtain free sky-apples. (And frankly, who could blame them - a law forcing people to buy apples when there’s a limitless supply of free ones is nothing but a handout to apple farmers).

Yes, but of course the real world problem is that the limitless free supply of apples only comes after someone puts in the considerable time and effort to make the first apple. And they ain’t going to do that to the extent they currently do unless some system is provided to reward them.

Of course, that doesn’t apply to individual decisions when the standard is morality (which can be evaluated in one’s own head) instead of legality (which must be evaluated in a courtroom based on evidence and the presumption of innocence).

You’ll have to explain this more

[Lemur866]

Of course, in a liberal democratic society it is generally wrong to break a law, even if you dn’t agree with a law. That doesn’t mean that the law is therefore a good law, or a moral law…just that the rule of law itself is an important principle that should only be set aside for compelling reasons, and getting free music isn’t one of those reasons. The moral course of action is to attempt to change the law, which is what we’re doing here. I’m not arguing about whether copyright law as it currently stands is the law or not, I’m arguing that the law is bad public policy.

Going back to the apple analogy. Someone is dropping apples from the sky, but they had no right to do so. But what was the point of granting particular people the exclusive right to provide apples? The point of the law was to create a society with lots of apples. To advance the useful arts and sciences. And how do we do that? Turns out people like money, so methods where people somehow get money when they advance the useful arts and sciences make sense. And several schemes have been tried…prize money, the most famous example being the longitude prize, and more importantly, patents and copyrights.

But if apples are falling from the sky, if copying apples is so easy, then grants of exclusive rights to copy apples simply become unenforceable. And that means they no longer serve the public policy objective they were created for. Which is NOT grant creators control over their creations. That is simply the mechanism that we chose to ATUAAS, because that’s what worked. The objective isn’t to make sure that those with the right to produce apples got money for those apples. The objective is to provide lots of apples.

Now, where the apple analogy breaks down is that books, movies, ideas, and music aren’t fungible. If we were content with re-reading the same books, watching the same movies, and listening to the same books over and over again then it wouldn’t matter. But it turns out we want new books, new movies, new music. So how do we get that? Well, even if copyright laws no longer make sense, people still like money, so somehow creators of new books, movies and music should get money.

But maybe not as much as you think. For instance, I entertain you here on the Straight Dope for free. In fact, I PAY to be allowed to entertain you here. Now, my writing probably isn’t very valuable, and the compensation I recieve for writing here is probably pretty close to what my writing is worth. But consider the new Radiohead album, which just was released last week. How was it released? Anyone can go to the band’s website and download the whole thing, and then pay whatever they like. $0, $20, whatever. You get the music, and if you like the band, you tip them. And even if most people don’t pay for the album, the band can potentially make more money that through a convential studio release, because of the well known fact that bands get almost nothing from recorded music sales. Out of that $16 price for a CD, how much does the band get?

So the internet and digital copying has the potential to vastly increase the amount of content people can access, and to vastly decrease their cost to access that content, and even with the vastly decreased cost the creators might actually get the same or more money rather than less.

Another model is to just open everything up, ditch DRM completely, just allow people to listen or watch or read anything. And they pay a mandatory additional fee on top of their monthly ISP fee. Say another $10. And then download, upload, listen to whatever you like, who cares, and that monthly fee is split up among the creators based on usage, and usage is tracked electronically, consumers never need to pay attention to it. And thing is, if everything ever created since the dawn of recorded music is available on demand anytime anywhere, who’s going to bother downloading music? You’re going to download all the music you like in one month and then disconnect from the internet and never pay a fee again? No, because you’re going to want email and websurfing and news and the dope, you don’t just want music. And if a few crazy coots download every song they’ll ever want to listen too and then never connect again, well, they can do that right now, and they aren’t paying a dime right now.

The system doesn’t have to work perfectly, just well enough that creators that people want to listen to/read/watch are compensated on a formula that is a rough proxy for popularity, and freeloading is usually more trouble than it’s worth.

It’s not so much to ask, is it? Access to everything ever recorded anywhere, anytime, anyhow, for only a minimal cost?

And the fact is, this is what we’re going to get. The only question is whether new creators are going to get compensated with something beyond social recognition. Because draconian punishment of uploaders won’t work, because there are just too many judgement proof people…people with no homes that can be foreclosed against, no savings that can be seized, and most importantly, people who don’t live in this country. Maybe 50 years from now, international copyright law will be enforced globally, but I’d be shocked if that happened. It’s a pipedream to expect to be able to shut down file sharers who operate in Russia, Nigeria, China, or wherever.

So forget arguments about how creators deserve to control their works, or what the law is as currently written. Laws that can’t be enforced fairly are bad laws. Laws that don’t advance the public good are bad public policy. Laws that don’t take into account real world attitudes towards the behavior encourage disrespect for the rule of law. Laws that benefit a few at the expense of the public cannot last long in a democracy unless the public believes that the laws that benefit the few also benefit the public.

[Bricker]

@Indistinguishable

Perhaps. But the question still arises as to whether it’s worth it to invest the resources it takes to try to put an end to the apple-rainers, if it’s so extremely easy to rain down apples all over the world. That is to say, we might question the use of the particular matter of law at hand here, pointing out that it is not much easier to enforce than the alternative law which would punish those who picked up apples.

Sure.

The problem is one that Alvin Toffler predicted in Future Shock way back in 1970. We’re used to thinking about commodities. All our models and arguments in this thread have revolved around ways to analogize the information that is digital music to physical commodities like apples. But information as a commodity is fundamentally different: when I sell apples, I get your money and you get my apples. When I sell information, I get your money and you get my information… but I still have my information.

The difference here is why all our analogies break down. Intellectual property is not the same as physical property.

[Digital_Stimulus]

@Bricker

The difference here is why all our analogies break down. Intellectual property is not the same as physical property.

Concise and spot-on. While you were responding specifically to Indistinguishable, the point originated with Lemur866’s post about the apple analogy. I’m not sure it leads anyplace other than where Lemur866 takes it. Reiterating your point from a previous post:

@Bricker

Still, if we can simply assume, as a matter of law, that the apple droppers are dropping apples illegally, that they have no right to do so… and then remember we’re punihsing THEM, rather than the innocent one that reaches for a single free apple… then we might be closer to a useful model.

From where I sit, you’re simply bringing the legal/illegal point into the argument here. But that point is simply the historical result of the (flawed) analogy – that is, from a time when the analogy was a better fit due to the difficulty involved with actual reproduction. ISTM that Lemur866 is giving due consideration to the inadequacy of the analogy, simply by questioning the law (and its validity) as it currently stands.

[Ms2001]

@Princhester

What the heck route are you talking about?

Getting paid directly for providing a service. If I’m the only guy in town who knows how to write songs, and my fellow citizens like to hear new songs once in a while, I don’t need any special rights to make money at it - I just need to hang a sign outside my door saying “songs written, $X each”. If X is a large number, the music lovers will be clever enough to realize that it doesn’t all have to come from one person’s pocket, and they (or I) can build whatever infrastructure they want on top of that to facilitate collecting the money.

As I said, you may not like that route because it doesn’t produce exactly the same outcomes we see today (under a system which encourages speculative overproduction and has a blow-off valve for demand in the form of illegal copying), but it is undeniably a route to economic reward for producing artistic works.

There’s no magic about where the line is drawn, but since our democratically elected governments have chosen a line, it’s moral in a civil society to try to stick to that.

I don’t think most people would agree that laws can dictate morality. An act is either moral or immoral, regardless of what the law says about it.

Yes, but of course the real world problem is that the limitless free supply of apples only comes after someone puts in the considerable time and effort to make the first apple. And they ain’t going to do that to the extent they currently do unless some system is provided to reward them.

So, figure out how much you have to pay the apple farmers to create that first apple, and then do it, either by levying a tax or by having the apple lovers in town pool their money voluntarily. Once the first one is created, everyone can eat free apples forever, or at least until they get tired of Golden Delicious and they decide to pay the apple farmers to make a prototype Granny Smith.

You’ll have to explain this more

All right: if we’re talking about an individual’s choice of whether to take a free apple or buy one from the stand, rather than the decide of whether to pass a law, the question becomes much simpler. The difficulty of prosecuting someone for breaking the law no longer matters, because the only judge is the individual’s conscience: they know whether they’d be willing to buy one from a stand.

We can’t say that passing the law will have no economic impact, because we can expect that some people will take a free apple even though they would’ve been willing to buy one, and those people can’t be detected or prosecuted because we can’t read their minds. But in the context of an individual’s choice, we can say it’ll have no impact, because in that context we (they) already know whether they’d be willing to pay or not.

So if we tell someone “if you ever find yourself having to choose between downloading something for free and not having it at all, go ahead and download it, because win-lose is better than lose-lose”, then we can be sure it won’t have an economic effect – or at least that any effect it might have would come from them misinterpreting our words and not from what we actually said.

@Bricker

But information as a commodity is fundamentally different: when I sell apples, I get your money and you get my apples. When I sell information, I get your money and you get my information… but I still have my information.

The difference here is why all our analogies break down. Intellectual property is not the same as physical property.

I’d go a step further and say that since we can’t reason about information the same way we reason about other commodities, treating it like a commodity is misguided from the start. We may be used to thinking about commodities, but we’re also used to thinking about services – paying someone to do something for us, instead of paying them to give us something – and if we consider writing, recording, etc. to be services, we can reason about them just like any others.

[Stink_Stank_Stunk]

If I buy a CD, I am allowed to make as many copies of it as I want for my own personal use, right? I can have a disc at home, one in the car, and one in my office, etc. That gives me a legitimate reason to upload songs to a P2P. If I am at a friends house, and i want him to hear the new CD I just bought, but I dont have a copy on me, I can hop on to Kazaa and download it. right?

[Rysto]

@Mr2001

I’d go a step further and say that since we can’t reason about information the same way we reason about other commodities, treating it like a commodity is misguided from the start. We may be used to thinking about commodities, but we’re also used to thinking about services – paying someone to do something for us, instead of paying them to give us something – and if we consider writing, recording, etc. to be services, we can reason about them just like any others.

The problem with your idea is that public goods – goods that are consumed by the public collectively instead of by private individuals – are a well-known economic phenomenon. And economics predicts that if we leave the production of public goods up to the market the result will be underproduction of that good.

[Ms2001]

@Rysto

The problem with your idea is that public goods – goods that are consumed by the public collectively instead of by private individuals – are a well-known economic phenomenon. And economics predicts that if we leave the production of public goods up to the market the result will be underproduction of that good.

Not necessarily. For example, from the link, “Coase (1960) argued that if the transaction costs between potential beneficiaries of a public good are sufficiently low, and it is therefore easy for beneficiaries to find each other and pool their money based on the public good’s value to them, then an adequate level of public goods production can occur even under competitive free market conditions.”

The same technologies that make it hard to enforce musical copyrights also make it easy for fans to meet up and fund the production of new music. Combine that with an assurance contract (you get your money back if the artist’s asking price isn’t met) and the fact that people do contribute to fund public goods even when that choice seems irrational, and it appears quite feasible to fund production this way.

Also, one result of the current system is underutilization of copyrighted works, which I’m not convinced is any better.

[CapnPitt]

@Mr2001

OK then, stop dancing around and let’s hear it. “Even though it deprives artists of income just like file sharing, buying and selling used CDs is still morally acceptable because _________.” Fill in the blank with as much explanation of that compromise and reasonableness as it takes.

Point A: it does not deprive artists of income just like file sharing

Point B: Buying and selling used CDs is morally acceptable because the seller no longer has the ability to listen to a piece of music from that CD at will. If the seller then wants to listen to the music at will again he/she would need to purchase the CD again. Morally, you would need to find a copy and pay for it, that someone else had at some time paid the full price for.

In the case of “file sharing” (more aptly called “file copying”), the person that made the piece of music still has access to it and can listen to it at will. Thus the “sharer” who is approximately the same as the seller maintains a much greater ability to “use” the music than the seller of the CD. Therefore, by maintaining these greater rights it “file sharing” is significantly different than selling used CDs.
As far as the chainsaws and apples arguments go, these are the same false analogies that are always brought up in threads like this. It’s *intellectual *property, not tangible property and they are not able to be compared directly.

[Lemur866]

Well, sure. And that’s why focusing on the *copying * restriction part of our current intellectual property law is so misguided. Computers make copying or not copying the work irrelevant.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to charge per view than to charge per copy? Every time someone listens to Brittney’s new single, Brittney gets $0.xx. It shouldn’t matter whether they’re listening on a new CD, a used CD, a burned CD, on the radio, over a streaming website, on an .mp3 player, on a tape backup, on a cable audio channel, or at the local nightclub.

The location of the data that causes the particular vibrations of a particular speaker should be irrelevant. It makes no difference. What matters is that someone wants to hear this particular piece of music, and Brittney gots to get paid, otherwise she’s gonna quit the music business.

In the past, when making copies was an expensive industrial process, control over the right to copy was an easily enforceable rough proxy for usage. In the past. Not the present. Now it is a difficult to enforce rough proxy for usage. And it’s not going to get any easier, it’s going to get harder as data storage and bandwidth gets cheaper and cheaper and spreads beyond the first world countries.

So, since number of copies purchased was supposed to be a rough proxy for usage, why not take advantage of the features of computers rather than screaming and crying about them and trying to shut the barn door after the milk is spilled? Pay Brittney per use rather than per copy. It’s more fair to Brittney and more fair to the customers. It’s win-win.

[Ms2001]

@CapnPitt

Point A: it does not deprive artists of income just like file sharing

Perhaps you could explain further, because as far as I can tell, it sure does.

If I want an album, and I choose to get a copy from my friend instead of buying it new from a store, the artist loses the potential income that he would’ve gotten from my sale. The artist got paid for my friend’s purchase, but not for my download.

If I want an album, and I choose to buy a used copy instead of a new one, the artist loses exactly the same amount of potential income as above. The artist got paid for the original purchase of that disc, but not for mine.

In both cases, I’m obtaining a copy of the album and the artist isn’t getting any money from me. In one case, someone else is losing the ability to listen to it at the same time that I gain that ability, but that has no impact on the artist’s finances. What matters to him is the number of new albums he sells, since those are the only sales he gets paid for, and that number is equally unaffected by file sharing and used sales.

Point B: Buying and selling used CDs is morally acceptable because the seller no longer has the ability to listen to a piece of music from that CD at will.

In other words, the loss of income isn’t what makes file sharing immoral in your view; the number of people who are able to listen to the songs at will is (which raises another set of questions about libraries, roommates, coworkers, etc. who share their copies with anyone who wants to listen). Fair enough, I guess, but that’s not what I was responding to.

As far as the chainsaws and apples arguments go, these are the same false analogies that are always brought up in threads like this. It’s intellectual property, not tangible property and they are not able to be compared directly.

I’d say the reason they can’t be compared directly is that one of them isn’t property at all – it’s a number – and the only reason people would try to compare them at all is that they’ve been conned by an industry built on the absurd idea that numbers can be owned.

[CapnPitt]

@Mr2001

Perhaps you could explain further, because as far as I can tell, it sure does.

If I want an album, and I choose to get a copy from my friend instead of buying it new from a store, the artist loses the potential income that he would’ve gotten from my sale. The artist got paid for my friend’s purchase, but not for my download.

If I want an album, and I choose to buy a used copy instead of a new one, the artist loses exactly the same amount of potential income as above. The artist got paid for the original purchase of that disc, but not for mine.

In both cases, I’m obtaining a copy of the album and the artist isn’t getting any money from me. In one case, someone else is losing the ability to listen to it at the same time that I gain that ability, but that has no impact on the artist’s finances. What matters to him is the number of new albums he sells, since those are the only sales he gets paid for, and that number is equally unaffected by file sharing and used sales.

You’ve had this explained to you numerous times in the past and you just won’t agree with the premise and no amount of arguing will overcome your “I’m able to get it free so there’s no reason I shouldn’t get it free” mentality. So there’s really no point in discussing it further, but I’m a sucker for lost causes. I would argue that you could morally sell (or give) the file of the song to your friend as long as you didn’t keep a copy for yourself. The file is “used,” but at the same time you won’t be able to have at will access to it.

@Mr2001

In other words, the loss of income isn’t what makes file sharing immoral in your view; the number of people who are able to listen to the songs at will is (which raises another set of questions about libraries, roommates, coworkers, etc. who share their copies with anyone who wants to listen). Fair enough, I guess, but that’s not what I was responding to.

Oh here we go again…no, it has nothing to do with libraries, etc. sharing a CD. If one person borrows it from the library, no one else can borrow that same copy from the library. At you’re missing the point that the number of people able to listen to a song at will at the same time without paying for it is exactly one way to deprive an artist of revenue. Loss of revenue and “at will” listening are two sides of the same coin.

@Mr2001

I’d say the reason they can’t be compared directly is that one of them isn’t property at all – it’s a number – and the only reason people would try to compare them at all is that they’ve been conned by an industry built on the absurd idea that numbers can be owned.

Well, the folks that were comparing them upthread were on the same side of the argument as you.

And they’re not numbers. They are not numbers. They are not numbers. These are creative works. Just because they can be encoded as numbers does not mean that they are numbers.

[Ms2001]

@CapnPitt

You’ve had this explained to you numerous times in the past and you just won’t agree with the premise and no amount of arguing will overcome your “I’m able to get it free so there’s no reason I shouldn’t get it free” mentality.

Interesting that you chose to go after your inaccurate perception of my “mentality” instead of responding to my actual point. I guess that means you realize buying a used CD does, in fact, have the same financial impact on the artist as illegally downloading it.

I’m just pointing out that the two acts have the same impact on the artist’s bottom line, and that therefore, the moral difference between the two acts cannot be a result of the difference in financial outcome, because there is no difference in financial outcome. Maybe there is a moral difference, maybe not, but if there is one then it must come from somewhere else.

Oh here we go again…no, it has nothing to do with libraries, etc. sharing a CD. If one person borrows it from the library, no one else can borrow that same copy from the library.

And yet if you step back and look at the forest instead of the trees, you can see that a well-stocked library fills the same role as file sharing: a person who can go to the library and check out a copy whenever he wants will have no need to buy one of his own. The number of copies in the library’s stock is finite, of course, but that isn’t a problem as long as there are enough copies to cover demand.

At you’re missing the point that the number of people able to listen to a song at will at the same time without paying for it is exactly one way to deprive an artist of revenue.

Yes, it is, but there are other ways: selling used copies, writing negative reviews, etc. There are also obvious cases where increasing the number of at-will listeners who don’t pay doesn’t deprive the artist of revenue.

Since you don’t object to selling used copies (which does deny the artist some revenue), and you do object to copying even when the recipient wouldn’t have bought a copy of his own (which doesn’t), the natural conclusion is that your only objection is to the act of copying, not the effect on revenue that it may or may not have.

And they’re not numbers. They are not numbers. They are not numbers. These are creative works. Just because they can be encoded as numbers does not mean that they are numbers.

The number and the work are equivalent. For every work covered by copyright, there is a set of numbers which you are not allowed to disclose without permission from the copyright holder.

Copyright is also a monopoly on transmitting sequences of words, arrangements of color, and so on, but as far as widespread violation of musical copyright in the year 2007 is concerned, copyright is primarily a monopoly on transmitting numbers.

[CapnPitt]

Why I ever jumped into this, I have no idea.

You just completely disagree with my premise and I with yours.

I’m going to exit this discussion by restating my two main points:

1. Just because you can do something, such as make a copy, doesn’t mean that it’s moral for you to make a copy.

2. Creative works are not just numbers. Many can be encoded as numbers but they, in and of themselves are not numbers. If they were, you should just go listen to the Count from Sesame Street.

[Ms2001]

@CapnPitt

Just because you can do something, such as make a copy, doesn’t mean that it’s moral for you to make a copy.

Obviously. I didn’t say that was the case.

Creative works are not just numbers. Many can be encoded as numbers but they, in and of themselves are not numbers. If they were, you should just go listen to the Count from Sesame Street.

Not all numbers are interchangeable. If you met a census worker who was trying to find the number of people living in your town, or a scientist trying to find the number of atoms in a grain of sand, you wouldn’t tell them to go ask the Count from Sesame Street, because they’re looking for numbers that fit certain criteria, not just any old numbers.

[Lemur866]

The thing I can never understand in these debates is when pro-status quo side points out that the difference in one scenario vs another scenario is that in one scenario you made a copy, and that made it immoral.

But they never seem to be able to take the next step…WHY is making a copy of a data file immoral? I understand it is illegal, and I understand that it is usually immoral to break a law, even a law you disagree with, unless you have a really good reason. But the law didn’t make copying immoral, it made it illegal. What, aside from the law, makes copying immoral?

It is my contention that making a copy is not immoral. Depriving a creative person of just compensation for their creative work is immoral, but the trouble is that not everyone is going to agree on what is just compensation.

Suppose I purchase a legal .mp3 of a song for $1. So we’ve established in this case that just compensation for that song is $1, because I agreed to buy it for that price, and the creator agreed to sell it for that price. So if I make a copy and give the copy to a friend for free, it certainly seems true that I’ve deprived the creator of $1. But it wasn’t the copying that deprived the creator. I could write a script that would create copies of that song until my hard drive was full, then erase them, then start over again. This is trivial to do. Now suppose I let that script run for a couple of days, then look at the log files, and discover that over the past few days I’ve created and destroyed 10 million copies of the file.

Have I cheated the creator of that file out of $10,000,000? Obviously not. Only a fetishist would claim that I had done something immoral, that I had cheated the creator somehow. But I violated copyright 10 million times. Yet it seems to me that I haven’t done anything wrong. Anyone care to argue that I’ve caused the song creator $10,000,000 in damages? Anyone? Because I can do this tonight if you like, and cause millions of dollars of damage to various artists, and I won’t feel the least bit bad about it.

What I might feel bad about is the first scenario, where I gave one copy of the file to my friend. That’s $1 in damage, and it seems to me pretty reasonable to suggest that I’ve caused some amount of damage and that $1 seems like a reasonble figure to attach to that amount of damage, although it could be less.

But what if I give the file to my friend and he never listens to it? Or suppose he listens to it once, then deletes it? In that case, have I really cheated someone out of $1? I mean, suppose he called me up and wanted to hear the song, and I played my copy for him over the phone, and he listened to it for free but didn’t possess a copy? Suppose we set up a system where he could call my computer directly and listen to any song on my computer over the phone, but he never made a local copy of the song? I could go on and on spinning scenarios that don’t technically violate today’s law but allow people to listen to music without paying a penny to the creator of the music, and I could go on and on creating scenarios where today’s law is violated egregiously, yet no human being ever listened to a single music file.

Copying is a red herring. It is meaningless. It is only considered meaningful because of technological legacy issues that are irrelevant in today’s world, in the same way that today’s copyright scheme would be irrelevant in world where all manuscripts had to be copied one letter at a time by monks.

The morally significant moment is when a particular pattern of vibrations strike someone’s eardrum, not when and where and how and why the datafile that was used to create that particular pattern was copied or not copied or stored or not stored. It is moral to justly compensate creators when you enjoy their work, because otherwise such work cannot exist. It is morally irrelevant whether you have a copy or 10 copies or 10 million copies of a particular number stored on a hard drive.