What is the basis for the argument that filesharing is equivalent to theft?
To paraphrase Jeff Tweedy from Wilco, people would think it was awfully strange if authors suddenly banded together against libraries to keep people from reading books for free.
The argument I’ve heard from my uncle, who is a working musician, is that the people who really get screwed by file sharing are the studio musicians, sound men and other behind-the-scenes people who contribute to the final product, and not the record companies or the big stars. If this is true, then you could call it immoral.
But I don’t know how true this is.
Whether or not something is immoral is really all up to you, I guess.
I think that’s an inaccurate analogy. Musicians do not prohibit people from listening to borrowed CDs, just as writers don’t prevent people from reading borrowed books.
What they object to is the unauthorized copying of music and printed material… rightfully so, I might add.
Apples and oranges. Libraries exist by buying books and periodicals and loaning them to people, they don’t hand out free copies for you to own.
Think of it as walking into the nearest Strawberries [music store] and just grabbing whatever disc you like and walking out.
You can go into many libraries and borrow a music disc, but you have to return it to the owner [the library] You can not go into a store and walk out with merchandise.
You can buy it, and according to the copyright laws listen to it, destroy the disc in a fire, use it for gun target practice, or even resell it to a second hand store. You can not dub off copies and sell those, as you are not licensed to do that. You have, if you will, bought a limited use license.
Think of the music on the disc as a product, like a pair of shoes. The band gets paid to produce the music by people entering into a contract - they buy the disc. You didnt make the music, so you dont get to dub off the disc and sell it.
If you made your living by putting music out I would be more than willing to believe you would get upset at people essentially stealing your product from you and making money off your work. Just like you come up with an idea at work that someone else gets credit for and possibly gets either a bonus or raise in pay from - youd be pretty damned torqued off at them … if you sell 1 disc, and that one person you sold the disc to makes 25 copies and sells them, or even gives the files away, that is 25 discs you will not get paid for. So why bother even trying to put out a disc of music if you get nothing from it? Pretty soon all you would have is nobody bothering to make music because they can’t make any money doing it, so they have to work regular jobs.
Ask any of the musicians on list how difficult it can be to work a day job and maintain a career in music …
No, but no one would think it strange if they banded together to prevent people from making copies of books, rather than buying them in stores.
A file of, say, music, is a copy of a performance. As such, the right to make more copies is owned by the copyright holder (usually the performer). This is a property interest, the same as your car in your driveway is. Just as you would get very upset if someone else took your car in order to drive it, so, too, do owners of a copyright get upset when people take their property and make copies without permission.
Doing so is immoral, as it is theft of property.
Is your question “why is filesharing immoral?”, as per the thread title, or “why is filesharing morally equivalent to theft?”, as per your post’s content? Those are two different questions with two different answers; for one, my answer to the latter is “it isn’t”.
If there’s a guy who owns something he made and he has complete rights to decide what to do with that, and no one can argue it isn’t his nor that he doesn’t have the right to do what he wants with it, then doing something with it that he specifically asks you not to do is immoral.
Whether that’s a wise decision on his part may be up for debate, but whether you’re acting immorally isn’t.
Putting on my cynical hat for a moment, I would say that the music-producing industry doesn’t have to produce a satisfying moral argument as to why it equates filesharing to theft; it merely has to assert it strenuously enough for government to accept it.
“It hurts us as we want it to stop” may be as sound an argument as they need.
I’m not sure which part of copyright violation you think isn’t theft…? You bought the CD and presumably understood the bit that said, “Thou shalt not make public performances of this CD”, and yet you proceeded to upload the CD for anyone else to listen to. There are many different licensing schemes for publicly performing songs, and all of those go back into paying the royalties of the person who wrote the song. If you’re not paying his royalties when there is no legal way for you to provide the songs for public consumption without doing so, then you are robbing him. And if people download the music, keeping a personal private copy, knowing that their posession is a version that is in violation of the copyright, then they’re knowingly accepting stolen property.
There is no question on the legality nor morallity of file sharing. The only debate that can be made is that the RIAA is trying to continue an archaic business model and should get a new one. But even that’s not worth arguing. The iTunes store has a good and fair model for selling songs and keeping them from being pirated. It’s just a matter of time before Apple starts signing on bands and becoming a rival label (of course, they might not ever release CDs.) At that time, the RIAA will hopefully lose the battle, but certainly they’re going to need to shake themselves up a bit first.
I didn’t say it wasn’t.
Alright. The part I quoted sounded like it was a mystery how one could ever think that filesharing was theft.
Sorry. I can see how it might be read as implied in my post. I do agree that intellectual property is property (or is akin to it) and unauthorised acquisition of such material is theft - or theft of revenue, or something of that nature, but definitely morally wrong.
My point (which I should have made more clearly) is that the music (and film, software, etc) producing industry, in practical everyday terms, doesn’t have to address each and every sophomoric pro-filesharing argument that can be dreamed up. It simply stamps its foot and asserts that We Will Be Having None Of That, and that works. Sort of.
It isn’t really theft at all, more like patent infrigment, well from a anology point of view. You are not taking anything from them. You are making a copy of their product. Like if you bought a car, then used that as a model for you to make a copy in your machine shop to give to your mom.
Maybe in America. Library royalties are a fact of life in Europe.
I don’t see why it has to be equivalent to theft for it to be wrong. In order to promote the public good, we have copyright laws. This promotes artistic creation by allowing the artist to control, for a limited time, the publication of the work.
Filesharing and other unauthorized copying violate the copyright, and therefore should be considered not in the public good. You can argue for exceptions, but on the whole, we are better off having copyright controls on publication, so it’s generally wrong to circumvent them.
By “exceptions” I mean one can claim violating copyright is morally good under certain circumstances. For instance the rights to a work are bought and the work is suppressed by the new owner in an effort to censor the ideas. In such a case, you can argue that spreading the word is more important than supporting the censorship. It will still be just as illegal.
I can see how FS might indirectly hurt some musicians – such as an inner circle of first-call guys who work a lot with name acts and big labels, and perceive themselves and their buds as The Scene. But it might just as easily benefit others – such as indy bands and those lower down on the musical food chain –who are really the grat majority.
It’s not the same as theft. In a theft, the rightful owner is left without. If I steal your garden gnome, you no longer have a garden gnome. If I copy your disc, you still have your disc.
I’m not saying that makes it OK; I’m just saying it’s more nuanced an argument than the RPAA is willing to acknowledge. Their claims of “losses” is vastly exaggerated, because, I don’t know about you, but an awful lot of music that I have, um, borrowed from friends, I only did so BECAUSE it was free. I would not, in fact, have bought it, I just would have done without. So if copying discs were impossible, I wouldn’t be buying more music, I would just have a lot less of it. No “loss” to the music industry involved.
Now, once I’ve “tried” an album from a friend’s collection, I may fall in love with a new artist, and then end up buying other stuff by that artist. So, in my case–which, yes, I understand is not the universal norm–“filesharing” actually results in a net gain for the music industry. Many independent artists agree with this model and encourage the sharing of their music.
There is nothing stopping bands that wish to benefit from filesharing in this manner from doing so. The idea is that those that create artistic material should not be forced to allow unlimited copies of their own work. An individual artist should be free to not release their work, or sell their work, without being undermined by those who want it for free.
I would disagree; theft is taking something that does not rightfully belong to you. Theft of services is still theft. If you sneak into an empty seat at a movie theatre without paying, you’re stealing. If you hook into your neighbor’s cable, it’s stealing. Just because it doesn’t deny someone else the same thing doesn’t mean it’s not theft; you have no right to have something for nothing when the service or product is being offered for a cost.
And as said in the other thread, the RIAA is being robbed of licensing fees, not sales fees.
How many times have you bought Happy Birthday? Probably zero. Possibly no one in the world has bought a copy of Happy Birthday, and yet it is the most profitable song to own in the world.
If I get a free second refrigerator from my mafioso friend, knowing that he stole it, the fact that I wouldn’t have bought a second refrigerator if it hadn’t been for free doesn’t mean that theft did not take place. The act of giving away stolen goods does not somehow exhonerate their status as stolen goods.
To own the rights, I mean.