Why online piracy isn't theft

I have to say that this is the funniest thread I've seen in years :)

Next time I need to explain the phrase "dialogue of the deaf", I'll point the questioner here.
 
Basset said:
I understand the web provides a distinction in that dissemination is a lot easier. But suppose only one person downloaded your book from Megauploads. After she's done reading it, she deletes it.

How is she different from someone who simply borrowed your book from a library or friend and then returned it after she was done? In either case, she does not buy your book, so the impact to you is the same. In either case, her motive is to read the book once without having to pay you.

We revere libraries in our culture, and yet in my example, the library is in a position to facilitate hundreds of transactions (borrowing, with no royalty paid to you) that may operate to deprive of many dozens, if not hundreds of sales. As noted above, the web makes many thousands, or millions or transactions possible, I understand that, of course. But do you also think libraries are a problem for authors as well, just to a lesser degree?


The NYT article does make a good point that intellectual property is different in nature than physical property, and thus the discussion might need to be different either. That's not saying authors are entitled to no protection for their work. It's just saying it's a different sort of conversation.

I have some idea what responses might be, but I am more interested in your response than mine.
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Hi,

In this country authors are re-imbursed for library loans. Or were, I've little recent experience of it.

But, here we go, writing a book is like going to work but without being paid at the end of the week or month. You get paid when the thing is published and sells.

What that means in practice is weeks of work and expenses like photography, ink, ribbons (for typewriters as this was the 70's), photocopies, travel and you have to pay others to do very technical stuff like line drawings*. Then it gets checked, revised and then the final draft (more expensive photocopying) gets sorted out, printers and so on are visited to check pagination (getting the photo's opposite the right page can be a pita). Finally it's printed and sells, and you start paying off the loan for the expenses and then a long time later you actually get money for the work you did.

BTW, you have to eat and pay the mortgage while all this is going on.

So those people who put the scan up on the web have deprived me of hundreds if not thousands of pounds of wages or salary.

And I still have to search the web for the current scans and then start a row with the web-site owner etc. I can do without this.

Regards, David

* Line drawings cost a lot to be done properly and are ripped off very often. I've hard back books by others with my work in for instance. And lawyers cost a fortune. In the end you give up. I am not happy about that...
 
Rayt said:
Here in San Francisco about 20% of the bus riders don't pay. But is that stealing? I mean the bus is going that way anyway right? But to be more in topic is sneaking into a movie theater stealing? They are showing the film anyway, right?
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Hmmm, is shooting someone murder? They'll die sooner or later...
 
Finally read the article. The author says that downloading copyright stuff is not legal but it's not really theft in a strict legal way and that he would like to have a new law category for that. To me this sound just like some academic writing, nothing to be upset. But I think that the title of the thread that Jamie chose, leads to the wrong direction.
 
tom.w.bn said:
But I think that the title of the thread that Jamie chose, leads to the wrong direction.
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Obviously I chose a provocative title to draw some attention. But I intentionally posted the link with little additional comment so that (or so I thought) people would actually read the article before they can make a comment. Boy was I naive.
 
David Hughes said:
Hi,

Hmmm, well now, one of my books from the 70's was scanned and posted on the www and hundreds of copies downloaded. I feel they've been stolen from me...

Regards, David
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just a question. Had it not been posted would you have sold hundreds of copies? would your work still have reach all these people?
 
Copyright infringement and theft are different things, news at 11.

In other news, blackmail and libel and slander are different things, even though all of them involve people and words that can be true or not.

And if one wants to be nitpicky about the title of this thread, piracy is something that involves boats.

Is that now something that one can get worked up about?
 
Al Patterson said:
How about the cqse of music I purchased on vinyl, 8 track and CD, none of which play anymore? Should I pay a fourth time?

I agree that downloadingthe first one free is theft, but how many times do I have to buy that Beatles album I first bought in 1964?
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I lost hundreds of tapes and cds in a fire, no insurance, i replaced all I could with file sharing.
 
I agree with the article. personal use is different than resale. For example should a pot smoker be changed the same as a pot dealer, no, and they are not in the USA. so personal downloads should not be treated the same. But a company who makes money selling memberships or ads because their net traffic is thru illegal activities is making money just as a pot dealer. the US government went after parents of kids downloading music I felt this was wrong. They were guilty of sharing not thief. As a teenager when I started to love music we borrowed each others albums all the time. I wasn't going to buy it. Now file sharing is the same its just the net makes everyone closer. i downloaded music from people back in the day. Never sold any and quite frankly don't even listen to it anymore. I didn't steal it. I have photos from artist I use as backgrounds on my computer. So much of law in USA at least is based on intent. so I believe intent needs to be addressed when charging someone with a crime.
 
Jamie123 said:
Man this is really frustrating. I wonder what's worse, the thought that most have probably not read the article or that they have read it and just didn't get the point at all. .................
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Jamie, I understand your frustration. I did read the article, twice. I do admit to having an emotional response.

Too much of society today has convinced themselves that they are not thieves but good people who are merely using someone's work product without paying for various reasons. The article helps these people by providing new terminology to assist in their rationalization that their behavior is acceptable.

My responses were designed have those people, some RFF members, realize that stealing is stealing, regardless of the terminology. The person on the other end always has less because of your non payment. There is no new terminology that lessens the impact.
 
I read the article and I read the entire thread here too *yay me!!!* :D :D :D

That said, it's been an interesting "discussion" here and I have my own opinion on this but it really doesn't matter because that opinion will, undoubtedly, be opposed to someone else's opinion which inevitably will cause some sort of online "tit-for-tat" type of exchange.

The author takes a long time to get to it but I think his point is the following:
This is not merely a question of nomenclature. The label we apply to criminal acts matters crucially in terms of how we conceive of and stigmatize them. What we choose to call a given type of crime ultimately determines how it’s formulated and classified and, perhaps most important, how it will be punished. Treating different forms of property deprivation as different crimes may seem untidy, but that is the nature of criminal law.
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I think, and this is only my opinion on what's being said here, that we should recognize that morally speaking it's still "theft" if you download something without paying for it. HOWEVER, in order for the "law" (and in this case I'm talking the broader "law" and not a specific law in a specific country or region) to be effective they must make a distinction surrounding specific "crimes" - yes, from a moral perspective, it's still "stealing" but in order for the law (legal not moral) to be iron clad, they can't call it theft lest some lawyer'in type *smirk* be smart enough to prove exactly what Stuart P Green is suggesting; that it's not "theft" in the legal sense of the word.

Morally, I believe it's still theft but morals don't mean squat to the law it seems :)

Cheers,
Dave
 
I am sure some clever type has suggested this, but if someone cut and paste the NY Times article and passed it off as their own work and sold it to, I don't know, the Huston Chronicle, the columnist might feel differently.
 
@jamie123 -- As with my earlier reply to @andersju, I would like to respectfully ask you a question about your position. I just want to understand you. Here is what I think I hear you say:

* As long as you don't try to resell or publicly display or take credit for using an artist's work after downloading it for free on a torrent feeed, when the artist is trying to sell it on some other channel such as the iTunes store or a stock photo website, downloading a copyrighted work isn't wrong.
* Copyright infringement happens when someone DOES try to resell or publicly display or take credit for the artist's work. But personal use of stuff available in torrents doesn't infringe a copyright.

Is that about right?

You didn't say this, but I'm wondering what you think about it: Making a copyrighted work available on a torrent feed might be a copyright infringement, but downloading one that way wouldn't be.

As with @andersju, I'm not trying to point fingers and I'm not trying to change your mind.
 
Benjamin Marks said:
I am sure some clever type has suggested this, but if someone cut and paste the NY Times article and passed it off as their own work and sold it to, I don't know, the Huston Chronicle, the columnist might feel differently.
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heh.. it was suggested Ben - NYT may take offense. If you really want to get to the author you may want to wait until his book is released, copy it, and then distribute it online:
Stuart P. Green is a professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark and author of the forthcoming “13 Ways to Steal a Bicycle: Theft Law in the Information Age.”
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:D

Cheers,
Dave
 
What an interesting mess we've created, the scale of which is primarily down to the internet. My own view is that downloading something that should have been paid for and not paying is theft and I think it's very hard to argue otherwise. Whether we choose to call it theft or something else, in order to ease the legal redress to wrongdoing is another matter. I read the posted-to page as saying that, I didn't read it as condoning the basic wrong.

What does intrigue me is how (primarily) business reacts. On the one hand, they like the ease of almost-free distribution of material. Yet they whinge when people steal because it's insecure and theft is possible and hard to control. What they need to do is to move with the times and find ways to answer the challenges. The internet is here and it's unlikely to go away. The entertainment industries were happy to embrace CDs, DVDs etc when it meant increasing profits by charging more, now they're less happy that their products are readily copied in perfect form and easily distributed over the internet.

In one post, someone asked if it's illegal not to destroy "rips" of CDs if you sell the CD. The answer is that the licensing on CDs is subtly changed and you are no allowed to rip them in the first place. Back in the day, buying a record meant you had bought the right to listen to that music, anywhere, anytime. Although you were supposed to buy the 8-track too if you wanted it on your car's 8-track player, the music industry didn't really care if you recorded it yourself and played it in your car. Now, they do care and you are not allowed any copies in any format at all. The CD bought you the right to listen to the music exclusively from off that original CD. If you lose or damage the CD or you need to use MP3 etc, well tough - buy it again.

There are also so many grey areas now due to "intellectual property". If I watch a DVD and invite a friend over, is he or she stealing that because only I paid? That other person now does not need to buy the DVD so have I deprived the DVD's copyright owner of income? How does that differ from lending a book to the friend, which is certainly legal?
 
wolves3012 said:
There are also so many grey areas now due to "intellectual property". If I watch a DVD and invite a friend over, is he or she stealing that because only I paid? That other person now does not need to buy the DVD so have I deprived the DVD's copyright owner of income? How does that differ from lending a book to the friend, which is certainly legal?
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Look at the back of a DVD cover. You will find clear instructions there.
 
tom.w.bn said:
Look at the back of a DVD cover. You will find clear instructions there.
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Maybe it wasn't the best example but I was making a point that there are plenty of grey areas in the moral arguments. If I choose to rip that DVD, for my own convenience to watch on a laptop that has no DVD drive (say), then according to the licensing I'm in breach of copyright. I find that unacceptable but do I get a choice when I buy the product? These are the conditions, I accept them or don't buy. Can I buy a copy that allows what I want? No, take it or leave it. And how is this fair or sensible, even?
 
I hear photographers cry foul when images are copied but, yet, they seem to think it's ok to have music they haven't paid or received permission to use, on their web site that they think, "well, that's ok."
 
I wonder how strong of a correlation there is between a person's opinion on this matter and the age of the person.
 
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