Copyright Infringement != Theft

http://20bits.com/2008/06/02/copyright-infringement-is-not-theft/

by jfarmer • 18 years ago

30 69 18 years ago

jfarmer12• 18 years ago

I created this in response to Matt Maroon's essay on IP: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=207125

tptacek17• 18 years ago

I'm not sure what the point of this particular semantic debate is. It's not theft. Ok. It's still wrong, it's still harmful, and it's still totally within the purview of a reasonable government to regulate or outlaw.

jfarmer12• 18 years ago

I intentionally avoided the larger debate, but one point I did make is that it is not a semantic debate.

Arson is also wrong, harmful, and should be illegal. But we don't regulate it in the same way that we regulate theft, nor should we. It would be bad policy.

tptacek17• 18 years ago

I'm not sure your analogy holds. What's different about the way we "regulate" arson and theft? They're both criminal offenses, and both offenses leave you civilly liable for damages. Finish your point; I'm interested in hearing it.

mrtron4• 18 years ago

I do not agree what is deemed copyright infringement in the US is wrong and harmful in all cases. Luckily, the Canadian government agrees with me. A 2005 ruling states "Downloading a song for personal use is not an infringement.".

wmf2• 18 years ago

Doesn't that virtually eliminate the point of copyright? Almost all music and movies are bought for "personal use", so what if everyone downloaded for free instead of paying?

calvins• 18 years ago

I think the point is that we should be more careful with the words we use. Saying that copyright infringement is theft is just sloppy thinking, and is likely to confuse the issue and lead to even more sloppy and confused thinking.

You might argue that both are wrong, that both are illegal, or whatever. Fine. Just don't say they're the same thing, because they're not.

Redefining words for purposes of brainwashing consumers is propaganda pure and simple, even if you believe that copyright infringement is wrong and should be illegal.

tptacek17• 18 years ago

It's equally bad to elevate a semantic argument so you can use it as a straw man, as you implicitly do with the word "even" in the sentence "even if you believe copyright infringement is wrong".

And face it, the Free Culture side of this debate uses that tactic a lot. "Copying isn't piracy! Pirates kill people! Abolish copyright!"

maw• 18 years ago

Well put! I would have written much the same thing had you not beaten me to it, and will only add that sloppy thinking about this question isn't purely an academic concern: among other things, it leads to bad laws with difficult to foresee, but often undesirable, consequences.

eyudkowsky2• 18 years ago

Would copyright infringement still seem intuitively, morally wrong, if there were no copyright laws to begin with? If creators were never promised a legal expectation of control over their work, would you be violating any legitimate expectation by copying?

Let's say that someone produces a musical album, and, knowing they cannot legally stop you from downloading it, they ask you not to copy it unless you send them $5. Would it be morally wrong to copy without paying?

Is it the same amount of moral wrong as copying the work of someone who produced an album relying on the promise of legal protection for it?

tptacek17• 18 years ago

Uh, yeah? Like, very?

rms5• 18 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism To me, there is no intuitive moral wrong here to start with.

>Let's say that someone produces a musical album, and, knowing they cannot legally stop you from downloading it, they ask you not to copy it unless you send them $5. Would it be morally wrong to copy without paying?

Trent Reznor actually did this recently with his Ghosts I-IV album. It was released under a CC non-commercial license, making it freely copyable. But the only Reznor-endorsed way to download it was to pay him $5. In this particular case, at least, there is absolutely nothing immoral about downloading Ghosts from The Pirate Bay, even if Reznor would like the $5.

Reznor seemed guilty about pulling the pay me to download a CC album; his most recent album had sanctioned free bittorrent downloads of ultra-high resolution music files.

enra• 18 years ago

What if I would paint a painting and hung it to my outside wall. I would require every passager that would go by and maybe look at it to pay me $5. I wouldn't be able to legally stop them for looking for free. They would walk away with a copy of my paiting in their heads.

I think this is a one problem. In the internet almost anything is public good. It's available for almost everyone and you cannot or you don't want to shut people of from consuming.

Not related, but the second problem of the copyright is that it's hard and expensive to use it properly. If you would want to legally use a song in your presentation, make a mixtape or even sing a song on your mom's birthday, you would have to go through riias, companys, individual artists, lawyers and applications to get proper rights.

Above process is fine for big corporations, they have the time, money and maybe motivation to do this. Individuals don't have this luxury. We all know that singing that song for your mom is copyright infringement, therefore as mattmaroon says, theft, don't we?

mariorz2• 18 years ago

What makes you so sure it's harmful? There is hardly enough data yet at a systemic level to prove that argument.

You can maybe intuitively say (as many do) that artists not getting paid will obviously result in less incentive to create and hence less art will be created, but you see, the tricky part with complex systems like this one is that they tend to actually be counter-intuitive and respond to many feedback inflection points.

Better access to more works of art, for example, would undoubtedly lead to some people being inspired to create that otherwise would have not.

mattmaroon7• 18 years ago

There's enough data to prove it's harmful to some people. Maybe not the overall music industry, and maybe not the artists, but clearly to retailers, record labels, middlemen, etc.

mattmaroon7• 18 years ago

Right. My point was more to highlight the absurdity of saying we shouldn't outlaw natural human behaviors than to get into an argument about the definition of theft. I don't know why he chose to worry so much about whether music piracy is theft or some other crime, it's basically irrelevant to my arguments.

andreyf3• 18 years ago

It's still wrong

Really? For the majority of human history, it hasn't been.

it's still harmful

It is? To whom? Surely not to people enjoying music - infringing copyright has made more people listen to more music.

it's still totally within the purview of a reasonable government to regulate or outlaw

In a government based on the US Constitution, only if such regulation and law "promotes the progress of useful arts".

cturner• 18 years ago

It would be interesting to see an attempt at a meaty economic defence that demonstrates that more innovation happens in a world with IP in spite of the harm that has on network effects.

I've been interested in this field for a while and never seen sign of such a thing. "IP" has grown out of the lobby groups, not out of academic integrity.

dhimes• 18 years ago

For the majority of human history, some humans have treated others as property. That's wrong.

tjr• 18 years ago

Really? For the majority of human history, it hasn't been.

For the majority of human history, there has been but a tiny fraction of copyrightable material compared to what has existed over the past, say, 200 years.

It is? To whom? Surely not to people enjoying music - infringing copyright has made more people listen to more music.

It's harmful to the producers. It's not cheap or easy to put together a professional music recording. Producers wish to both recover the costs of production, and have funds available to live on and produce more.

In a government based on the US Constitution, only if such regulation and law "promotes the progress of useful arts".

Yes. If you allow the producers to profit from their works, then they will have both the funds and more motiviation to continue producing more.

U.S. copyright law began with discussions between educator Noah Webster and lawyer Daniel Webster. Noah had completed new textbooks for use in the public school system, which he had based on existing works. Nevertheless, his books were new productions, and he wanted to have control over how they were copied; he wanted to be able to profit from the production of his works. (Noah was never a very rich man, by the way; don't get the idea he was insanely wealthy and scavaging for more.)

Daniel Webster agreed wholeheartedly, that authors should have the right to how their works are copied and should get royalty payments for a limited time. He claimed this was so obvious it was like "natural law"... as obvious as laws against murdering and theft.

Some people in recent history (e.g., the RIAA and other big corporations) have taken copyright law to absurd and abusive levels, and that is wrong. But the basic principles of it -- to allow the author of a work rights over who copies it and rights to limited royalty payments -- are not absurd and do contribute to the furthering of more and better works.

SirWart• 18 years ago

I think the last example is a little off. It compares taking a friend's book to simply copying it, but the friend presumably does not own the copyright to the book.

The idea of copyright extends beyond money. By being able to freely copy an artist's work the artist loses control of his creation. Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, did not license out his characters for lunchboxes or plush toys because he felt it would hurt the artistic value of the comic, even though he could have made much more money licensing it. He was able to prevent licensing because he owned the right to copy his creations.

jfarmer12• 18 years ago

As is his right to do. But violating that right is not theft, which involves depriving someone of their property.

tptacek17• 18 years ago

And your point is exactly what?

alex_c• 18 years ago

I'm having flashbacks to Slashdot... circa 2000. At least back then we had Napster to talk about.

Durn kids, get offa my lawn!

Copyright Infringement != Theft

Related Stories