Are We Jsut A Bunch Of Theives?

[echidna]

according to current laws in many nations yes it is theft to DL copyrighted files via p2p.
i choose to view it as property collectivisation, which i see as a political act, since i don't monopolise possession of the files i DL their not exactly 'mine' they could easily be 'yours'.
this is however the wrong place to try to take an ethical moral stand, this board is dedicated to p2p methods and the curtailing of all methods which may hinder file sharing.

[Adster]

but a website is copyrighted like this on eand we downlaod it to our HD whats the difference its still data

[doctah]

^

This site is offered to the public for free. The copyright is here only so people don't steal the general design.

But they're ripping me off with high CD prices...it wasn't worth buying:
...but that still doesn't entitle you to the song. I think a mercedes benz is over priced, but I can't go take it. Maybe you're compairing it to a test drive? You can go do that @ a local music store.

This all goes back to a convienence issue.

This is an awesome topic.

[RoMoFo]

I see alot of people saying F!!! RIAA or MPAA, but what I don't see is anyone here actualy up and protesting out on the street. Get real people from the RIAA or MPAA point of view, all you are doing is barking but no bitting. In my opinon. So far all the people that have gotton sued, was sued and no one els came to there rescue.


We are protesting with our wallets, and that speaks the loudest to the RIAA. I haven't bought a major label CD in over a year. I do continue to buy CD's from independent labels which are not associated with the RIAA.

Even if I did like a band on a major label enough, why would I buy their CD? All that does is keep lining the pockets of the RIAA to continue their quest to prosecute teenagers and college kids (which also happens to be their target audience).

[Adster]

protesting wont do anything

we should all boycott CD buying then they will listen

[dumdum]

i'm a dirty rotten scoundrel, and a thief as well. there must be something wrong with me, cause i don't feel bad about it at all.

[jim1013]

A brilliant discussion! here is my long winded contribution

what is stealing?
legally its often that you have to actually 'pick it up and carry it away with you'

#1
Compare copyrwite violation to stealing something from a shop, or another person.

If i were to steal a cd from a shop, that shop would loose that particular cd - they would not be able to sell it, AND they would have actually lost one of those copies.

when you commit a copywrite violation, (at least from the point of you acquiring a copy for yourself ) they still have their cd in the shop, which can be sold, they dont 'loose' anything, they may not gain a sale of it to you. but there is a difference between that and actually making them 'loose' something.

my point is there is a difference between 'loosing' something and 'not gaining' something.


#2
I also think there is a significant moral difference between selling burnt cds and either downloading or uploading them, as selling the burnt cd's your doing it for profit.

Consider this; unless you have a lot of money, you probably can't afford to buy all the stuff you've downloaded. So if you were not going to buy it anyway, they have not lost a sale to you.. in effect they have not lost anything in this example.

I'm sure if you took a look at what you have downloaded, and that if you had to pay for it all, MUCH of it (not all, but at least a fair bit) you would not have. sure, some of the stuff you would have bought, but probably not most of it. and of course you may do a combination of buying things and downloading them.
of course this point doesn't excuse you for downloading something that you WOULD have bought.


#3
who looses out? the creator - yes, (if <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>and only if </span>you would have bought it anyway).
but also the label (in the case of music) is the one that looses the most , since most of the profits go to the label.

any fairly popular artist is in most cases going to be pretty damn rich. likewise recording companies are raking the moola in too. So how bad is it then, if they get slightly less - they&#39;ll still have millions of dollars more than they&#39;ll ever need. - and they really were looking forward to buying another ivory backscratcher&#33;&#33;&#33;

This point does not work for small time artists or content creators - who quite possibly not excessively wealthy.

So to summarise; I would say its morally okay to commit copywrite violations if

You would not have chosen to buy it anyway
AND / OR
Its only done against someone who has plenty of &#036;&#036; anyway

the reason being that its hard to demonstrate any &#39;hurt&#39; caused upon them. Something is not morally wrong if it does not harm anyone (in my view)
you might argue that even a millionaire getting slightly less constitutes hurt, and perhaps i could concede that point - but the hurt would be VERY VERY MINOR.


Side issues
Creating a backup of something you have already bought is morally okay.
(surely theres no argument there). this doesn&#39;t stop some of the content creators from making this difficult however.

By buying something you are essentially buying the rights to that information - this applies to the above, and also to the idea that if say you purchased something on VHS why should you have to pay again to have it on DVD - since your only getting a higher quality copy of something you&#39;ve already bought the rights to (and we&#39;re told its just as wrong to commit a copywrite even if the mp3 or whatever is low quality rather than high quality). so this is morally okay as well

Taping stuff off the radio, recording stuff off tv,etc.. i believe these are technically illegal too, if the content you are recording is copywrited. morally wrong? well i doubt too many people look down upon this sort of behaviour.

The same people fighting against mp3&#39;s ,p2p networks, creating the DCMA law, etc are essentially the same groups (or modern day versions of) similar organisations who were against things like:

VCRs
Casette recorders (we were told this would be the death of music&#33
Even radio (eg allowing songs to be played on radio)

-All of these things have unquestionally ended up benefitting (overall) the content creators - by a lot. This doesn&#39;t prove that mp3s will boost their profits, and they may well do the opposite. but i dont think it will be as bad as the horror story they say it will be.

now consider the above copywrite violations, and compare that to the 12 year old girl living in public housing who was targetted by RIAA. Clearly she would not have been able to afford that music (or not much of it) so she has not even caused them to not gain money from her. but her family would be doing it tough with trying to pay that &#036;2,000 settlement, surely thats hurt her family more, than RIAA loosing the sale of the two cds she might have been able to buy.
Hurt to riaa 2x cost of cd (minor for wealthy artists and wealthy recording industry) hurt to her faimly &#036;2,000. probably they&#39;ll have trouble paying their bills and just getting by.

and why is it that you can get a 250,000 USD fine, and/or like 5 years imprisonment (these are the max penalties), for one, non commercial copywrite violation????

the max penalties for actually stealing the cd from the shop (surely something far worse&#33 is far less than that.
Putting someones&#39; life in danger for a 3rd time drink driving offense would be less too.
so there we have it, a legal system where (in theory) the safety of people&#39;s lives are rated less than the cost of one track from a cd.. now that is immoral&#33;&#33;

(one would hope any sane judge would never impose anything even close to the max penalties for one extremely minor copywrite law of course)

In my view, non commercial copywrite violations, the max penalty should be more like the cost of the work multiplied by two (and that is the max penalty). obviously if you&#39;re out selling burnt cds the max penalty should be a lot more than that however (this would be a commercial copywrite violation)

The punishment should fit the crime&#33; (this doesn&#39;t imply &#39;an eye for an eye&#39; type justice - only that a minor crime deserves a minor punishment, and a major crime deserves a major punishment)

creating a copy of an mp3 (one track from a cd is about a dollar or 2 in value in loss to the copywrite owner - if you would have bought it had you not been able to copy it), and that is very F***ing minor indeed (certainly not deserving of a quater of a million dollar fine per violation&#33

thats my 2cents.. although by now you probably feel more like it was &#036;20 &#33;

[james_bond_rulez]

Originally posted by jim1013@21 October 2003 - 18:00
.......BLAH BLAH BLAH

thats my 2cents.. although by now you probably feel more like it was &#036;20 &#33;

well said

althogh i only read your last sentence

[Will_518]

Well said jim 1013 &#33;&#33;&#33;

however:

#1
of course there is a difference between "loosing" and "not gaining".

But consider why do we buy CDs? Not because of the disk, but because of the data on it. i can buy a CDR for 50cents, but a music CD will cost me &#036;20.
So, in my opinion getting the music on the CD for free is just as good as getting the CD.
And in reality it doesn&#39;t matter whether you steal the CD from the shop, or download it. The shop has lost one sale.

#2
i smiled when i saw this, I use this to justify a lot of things.

but at end of the day, stealing is stealing. A theif can&#39;t justify why he stole the latest Mercedes car by saying "I can&#39;t drive and I can&#39;t sell it, I just stole it to make my front lawn look nicer."

If you decide a particular CD isn&#39;t worth your &#036;20, you don&#39;t buy it. And you certainly don&#39;t steal it.

Maybe economically the shop hasn&#39;t lost anything. But morally you have just lost a lot. How can we justify breaking the law by saying "there was no practical consequencies." What kind of a society would we live in if this was the case?

#3
I smiled at this one as well. This is totally against what i thought the American free market economy and the whole capitalist society stood for.

What is America all about? Why is it called the land of opportunnity? isn&#39;t it because every men have to work hard to earn their money? The harder they work (+ some luck), the more they earn.

How much money does the guy who sweeps the streets earn? Not much, but he gets every cent from his own hard work.
Isn&#39;t this also the case with rich people? Sure, the music artists may not have had to do back breaking work, but the artist found the opportunity and he seized it. Therefore every cent they earn is from their own hard work. Therefore, isn&#39;t taking a cent from a rich man equally a crime as taking a cent from a poor man? (provided neither of them will die without the money).

[Will_518]

About legal and practical issues:

1) As far as i know taping music and programes from radio and TV are illegal also. But there is quite a difference between this and filesharing.

The main one is: if you&#39;ve taped it then you could have watched or listened to it; whereas with filesharing, you couldn&#39;t have gotten a copy of Matrix reloaded 2 weeks before it came out anywhere else other than the filesharing networks.

2) About that 12 year-old girl.

Surely breaking the law is breaking the law. it doesn&#39;t matter whether you are 12 or 21; it doesn&#39;t matter whether you live in public housing or a mansion next to the beach. Could a guy justify breaking the law even if he was only doing it to stay alive?

Maybe morally it&#39;s wrong. maybe emotionally it&#39;s shocking. but end of the day, The law is the law

Of course maybe the law itself is unjust. But that is why there is a supreme court; and that what&#39;s good about living in a democratic country.
You can&#39;t just break a law because you think it&#39;s unjust. If that happened, i&#39;d like to shoot the guy in my street whose smoke alarm went off 3:00 AM this morning.

3) yes, downloading a mp3 may not cause much economical damage.
But:
1) What if millions of mp3s were being downloaded?
2) Stealing a dollar and stealing one million dollar are both stealing.
3) Like I said before, the artist put a lot of hard work into it, and you just get it for free. is that moral?

4) So, we are actually protesting against high CD prices&#33; now, is that why we are filesharing?&#33;

maybe it&#39;s part of the reason, but be honest, you would spend hours downloading a bunch of music ONLY TO PROTEST AGAINST HIGH CD PRICES?

The more serious issue is this: in the 21st century, are we so lazy we can&#39;t be bothered to go on the streets and protest about something we really care about?&#33; Instead we sit at home and do something that&#39;s morally wrong?&#33;&#33;

5) Yes, the CD prices are high. but people are still buying them, aren&#39;t they? After all, isn&#39;t earing as much as you can what capitaslism is all about?

6) convinience? it would be very convinient if i went to my local shop instead of the shop 2 miles away; but i don&#39;t, because it&#39;s much more expensive. is the whole reason why we use filesharing really just for convinience?

{off topic}

Echidna, which forum would be the right place to discuss the ethics of filesharing?
Surely the whole point of this discussion is to make your point with the filesharing community, not with a bunch of oldies who have nothing to do after dinner.
you view p2p as property collectivisation? so, is that good? would you be willing to share your money with me and a bunch of beggars downtown if we are willing to do the same?
Don&#39;t get me wrong, I&#39;m quite a socialist idealist as well, but surely the real world is not built on ideals. The world we live in is no longer that described by Marx&#39;s "Capital" or "communist manefestal", workers don&#39;t want to be free from the chains, They just want money&#33; same as everyone else