The Moral Argument In Favor Of File Sharing?
from the is-it-wrong? dept
I've discussed in the past the question of whether or not there's even a moral question to consider when it comes to copyright, if you can first show a situation where everyone is better off (i.e., if the end result of content being shared, willingly, is better for both the content creators and consumers, why should morals even be a question?). Separately, I have made clear that I do not engage in any sort of unauthorized file sharing -- noting that it is illegal and, I personally believe, wrong. Some people have pushed back on that latter point, suggesting that my labeling it as "wrong" is, in fact, a moral statement as well. A couple months ago (yes, I'm slow, but I'm catching up on some old "saved" submissions), SteelWolf sent over some thoughts on why file sharing is not wrong, and why there's actually a moral argument in favor of sharing:It is through sharing that we develop a culture and advance humanity. Creative works like art and music are, at their core, about sharing with others. They tell stories, reveal personalities, or comment on the world in ways that others can appreciate, forming a part of our culture as they are spread around. Gregor Mendel's discoveries about genetics had no value while they were gathering dust on the monastery bookshelf; it is only when those discoveries were shared with the world that they became vital.On this, I absolutely agree -- but it is much more the argument for why the content creators themselves should share their content first. And that's where things get tricky. I do think it makes sense to share content. I think that content creators would find themselves better off if they share their works (and do so strategically, in combination with a business plan that takes advantage of it). But what if the original creator doesn't want the content shared? Then what?
Infinite Goods Should Be Shared
Say you have something that is good for others, and it is infinite, so you will not lose any of it by giving some away. I don't think it's a stretch to say that most people's idea of morality would dictate that they should share that thing. In general, information is something that can be seen as a public good. If somebody has a discovery or an idea, it costs nothing to give it away, it is not scarce, yet it can potentially benefit the world.
SteelWolf argues that there's a moral imperative to share, but again, this seems to apply more to the content creator, than those downstream:
Faced with an infinity of good things in the form of content information, why would somebody chose not to give it away? What is gained by hoarding something that can help others and costs nothing to share? Let's say you figure out that you can protect people from a deadly virus, say, influenza, with a vaccine. While it costs something to manufacture physical vaccines and mail them to everybody in the world, sharing the information behind it is free. Others can chose whether or not they want to invest money in creating their own, but sharing has given them the option to do so where before it did not exist. Faced with this situation, who would chose to let thousands of people perish by denying them even the potential opportunity to save themselves?While I think this is interesting, and at times compelling, in the end I'm still not convinced there's a moral component here, except potentially for the creator/innovator. But, at the same time, I still believe that we're better off taking the moral discussion out of it. Perhaps a moral argument like the one above is helpful to convince some, but it leads right back to the economic discussion, where some will ask why anyone would bother in the first place, if they're just told they need to give it away for moral reasons.
Yet this is exactly the choice many people are making in the name of "intellectual property." They would rather see others suffer than share something infinite with them, desperately clinging to business models that depend on scarcity. In the 21st century, ideas, information, digitized content are all infinitely available. For these things, the Star Trek replicator has been made, and it's time to use that as a stepping stone to greater things.
Faced with an infinite supply of information that can potentially benefit billions of people, I chose to share. Those who try to hoard this information are both attempting to drink the ocean and doing wrong.
Instead, I'm more convinced by economic arguments that show greater opportunity in sharing infinite goods, in that it decreases the cost of creation, promotion and distribution, while making it easier reach a larger audience for selling scarce products. Again, if you can make the economic argument, and then throw in the moral benefits of spreading information on top of it, that makes sense. But a purely moral argument still falls a bit short for me. Still, I'm sure it will lead to an interesting discussion here.
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Filed Under: copyright, file sharing, morals
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Remember
So, what reasons do you have for your "it's wrong" stance? (And no, the current law is a fact, not an argument.)
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Re: Remember
But remember, the argument for physical property laws is that everyone is better off with them than without. Any law should be for the betterment of society, neither physical property NOR intellectual property laws are exempt from this requirement.
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Re: Re: Remember
Since the amount of work that need copyright for life+70yrs is about 2 percent (only 6% of books get reprinted after 1 YEAR, let alone 70), it's not hard to see how scary the prospects for the public domain are. I'm all for the rights of artists to benefit for creations, but there's a lot of stuff out there that creators or rightsholders somehow can't figure out how to profit from and so they let it sit on a shelf somewhere. IMHO this content should be in the public domain, where we could profit from it culturally if it was widely available.
Last year a well-known research institute in the Netherlands actually proved that file sharing, although slightly harmful for the labels and studios (probably in respect to commercially viable content), had huge cultural benefits and was good for society as a whole.
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My problem in all this
Artists can only perform a certain number of concerts/shows per year before they succumb to physical exhaustian (I would assume), so this places a limit on their revenue generating capability from those channels (assuming merchanising sales are proportional to public performances).
In a world without the RIAA, their revenue - thanks to selling electronic downloads or even those archaic pieces of plastic - is limited not be how many shows they can fill, but by how many people worldwide wish to obtain a copy of their music. You can kind of see why a lot of people cling to this metric.
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Re: My problem in all this
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Re: My problem in all this
What, you mean just like anyone else who works for a living? Yes, there is always a limit when trading hours for dollars.
On the other hand, concerts are just one channel. There have been MANY other money-making channels listed here on Techdirt that do not rely on the sale of infinite goods.
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Don't publish
Mike, then they shouldn't publish it in the first place.
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Re: Don't publish
Some of them charge by the word! Greedy, is what they are.
Judas created something too. For only thirty pieces of silver he created a martyr.
Some say God is the greediest creator of them all.
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Re: Re: Don't publish
Huh - I thought the greedy ones were the middlemen, you know - the **AA mob.
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Re: Re: Re: Don't publish
I would be willing to bet they would keep doing so even if there weren't any financial incentives.
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Re: Don't publish
I do not understand the mentality of people who think that the quantity of quality material available on the internet would somehow just magically increase if copyright were done away with.
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Re: Re: Don't publish
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It's what people do! They share!
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Re: Re: Don't publish
There, I fixed it for you! Two-letter change was capitalized in case you missed it.
More seriously, the burden of proof is always on those seeking unequal government protection under the law. Any form of monopoly such as Copyright or Patent constitutes unequal government protection. Thus the burden of proof is on those who seek such protection, to prove that values like innovation or creativity would DEcrease without such protections. Nobody has ever proven such a decrease would occur. Most studies show the opposite, that valuable output and availability would both INcrease and diversify without such protections complicating the interactions.
People seem to forget that the natural/non-government alternative to public domain status isn't monopoly, it's secrecy. What value is there in keeping a creative work secret? What use are secret innovations, that are no longer secret the moment you start selling them? The truth is that there is no incentive, moral or economic, in keeping secrets. Especially in the modern economy, which is increasingly driven by reputation, exposing your knowledge and creative value to the public will always be more valuable than hiding it away where only you know about it.
Don't start denying the reputation economy now. What else are "brands" except economic value in reputation? How would charities or political groups get ANY income without their reputation for serving well-known goals? How do you trust any information without the reputation of the authors? To concentrate on scarcity alone is to completely miss the basis of most modern economic interactions. The reputation market validates trademark and attribution rights, which are ethical because they also serve consumer protection aims.
Monopolies serve and protect nothing but power lust and greed.
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Re: Re: Re: Don't publish
If consumers are going to "spend" their attention on free content created by other consumers (youtube) rather than priced content created by other corporations then you end up with a situation that appears to be harming the corporations.
The consumers are fine though.
I can see why content creators favor kicking people off of the internet.
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The same should be true with cable infrastructure. If the government is to grant a monopoly on who can build new infrastructure or who can use the existing infrastructure then, as far as I can tell, it's government infrastructure. It doesn't belong to the free market and so the government/PUBLIC should ensure that ALL media on that infrastructure is public domain. Period. Otherwise, open up the infrastructure to competition and those who want their content to be subject to intellectual property should compete with those who release their content under some creative commons licenses. Then I can choose a cable company out of anyone who wants to compete in my area and some cable companies can offer some youtube channels as well, channels from individuals who offer their content and independent movies for free and I can record and share them all I want. Those who want intellectual property on their content should have to compete. But if they want a monopoly on the infrastructure their content shouldn't be subject to intellectual property. Society does not owe these people a monopoly on the infrastructure and we should not grant them a non equitable deal.
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Let's say there's a famine. You are a storekeeper, and you decide that since there's a shortage of food, you refuse to sell your food, because you know you'll be able to extort a better price at a later time (when everyone is desperate and starving). In this example, while nobody is claiming that you should give away your food, very few people would disagree that the previous hoarding of the food (instead of it being sold at whatever the market price should be or whatever) is immoral. Yet (unless there's a very specific anti-speculation law in your state), it is quite possible that the storekeeper is doing what is legal.
So, I hope everyone agrees, using your "legal rights" to refuse selling (or sharing, for a price) is immoral.
From the opening post, when something benefits humanity as a whole, INCLUDING the "holder", and he refuses to share, it could be argued not only that it is NOT WRONG to share, but that any rights to "refuse sharing" the holder uses is IMMORAL.
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Re:
What if there was an absolute refusal to sell a good? Then the greed componenent is removed. While Jesus "shared," there was never a commandment to "share," it was merely a recommendation.
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I really don't give a crap about what Jesus did.
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Now, if you did not share because your goal was to gain more money at a later date, you might have a case for immorality if by not sharing you caused harm (starvation, in this case) to a potential sharer. But the immorality is not failure to share, but greed.
As for not giving a crap about what Jesus did, I only bring up Jesus because the foundation for morality sans law in the western world is the Bible. So, if you accept no morality outside the law, then likely you do not care what Jesus did.
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I'm sure there was some basis of Western morality long before a bunch of guys got high one day and decided to write The Bible.
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What about the copyright holder?
Now if we abolished copyright, everybody who makes a creative work would pretty much have to self-publish... so what if some lesser-known person creates a work that happens to be pretty good, but a larger entity with a wider distribution capacity usurps control of it and distributes it without compensating the creator? Without copyright, the creator would have no legal recourse against a company that would do this, since nobody else needs permission to copy.
So one might think that's still workable... one could simply only allow non-commercial distribution... what harm could that do, right?
But even non-commercial distribution, in particular when it is left unchecked, still deprives the copyright holder of the exclusivity that copyright is supposed have, and without the notion of exclusivity attached, the very notion of copyright itself becomes worthless.
That said, I'm STRONGLY in favor of copyright holders making the choice to freely share their content, as I believe that will have the greatest benefit to society as a whole. Personally, however, I refuse to take matters into my own hands on this matter and disrespect the wishes of ANY copyright holder by distributing an author's or artist's work without their permission, and I make no qualms with calling into question the integrity and moral character of anyone who would simultaneously do so and still claim to want to act in the best interests of creators (a position that I'll admit has made me a few enemies, but until an alternative to copyright exists that actually has a potential to benefit the creator of a work with no less efficacy than copyright should, it's one that I resolutely remain steadfast in).
Meanwhile, of course, thanks in no small part to the ongoing activities and attitudes of people who don't care about the value of copyright, numerous governments around the world are creating stricter and stricter laws surrounding copyrighted material, which may not impact people who were going to go and break the law anyways, but is of serious concern to people who may have only wanted to fairly use a copyrighted work in a manner that otherwise could have been perfectly reasonable and legal.
Think about it.
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Re: What about the copyright holder?
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Why do those who love copyright so much have such a limited knowledge of the future. It's easy, take what's in the present and assume it won't matter in a few years time.
That's always been the future. Do we use animals for mass transportation? Nope. Do we go to the bathroom en masse outside? We sure don't. Do we have a massive network of interconnected machines that are at their core copy-makers?
Then I guess we don't really need copyright, do we. Or at least we don't need a system where copyright last for centuries. That's asinine.
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Re: What about the copyright holder?
This remark misses the entire point of the thread. The subject here is the morality of filesharing. The principal feature of filesharing is that there is NO SUCH THING AS "a larger entity with a wider distribution capacity" since everyone has exactly the same distribution capacity.
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Re: Re: What about the copyright holder?
Again, this is false. People with more money can distribute to a wider audience faster. Always.
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Re: Re: Re: What about the copyright holder?
Even if a corporate distributor used torrents (which few have the savvy to do), they aren't necessarily going to be able to pay to get distribution to a wider audience faster than another distributor paying nothing who has a more compelling content item, which by no other force than its popular appeal will find itself on more nodes thereby achieving wider, faster, cheaper, and more efficient distribution.
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Re: What about the copyright holder?
The only way to have legal recourse would be to have a neutral third party, like the copyright office, to register ownership of works. So it will be on official public record. In other words, a paper trail.
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why bother?
the answer is not easy, but one must acknowledge that creators do bother even when monetary compensation is not part of the equation. one obvious example that springs to mind is the free software movement. there is an entire operating system (several in fact) and a complete ecosystem of applications surrounding them, that is vibrant and growing yet not driven by the desire to extract residual payment from all uses downstream.
people created music before anyone ever thought of copyright and if copyright were to disappear from the face of the earth would continue to do so.
some creators are motivated by vanity, some by altruism, some by their faith and some for a myriad of other reasons, yet they are motivated, nay compelled, to create.
those who create solely for monetary considerations are called 'hacks' or sometimes even 'whores'. who among us would truly be diminished if these voices were to go silent?
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Re: why bother?
Now put this in a music perspective. Music is nice to listen to, but it doesn't produce anything. I can play a song a hundred times, and still it produces nothing useful. Sure, it's nice, it's a catchy tune, but in the end, I wasn't able to use it to calculate the value of a mortgage or determine how many trees should be planted on a certain slope to deter erosion. Music makes people feel good. I can't imagine any reason that someone might have to withhold something that is infinitely reproducible and that would make others feel good. Would you do that to your wife or kids? I don't think so. I think musicians are a lot like software developers, they write music because they have a lot of ideas and they need put those ideas into music. They record it to polish it and tune it and make it perfect. Lots of musicians post it on the internet for free (see Jamendo or Kahvi for thousands of examples). Why do they bother? Because they want to. That is all.
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Re: why bother?
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Re: Re: why bother?
What's with the future perfect tense here? Welcome to the internet! This is happening now - there is a lot of creative content available for free; a lot of it is crap, but a lot of it is very, very good. Luckily, as time as goes on, people continue to build better and better tools to sift through all the content and find the good stuff.
Also, I would argue that the amount of works from people who freely distribute is NOT constant - it is going up thanks to open distribution platforms, better and cheaper tools for creation, and better business models to leverage that distribution.
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Re: Re: why bother?
Wrong. Copyright was created for censorship. Please read some history:
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Re: Re: why bother?
and you think there isn't money to be made helping people find stuff they like? that's a salable scarcity called convenience.
that is just one of thousands of new scarcities that pop up from freely available content.
sure i can get anything i want whenever i want it right now, that shifts my focus from obtaining content to finding worthwhile content in an easy way.
now that i can snap my fingers and get any pop song i hear for free, my new music interests have shifted away from catchy, yet ultimately forgettable tunes, to things that interest me in a much more meaningful way. i would gladly pay for someone to find me "free" content that i had control over once it was mine.
this was supposed to be what the recording industry did: finding, investing in, and promoting talent, rather than demanding $20 a disc for auto-tuned excrement.
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Re:
Communism states that all works should be shared equally, and that the workers shall be compensated in accordance to the amount of work they have done. In other words, artists would share their work freely and receive a set compensation.
Capitalism believes that the market dictates the price of a good, which in turn is determined primarily by supply and demand. In this case, anything that is instantly copyable by anyone has effectively infinite supply, which results in a "worthless" good.
In other words, both true Communism and true Capitalism dictate that music is...well, free.
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NICE LOGIC ..... Hoo-ah!!
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Re: Capitalism vs Communism
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I think that the argument that SteelWolf makes applies recursively to all consumers... Discovery and innovation as you have mentioned on a number of occasions Mike is not exclusively creation ab nihilo. In a very real way, the person who receives a piece of information has always "discovered" it. As such, they do have the same moral imperative as that of the "first" discoverer: They must share their infinite good for the benefit of humanity at zero cost for them. That being said, laws are meant to be followed as they represent (theoretically at least) the will of the democratic majority. And so you should not file share, though you should encourage file sharing to be legalized.
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The problem with this statement is it implies that content that the artist willing allowed to be redistributed shouldn't be shared.
Filesharing in itself is not illegal. I do agree with what you were trying to say.
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Personally, I see no moral problem with my sharing of music or movies with others (even though my job is also production of data that I would like to be paid for - the data, not my time)
I can't speak for others, but the only thing that will ever stop me is a "free" (as in $0 coming directly out of my wallet) alternative that is more convenient/easier than current sharing.
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infinite goods are going to be shared eventually
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Bad approach
No matter which way you take the moral argument, for or against copyright, the result is that the discussion will resemble the theological arguments of the middle ages.
In short - nothing good will result, freedom will be severely restricted (who want's a sharing police to catch all those greedy creators that don't want to share?) and a lot of people will get hurt.
This is an economic issue - let's keep it that way.
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Good approach
And no matter which way you make the economic argument, for or against copyright, the result is that the discussion will resemble the economic and political arguments of the 20th Century. It's still worth making the arguments, because they're true.
I am moved by both moral and economic arguments against copyright.
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GPL somewhat mitigates this
There is also the GFDL (GNU Free Document License) for books, manuals, and other writings. The FSF has a list of free and non-free licenses for those interested in deciding how to license their work, including such "weird" things as font licensing, editorials, and opinions.
Much like Creative Commons, the GPL and GFDL encourage the free sharing of information and knowledge while preventing someone from co-opting the info for himself. However, the FSF recommends not using CC for some works because of ambiguity due to the many different CC licenses.
That being said, there is obviously a big difference between morality and legality. What is moral may not be legal and vice versa. For the most part, people have to follow their own compass. Are you going to do the right thing or the legal thing? Ideally, laws and morality would mesh but that won't always happen, especially when money and power come into play.
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Re: GPL somewhat mitigates this
The whole point of Creative Commons, which I think is in many ways more successful than GPL, is creating a consistent short-hand for expressing legal rights granted by copyright holders to their audience, in a way that doesn't force all content creators to become lawyers. CC, rather than depending purely on acronyms, version numbers, and overly-complicated web guides, include more consistent combinations of license sub-sections. Rather than impregnable backronyms, CC includes easily parsed short-hand like "non-commercial" and "share-alike", and matching visual iconography with the same meanings (which are preferable for many forms of visual mediums). The GPL authors could learn a lot about accessibility from Creative Commons, and inspect their own ambiguity instead of blithely discarding others'.
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Re: Re: GPL somewhat mitigates this
CC has streamlined things somewhat but I still think the FDL has its place; it ensures that any changes made are given back to the community, much like the GPL.
Too many licenses can be overwhelming and therefore a bad thing. But the fact that there are so many choices means people are more likely to pick one that doesn't limit other people from using an item to their benefit.
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Re: GPL somewhat mitigates this
Yes. But doing the right thing takes courage; obeying bad laws does not. We are all indebted to those who chose the right thing over the legal thing. If people obeyed laws over their moral consciences, human slavery would still be legitimate in the US, and the Third Reich's "final solution" would have indeed been final.
(Of course there are people whose morality is opposite to mine, who disobey laws for their principles; these include terrorists like doctor-murdering anti-abortionists. I am appalled by them, but not because they break laws; rather, because their actions are so egregiously immoral to me. If only laws reflected a shared or "true" morality, we wouldn't have to grapple with moral questions. But because law is so inadequate at expressing morality, individuals really do need their own "moral compass.")
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If it is an infinite good, then no, I don't think it is morally wrong.
what is wrong is locking up human advancement (much like the person who emailed you said) behind walls of money and law.
If a person owns the land a river is on, is it wrong to take a glass of water to give your friend?
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Ever. And nothing of value was lost.
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Or.. if I pay to buy a glass of that water, is it wrong for me to give my friend a sip?
Or.. maybe private ownership of natural resources is immoral.
Take your pick.
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It is a question of respect, something that the current generation isn't very good at.
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It is impossible to take an infinite good. You can copy it. And you can question the morality of taking an infinite good but you shouldn't rag on how much this generation lacks respect.
It makes you sound petty.
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Now kids just disrespect copyright like it was irrelevant with their massive network of copying machines all across the globe.
Disrespect is what it is.
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The nerve! They would invite their friends over to hear the new 45 they got - can you believe it? - and they did not pay one cent in performace fees, now that is disrespectfull. Then they would record it on a cassette tape - damn pirates - and give it to a friend. They should be ashamed!
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Internet sharing just puts numbers in front of the content industry's bloated face.
So of course we have to kick people off of the internet.
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An "infinite" good does not actually exist, as has been pointed out many times on this site as well as others. It requires equipment, time and effort to locate a digital good and to then copy it. Thus, even a "free" good requires a significant capital investment (a computer with memory) and at least a modest labor investment. All this effort is to "take" a copy of the digital good.
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Yeah, but those people would be considered morons. The words you are looking for: copyright infingement.
Which ain't stealing.
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Sorry, the stealer. Why not just call him a murderer of paid content.
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Note that this article (and the dozens of other articles dealing with the subject) covers acts that are illegal and those that may not be illegal, but still fall under the definition. Indeed, the article spends about as much time on actions that are clearly stealing and yet are not illegal.
As for calling him a "murderer of paid content," you will have to provide your own reference for that. Murder seems to imply destruction and a "stealer" of something is merely taking, not destroying.
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And fair use is sharing?
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So, now you are saying copyright infringement is stealing. However, remember that this definition is a moral one, not a legal one.
Are you saying murder is not destroying?
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You can create things using murder. Destroy things as well.
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How could I provide an example where stealing is not taking?
You can take a gift. You can steal a gift. See?
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Taking is always stealing if the person took without permission of the person who was the legal owner. In the case of the gift, there was a complementary action to the "taking," and that was the giving. Of course, there is a presumption that the "giving" person was authorized to "give," meaning that the "giver" had legally acquired the "gift," and was not a stealer as well.
Incidentally, there are moral and legal arguments regarding acquisition of stolen goods. In the eyes of the law and the Bible (and in common law as well) anyone receiving of a stolen good is as guilty as the person doing the stealing if the "taker" had reasonable belief that the "taken" goods were not fairly given.
Interesting example: If you find a bag of money alongside the road and you take it, is it stealing? You did not deprive anyone of anything since the money was clearly lying alongside the road, and you did not "take" the money from anyone, so it must not be illegal, right? Of course, the law and the definitions of stealing say otherwise. So, here is an example of where stealing was not "taking" in the purest sense of the word (yes, I had to search to find that one).
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What, exactly, have I taken?
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However, ideas, as opposed to a book or a design, is just an idea. Faster-than-light travel is an idea. Ideas cannot be suppressed and once in the world, they can never be retrieved. Of course, ideas are mental abstractions and not an implementation or embodiment. From a moral viewpoint, ideas just "are." It is impossible to unthink an idea once you have heard it.
Try unthinking faster-than-light space drive - of course, it does not exist, but then again, it is only an idea - which is a true infinite good since it costs zero to replicate other than the labor required to speak the idea and to have someone hear the idea; however, ideas are not prohibited (well - biblical, some ideas are prohibited, but that is another story) under any system of justice or morality, biblical, koranic, Bhuddism, or legal.
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The On and On and On song.
Then there is all the "In between" interests related to these two basic positions, the publishers, recording companies etc. etc. whose business model is threatened, and in reality there is no longer any need for. They are the ones who squawk the loudest and create the most confusion. If it was agreed by the politicians that only "CREATORS" of content have the primary legal rights to it, (only they can dictate who has the right to produce copies and no exclusive deals can be made) a lot of the "in between" parasite issues would go away.
Of course there then is the peripheral "moral" and "legal" issues thrown in to remove the clarity of thinking. What does not seem to be noticed is the large amount of brainwashing involved in the debate. The US has a specific culture that brainwashes their citizens that the US corporate way is morally right, and has the moral right to foist it's values on the rest of the world. What they don't see is that to a lot of other cultures they seem like they have lost the capacity to reason, that they are crazy and brainwashed.
Look at a parallel debate currently going on about health care right now, the rest of the world cannot understand what the issue is. (because corporate interests weigh heavily in the debate, which should really be about the interests of citizens) The reason for this is that the rest of the world has an entirely different outlook on "CONFLICT OF INTEREST". Example: Why should a hospital be a profit center? To the rest of the world that concept is an ACUTE conflict of interest, and disadvantages and misrepresents the patients. (crazy?) The corporate brainwashing in the US is that if you suggest differently you are a socialist and a communist. Are they really that stupid? This same conflict of interest exists in a lot of other occupations. The politicians of whom a lot are ex-lawyers are not interested in settling the copyright and patent issues. Because there would be a lot less work and fee theft for their overpopulation.
Who are the really big financial winners in any copyright or patent dispute? Is it not mostly the lawyers? Who is charged with adjusting and correcting these systems to make them workable in todays world? Is it not the legal system and lawyers? If you want any system to work then correct the root causes of the problems. If you want healthy people then produce healthy food. If you want healthy plants then work on making healthy soil. If you want a healthy alternative to copyright and patents then REMOVE GREED, CORRUPTION, AND CONFLICT OF INTEREST.
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Economics *is* morality
If by 'morality' Mike means "arbitrary rules dictated by belief systems that have no relevance to objective reality", then I guess his stance makes some sort of vague sense, but I view it as evidence of fuzzy thinking. As already pointed out, disclaiming the relevance of morality to economics and then throwing the term "wrong" around is evidence of this fuzziness. Please think a bit harder on this matter and clarify your views.
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Re: Economics *is* morality
What if the discussion was about Ludwig van Beethoven? And not his music played but a discussion of his compositions?
And the discussers are all mute.
I think I've made my point.
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Re: Economics *is* morality
This is entirely incorrect. Morals do come into play later in figuring out if you want to make policy changes to impact economics, but a free market exchange system works entirely independently of moral structure.
Economics describes how the transactions work out in the absence of morals. You can add in morals to discuss if those transactions are "fair" or "right," but that's separate from the economics.
The two can be connected, but you can absolutely have an economics discussion without morals playing a part. And you should. Otherwise, you will cloud the discussion with morals where economics should go. I am fine with adding in the moral discussion *after* the economics discussion, but mixing the two is how you screw things up policy wise.
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Re: Re: Economics *is* morality
Once again, I disagree. When it comes to making policy, the two are intertwined.
Certainly you can have a purely economic discussion about intellectual property and a separate purely moral discussion about intellectual property. But taking the discussion beyond the mere academic and attempting to formulate an equitable policy, you have to consider both parts.
Copyright is in essence a moral policy that uses economic and legal mechanisms to further that policy. The basic moral underpinnings of copyright are the promotion of creative efforts for the benefit of society while recognizing the unique nature of intellectual property and the creators' right to benefit as the market allows from his/her creation. The mechanism is the exclusive right to control the dissemination and/or monetary benefits of that creation.
You've said elsewhere that you haven't seen any evidence that copyright hasn't really done much to further creativity, yet the economic incentive is a powerful driver that has allowed us to become incredibly productive and innovative.
Free sharing of content without copyright may increase the economic benefit to society but places additional economic burdens on the content creator to make a livelihood doing other activities than creating. Under copyright, society may be restricted from completely free sharing and what they can do with the content, but it still has the benefit of the content and the ideas conveyed by it while the content creator has a chance to benefit economically from the creation for a limited time.
You know I agree that copyright term has been extended well beyond reason, but it doesn't mean that copyright extends economic benefits to both society and creators...and it does so for moral reasons. Indeed, just making the economic argument for file sharing (that free sharing increases innovation and creativity for the benefit of everyone, without specific concern for payment) makes a moral assumption that this method of encouraging innovation and creativity is "good."
Frankly, trying to separate the two is what screws up the policy making.
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Lets consider software
Noone can fault MS's business model - there are a lot more MS millionaires than OpenOffice millionaires or linux millionaires. You are free to opine MS would make more money in the long run by giving Office away but I fear you'd find it hard to convince many (including me).
I don't think anyone would argue that after MS have invested what could amount to millions in a new version of Office, that they there is some moral reason why they should give it away, not that someone who chooses to illegally pirate it has some moral defence.
Sure, in a country or market sector where noone can afford it, MS might be better of turning a blind eye to piracy rather than see OpenOffice take market share but this is a decision for MS alone to make. They invested the money up front to create value for people.
The major reason that there is not huge ubiquitous piracy of Office is not because people are respectful of any moral arguments or even of the rules of copyright. There are simply technical hurdles (aka DRM) and a well funded policing operation that finds and punishes businesses that break the clear rules.
And when software as a service becomes uniquitous, there will little or no pirated software. When Office is served from the cloud, how will OpenOffice compete ?
Who will pay for the servers that are required for OpenOfficeAsAService ?
Once again, I'd defend to the death your right to say that MS would be financially better off giving Office away, but I would not agree.
Now compare this with music. The ONLY difference is that preventing and punishing piracy is technically more challenging. The value per item is less and there is little control over the enivironment in which the product is used. But music, like software, is digital content that can be copied infinitely at almost zero marginal cost.
( Music in the cloud (aka streaming) will simply be recorded and then pirated. The old Radio DJ trick of talking over the intro won't work for a streaming service )
Now I fail to see how just because it is harder to protect music from actions the creator has not approved, that somehow changes the morality of the situation.
It may well be true that the musician / label is on a hiding to nothing now the genie is out of the bottle but that doesn't make it morally wrong for the artist to want to sell the content (noone has to by it) nor does it make it right for someone to copy it without his/her permission.
It may well be true that the industry would find a whole different business model more profitable than the RIAA/DRM approach, but that doesn't mean their current approach is morally wrong. The RIAA's main fault is their overreach and excessive behaviour, and the way they seem to get absurd backing from the legal and political establishment, resulting in ludicrous financial legal awards, but if these things were not so, they would not be per-se morally wrong. A guy/gal who uploads an album with the express intention of enabling illegal sharing should arguably be punished as if he/she had shoplifted one copy. It is well nigh impossible to meaningfully prosecure the downloaders unless tools exist for them to verify what is a legal/illegal download. (As an aside, the industry could easily create such a tool and make it widely available - why don't they ?).
Without these excesses, the RIAA would be little different from the alliance of software producers (whose acronym eludes me) that send people into sizeable companies to catch them in the act of using 200 pirated copies of Office.
Are they morally wrong ?
Someone posted earlier saying how they create software for themselves and then are happy to freely share it for others. That is all well and good but I suspect that
a) The software he refers to is not 20 man years of effort
b) Giving code away for free is not his day job
I must say, with a Sonos as my primary music system (plus a few cheap MP3 players for running/dogwalking) I would rather buy an MP3 album for £5 from Amazon than pay more than twice that for a plastic disk that I have to rip as soon as I get home. But £5 is fine, and the artists have to eat. I'd rather they made money off the music and toured to meet the fans, playing small, unprofitable venues even in towns where the turnout might not be high, rather than played a few stadiums I cannot get to to be sure they make a million from the tour.
You could tell me that DRM is not a business model but MicroSoft might disagree.
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Re: Lets consider software
"... the industry could easily create [a tool to verify what is a legal/illegal download] and make it widely available - why don't they ?)."
Are you suggesting that somebody could somehow actually tell the difference between an illegal and legal download? How would you propose that anyone do this, particularly since both controlled and freely distributable content are both just a bunch of 0's and 1's when being transmitted digitally?
In truth, the only difference is how the end user will (not might, not potentially, not even probably, but actually *WILL*) interpret that data... and lacking any technological means for predicting the future, I cannot see how it can ever happen. In fact, the exact same sequence of bytes (and by logical extension, an entire computer file) could represent both a controlled copyrighted work and a public domain one or otherwise freely distributable one when processed by different programs (or even the same program, using different settings), although I must admit that for the case of an entire non-trivial file this is statistically unlikely to actually happen without somebody taking some pains to deliberate contrive an example of it.
In the end, there is absolutely nothing that copyright holders can truthfully do to keep people from infringing on copyright... even kicking people off won't really solve the problem, because the people who remain will simply get a whole lot sneakier about it (which I can't help but chuckle at the notion, because this is almost the exact behavior exhibited by house cats when they do something they are not supposed to and you catch them... they simply continue to do the activity... just while you are not looking).
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There is an iPhone app that allows your iPhone to "listen" to a tune playing on a the radio an immediately identify it (then buy it if you want to).
The "is this an illegal download" tool I alluded to would
- identify the tune (using the same database the app referred to above uses)
- interrogate the database to see if said tune is currently legally available free.
If the song has ever been legally made available free with unlimited copying rights then I would suggest that it is meaningless to later assert that a download is illegal. But I would guess that most commercial music would not be in that category and the tool would tell you that it was dodgy to expect the tune to be free.
I'm not sure that you could do this in real time as a browser add on (as you are downloading) since torrent sites get fragments from different places simultaneously, but you could certainly check the file after receiving it.
What this tool could not do so easily is tell you whether the apparently legit looking music download site with paypal payment was entitled to sell you the MP3 (Amazon) or not ("fly-by-night-cheap-mp3s.com ). But in theory the database behind the tool could tell you that too.
This is not rocket science technically if
- someone wanted to do it
- consumers wanted to use it
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Sure, but why would the recipient of the file *WANT* to check it? If they wanted the song, whether or not the source is dodgy is unlikely to matter to them, so they wouldn't be running the verification software. You could integrate it far enough into the OS that initially people would have little choice, but technically knowledgeable people would still figure out ways to defeat it and eventually that knowledge would become common enough that even that level of protection would become meaningless. Again, whether or not the sharing of such information is against the law is irrelevant to whether or not people do it. Speeding is against the law too, and a majority of people do that too when they figure, using nothing more than their own independent judgment, that it is not unreasonable for them to be doing so.
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This was all said in the context of whether it is right for the **AA to prosecurte a downloader. If there is a legitimate way for a downloader to find whether a download is legal or not, then whether they choose to use it or not is immaterial - it takes away their defence of not knowing. If I owned file sharing site I would point users to such a tool to get my site off the hook.
I guess the next problem is that if the tool was completely automated (as it could be) then the **AA could insist that the filesharing site used it to screen uploads, rather than simply hiding behind safe harbour and making it the punter's problem.
And by logical extension, the **AA could insist that any ISP that hosts files has a duty to see if they are indentifiable music files and if so check legality.
This would cost all internet users as the ISP's would pass costs on, but to be honest I'd rather pay for that (a once per upload application of a server algorithm) than pay for a huge overhead of watching surfers' traffic looking for infringement.
It's an interesting though experiment though. if the **AA spent the money developing such a tool and made it freely available to all and sundry, what would the implications be ?
There'd have to be logal redress for false positives (I can imagine otherwise the **AA developers adding )
if (songNotRecognised)
{
status = NOT_FREELY_DOWNLOADABLE;
}
Like any DRM, however, some smart people will get round it. They will find a way to mangle an MP3 so that it sounds almost the same but is unrecognisable by the algorithm. But a lot of illegal copying is about convenience. It is just so easy to rip a CD and post it online.
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Re: Lets consider software
I share the same thinking. Artists and distributors who ignore the need for evolving business models do so at their own peril, but it is their choice to make, not mine or anyone else's.
There is no moral imperative for sharing here because music is entertainment.
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Re: Lets consider software
Yes. Did anyone suggest otherwise? People pay for infinite goods all the time. But the question is whether or not it's a truly sustainable business model. And, over time you discover that it is not. And, to be fair, you seem to have ignored the fact that a rather large % of people buying MS Office are not buying MS Office. It comes bundled with their computer. They're buying convenience, not MS Office.
Noone can fault MS's business model
But we can ask if it's sustainable.
I don't think anyone would argue that after MS have invested what could amount to millions in a new version of Office, that they there is some moral reason why they should give it away, not that someone who chooses to illegally pirate it has some moral defence.
I could see how some could make a moral defense. If they need it and can't afford it.
What if by using Word they were able to write the greatest novel ever? Or what if they were writing down some amazing truth?
The major reason that there is not huge ubiquitous piracy of Office is not because people are respectful of any moral arguments or even of the rules of copyright. There are simply technical hurdles (aka DRM) and a well funded policing operation that finds and punishes businesses that break the clear rules.
Heh. Uh, that's just not true. Office has rather weak DRM and had no real DRM for most of its early days -- and it still sold well. The reason was (1) convenience (2) service contracts (3) bundles.
And when software as a service becomes uniquitous, there will little or no pirated software. When Office is served from the cloud, how will OpenOffice compete ?
Who will pay for the servers that are required for OpenOfficeAsAService ?
Google seems to be doing quite well offering Google Docs, which is basically office served from the clouds. I imagine that Oracle (soon to own Sun, which owns Star Office) may also be plenty willing to pay for the servers. IBM is now offering Open Office as well, and would be thrilled to offer a cloud version.
What do they all have in common? Doing so helps other aspects of their business model.
Once again, I'd defend to the death your right to say that MS would be financially better off giving Office away, but I would not agree.
And when everyone else is offering equivalent products for free, and Microsoft is struggling, we'll await your response.
The ONLY difference is that preventing and punishing piracy is technically more challenging.
No, that's not true. It's not difficult to pirate Office. Even Microsoft admits this.
a) The software he refers to is not 20 man years of effort
Have you ever used Linux? Have you ever used Google?
b) Giving code away for free is not his day job
Again, have you ever used Linux? Have you ever used Google? Have you used the web?
You could tell me that DRM is not a business model but MicroSoft might disagree.
Microsoft's business model has nothing to do with DRM.
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Proper Terminology
There is nothing wrong with file sharing. All of you reading and/or posting to this blog are participating in file sharing. That is how a computer works, that is how the internet works.
I do not think that a prosecutor would use the term "pop a cap in his ass" in order to describe attempted murder. Nor would a doctor say "slip him a mikey" just prior to surgery.
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Free defines a line between hobby and occupation. Since most infinite goods content creation requires specialization, practice, materials, and equipment, it is also a line that frequently determines quality as well as quantity.
If we do not pay them for their output, how do we reward our artists? Will we return to a system of patrons? Should they receive grants funded by taxes? Probably it will come down to acceptance that most folks feel entitled to get something for nothing if they can, and we will just settle for mediocre.
Or maybe the best artists will write that classic after they retire but before their mind loses its capacity for excellence?
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However, if copyright were to be reduced from 200 years back down to something reasonable, like 14 then I would be more than happy to become pro-copyright.
But it will never happen so fuck copyright.
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Or are you of the opinion that since you are an artist who is poor, that all other artists ought to be content to be the same?
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copyright deprives artists of income
Copyleft is so new and so rare, that there's a much tinier sample of artists who use it vs. artists who don't. However I can think of several who make more money with copyleft than copyright. Me, for example. Also my colleague Karl Fogel, who has published two books with O'Reilly. And Cory Doctorow.
I don't expect anyone to give up $$ to support copyleft. The problem is, copyright deprives artists of income, but STILL they cling to it, possibly because they fear change. I wouldn't expect Madonna or Sting to support copyleft, but almost all other artists have a financial as well as moral incentive to do so.
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Re: copyright deprives artists of income
I repeat what I said before... the people who copy material without regard for its copyrighted status are ruining things for law-abiding citizens... people who had wanted to respect the laws regarding copyright and use material in ways that actually would have been perfectly legal if increasingly draconian measures weren't being taken to try to stop copyright infringement (measures which will ultimately be ineffective at stopping people intent on breaking the law, but can stop cold the fair use by people who had no such intention unless they too resort to breaking the law).
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Re: Re: copyright deprives artists of income
But the copyrighted status is becoming meaningless as more and more artists come out in favor of ignoring copyright for their own works.
Sounds like a grey area to me! We need more control! That will help. Let's sue! Kick people off the internet!
And while we're at it let's prevent jaywalkers from using the streets! Jaywalk three times and no more roads for you.
That will make people respect the law!
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Re: Re: copyright deprives artists of income
If copyright was something that by law could not be traded away as part of any contract, then it might make money for the artists as well as the recording companies. If a copyrights part of a deal could not be locked in, then the money part is always open for renegotiation. So the artist could could revoke rights to copy at any time unless they got a bigger cut, leverage for a fair profit sharing arrangement instead of recording company theft.
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Re: Re: Re: copyright deprives artists of income
I would be more than happy to support copyright if it really were about the "artists" but the law is so one-sided in favor of corporate-owned content that I have no probelm throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
How does a corporation own a creative work and have rights to that creative work, lasting, what, a century?
I can't wait for all the great works of the 20th century to be owned by McDonalds and Nike!
Respect the artists and don't you dare copy that floppy.
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But seeing as how copyright will NEVER be reduced and there is a great chance that it will be extended what choice do I have?
There are so many other alternatives aside from copyright for creators to use and utilize that it boggles my poor mind.
And creators are more than welcome to kick people off the internet even though I fail to see how that helps there position. Or more lawsuits. Or conflating copyright infringement with stealing.
I have found my alternative. Why should I share what I've learned as an artist with others?
They might try to share my precious thoughts with others!
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I assume you are saying that free (either type) implies low quality.
That's a rather arbitrary conclusion and I'm sure there are many who would dispute it. In fact, there are many examples where free is of much higher quality than the non-free alternatives.
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If the artists are poor, then the overall quality will decline--instead of Thriller on DvD, the best we will get is Numa Numa Guy on YouTube and the bulk of it will be sadly lacking the quality we have come to expect.
Why should someone be expected to provide value to you for free just because you can take it? And if it doesn't have value, why do you want it?
Why do you pay so much to see a doctor for 15 minutes? Why would you pay more than the $2 that represents minimum wage? They aren't doing anything more than talking to you then writing a note on a special pad of paper.
You don't pay them for the time you spent in their office. You pay them for their 23 or more years getting an education and for their experience treating patients.
If you value an artist's work enough to want it, how can you possibly believe they don't deserve to be paid for it, or that they don't have the right to expect compensation for the time and money they put into producing it and for the time, talent, and effort they put into learning the skills they need to create it?
Their prosperity does not come from a steady reliable source that rewards them for the time they put in regardless of the quality of their output, as yours does if you have a regular job, but depends on how many folks like their work enough to pay them a tiny installment for each copy.
They are not selling bits in a file, ideas, or free product that came magically from thin air. They are trying to sell their genius, their training, their talent, their time, their work, and their angst, and recoup the money they put into the equipment, costumes, employees and the like, that they needed to produce that file you valued.
If producing a work of quality is so easy that it should be free, why do you need to download one? Why not just make your own?
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Moral Schmoral
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Re: Moral Schmoral
Oh sorry, what I mean to say is how awesome intellectual property laws are and without them we wouldn't have any new art or invention, everybody would steal everything and humanity would implode.
So let's kick people off of the internet.
That sounds pretty exciting too!
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Keep it Simple, Stupid
If I'm smart, I will evaluate all of the best ways to make money from the product that I'm selling. For example, if I'm selling digital copies of my music, I might want to switch to a model in which I give away the music for free but you have to come to my website to get it and you have to listen to it stream from my website at least once before it becomes available to you. While you're streaming it, I might have some ad displays that are making me as much money as selling the music. Just one example.
The bottom line is that supporting copyright laws for anything - digital music included - doesn't have to mean it won't be free. However, it's up to each individual rights holder to decide on what business model they will use. It is not up to the douche bag thieves to just take what they want for free.
Oh, one more point: any song, no matter how good, only has so much demand. It might be 100 copies, 100K copies, or 10M copies. Every time a song is illegally copied or downloaded, the opportunity to sell it has gone down. So please stop with the infinite supply arguments. That only works if the market is also infinite, which it is most definitely not. There is a real opportunity cost associated with stolen music.
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Re: Keep it Simple, Stupid
But it is up to the "thieves", sorry, copyright infringers. If no one infringed than content creators would still be trying to sell plastic discs for $24.99.
Piracy is a form of competition.
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Re: Re: Keep it Simple, Stupid
Piracy is almost completely disconnected from the price of CD's.
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Sharing something infinitely replicable has a minimal cost. It's one thing to ask somebody to donate money, time, essentially "scarce stuff." But something infinite? Information, as Mike says again and again here, is not implementation. Is it not better to let needy countries try to do what they can with valuable information (at the very least) than clutch tenuously at information and declare "I don't want this shared?"
In this thought experiment, I think that once information is released to the world (one might say "published"), the creator doesn't have the ability or the right to say what gets done with it. While he may not want to share lifesaving information with the world, could you blame somebody who worked for him for doing the same?
What we see across the filesharing community is a bunch of people sharing something that they have with others. It costs nothing to replicate, so why not? Why artificially prevent somebody from enjoying something just because the original creator has some idea that he should be able to control it forever?
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(1) Any "lifesaving information" that is patented is already available to anyone, anywhere, to read. Since the vast majority of "lifesaving" patents are patented in few, if any, third world countries, then they are pretty much free to duplicate any of the processes in that patent - if they can. The duplication part is, of course, the significantly non-free part of the equation.
(2) I have seen many people claim that "most" "lifesaving" information is developed with public money. I have spent hours searching for sources and yet all I find are the same sources repeating the same mantra over and over again. Does the government fund a lot of medical research? Yes. Do private companies benefit from that research? Apparently. Is there a solid link between the dollars spent and the benefit to private companies? None that I can find. Of course, there are trillions of gigabytes of data on the internet and only so many hours in the day. It is possible that someone has definitive data showing the relationship between government funding and private company "lifesaving" information.
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Yet this is exactly the choice many people are making in the name of "intellectual property."
I don't know of anyone making choices to share or not share "in the name of intellectual property." Those choices are made in the name of commerce.
I think that once information is released to the world (one might say "published"), the creator doesn't have the ability or the right to say what gets done with it. While he may not want to share lifesaving information with the world, could you blame somebody who worked for him for doing the same?
I think this might contain the seeds that undermines the argument. Keeping in mind it's not just a matter of control, but of control in the name of commerce, if the creator doesn't have an incentive (whether moral, economic or both) to release the creation, he just might not want to share it. If the release of that creation by other means (such as an employee) is likely, it would only encourage the creator to be even more secretive.
From the article you link to:Now, the article also points to the downside of patents as well, but that doesn't mean that the upside, encouraging the release of creative material by protecting it, should be ignored.
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Now, how do you "prevent" someone from making a drug in a country where it is not patented?
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Sleep well at night.
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So how is reading Shakespeare immoral? I took a copy off of the internet. I didn't pay anyone for it.
They didn't pay anyone for it. Everybody taking things and not paying for it. How dare they!
Pay up! Taking is stealing is infringing is taking is stealing. Everybody knows this!
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"They didn't pay anyone for 'what'?"
If everybody is "taking" things and they do not have legal permission or the implicit or explicit permission of the author, then they are taking things they are not entitled to. Under biblical interpretation, that is stealing.
As for "how dare they," I suppose some people have a morality that permits taking things they are not entitled to. Of course, some people are caught and go to jail.
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I can take any copy of it. I need no permission to do so.
It's our culture. Not stealing.
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However, the legal issue, which is very different, disagrees with you. You are in fact not permitted to take a copy of anything covered by patent, trademark, or copyright. If you do so, you risk a combination of civil and criminal punishment.
It is stealing until either the law releases it for general use, or the original creator or subsidiary owner gives permission for you to make a copy, from some philophical points of view.
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19th century artistic works. I can take copies of them! Not stealing.
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(1) Get permission of the "owner" to make a copy. Many creators give this permission or even provide free digital copies. There are no issues here.
(2) Take a copy of the work, without permission. Uh huh.
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How do you retain permission from a dead author? What if copyright last for an infinite amount of time minus a day?
It is impossible to steal memes.
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I have mixed feelings about copyright. For certain, copyright is too long. What is the right length of time? Many people argue zero is the right length of time. I am unsure. I would be interested to see what happens if copyright were shortened to 5 or 10 years. Would the world really fall apart? Seems hard to believe. If 5 or 10 years seems beneficial to society, then chop the length to 2 or 5 years and see what happens again. Once again to 1 or 2 years and test again. If undesirable things happen, it would be easy enough to stop decreasing the length, and we would get the benefit of a less onerous and complicated system. If anti-copyright extremists are right and copyright is harmful and unnecessary, we would be able to have a plan to phase copyright out. If they are wrong, then we can figure out what the optimal copyright length is based on measurement.
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If copyright only lasted 10 years I would be in complete agreement that taking an artistic work that the artist has not released would be, well, not wrong, but not good either.
But copyright lasts so long that I, as an artist myself, that I have a moral obligation to bitch about it, anonymously, on techdirt.
Seriously, if copyrighted lasted 20 years we wouldn't be having this conversation.
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It is not our culture. It is a good that needs paid for. To take is to steal.
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Good luck with the 22nd century!
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copyright, non-commercial projects
It is important to understand that by asking the details of the downloader (name, email, project description), we are essentially bringing to the light the non-commercial users. We ask them to put the artists credits in their project and we double check the usage of the track(s). We think this is the best way to offer non-commercial users a legal alternative in exchange of their data.
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The morality of copying: a simple Kantian evaluation
First, the argument must rest on the basic elements. So put aside consideration of economic effects of copying on the producer, and look at copying in itself.
To evaluate something morally, we can follow Kant, whose fundamental moral rule is: Act only if the maxim of your action can be willed as a universal law. That is, we ask: would we want an action to be a general law?
If a digital object is good, then copying it duplicates and spreads that good. And the incidental cost of copying is practically nothing. We can certainly wish this were a general law: if everyone copied freely and widely, we would all benefit -- we would all receive very much more good, and at negligable cost. Copying seems clearly moral, and any restriction such as copyright must therefore be partly immoral.
Creative production can be addressed similarly, with a similar result: We ought to help cultural items be produced because we will all benefit. So helping production, and copying, are *both* moral. One is not intrinsically antagonistic or limiting on the other -- in fact they are mutually supportive. You have a duty to do both. And it follows that where there is a system that is self-conflicting, such as copyright -- which trades copying restrictions against production rewards -- you have a moral duty to replace it with something better.
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Re: The morality of copying: a simple Kantian evaluation
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Re: The morality of copying: a simple Kantian evaluation
As for copying digital objects being an object of "culture," that is debatable. If someone creates a video of farting "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and digitizes it, what has culture lost by avoiding copying? As before, your argument assumes an undemonstrated value. A digital object only demonstrates "good" and "cultural value" after a time, not initially. Your Kantian arguments are interesting, but not persuasive. Further, they are yet another philosophical viewpoint not founded in any greater objectivity than any other moral viewpoint.
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Of course, because the whole debate assumes it. If objects are harmful then they should be restricted -- we would all agree on that (generally, I think), or at least it is a separate matter.
Questioning whether digital things are without exception of cultural value, and not knowing if something will 'evolve into an evil', is irrelevant. Do you like music? Then it is good. That is all that needs to be said.
Because the question is not *what* things are good, but *how to handle* good things.
As far as Kant: establishing an objective foundation for ethics was his central purpose. Whether he succeeded, or if it is possible at all, are deep questions requiring more than a sentence to dismiss. But your criticism was relative, and so in this case rather vulnerable: I think most people *would* say that Kant made a better job of objectivity than others.
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Re: The morality of copying: a simple Kantian evaluation
Great! I posted it to my notes-blog (click my name), for future reference. Copy it freely and at your leisure!
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tt
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Against too much copyrights
but does that mean to get copyrighted materials, someone also has to meet certain STANDARDS
where do you draw the line
is it fair that people not born to meet these requirements have to miss out on these things
copyright holders are greedier than they have to be, they should be happy in the fact they are fluid in life, and will never have to face poverty
damned bigots
fluid: capable of flowing and easily changing shape
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What about dead artists?
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