Well if you have not heard about this topic, I think you had better turn in your web user card on the way out the door. Wiki SOPA and PIPA Apparently our government is considering some laws that would make it challenging and expensive for many web sites to operate.
Being a supposed "Small Government Libertarian", I really do not want the government putting anymore rules on the web or spending my tax dollars enforcing them. Yet due to my strong belief that people should pay others for their work, I am fully in support of doing something. As usual, I AM CONFLICTED !!!
A brief story: when I was younger I would pirate "free" music from my friends by copying it onto cassette tapes. I mean I was broke and my friends had some cool tunes. Yet when I got a job and matured (slightly), I started to truly understand that it was wrong to steal people's intellectual property without paying for it. So I discontinued the practice and began paying for all of my tunes, movies, software, etc. By the way, we do still "share" within the family. (I think that is ok, though I may be rationalizing...)
Now compare this with an acquaintance of mine who has 30,000 songs, another who watches "free" movies instead of renting or buying them, another that rarely buys software, and dozens of other examples of freeloaders extraordinaire. And the scariest part of this is that most of these folks are at least comfortable with their pilferage, if not down right proud of how good of a deal they are getting. On top of this... Many of them are neither young nor broke...
I wonder if these folks would be willing to slip into a bakery and grab a "free" roll while the baker wasn't looking. Or how many go to church on Sunday morning and pledge not to steal, just to come home and download that "free" content.
One more story: In a book named Predictably Irrational by Dan Arielly, they discuss some social experiments they ran and how the results did not always make sense. (a fascinating read) One related to this post is when they placed bottles of pop in a shared college dorm fridge. Not surprisingly, within a few days they were ALL gone. So next they placed a plate with the same number of dollar coins in the fridge. Surprisingly, all coins were still present at the end of the test. Apparently we can rationalize taking things, but have a harder time with cash.
Thoughts? STEALING or A GOOD DEAL?
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23 comments:
I think the concern ought to be that the government is not solving the problem at all, but instead stepping all over individual rights and impeding normal, legal commerce.
J. Ewing
What J said.
--Annie
So what should they do?
Keep letting people steal the "sticky buns" from the hard working baker? Maybe the government should stop enforcing physical theft laws?
What would happen to the value of US currency if we let people photo copy it?
How is this any different than people copying all this digital content?
What would a Disney film be worth if everyone can get it for FREE?
A number of interesting questions are raised here. What rights does the seller of a CD retain when he sells you a disc? You believe loaning the disc out to someone else to record is piracy. Is it piracy to record the disc for your own purposes? If you sell or give away the disc, are you morally obliged to erase the recording you made from the disc? If you sell the disc, are you morally obliged to return a portion of the sales price to the record company? What about artworks? If you resell a painting from purchased from an artist, does the artist retain some right in the painting, for which he should be compensated out of the proceeds from the resale?
What rights do you retain in anything after you sell it? What are the legal rights? And does a determination of what the legal rights might be influence our moral judgment of the issue?
By the way, I don't mean these as rhetorical questions. I don't have any definitive answers for them myself. I am just throwing them out here.
--Hiram
I am a participant in the Netflix DVD service. Netflix buys DVD's from the manufacturers and loans them out for a fee which it does not share with the copyright owners. It pockets the fee making a profit. Has Netflix committed piracy? Has Netflix in any other way deprived the copyright holders of any rights they might have? Have I, as a Netflix subscriber, violated anyone's rights?
--Hiram
My impression (and I'll admit to only a cursory knowledge) is that these two pieces of legislation use a sledgehammer to address a problem best remedied with a scalpel.
Pirating music and videos, in their entirely, for profit, is pretty indefensible. But the entertainment industry once opposed cassette tapes and VHS tapes--technology will march on, and it's only sensible that congress find a sensible middle ground that doesn't pit old media against new meda.
Wikipedia, as one example, provides a tremendous public service at no cost, yet it would likely be shut down in this broad-brush crackdown.
The entertainment industry and the legislators who proposed these bills overreached.
--Annie
I think the problem comes when people duplicate or show en masse other peoples IP for means of making a profit or gaining in some way. (ie some white lies are ok)
If you buy a painting and later sell it at a profit, you owe nothing more to the artist. (ie investment appreciated) If you buy a painting, create 1000 prints of it and sell them. You should be paying them something.
Or if you sell a CD once in awhile and neglect to delete it from your system, or you rip a close friend's CD. As compared to downloading almost all your content off some pirate site, or uploading your rip to a pirate site. (ie matter of scale)
As for netflix, blockbuster and other mainstream sites, I believe they pay royalties or higher prices for content in order to pay the IP Owner for their work.
Beyond just these 2 laws, any idea how to address an issue like this that is becoming socially acceptable? Yet it would conflict with old time values.
There are some things the government doesn't need to "fix." If you try to copy a CD or DVD these days, you will likely find it digitally copy protected. Online music comes with digital rights attached. Software licenses are pretty ironclad, and some people are dedicated to keeping it that way. In short, the industries are creating their own solutions. The heavy hand of government just mucks things up. We have laws against this stuff already; we don't need more.
J. Ewing
If you try to copy a CD or DVD these days, you will likely find it digitally copy protected.
Not really. I am in the process of uploading a significant number of CD's I personally own, to iTunes Match, and it works quite nicely. I feel no personal ethical qualms.
These licenses mean nothing indeed are nothing unless there are laws to create them and a government ultimately to enforce them.
--Hiram
I was going to say that when I read J's comment. It seems there are no electronic protections that can not be undone pretty easily.
So how does your thought process work regarding not being concerned about making someone else's hard work available for free to the masses?
I forgot the second part. If you were the artist that had worked for a year on the CD or the company that funded the efforts, would you be comfortable with someone doing what you are doing?
Rationale?
These protections are recent, and I don't know that they can NOT be easily circumvented. I DO know that my personal ethics prevent me from trying unless I know my reasons for doing so have an honest end-- there are some-- and that to knowingly circumvent such barriers constitutes knowledge that you are committing a crime for which you can and should be prosecuted.
Again, just because industry cannot or has not protected itself does not mean that government should be involved, especially with poorly-considered rights-mangling overreach.
J. Ewing
would you be comfortable with someone doing what you are doing?
Well, I would be, but that's because I think I have a clearer understanding of how markets work. When you sell something, you get the purchase price, it's the other party who gets the value of what he or she purchased. And in this case, the artist hasn't lost by the transaction. I purchase the disc once, I wouldn't have purchased it again for the purposes of uploading. And of course, the reality going forward is that the availability of uploading, and the income artists receive from the Apple store going forward is tremendously profitable and advantageous to artists going forward.
A lot of what's happening here are rearguard attempts to protect doomed technologies like the CD and the DVD. I, for one, old fogy that I am, am saddened by their loss. Visiting the CD and DVD aisles of my local Target is a lonely experience. But the simple and indisputable fact is that nothing can save these technologies, and putting effort and resources in trying is a wasted effort, and diversion from developing business models and strategies that can be successful going forward. And this, after all, is the history of those technologies. The same forces that are trying to save these technologies are the ones who attacked them when they emerged. They failed then, just as they will fail now.
--Hiram
Hiram,
If you are uploading a ripped CD to the web and a million people download it for free, how is the artist getting money? I missed this point.
Or is this the story that goes something like this. The corporations and artists are rich and powerful, so the uploaders are modern day Robinhood's.
If a corporate baker is away from the shop, should we grab 100 stick buns and hand them out to our friends? I am still missing it.
J,
Should the government get out of the Patent, Trademark and Copyright business then and let business fight it out? Seems aligned with your point.
"If you are uploading a ripped CD to the web and a million people download it for free, how is the artist getting money?"
I should have been clearer. With iMatch, I am uploading the CD to my personal account, it's not available to anyone else. The equivalent, maybe of taping a CD for playing in the car. As it happens, and I didn't mention this, because it tends to undermine the argument for my own immorality, Apple's service is completely legal, and they compensate the record companies for the service they provide to me. Record companies, and maybe even artists, get further payment for what they were happy to unconditionally sell at some earlier date and are as happy as clams with the arrangement.
"The corporations and artists are rich and powerful, so the uploaders are modern day Robinhood's."
Actually most artists and other creators of intellectual property are not, which raises a different set of questions. The vast majority of content creators expect no money for their efforts. Bloggers for example. In general, policies that tend to restrict the availability of content on the web negatively affect the vast majority of content creators, for the benefit of the infinitesimal few. Does this make sense?
"If a corporate baker is away from the shop, should we grab 100 stick buns and hand them out to our friends?"
When he sells them, does he have the right to say, they shouldn't be used for sandwiches? What if he puts them out front where they are free for the taking?
--Hiram
What is happening here is that established companies whose businesses are in irreversible decline are using there still substantial resources, and carefully cultivated connections, to achieve through legislation what the marketplace will ultimately deny them, the preservation and profitability of their business model. In doing so, they are stifling the emergence of competitors with business models, that can deliver the profits, and the prosperity our economy is a bit short of lately.
I see that Al Franken is backing these measures. Much as I like Al, he symbolizes the old media whose day is now done. He needs to step out of the way of the new technologies, the ones that were successful for him, but are now longer viable, and let the kids have their turn. And open an itunes account.
--Hiram
ITunes isn't the problem, since they pay royalties.
These are the type of sites that are of concern.
Free MP3s
After some research ITunes Match seems user specific. (ie no one else can download unless you give them your ID.
"Should the government get out of the Patent, Trademark and Copyright business then and let business fight it out? Seems aligned with your point."
No, the government is already in this "business" and unlike most things they do, this is something they should be doing. But we do not need another law to enforce the laws on patent, trademark and copyright infringement. It is up to the producers to detect or prevent, by technological means, such infringement and report it to government prosecutors.
We have a Congress with WAY too much free time, thinking up new ways to regulate every single transaction, or even every thought, by every single individual in the country. It would be bad enough if they made such regulations with some intelligence, but they don't. This bill is another perfect example, solving a "problem" that doesn't need solving, and certainly isn't going to be solved by some ham-fisted one-size-fits-all government law with all kinds of nasty unintended consequences.
J. Ewing
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the web servers are not in this country. So enforcement is difficult or impossible given the current infrastructure and systems..
Given that so many people complain about the federal government exceeding it's power, I thought I would note that regulating intellectual property issues is one specifically granted to the feds under the constitution.
--Hiram
I wouldn't say "regulating," but rather "protecting." They have that role, and to my knowledge do it reasonably well, but the new age brings new challenges. But SOPA isn't a solution, it's just a meddlesome overly complex overreach in search of a problem. Congress does that, sometimes.
J. Ewing
Last night I watched the documentary, "Page One", about the New York Times, on Netflix streaming. It touches a number of issues we have been discussing here. It's an excellent movie, but for folks with kids, I would note that it contains some foul language.
==Hiram
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