Greetings and Salutations….
The question arose on Slashdot.org as to whether there was any validity to the RIAA’s claim that piracy really
hurts the recording industry, and included a request for folks to quote chapter and verse proving this.
I saw the following rant and thought it merited another point of view, and, that I would post it here
just in case anyone ELSE was interested:
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Some interesting thoughts here…and the sort of ethical debates that can keep a group of college students up ALL night with pizza and beer, wrestling with the issues. let’s look at them, though….
| Right, and its also theft every-time I go into wal-mart take a look at HDTVs and don’t buy one.
| Its also theft every-time I go to the book store and read a book. Etc.
No, sarcasm aside, in the first case it would only be theft if you talked an associate into loading one of those HDTVs into your car without paying for it. but then…I suspect you understand that (*smile*). As for reading the book in the bookstore….I suppose a lawyer could argue either side there, and end up with a new Mercedes no matter WHO won. My feeling is that it is NOT, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, unless you can read the entire book in one sitting, you run the risk of coming back to find all the copies sold out. The only way to avoid this is to buy the book. Secondly, it has been my observation that a vast majority of folks that read books in the bookstore are sampling them to decide IF they want to invest in them or not. While there is a certain population of folks that may do exactly what you say, it is such a small percentage of folks that look at a given book that it is lost in the noise. If it were a serious problem, the publishers would pressure the booksellers to keep that reading from happening.
| Why is theft wrong? Theft is wrong because it deprives the person of an object. For example,
| if someone steals a car, the problem isn’t that someone got a free car, the problem
| is that I don’t have my car. If someone had a duplicator and wanted my car to
| duplicate, I’d let them because I wouldn’t be deprived of property.
Well, in short, my answer to the question is “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. However, your following point is also quite well put and accurate too. Things start going a bit sketchy after that though, alas. Let us consider the case of a BiG copier that could duplicate your car. You might well be willing to allow that duplication to happen, because, by your estimation, it costs you nothing. However, you are not the only person affected by that event. YOU bought that car from someone, after all, and gave them real property – cash – for it. If your friend copies your car, and ends up with a vehicle that they can drive around town just like the original, they HAVE deprived some seller of real property – the cash that would have been handed over if the copy had been purchased. This may well have no immediate effect on you, and, so seems unimportant to you. As many other folks have said too, it’s only one copy..that is not important… However, what if the sale was through the manufacturer….suddenly their cash flow drops, and perhaps they go out of business. One day you need a spare part for that car, and, you find that it is not available, or, is painfully expensive because it is being manufactured by a third party. Or…while we are spinning scenarios….what if the seller is desperate for money in these hard times, and the car you allowed to be duplicated for free replaced a sale that would have brought the seller cash to keep his starving family alive, or pay for a life-saving operation?
It could be argued that, while you feel that you have suffered no loss, as a matter of fact, you HAVE deprived those two sellers of real property – the cash from the sale that your duplicate replaced – and so are directly responsible for the failure of the manufacturer in the former case, or th death of the seller or his family in the latter case.
| Theft is depriving someone of a physical, guaranteed good. Copyright infringement is not theft.
As noted above, unless one is willing to say that the cash from a sale is NOT physical goods, it is quite possible to argue that, in some significant way, copyright infringement, by duplicating and distributing free copies of someone else;s work IS a form of theft.
Pleasant dreams
Dave Mundt