ORIGINAL: jacktheexcynic
...here is the law itself, so we can stop arguing over each other's opinions of what we think the law might say...

This does not represent the totality of copyright law, but even still it clearly and explicitly grants the copyright owner *exclusive rights to do and authorize the following:

To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords...
To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;...

I cannot see how anyone but a lawyer working on contigency could make a case with a straight face that ripping an mp3 and distributing it over the internet does not consititue "reproducing" a copy of the work, merely because it is a "digital" copy or whatever.

But more to the point, the spirit and intent of the idea of copyright is baldly obvious, regardless of what legal contortions anyone might try. The author of a work clearly has a moral right to control the copying and distribution of that work for some period of time.

There may be legitimate questions and disagreements around the edges or over the nuance or particulars of the law, and there may be exceptional cases where the ethics are murkier, but collecting and distributing large quantities of obviously copyrighted songs without payment or permission is obviously and clearly wrong and blatantly at odds with the notion of an author having a right to control their work, and to charge for the use of it.

Cheers.

ORIGINAL: yep

...i can invite 200 people over to watch a movie (for free!) as long as i don't - get this - charge for it...

I'm sorry-- this is just wrong. It's not charging vs free, it's private in-home viewing vs public display.

You can invite as many friends as you like to watch a movie (and you can even charge them admission to the party), as long as it is in the spirit of a private home viewing. But you cannot for instance open up your doors to the public for a free movie night. Only a pirate or a defense attorney is unable to see an obvious difference.

i believe "invite" precludes opening my doors to whatever strangers wander into my home. and if my home (or yard) is big enough, and i have hundreds of friends who invite hundreds of friends then i can easily and legally allow thousands of people to watch a movie for free, right? as long as i know all the people who know all the other people? or where does it stop? can only my acquaintances watch and not their friends? what about my neighbors?

Copyright is way simpler than most people make it out to be. It is not a game of hidden and elaborate traps and loopholes. It only appears that way if you are looking for ways to sneak through them.

there are real issues here and it's not black and white. it's not simply the whims of the copyright holder.

again, a car is a physical object. if cars could be duplicated, and you duplicated my car, whether i was out of town or driving it, it wouldn't be stealing. it doesn't affect me one way or the other if you have a carbon copy of my car in that case. the analogy does not work.

But there is an effect. How likely would you be to buy a car if you could copy one? And what would be the impact on the car industry?

you are correct, copyright law was last updated in 1995, before napster became a big issue. to me it would seem that copyright would cover digital distribution as well, but then you run into fair use:

There is no way you can stretch fair use to cover uploading copyrighted materials for other to download. There is not any question about it and it is currently illegal. I cannot in my wildest imagination believe it would ever be otherwise, because that would destroy the intellectual properity based industries and no sane country that depended on them as much as we do would allow to happen.


Personally I think that if the EFF is trying to argue that file sharing is not a violation of copyright, that they've gone completely off the deep end and are not really interested in a real balance at all.

the car industry would pretty much collapse and car designs would probably fall under copyright law (if they aren't already) since the only remaining value would be the design of the car itself. technology marches onward and the value of a car drops like a stone. except that the car manufacturers wouldn't like that and would band together to keep their outdated industry alive. they might try to place restrictive controls on distribution in order to lock customers into a specific format or a certain number of car copies or other artificial controls designed to thwart the new market trend. sound familiar?

The car manufacturers would band together to keep people from stealing their products, like any sane industry would. You try to make it sound like they are the evil ones and deserve to die. They are the ones doing the work to create the car designs and putting in the huge investment to do so and putting out the product. There's nothing RESTRICTIVE about it, it's the same protections that any other industry would get.

it is not currently illegal and saying it doesn't make it so. if it was illegal, the courts would not still be deciding whether it is or not. i don't think that copyright or fair use were designed to cover song uploading and downloading, on that i have definitely changed my mind in this discussion after reading the laws.

It is illegal. Put up a bunch of files on your server and then send an e-mail to the RIAA telling them where to find you. You will discover that it is illegal and they will have you in court and you'll lose.

the EFF is trying to keep huge corporations from destroying fair use any more than they already have. when you play tug of war you pull as hard as you can, hoping to move an inch or two. that's how you achieve balance in an adversarial legal system. they may not be interested in balance but neither is the RIAA. the result is that the law is skewed only somewhat against the consumer, and music is still being purchased.

You continue to act like the people who are making the product and investing the time and money to create it are the evil ones. And don't try to make out like it's a bunch of huge corprations. Copyright protects you against them just as much as it protects them against you. If you create some hugely popular song, without copyright protectsions you'd never get a penny because they could take it from you and use it any way they wanted. This thing is always cast as fight against huge evil corporations, as though they are the only ones who benefits from copyright protectsion (or should if it were actually being enforced.)

haven't really read anything here... but i'll just play the devil's advocate and say that without things like h20 or other warez or pirated software...I would never have ended up buying a lot of the software I own today.

I don't believe that for a second. Surely you're not claiming software pirates provide a handy 'try before you buy' service?? You've used pirated software because you can - if it wasn't available, you would have bought the software you wanted by doing legitimate research.

Life is full of disappointments.

I know you stated that you're playing Devil's Advocate, but still - just because you bought something which you perceive to be 'crap', that doesn't allow you to steal the next item to make sure you don't waste your money again.

I was disappointed with KT Tunstall's 'Eye to the Telescope' album, but that doesn't give me the right to steal her next album, just in case.

system of a down put out the album called "steal this album" in reference to abbie hoffman's book "steal this book." the cover art was designed to look like a burned CD written on with a sharpie.

i'm not sure what their point was though.

EDIT: i love wikipedia : Steal this Album

apparently it was released because these songs were first leaked as crappy quality mp3s so the band wanted to release higher quality versions of them. lol. good call. that fits perfectly in this discussion.

ORIGINAL: droddey

the car industry would pretty much collapse and car designs would probably fall under copyright law (if they aren't already) since the only remaining value would be the design of the car itself. technology marches onward and the value of a car drops like a stone. except that the car manufacturers wouldn't like that and would band together to keep their outdated industry alive. they might try to place restrictive controls on distribution in order to lock customers into a specific format or a certain number of car copies or other artificial controls designed to thwart the new market trend. sound familiar?

The car manufacturers would band together to keep people from stealing their products, like any sane industry would. You try to make it sound like they are the evil ones and deserve to die. They are the ones doing the work to create the car designs and putting in the huge investment to do so and putting out the product. There's nothing RESTRICTIVE about it, it's the same protections that any other industry would get.

if i design a device that can duplicate cars, it isn't stealing the cars because i'm not taking anything. all i have done is evolve the assembly line and lower the barrier to entry for car manufacturing from huge corporations to anyone with the money to purchase my duplicator. many industries have died in the face of advancing technology and the work of many has been reduced to silicon. there is no good or bad guy until big corporations use their power to stop the progress. that is why i believe that there are two evil sides in the music downloading issue, and if i've got to pick the most evil side, it's the RIAA and not music pirates.

in the real world, big investments are made and lost. all the money poured into technology x is lost when technology y comes out and replaces it. the LP manufacturing industry pretty much blown away by the tape industry which more or less was decimated by the CD/DVD industry and now the internet is making traditional data mediums irrelevant. just because a particular industry exists doesn't give it the inherent right to continue existing in the face of progress.

it is not currently illegal and saying it doesn't make it so. if it was illegal, the courts would not still be deciding whether it is or not. i don't think that copyright or fair use were designed to cover song uploading and downloading, on that i have definitely changed my mind in this discussion after reading the laws.

It is illegal. Put up a bunch of files on your server and then send an e-mail to the RIAA telling them where to find you. You will discover that it is illegal and they will have you in court and you'll lose.

getting sued != illegal. most people haven't gone to court with the RIAA because like monster cable, the RIAA can simply intimidate any person of normal means into settling. settling with someone does not make something illegal. i can sue you for saying something is illegal when it isn't but it doesn't make it illegal to make up stuff.

the EFF is trying to keep huge corporations from destroying fair use any more than they already have. when you play tug of war you pull as hard as you can, hoping to move an inch or two. that's how you achieve balance in an adversarial legal system. they may not be interested in balance but neither is the RIAA. the result is that the law is skewed only somewhat against the consumer, and music is still being purchased.

You continue to act like the people who are making the product and investing the time and money to create it are the evil ones. And don't try to make out like it's a bunch of huge corprations. Copyright protects you against them just as much as it protects them against you. If you create some hugely popular song, without copyright protectsions you'd never get a penny because they could take it from you and use it any way they wanted. This thing is always cast as fight against huge evil corporations, as though they are the only ones who benefits from copyright protectsion (or should if it were actually being enforced.)

i never said or acted like anyone was evil except corporations trying to take away my fair use rights and people who don't think they should compensate artists for creative works. i don't have a problem with copyright, i think it's a good thing. i also think fair use is a good thing, and like i said above, i don't think fair use is really meant to cover downloading music.

if i design a device that can duplicate cars, it isn't stealing the cars because i'm not taking anything

Yes it is. It is stealing the design of the car, into which went many tens of millions of dollars. You are getting not just hunk of matter for free, you are getting a well designed hunk of matter that has much more value. And you destroy the ability of those people who actually do the work to create that design to get paid for the work that they did. What you are replicating only has value because someone put a lot of time and effort to creating the thing you are replicating. That value is what you are stealing, in the same way that someone steals value when they put a brand name sticker on a sweat shop knockoff.

If you want to create a machine that designs and then spits out cars, go for it. But you cannot just duplicate cars because a car is not just a hunk of atoms, any more than a song is a hunk of bits. It's a very carefully crafted hunk of bits that someone spent a lot of time and money probably to put in that form.

LOL! A device that can duplicate cars is entirely hypothetical. It does not exist. If you ever develop such a device, I'm certain the legal entanglements will ensue. Ripping off music DOES exist, taking it out of the realm of the theoretical.

I personally don't mind if someone rips off my music. My income and well being is not dependent upon it. That's why I put my stuff out there for free. However, if my income DID depend upon it, I'd be real unhappy to have it stolen. Let's talk about this in practical terms.
Mark

The car thing was brought up, so I tried to get out of it what I could... I think the applicable lesson is still there. Unless you are replicating rocks or something else that costs nothing to create, then you are stealing from the folks that added the value to raw materials to create the product being replicated, whether it's technically doable or not. The same applies to music. When you steal it on a broad basis, you dilute the value of the product artificially and illegally and hurt the people who worked on and invested in the creating of the thing being duplicated. A single instance of a car (or CD) isn't the issue. It's the work that went into the designing an creating a car or the music on a CD (so that people assign value to it) that is what is really being stolen. And it's the destruction of those people's right to a fair market for their product that is at issue. Everyone else has that right, and if you start arguing that one industry doesn't deserve that right, then you won't have a foot to stand on when the tables are turned on the industry that puts food on your table and puts your kids through college.

ORIGINAL: droddey

if i design a device that can duplicate cars, it isn't stealing the cars because i'm not taking anything

Yes it is. It is stealing the design of the car, into which went many tens of millions of dollars. You are getting not just hunk of matter for free, you are getting a well designed hunk of matter that has much more value. And you destroy the ability of those people who actually do the work to create that design to get paid for the work that they did. What you are replicating only has value because someone put a lot of time and effort to creating the thing you are replicating. That value is what you are stealing, in the same way that someone steals value when they put a brand name sticker on a sweat shop knockoff.

it is not stealing the design, it is replicating it. the only part of your argument that makes logical sense is the fact that i am significantly lowering the value of all cars by inventing a device that duplicates them at essentially zero cost. so a car designer spending 2 million on designing a working prototype really wouldn't be able to make money unless there was some kind of artificial compensation system, which i believe there is already or we would actually see cheap clones of "name-brand" cars coming out of certain countries with lower costs of living.

i get what you are saying, although based on your most recent posts i think you are definitely going overboard on the emotional arguments. i've never advocated that artists shouldn't be compensated for their work, just trying to point out that the internet is making the old-school music distributors obsolete, and in doing so, de-valuing certain musical experiences, namely listening to audio recordings of original works. again, i believe that artists should be compensated, but the artists get a fraction of what i pay for a CD. the rest go to middlemen that technology has rendered nearly obsolete. this disparity of value is part (not all) of the reason that otherwise honest individuals are downloading music. many of them buy the music after listening to it - the music itself is good enough that they want to compensate the artist and so they do. many of them don't pay for the music, but would they have bought the CD if there had been no other option? probably not. they probably would have borrowed music from friends, listened to the radio and bought a few CDs of artists they really liked. yes, there are some that may have bought the CD if downloading weren't an option, but i don't think they are the majority (and that's just speculation, there's no way to know).

If you want to create a machine that designs and then spits out cars, go for it. But you cannot just duplicate cars because a car is not just a hunk of atoms, any more than a song is a hunk of bits. It's a very carefully crafted hunk of bits that someone spent a lot of time and money probably to put in that form.

and the ability to duplicate songs for free simply means that the return on investment is going to be a lot lower than it was before. it may mean that talentless hacks with large breasts simply aren't worth the money it takes to market their image, make their vocals presentable and pay for spins at radio stations. it may require artists to connect more with their potential fans in order to increase the value of their musical experience. it just might take some of the greed and extravagance and superficial banality out of the industry.

in any other industry, when sales go down, corporations lower prices, attempt to improve and innovate products and spice up the customer's experience. the music industry keeps the prices the same, spits out more and more dreck, and sues their customers. then they blame piracy for flagging sales.

not paying to own music is wrong, no question. but ignoring the impact of technology on the value of commodities is putting your head in the sand.

ORIGINAL: nick8004
-- Here's an analogy I sometimes use. Suppose you own a department store. Someone invents a cheap handheld "copy ray" device. They can walk into your store, point it at any item (unbeknownst to you), press a button, and voila! A perfect copy of the item is instantly transferred to the trunk of their car. Suddenly, teenagers by the score are walking into your store and walking out without buying anything. Would you have any doubt that many of them are filling the trunks of their cars with each trip? Wouldn't you consider this "stealing"? Or maybe not -- after all, they're not taking actual physical items. Your inventory remains exactly the same as if they had never been there. Would you be okay with all this "harmless" copying? Would you be content in the knowledge that after Little Johnny "replicates" every pair of designer jeans in your store, he will like them so much that he'll come back in a month and buy the same items from you (i.e., he was "just trying them out to see if he liked them")? Would you throw up your hands and say "Oh well, such is the march of technology, I guess I'll just have to be content with steadily diminishing sales and eventual bankruptcy"?

here's what would really happen - the kids would go into your store, buy one pair of everything, and then copy them at home and sell them dirt cheap. your store, not being clever enough to obtain a copying device, would go out of business and when it did and people finally got tired of last year's jeans for $3 a pop, the kids would go looking for new designs. the designers of the jeans would keep them locked away and charge the kids to go in with the ray guns to copy the jeans. they would haggle over prices until both parties were satisfied and commerce continues, only with vastly cheaper jeans.

Let's be real. You'd do everything in your power to restrict the use of such a device, and certainly to prevent it from entering your store.

of course you would, and you would lose, because someone smarter than you asked the kids where they got their ray gun from and bought one of their own. now they only need to buy one pair of jeans to fill their department store, and they can charge customers $3.50 per pair (the extra 50 cents being the cost of not buying jeans from some kid in the streets).

50 years from now, society will look back on these days and say what idiots and dinosaurs the music and movie labels are, just like i'm sure people looked back on those who protested the evil invention of the car and its effect on the horse and buggy industry, etc.

once again, i think owning music without paying for it is wrong. but if albums were $1.70 instead of $17, a lot more music would get sold. that may be a low price point (and i picked it at random), but when you see how little the artists get from a CD sale it makes a lot more sense to cut out the middlemen and lower prices. if i had a band i would just put up mp3s and FLACs on my website and sell them for cheap. if i actually connected with people, which is what music really ought to do, it wouldn't matter that they could find my music on bittorrent, they'd pay anyway. if i connected with enough people i could probably make a decent living off it. i wouldn't be able to demand a wineglass of green m & m's at every concert or wear diamond studded chains, but i could still do what i loved without the 800 pound gorilla music label on my back.

50 years from now, society will look back on these days and say what idiots and dinosaurs the music and movie labels are, just like i'm sure people looked back on those who protested the evil invention of the car and its effect on the horse and buggy industry, etc.

The automotive industry didn't win by encouraging people to steal from the horse and buggy makers. They won by providing a better product. Stealing stuff isn't a better product. 50 years from now, people may well look back at this as the point in time at which it started to become impossible to be a professional in any sort of intellectual property business and the entire society took a huge step backwards from the principles of capitalism, to their detriment.

here's what would really happen - the kids would go into your store, buy one pair of everything, and then copy them at home and sell them dirt cheap. your store, not being clever enough to obtain a copying device, would go out of business and when it did and people finally got tired of last year's jeans for $3 a pop,

Because someone has to put in the time and money to create the things you are copying. That's what you don't seem to get. Products with value don't just appear magically. Someone has to create them. When you copy and distribute them, you dilute their value and this is stealing from the people who put in the money and time to create them. That's why copyright law explicitly deals with the right to control copying and distribution, because without it people who create IP do not have the basic rights that everyone else would have when they create a product and go into business to sell it.

here's what would really happen - the kids would go into your store, buy one pair of everything, and then copy them at home and sell them dirt cheap.

No, they wouldn't. First of all, the kids aren't copying the products so they can go into business for themselves (which takes a certain amount of ambition and savvy, even if you have no product costs). Second, what incentive would there be for the kids to buy copies, even dirt-cheap ones, when they can just copy the jeans (or whatever) from their friends at virtually no cost or effort?

your store, not being clever enough to obtain a copying device, would go out of business

It wouldn't be an issue of cleverness. Using the ray gun to copy commercially available products would be illegal. You put a lot of energy into presenting quality products to the public for what you consider a fair price, and you feel that you, as well as the designers, deserve to make a living at what you do. And if people think your products are too expensive, they have the option to shop elsewhere.

and when it did and people finally got tired of last year's jeans for $3 a pop, the kids would go looking for new designs.

Might not even take a year. When the kids saw something that looked even slightly novel, they'd copy it to have it on hand "just in case." They'd only be limited by the size of their closets (which, for purposes of this analogy, would be the size of Buckingham Palace ;-)).

the designers of the jeans would keep them locked away and charge the kids to go in with the ray guns to copy the jeans.

They'd have the same problem as your store; once you let in a few copyers, they start to share with all their friends and the next thing you know your market vanishes. The only ones buying are the ones who acknowledge the law and choose to purchase on moral grounds, i.e., a small minority.

they would haggle over prices until both parties were satisfied and commerce continues, only with vastly cheaper jeans.

Why do you think people who can obtain products at virtually no cost or effort, and who apparently are not concerned with prickly issues of legality, are willing to pay *any* price, even a dirt-cheap one? I buy songs from iTunes; I think $1 per song is pretty reasonable. But let's say, objectively speaking, this is too high a price, so Apple lowers it to $.25. Do you think the teenager who wants 8,000 songs on his iPod is going to say "wow, Apple is selling songs for a fraction of their original price, now I'll happily pay $2,000 to get my 8,000 songs?"

Let's be real. You'd do everything in your power to restrict the use of such a device, and certainly to prevent it from entering your store.

of course you would, and you would lose,

Perhaps. I understand your point about the current business model being untenable. And I'm not trying to be a defender of corporate greed. My point is to direct this question to the people who think illegal downloading isn't stealing: If you were in the position of the business owner, and people were doing "illegal ray gun copying," would you accept their argument that it's not really stealing because even though you're losing vast amounts of business, your physical inventory is not being diminished? I don't think so.

because someone smarter than you asked the kids where they got their ray gun from and bought one of their own. now they only need to buy one pair of jeans to fill their department store, and they can charge customers $3.50 per pair (the extra 50 cents being the cost of not buying jeans from some kid in the streets).

Again, why would customers pay even $3.50 when they can get it for free with no cost or effort?

50 years from now, society will look back on these days and say what idiots and dinosaurs the music and movie labels are, just like i'm sure people looked back on those who protested the evil invention of the car and its effect on the horse and buggy industry, etc.

once again, i think owning music without paying for it is wrong. but if albums were $1.70 instead of $17, a lot more music would get sold. that may be a low price point (and i picked it at random), but when you see how little the artists get from a CD sale it makes a lot more sense to cut out the middlemen and lower prices. if i had a band i would just put up mp3s and FLACs on my website and sell them for cheap. if i actually connected with people, which is what music really ought to do, it wouldn't matter that they could find my music on bittorrent, they'd pay anyway.

The issue of fair cost of CDs is a valid one. I have never gone into a retail store and paid $18.99 for a CD; that just seems too high. I'm comfortable with $15, because that's been the cost since CDs first came out in the mid-80's. I can usually find what I want on sale, or find a used copy, for less. Occasionally, I find a gem in the bargain bin for $2 to $4 I'm thrilled.

if i connected with enough people i could probably make a decent living off it. i wouldn't be able to demand a wineglass of green m & m's at every concert or wear diamond studded chains, but i could still do what i loved without the 800 pound gorilla music label on my back.

Let's say you're the next Paul McCartney; you post your music, you're selling CDs at $1.70, and they're going like hotcakes. Wow! You can quit your day job; in fact, you have to. You can just do music; a dream come true! Business demand is so much, you have to hire someone just to take orders. There are only so many hours in day; you can't handle all the demands for interviews, press releases, package design for your music, etc. so you hire a manager, a PR agent, graphic designers, and a marketing person. Now you have a legitimate business, so you need input from a lawyer and accountant. Your payroll is now such that you can't sustain the company just on your personal musical output, so you have to release recordings from other groups, requiring hiring of an A&R person and possibly studio costs.

Starting to sound like the 800-pound gorilla, isn't it? ;-)