How is downloading not stealing?

[Bob The Skutter]

On the other hand -- From the downloaders point of view... Would you have bought it if you hadn't been able to download it for free. If the answer is definitely "no", then there is no loss of profit to the author by downloading it. Perhaps in that situation it is more forgivable, but it's a grey area as to whether it's ethical or not, depending on what the user gets out of it, or the relative wealth of author vs user.

I don't think it is an ethical gray area at all. If you use the item you obtained, listen to the MP3 for instance, you have the consumer value of that item. If you gave nothing in return, it is unethical. If you obtained it unlawfully, it is unethical.

There are any number of books and musical works I would not buy, that implies that I do not find they have sufficient value for what it would cost me. But if I obtain one it implies it has value to me, otherwise why would I bother? There should be a transaction between the consumer and the producer to transfer that value, and unless the consumer can haggle directly with the producer, the consumer has to pay the price the producer sets. Whether someone would have paid for the item if it wasn't free is beside the point: The value has been transferred, but the transaction has been only one-way.

--Justin

The point is not getting something you were never planning on buying, but getting something you think you may be interested in, but don't want to waste your money on something that turns out to be rubbish, You like it, you buy it, you don't like it, you delete it.

 

[Roger Wilco]

I mostly like the discussion in this thread, but I think there's a serious lack of differentiation by some.

I mean, if you really think stealing=stealing and copyright infringement=stealing, regardless of any circumstance, you're simplifying a complicated situation to the point of being worthless.

Think about it: I'd wager, that noone in this thread is innocent of having violated someone's copyright sometime - be it recording a song off the radio, quoting a text without citing the source, uploading a picture you didn't create, buying a shirt with a faked brand-logo, watching a video on youtube whose uploader didn't have permission to post it, whatever, people do that all the time.
So once that is established, it's just a matter of discussing degrees of copyright violation, since obviously the people here who take such a hardline stance against illegal downloads won't want to think of themselves as thieves...

I think that should the basis of this discussion, not "you're a criminal and I've never done anything wrong".

 

[Jadzia]

This 'consumer value' is of a legal construct, not than ethical one. I'm only presenting an ethical argument.

It's rather like, if aliens living on Mars were to pick up our radio waves, and were maintaining a collection of recordings of our music. Then are those aliens are behaving unethically in your opinion?

Even if nobody on earth even knows those aliens exist, then where is the harm to anyone on earth? You say they are getting 'consumer value' and should feel ethically compelled to compensate the earth people for that?

While there's no loss of profit, I would argue there is no harm, and (in many cases) it would not be unethical to duplicate material that is able to be duplicated.

But if there is loss of profit, like if the earth people are then unable to trade music with the aliens, because they already have got it for free, then that does begin to slide towards being unethical.

 

[J.T.B.]

The point is not getting something you were never planning on buying, but getting something you think you may be interested in, but don't want to waste your money on something that turns out to be rubbish, You like it, you buy it, you don't like it, you delete it.

If the file is deleted and it was just a "test drive," that seems OK to me. But if the file is kept it should be paid for. There is still a problem if the "sample" was obtained unlawfully, though.

--Justin

 

[wamdue]

What if its a TV show that you can get in your area, say How I Meet Your Mother, does not air on anywhere on UK TV, and Hulu does not cover the UK, sure its still stealing, but it does seem like a grey area to me

 

[Roger Wilco]

Legally it is exactly the same thing as downloading a CD, but yes, of course it's different and not clearly black/white. Anyone who doesn't acknolewdge that isn't being reasonable imo. According to some people in this thread though, you just shouldn't be "impatient" and wait until the producers deems you worthy of watching it. And you're a thief for not waiting.

 

[JoeZhang]

What if its a TV show that you can get in your area, say How I Meet Your Mother, does not air on anywhere on UK TV, and Hulu does not cover the UK, sure its still stealing, but it does seem like a grey area to me

It's still breach of the IPR - but nobody cares and that's the only issue worth discussing. People can go around and around the houses on the legality but the simple truth is that the laws in this area are largely unenforceable and followed by only a small minority of people. From a business perceptive, organisations seem have to deal with the fact that the majority of people will not pay and there is nothing you can do to stop them.

 

[J.T.B.]

Think about it: I'd wager, that noone in this thread is innocent of having violated someone's copyright sometime - be it recording a song off the radio, quoting a text without citing the source, uploading a picture you didn't create, buying a shirt with a faked brand-logo, watching a video on youtube whose uploader didn't have permission to post it, whatever, people do that all the time.
So once that is established, it's just a matter of discussing degrees of copyright violation, since obviously the people here who take such a hardline stance against illegal downloads won't want to think of themselves as thieves...

I think that should the basis of this discussion, not "you're a criminal and I've never done anything wrong".

Who has claimed that in this thread?

My position is that taking something of value without giving something in return is not ethical, simply at the level of individual action. Don't read into that some moral judgment on my part, nor am I claiming that I have never done anything unethical. But if I have, I will admit it and take responsibility, not try to rationalize my unethical behavior. I only mentioned myself in the first place because the earlier poster believed that everyone posting here had illegally downloaded music, and that is not the case.

I agree that there are different degrees and every illegal download is not the crime of the century. I mentioned up-thread that I believed copyright law has been stretched beyond some beneficial limits. But I have noticed (in life more than in this thread) a real tendency of some people to accumulate huge amounts of unlawfully-obtained music and to never consider the implications of that behavior. Notions like "they can't catch me, so I'll do it" and "everybody else is doing it" and "it only hurts rich guys" are disturbing to me, but I have heard people say those things, and quite sincerely. If my son were to grow up and have that kind of value system, I would have to believe I had failed somewhere as a parent.

This 'consumer value' is of a legal construct, not than ethical one.

No it isn't. Barter and trade, transaction of value for value, was a basic concept in societies before there were "legal constructs."

It's rather like, if aliens living on Mars were to pick up our radio waves, and were maintaining a collection of recordings of our music. Then are those aliens are behaving unethically in your opinion?

Even if nobody on earth even knows those aliens exist, then where is the harm to anyone on earth? You say they are getting 'consumer value' and should feel ethically compelled to compensate the earth people for that?

That is not a valid comparison, because the aliens are not members of human societies, and there is no mechanism for them to act as if they were.

What if its a TV show that you can get in your area, say How I Meet Your Mother, does not air on anywhere on UK TV, and Hulu does not cover the UK, sure its still stealing, but it does seem like a grey area to me

I agree, that's a gray area. But it is important, IMO, that you weigh the upside (seeing the show) and the downside (the ethical implication) and decide if you feel it's worth it. Personally, I'd just live without it, but YMMV.

--Justin

 

[Roger Wilco]

Who has claimed that in this thread?

I got that vibe from several people here, but I won't name names. If that impression was wrong, I apologise.

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

There's a balance here, between wanting your creative work experienced by an audience, and wanting to make money from it. The corporations would have you think that all there is, is money. It's why they think of DVDs and videos as licences, not commodities. By buying a disc, you buy a licence to enjoy the media contained within, but only as long as you use it in the way they prescribe. Don't make back ups, don't re-edit, don't rip to another format. If you want to use it in another way, pay, pay, and pay again.

It still makes me furious that the PRS take a fee from radio stations to broadcast music in the UK, then also expect listeners to pay to listen to that music.

But surely people who create music, films, novels don't want this. They want their creations to be read, heard and seen by as many people as possible. If television was pay per view for every single programme, how soon before you would disconnect the aerial/satellite? How soon before you threw away the radio if you were charged for every single song?

I enjoy reading, and I read as many books as I would like to. I don't pay a single penny. It's called a library. I'm sure that every author would love to sell one book to every single person who would read it, but if the choice is between no one reading it and as many people as possible reading it, what better than a library, and what's more kinder to the environment?

When you hear of bands like Radiohead finding innovative ways to distribute music, companies like Hulu and Joost and the BBC streaming television, there comes a point where you think it's time to get rid of the corporations that act as middlemen between creators and consumers. Where do you think all that money is going anyway?

 

[Amaris]

I'll look at this from an ethical perspective.


On one hand -- From the author's point of view... If you made an effort making something, intending to make a profit on it, would you want people downloading it for free and robbing you of your profit? Definitely no. The uploaders and downloaders are equally guilty of robbing you.


On the other hand -- From the downloaders point of view... Would you have bought it if you hadn't been able to download it for free. If the answer is definitely "no", then there is no loss of profit to the author by downloading it. Perhaps in that situation it is more forgivable, but it's a grey area as to whether it's ethical or not, depending on what the user gets out of it, or the relative wealth of author vs user.

No, relative wealth of either shouldn't come into play at all in regard to whether you should or should not steal music or movies. If you don't have the money, you can't afford it. Wait until you have the money. Save your money and purchase it when you can afford it. This is simple economics. You get what you want, the author gets paid to continue making creative works, publishers and manufacturers of the product get to be compensated for the time and material. Everybody wins.

I mostly like the discussion in this thread, but I think there's a serious lack of differentiation by some.

I mean, if you really think stealing=stealing and copyright infringement=stealing, regardless of any circumstance, you're simplifying a complicated situation to the point of being worthless.

Think about it: I'd wager, that noone in this thread is innocent of having violated someone's copyright sometime - be it recording a song off the radio, quoting a text without citing the source, uploading a picture you didn't create, buying a shirt with a faked brand-logo, watching a video on youtube whose uploader didn't have permission to post it, whatever, people do that all the time.
So once that is established, it's just a matter of discussing degrees of copyright violation, since obviously the people here who take such a hardline stance against illegal downloads won't want to think of themselves as thieves...

I think that should the basis of this discussion, not "you're a criminal and I've never done anything wrong".

Some of what you have listed there falls under fair use, though. Recording off the radio gets you the commercials and radio quality music. Just like recording a television program gets you the commercials and quality of television reception. There is a general flexibility too, when it comes to pictures and quotes as well.

Downloading a CD or near CD quality song, DVD or near DVD quality movie wholly that is available for purchase, and yet you do so without intent to pay, is stealing. It is theft.

This 'consumer value' is of a legal construct, not than ethical one. I'm only presenting an ethical argument.

It's rather like, if aliens living on Mars were to pick up our radio waves, and were maintaining a collection of recordings of our music. Then are those aliens are behaving unethically in your opinion?

Even if nobody on earth even knows those aliens exist, then where is the harm to anyone on earth? You say they are getting 'consumer value' and should feel ethically compelled to compensate the earth people for that?

While there's no loss of profit, I would argue there is no harm, and (in many cases) it would not be unethical to duplicate material that is able to be duplicated.

But if there is loss of profit, like if the earth people are then unable to trade music with the aliens, because they already have got it for free, then that does begin to slide towards being unethical.

Silly example, so here's a serious but silly answer. The radio waves are broadcast to be received. As silly as it sounds, when you record off the radio, you get advertisements and radio quality sound. It falls under fair use. CDs and DVDs are not broadcast to be received by others, they are sold on a medium for personal use. Downloading their contents and distributing them to others in such a way violates fair use.


J.

 

[Jadzia]

You know, I'm not promoting or condoning anything here, I'm just looking at things from an idealised ethical perspective, which doesn't have anything to do with current laws or societal norms. I like to think beyond those.

No, relative wealth of either shouldn't come into play at all in regard to whether you should or should not steal music or movies. If you don't have the money, you can't afford it. Wait until you have the money. Save your money and purchase it when you can afford it. This is simple economics. You get what you want, the author gets paid to continue making creative works, publishers and manufacturers of the product get to be compensated for the time and material. Everybody wins.

That not really how I presented it. The assumption was that person was never going to buy it, like the hypothetical alien wasn't.

Barter and trade being basic concepts in society was where something tangible was given up, or a person's time. Objects that were finite and required effort. That was the consumer value -- maybe not a legal construct at that time, but part of a social agreement none the less.

Stuff that can be copied just is different, since it isn't tangible and the commodity mountain doesn't shrink as it's taken from. And as such, the items forming that mountain have no tangible value.

When a person can create an infinite commodity mountain, the payment should rightfully be for their effort in creating it. But that effort is singular and finite -- it isn't duplicated with each copy of the product.

A person like our hypothetical alien who nobody knows about, doesn't affect the creator by taking from that mountain.

The way I feel that relative wealth comes into play is only in the scenario I described regarding the unknown alien user. It seems unfair for a (singular) effort to not be rewarded in any way by anyone. But if an unknown alien has benefited from the creation, then if wealth is there to give a reward from, and it would seem ethical to make that reward.

Current society isn't built on this kind of thinking though.

 

[amdmiami]

Now, I never download movies but I do download music. Why?
1) I have no compassion for record studios/execs

What does compassion or lack thereof have to do with whether something is right or wrong?

2) I only have the music for myself

You've obtained something illegally but keep it only for yourself. How does that mitigate the illegal act?

3) I can't afford to buy every song I like for $1 on Itunes!

How is that different from anything else you can't afford?

I'm sure everyone here has at least downloaded a couple of songs on various programs that I can't mention. Come on, let's keep it real around here!

No, never have. Some people don't do things that are ethically wrong, regardless of the harm it causes or the threat of punishment. This is not unusual, in fact it used to be the norm. I'm not sure if it is now, though.

--Justin

The record companies aren't so much pissed off that people are downloading their music, their pissed off because people burn 50 copies and then sell it somewhere else (that's the true stealing of downloading). I'm not saying that I don't legally buy CD's, but sampling and artists work helps me decide if I wanna buy it or not. If I couldn't sample it at all, I would never take a chance and blind buy it (now for movies it's a completely different story).

 

[MyCylon]

Just something that I was thinking about, and I'm curious to see how people would respond to this question:

Why doesn't an architect get paid everytime somebody walks into his building? Just like a musician composing and then recording a CD, he's worked once but he's only been paid once rather then everytime somebody makes use of his building.

 

[Amaris]

You know, I'm not promoting or condoning anything here, I'm just looking at things from an idealised ethical perspective, which doesn't have anything to do with current laws or societal norms. I like to think beyond those.

No, relative wealth of either shouldn't come into play at all in regard to whether you should or should not steal music or movies. If you don't have the money, you can't afford it. Wait until you have the money. Save your money and purchase it when you can afford it. This is simple economics. You get what you want, the author gets paid to continue making creative works, publishers and manufacturers of the product get to be compensated for the time and material. Everybody wins.

That not really how I presented it. The assumption was that person was never going to buy it, like the hypothetical alien wasn't.

Barter and trade being basic concepts in society was where something tangible was given up, or a person's time. Objects that were finite and required effort. That was the consumer value -- maybe not a legal construct at that time, but part of a social agreement none the less.

Stuff that can be copied just is different, since it isn't tangible and the commodity mountain doesn't shrink as it's taken from. And as such, the items forming that mountain have no tangible value.

When a person can create an infinite commodity mountain, the payment should rightfully be for their effort in creating it. But that effort is singular and finite -- it isn't duplicated with each copy of the product.

A person like our hypothetical alien who nobody knows about, doesn't affect the creator by taking from that mountain.

The way I feel that relative wealth comes into play is only in the scenario I described regarding the unknown alien user. It seems unfair for a (singular) effort to not be rewarded in any way by anyone. But if an unknown alien has benefited from the creation, then if wealth is there to give a reward from, and it would seem ethical to make that reward.

Current society isn't built on this kind of thinking though.

Let me ask you a question: Suppose you go to a library and borrow a book. You take it home, copy all of the pages and return the book the next day. Did you steal anything?

Just something that I was thinking about, and I'm curious to see how people would respond to this question:

Why doesn't an architect get paid everytime somebody walks into his building? Just like a musician composing and then recording a CD, he's worked once but he's only been paid once rather then everytime somebody makes use of his building.

They are two totally different business models and are apples and oranges in comparison.

To put it simply and without getting into detailed explanations, what you're suggesting is that the architect charge for each person entering and exiting the building. This doesn't work simply because the equivalent to a musician would be that the musician charges for each time someone plays the CD. Neither the CD or the building is property of the musician or architect, respectively. It is the work of the Architect/Musician that is sold via physical means. Even though music is digital, it still requires hardware to distribute it. This hardware is not free. It requires bandwidth. This bandwidth is not free. It requires time and effort to transcode the work. This time and effort is not free. Just as the buyer of the architect's design must then labor to build the end result and bring the architect's creative work to fruition, the same applies to the musician.

Now, to follow up on that, let me ask you a question. Would you be okay with someone making a copy of an architect's plans to use for their own personal use as long as they didn't harm the originals?


J.

 

[clint g]

I'm interested in how people rationalize it.

It's quick, easy, and cheap with little risk of getting caught. That simple.

 

[Jadzia]

So since it's easy to steal because it's not physical media, that makes it okay?

I didn't say that. The attitude the creator has to their creation should ideally be in terms of their effort. It's just artificial that in modern times it is toward the creation, even if that is infinite. But that's just how the world is at the present time.

The cumulative reward should be being appropriate for the singular effort, and then conditionally on whether the users find it beneficial.

I see you're using the word stealing a lot to stress your feelings.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I'm interested in how people rationalize it.

It's quick, easy, and cheap with little risk of getting caught. That simple.

Ah the light of honesty under a bushel of rationalization!

Why doesn't an architect get paid everytime somebody walks into his building?

An architect with enough clout and chutzpah might be able to wrangle a deal like that. The only thing preventing it is that any architect who made that a stipulation would find him or herself out of work as clients hire the less egomaniacal competition. But an architect with a truly unique vision, who had no competition, could theoretically pull it off. It would never happen simply because architects aren't unique enough to make their designs truly non-interchangeable with the competition.

Anyway, I'm not sure that's a good example. How about the example of a museum designed by, say, Frank Geary? Part of the attraction, and therefore part of the entrance fee, is the architecture itself. (If you can't charge for the fancy architecture, then what justifies the budget for doing it in the first place?)

Geary gets a one-time fee for his design; the museum charges users a per-visit fee to enjoy the interior of the museum. Same as the musician who gets a one-time fee from a distributor who charges a per-use fee.

 

[bigdaddy]

Some asshole music label sued someone for transferring his 2,000 plus CD collection to his computer, all of which were bought legally.

Of course this is the same assholes who said if you listened to the radio you were stealing because you didn't buy or rent the rights to listen to the music.

Where did you get your information?

While I don't think it ever actually happened, it is true that there was a Sony music exec who wanted to sue people for ripping their own music collection, he said people should buy legal downloads of their entire collection again if they wanted them on your MP3 player. And had previously said that listening to music on the radio was theft if you never bought any music.

Maybe that's it. It was years ago and I didn't really care. I just remember music assholes sayign stupid things.

 

[bigdaddy]

Who the fuck cares?!

A CD shouldn't cost more than $10 for 12 songs. If CDs were cheaper no one would odwnlaod them, so it's time to finally lower the damn price down.