Is Piracy Wrong?

[trubadour]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/01/05/adeles-21-best-one-year-uk-sales-of-an-album-ever-online-piracy-blamed/

In the same week as Adele make s the best ever one year album sales in the UK, the High Court tells ISPs to block The Pirate Bay.
Ironic, no?

What do you think: Is the Pirate Bay ripping off the music industry? Is Piracy wrong?

[trubadour]

wow!
wrong forum? this is an issue concerning technology, surely? no one here has an opinion?
maybe I'll start the ball rolling

whatever my contention is, we need to define terms:

1. piracy here means the copying and sharing of copyright material. note that public performance, etc, also comes under prohibited acts according to the copyright notice.
2. copying and sharing for profit is the same as copying and sharing for pleasure, for backups, and for any reason whatsoever.

The accusation is:

a. piracy is morally wrong, because,
b. piracy deprives artists and companies that support artists of their rightful property (i.e. is theft)
c. the effect of piracy is therefore, to limit the production of art or copyrightable material

my contention is that accusations a-c are in fact erroneous.

a would be true if b were also true but b is not true; therefore a, b and c are wrong:

Copying material is different to theft because nothing is removed, nothing is taken. Piracy is different to copying and pretending to be the author - that is definitely fraud and is morally wrong. Copying and retaining the proper credits, etc, is not fraud and is not theft so is therefore not morally wrong.

A pirated copy is definitively distinct from the original (by virtue of it being a self-proclaimed copy) so it is not fraud and not morally wrong.

The fact that copied material is circulated widely doesn't mean that the artist is deprived of a sale. It is well known in the software industry, for example, that the people who run the pirated copies are not in a position to pay for an original. No sales are lost (in fact, sales keep going up). Again, therefore, piracy is not theft. Bill Gates infamously said Window's benefits from piracy because the more people who use Windows the more important it is. Thus Windows is more useful, in fact is the de facto standard international OS because everybody uses it, most of whom have never bought it. Thus if your product doesn't work with Windows people won't buy it. MS profits, for one, therefore help us deny the third claim.

I have shown that piracy is not wrong. In fact therefore copyright laws are morally wrong as they inhibit the freedom of people to distribute their wealth, they inhibit (and would do greater damage if they were heeded) sales of art and other products of copyable material.

So am I wrong or is the whole issue not understood by anyone involved?

[Mick]

I think thats an oversimplification.

When talking about the Pirate bay, yes the topic of piracy is discussed. But it was not the Pirate bay doing the pirating, or offering the media themselves. What they did was to provide pointers to material that were hosted by others, and then downloaded by another, which for a long time was all perfectly legal in Sweden. A point that was lost to many lawyers from the US and UK who would quote laws like The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, only for the owners to mock and poke fun at them and point out US laws don't apply to people in Sweden.

However it is the thin edge of the wedge, obviously they knew exactly what was going on, so this became the new measure of if a company should be reigned in or not, Megaupload and other torrent sites are being targeted now, as apparently they should have know their sites were being used for file sharing, but where does this stop, is DropBox next, Youtube maybe google will be punished if it lists a copyrighted work in a search?

Regarding your claim copying is not stealing, technically you are right, it is copyright infringement. You can see Dowling v. United States (1985) for more information behind that logic. Despite the RIAA and MPAA wishing it was so, and telling its audience copying is stealing, it is not. If it was, it would be a criminal offence not civil, as it is, they have to do the legwork to protect their material, if it was criminal, they could call the police to do so at taxpayers expense.

Right now they are pushing for more laws using legislation like sopa and acta, and so far they have met some resistance, but just like jason voorhees they will never give up. so expect new attempts, and if they fail, more attempts and unfortunately, politicians like to suck up to corporations that have made political donations, so I don't think they have been or will be looking for a fair deal for the average citizen of any particular country.

[Deuce Dropper]

Didn't The Avengers just break the box office record this weekend?

I think Hollywood is coping well with the pirates.

[Mick]

Didn't The Avengers just break the box office record this weekend?

I think Hollywood is coping well with the pirates.

Adele just broke the record for biggest selling album of all time. Of course, the RIAA will still collect more on sales to movies, to TV, to coffee shops and any public use of her work, iTunes downloads, CD's , remixes you can pay for the same work again and again. You know there's a problem when someone who uploads Michael Jackson gets stiffer penalties than the person who killed him.

[headhonchoII]

Here's an interesting question , what if information only existed constantly being beamed in the cloud, as soon as it was beamed from one place to another the original would be wiped so you couldn't be done for storing copyrighted material?

[Chris]

I can't respond to any of the three survey questions, because I agree with none of them. It's a complex issue.

I download certain TV shows simply because they don't show them on TV here. If they showed them on TV, I'd watch them. Make it available to me, and I'll watch it, buy it, etc.

[Jaboney]

It's a sign that existing distribution means aren't working.

[sandman]

It's a sign that existing distribution means aren't working.

Right. It is the people like you who should be getting 17-year sentences. Me? I'm watching Seediq Bale on my 52-inch screen. Looks GOOD! Cars 2 is next up. Maybe Ratatouille.

[sandman]

It's a sign that existing distribution means aren't working.

Right. It is the people like you who should be getting 17-year sentences. Me? I'm watching Seediq Bale on my 52-inch screen. Looks GOOD! Cars 2 is next up. Maybe Ratatouille.

I'm a BAAAAAD man, though. NONE of you people should even be THINKING about such nefarious machinations.