From the highly overused ad you see at the beginning of many DVDs, you would think that copying a DVD were tantamount to hiring the Yakuza, cheating on the SAT, or being a smoker. But what, if any, ethical principle is being violated when you make personal copies of something electronic? Is it theft? Is it a crime, as so many of the warnings claim? And if so, is it really enforceable given just how many Americans do it? Also, why do we have copyrights in the first place?
Post-Show Thoughts: The main difficulty here is that we have no good analogy for "piracy." Those who say it's just like theft are simply wrong. The main defect of theft is that the other person is directly deprived of the thing you steal. When you copy something, now both people get the benefit. If the first person doesn't want you to make a copy, we call that being stingy. To properly understand the situation, you have to imagine that I create a science fiction device called "The Duplicator," with which I can make 100 copies of any physical item without consuming any natural resources at all. I can clone cars, houses, wheat, Darth Vader Pez dispensers, and X-Men #94. Although this would clearly destroy the collectibles market and force massive layoffs at Ford, it would also mean that everyone the world over could have anything they wanted. Would this really be bad? Why is the world better off when only a handful of people can have a real Monet or a copy of the Inverted Jenny stamp? Wouldn't this a better world when we all have all of it? Technology is constantly eliminating jobs and industries. As long as the Constitutional purpose of ongoing "Progress of Science and useful Arts" is occuring, there is no reason to think that copyright protection against private, non-commercial duplication should be prohibited. I think the reason that David Pogue and Dennis Prager find themselves baffled about how young people don't comprehend this is that those under 30 have grown up in this world and know it, whereas those over 30 have only tangible property and theft as a paradigm to comprehend.
Links on Software, Music, and Movie Piracy:
Computer ethics and copyright quiz by Crews.org
Ethics are the new craft by Cory Doctornow
What is piracy? by SIIA.net
Millions of wrongs don't make it right by CMTA.com
Study finds pervasive movie sharing by Digitaltrends.com
Americans don't think piracy is wrong by Seopher.com
Blog: Piracy is not wrong by Wordpress.com
What the MPAA's ad did by Wordpress.com
The generational divide by NY Times
Thoughts on ripping and sharing music by Douglas Yeo
So you thought ripping CDs was legal by Alpha.cnet.com
Computer software piracy by Better Business Bureau
Copyright infringement of software and fair use by Wikipedia
The Pirate by J. Budzieszewski
1 comment:
Bingo, you've nailed the argument precisely.
The word "piracy" is a bad metaphor, and even with its awful and misleading connotation, young and those older yet cyber-savvy users know it's ill fitting. Worse, it causes backlash against the record and movie industries that have padded their pockets but exploited artists.
Even the term "intellectual property" is a loaded one. We "stand on the shoulders of giants", so why should somebody be able to own the fact that 2 + 2 = 4, or an quick sort algorithm (recipe for telling a computing machine how to successfully execute a task), etc.…
Creators and artists should reap rewards, but I believe the founders got this one right, as you cite in your thoughts above…
--Naum
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