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This is a thread on Ektopos, a philosophy forum that I'm a member of, where we are discussing the piracy issue.
The first two posts seem to be pretty opposed and illustrative, the latter (BenElijah) is mine.
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Post 1:
Post2:
My position is difficult but I cannot really refute it, except in its extremism, but then, thats a term and idea I generally ignore for ambiguity. Thoughts?
The first two posts seem to be pretty opposed and illustrative, the latter (BenElijah) is mine.
Link
Post 1:
I've generally moved through life with the impression that stealing is somehow wrong. I don’t just mean wrong legally, but wrong in a moral sense. So I’m still somewhat surprised by what strikes me as theft by people I generally wouldn’t expect to be thieves. To come to the point I’m talking about people that pirate commercially produced music and films. The common sentiment I often hear is, “Well everyone’s doing it!” Of course all the philosophers recognize the fallacy here. I was recently surprised by a philosophy professor who asked if I’d burn him a copy of a music CD. He was actually surprised at my refusal, which may say something about his opinion of my character. So I’m wondering if other people see an ethical problem here, or is there someway we can justify such stealing?
Its an interesting situation. I personally see it in two ways. Firstly, stealing means that you are taking the resources of another for yourself, and they are losing because of it. So in other words, you are directly depleting their finite resources. However, in terms of digital information, text, music, movies, images and the like, this is a resource that is for all intents and purposes infinite, the only expense being hard disk space, processor time, memory and bandwidth etc. I can make a copy of a 6 megabyte music file, send it to a friend, and he has the music but I have not lost out in the process. This is not an argument about bandwidth of course .
This leaves the anti-filesharers with one alternative, that those who are sharing copied files are erroneously accessing private information, for example, like trespassing. However, while that may hold water if one has hacking into ones computer and extracting a copy of the files, since the record company in the first place puts the information into the public domain, via cd's, dvd's etc, this cannot hold water as it is already up for public distribution. Trying to control that is like trying to hold back the tide with a bucket and spade. I am aware that the implications of this are that the notion of copyright becomes void, yet even as an author myself I have no problem with this, since people would rather buy a book on paper than view it on screen, and cd music is of higher quality and more convenience (plus the opportunity to include merchandise). I think that the record companies see a threat to their business's and don't want to undergo a painful evolution. However, the world of business is such that you either evolve or die.
You may say that the author or owners of that information have a right to control that information when it is public but I maintain that is flawed. You place it in the public domain, and that information is emancipated from you, wherein your only concern is providing the material means for its distribution. Since that is irrelevant here, I can claim that the entire publishing industry in its many incarnations have been living on borrowed time since the 15th/16th century, waiting for a means of replication and distribution that undermines material concerns of paper and time etc. We have that means with affordable personal computing now.
I see no ethical problem with me copying music files, both receiving and distributing them. As a matter of fact, I have 15 downloading now and 6 outgoing!
This leaves the anti-filesharers with one alternative, that those who are sharing copied files are erroneously accessing private information, for example, like trespassing. However, while that may hold water if one has hacking into ones computer and extracting a copy of the files, since the record company in the first place puts the information into the public domain, via cd's, dvd's etc, this cannot hold water as it is already up for public distribution. Trying to control that is like trying to hold back the tide with a bucket and spade. I am aware that the implications of this are that the notion of copyright becomes void, yet even as an author myself I have no problem with this, since people would rather buy a book on paper than view it on screen, and cd music is of higher quality and more convenience (plus the opportunity to include merchandise). I think that the record companies see a threat to their business's and don't want to undergo a painful evolution. However, the world of business is such that you either evolve or die.
You may say that the author or owners of that information have a right to control that information when it is public but I maintain that is flawed. You place it in the public domain, and that information is emancipated from you, wherein your only concern is providing the material means for its distribution. Since that is irrelevant here, I can claim that the entire publishing industry in its many incarnations have been living on borrowed time since the 15th/16th century, waiting for a means of replication and distribution that undermines material concerns of paper and time etc. We have that means with affordable personal computing now.
I see no ethical problem with me copying music files, both receiving and distributing them. As a matter of fact, I have 15 downloading now and 6 outgoing!
I think we agree... but I'm not sure... because I'm stupid and confused.
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