Ionstormsucks
Major Villain
- Joined
- December 21, 2006
- Messages
- 758
It is not. And hardly anyone claims it is.I still haven't quite been able to figure out why it is suddenly okay to steal when the product you're stealing is digital instead of physical.
If you go into a store and grab a nice pot roast, shove it under your shirt and walk out without paying for it, then you're a thief and everyone goes: "No! no! no! Bad form". But if you go onto the internet, grab that brand new album of your favorite band, shove it onto your hard drive and close down your BitTorrent/P2P application without paying for the album you're suddenly an "innovator in an economical sense" and you're apparently "part of the bigger debate about copyright in general".
Well, first of all there is the law. Obviously the law makes a difference between these two acts of criminal behaviour. That's why it calls the one thing theft and the other copyright infringement. And that's why there are different penalties for these delicts. And then there is of course one very obvious difference. If I walk into a store and steal a physical CD the store has one less CD to sell. If I download an album from the internet, the copyright holder has not necessarily lost a sale. Nonetheless both things are illegal activities and who claimed it would be otherwise?
On the other hand it's fairly hard to deny that the file sharing community is also an "innovator in an economical sense" as I called it. Pirates were first to recognize the potential of digital distribution via P2P technology and the MP3 format. Further development of that technology was driven by pirates. But MP3 was never something that only pirates could use. It took the music industry a long time to realize that the MP3 format held a huge potential for legal sales (they even tried to legally prohibit the first MP3 player). Same goes for P2P. P2P is not something that can only be used for trading warez, but also to distribute legal stuff. The problem is, that again the industry is rejecting this technology and the whole idea of sharing stuff. At the moment the very idea of sharing stuff is taboo to the industry - you share, you're doing something illegal. Instead of making use of that new technology they try to outlaw it. What will happen is that companies which are absolute strangers to the content industry will take over this market and make a lot of money. Because that's what happened to the online music market. A total stranger to music - Apple - suddenly dominates the legal online music market. The same will probably happen to P2P. The famous client Azureus has recently renamed itself to Vuze and implemented a business model that allows creators to sell their stuff legally through the prominent P2P network.
And yes, even if you don't want to believe it - piracy is a part of the bigger debate of copyrights in general. Because it vividly shows to us that traditional forms of copyright as we know them might not be suited for a "digital age". People always think that copyright can only be managed in one way, but that's not true.
People tend to limit the debate about piracy to illegal file sharing, but let's face it - that's not were it ends. The content industry is not only fighting a war against illegal file sharing, it's fighting a war against the customer. If I give a game I bought to my brother and he's installing it on his computer we're both violating copyright law (not that I have a brother, but you know what I mean). Something that was perfectly legal for almost 40 years is suddenly illegal. If I get rid of a DRM to transfer a MP3 file I legally bought to my MP3 player, I'm violating copyright law. What I want to say is - everyone is talking about what pirates do, but no one is talking about what the industry does, although that's part of the discussion.
Pardon me, but you really sound like a representative of the industry. Did you know that it's part of the industry's propaganda to constatly compare copyright infringement with violent crimes? The very terminolgy used in the debate shows what I mean. Piracy is usually a crime which includes an element of violence. The same goes for the German term "Raubkopie" (pirated copy). "Raub" (which means armed robbery) is a criminal act that according to German law includes acts of violence. Now look at your own example. Illegal file sharing is not about beating people until they give up their property. File sharing is about the most non-violent crime imaginable.There is one reason and one reason only that this could possibly happen and that is that people can get away with it. There is no difference between the two examples I mentioned earlier except for the fact that you're much more likely to get caught robbing the store than you are downloading an illegal copy off the internet.
If I was to go around beating up everyone wearing blue jeans and I was big enough and strong enough that nobody could stop me, I can assure you that before long there would also be a debate going on about the need to make jeans in another colour or perhaps phase out jeans altogether but that sure as heck doesn't make me any less of a bully or a menace. Beating up people wearing a certain colour and kind of pants is not a fashion statement, it is criminal behavior.
See and that's exactely the mindset that got the music industry where it is now. The line between legal and illegal is not as clear cut as it seems at first glance. Copyright law is not something that was invented once and has never changed since that day. What's legal one year could next year be illegal - and vice versa. Sometimes it simply makes sense to give up part of your copyright to get out of a crisis or invent new business models that could grant you even bigger revenues.Piracy is a fact. It is not going to go away anytime soon. The industry has to deal with, that is true but I'll be damned if I'm going to give credence to piracy just because it is not just a figment of someone's imagination. It is still an ILLEGAL activity. End of story.
The same could very well be said for the behavior and propaganda of the content industry. To think of piracy as a purely destructive activity is a very conservative mindset and in no way helpful to solve the problem. You said it yourself piracy is not going away anytime soon. So instead of seeing pirates as useless parasites the content industry should rather start regarding them as potential customers and indicators in which direction potential new markets could develop.And the whole stealing vs. copyright infringement semantics that is going on (especially on slashdot) is getting out of proportions. Whether you call that huge steaming pile that your neighbour's Doberman just left on your doorstep a sh*t, a doo-doo, a number 2, feces, excrement or whatnot, we all KNOW what it is and we all know that it stinks.
- Joined
- Dec 21, 2006
- Messages
- 758