Avast Ye!: Government Sanctioned Pirates

Here's something the whole world seems to be against me on: the right of music artists, and all artists for that matter, to have their intellectual property protected. Apparently intellectual property no longer falls under the same umbrella as physical property. The government now sanctions the immoral practices of burning and distributing CDs (so long as it isn't done for PROFIT). This creates some pretty stiff competition for artists, as their high-priced products now have to compete with the looter's price of free.

One thing I find interesting and frightening about this whole thing is that the most intelligent defenders of the "right" to steal claim they are pro-property rights! This is how their twisted logic works: "If you own the computer and the burner, then the government has no right to tell you what you can and can't do with it." Their argument sounds Objectivist on the surface, and that's probably one reason why it's so powerful. But anyone who looks beyond that will realize that it contradicts itself. The artist who sells the CD that gets copied in the first place decides the terms under which it is sold, and those terms include not having their work copied and distributed.

Just because you own a gun doesn't give you the right shoot people with it. Just because you own a computer doesn't give you the right to steal music.

Post 1

Wednesday, December 3, 2003 - 11:02am

Unfortunately the decision to buy music from a legal distributor or to copy it is only determined by the individual's 'moral standing' on the issue of copying the music.

While most people can see the obvious wrongness of making bootleg copies of music and selling them for a profit (this is supported by general consensus), many people use the argument: "I wouldn't have bought the music anyway, so nobody is actually losing money if I copy it for myself." to justify making copies for themselves. Most people who use this argument are reluctant to distribute the music on a mass scale, since in that case they can't justify their behaviour in the same manner as they justified copying the music for themselves.

You get other people, though, who simply see nothing wrong with distributing copyrighted music. These are the ones typically who cause the largest percentage of the loss of money in the industry, and make it hard for musicians to make a living.

The unfortunate thing is that due to copyrighted music being made readily available by the people mentioned in the previous paragraph, many other people, who would otherwise not have made music available on a large scale, now have the opportunity to get any music they would like.

The unfortunate thing is that very often once we get used to the idea of getting copyrighted music, we are more likely to continue doing that.

The only logical course that governments can take is to prosecute those distributing the music on a large scale, as these predominantly are the major cause of money loss. There are simply too many people who might transgress by making a copy for themselves, to prosecute fairly, who, I might add, could be very honest people in other areas of their lives.

For piracy to stop we need to stop those distributing it, by smuggling bootleg copies or using tools like Kazaa, which, as a tool for sharing content indescriminately, is a major cause of piracy, not only in music. As for the majority of individuals who make occational copies for themselves, I don't see that we can do much about that.

Post 2

Wednesday, December 3, 2003 - 8:48pm

I personally think that the iTunes music store is the best solution to this problem as the music is cheap (99� per song) and the user is allow to make a limited number of copies for personal use, and it is not stealing as the record companies are making money off of this. As for Apple, the store itself generates little profit, but combine this with the high profit margin of the iPod, and one is able to see that from all sides, everyone wins. Now if only the Beatles would dummy up and put there stuff on iTunes...

Pianoman

"Damnit! I'm running out of things to say!" Pianoman

Post 3

Thursday, December 4, 2003 - 2:54pm

But who, besides someone of extraordinarily high integrity, would even pay $.99 a song when free music is right there? The solution is to no longer let the gain outweigh the cost of free downloading. Criminals operate like businessmen in a sense. "Rational" criminals won't steal if their chances of being caught and the penalty for the crime outweigh their gain.

Post 4

Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 12:21pm

The fact is that the Government (if it was at all interested in copyright as an issue, which it is not), would SHUT DOWN Kazaa and all such "fileshare" piracy-tools, and prosecute their owners into oblivion.
The sole reason to EVER get music 'for free' from one of these "fileshare" places is -- because you don't want to pay. In other words, all of the supposedly high-minded bullshit about how CD's "cost too much" (as supposed justification for bootlegging) boils down to the purest sort of "greed" imaginatble: you don't want to bother paying, so you resort to theft.

I'm a musician, and thankfully I haven't gotten "big enough" to have my entire career raped like that. However, filesharing is ofensive to me for ideological reasons as well: if we, as Objectivists, actually believe in the creativity of the Individual, then we must logically defend against ALL forms of fraud: plagiarism, pirated mp3s, anything.
It comes down, at basis, to a question of morality.

Someone who USED to be a good friend of mine (before I became and Objectivist, and started actually having standards), exemplifies the contradictions inherent in the pro-fileshare mentality:

This guy is into "ethnic" music, from Central-Asian folks like the Tuvans and such -- "throat singing" and all that. Well, curiously enough, he'll pirate damn near anything, EXCEPT for the "smaller, hard-to-find" stuff like that.
Why?
He ADMITS that file-sharing (IE, bootlegging) of the material damages the business-prospects of those labels. He can come up with some compellingly-florid justifications for the thievery, but he "honorably' restricts it to the products of the MAJOR LABELS.
In other wrods, he's a pathetic hypocrite.

Another interesting twist to the fileshare "controversy" is the fact that Kazaa has sued other Fileshare 'services" for INFRINGING THEIR TRADEMARK AND COPYRIGHT by using "kazaa" as part of their names.
Yes, you heard me: the same assholes whose entire 'business" is predicated on "giving away" other's intellectual property "for free", and whose DEFENSE of the practice entails DENIALS of "intellectual property" as a concept -- are SUING on INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY GROUNDS!
Poetic?
Actually it makes me want to puke.

Probably the only feasable way to take filesharing out entirely, is through cyber-terrorism. Find a way to corrupt mp3 files in such a way that they destroy the computer system onto which they are placed. Maybe -- just maybe -- if there was some discernible RISK to the action of downloading from these ILLICIT SLIME-PITS like Kazzaa, people would think twice about it.

That guy who invented Napster really strikes me as an Ellsworth Toohen type person: anything is justifiable if it involves "giving" or "sharing".
The whole "defense" of filesharing is nothing but Collectivist, entitlement drivel.

Post 5

Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 3:12pm

Does anyone ever remember the Republican senator Orren Hatch? He proposed a similar system of "cyber-terrorism", where copyright offenders would have their computers crash if they committed theft. Unfortunately his plan was shot down by the excuse that it would be an "invasion of privacy."

The one thing I hear all the time is that "Music is meant to be heard." So that's why it's okay to steal it. As if food could be stolen because it was "meant to be eaten," or money stolen because it was "meant to be spent."

Post 6

Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 6:05pm