20 comments

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  Eli

  1 year ago

  The artist owns the potential sale because he created the work with the expectation that the law would give him a monopoly in the work. In competition in general, there is no expectation of a legally enforced monopoly privilege. Creating a mixtape for a friend is theft if and only if artists that create the music have an expectation that the government will effectively prohibit mixtapes. No one has that expectation, so creating a mixtape is not morally equivalent to theft. Some other copyright violations, however, are morally equivalent to theft.
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  Graeme

  1 year ago

  No expectations make copying morally equivalent to theft. At the most they make it morally equivalent to breaking the law mandating any other monopoly: e.g. by using Skype in a country where the government has granted a single carrier a monopoly on international phone calls.
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  Jesse

  1 year ago

  Eli,
  
  Your argument is circular.
  
  You say that copyright infringement is morally equivalent to theft because there is an expectation that the government will protect the author of a creative work. That is, it is morally equivalent to theft because they are protected by copyright.
  
  So what is the basis for copyright to begin with? It can't be because it is morally equivalent to theft.
  
  Also, things are crimes independent of whether or not they are enforced, i.e., whether there is the expectation of protection by the government. If there were only one police officer in Chicago you'd have lots of unprosecuted murder cases, but they'd be crimes nonetheless, for example.
  
  Graeme got it right: the only similarity between theft and copyright infringement is that they're against the law.
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• 

  LKM

  1 year ago

  I think the original assumption that "theft of a song is no more natural than theft of a car" is very obviously flawed even without going into what constitutes theft.
  
  Humming a song you've heard is a very natural behaviour. Telling somebody a story you've read, too. Even trying to copy a painting somebody else has made; lots of people do that, and I don't think anyone would claim it was somehow wrong.
  
  At the same time, accepting somebody else's property right for physical things is also very natural (if you don't believe, go ride a train and sit in a compartment somebody else already sits in - you automatically accept that the person has some amount of ownership over the compartment simple becuse he or she was there first. Or watch children playing; they don't know anything about law, yet they accept and use the concept of ownership).
  
  So copying a song is much more natural to humans than taking away somebody else's car.
  
  I don't often agree with Arrington, but I think he has a fair point here.
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• 

  Joshua

  1 year ago

  If one artist copies another's work, he is stealing time. As abstract as that may sound, I think it is quite important in the life of a mortal. (i.e. the worse a crime is, the more time you spend in jail.) I believe the moral basis of copyright law rests on this.
  
  If I "spend" 20 years developing a new vehicle, and you "steal," it in 20 minutes by copying my hard drive, you have not just stolen the bits of information. You have also stolen the entire value of my 20 years of R&D.
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• 

  Eli

  1 year ago

  Jesse, it is true that if there were no copyright, it would not be morally wrong to copy works of art. This does not make the argument circular. If there were no copyright, then artists would produce with the expectation that their goods would be copied. As a result, they would produce fewer works (How many fewer? What is the efficient copyright term? These are empirical questions). It would not be wrong to copy these works.
  
  The law provides for copyright because information goods are costly to produce and cheap to copy. It is an improvement in economic efficiency to provide copyright. Those artists who rely on copyright in their production decision have a right to that protection. Breaking their monopoly is equivalent to theft---you are taking something from them.
  
  I don't agree with your claim that (all) things are crimes independent of whether they are enforced. Read Hayek on the difference between law and legislation. Driving, say, 5 mph above the speed limit is not against the law. It is against legislation. But the law is what is done, not what some goofballs in your state capitol say should be done.
  
  As a philosophical anarchist, I view government as morally irrelevant. The point is not that copying is a violation of the government's legislation and therefore similar to theft. The point is that once people recognize intellectual property, it is property. Your car also is only your property because other people recognize it to be so, not (directly) because the government says it is. If intellectual property is property, then the unauthorized taking of it is theft.
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  adriang

  1 year ago

  Joshua: If I kill a man I am stealing his life. Should we conclude "murder = theft" ?
  We are not saying copyright infringement is right, we are saying it is a different thing from theft, and should be studied differently.
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• 

  Jesse

  1 year ago

  Eli,
  
  You've just restated your original point. It's still circular, though. Your argument really seems to be not that copyright infringement is wrong because it's a kind of theft but that copyright infringement is wrong because it's breaking the law. That's fine, but there's plenty of laws whose breach people don't find "wrong" in the sense that they find theft wrong, e.g., jaywalking, speeding, etc.
  
  So, fine, copyright infringement is wrong in the sense that it's breaking the law, but it definitely occupies a different moral sphere in society than theft.
  
  Moreover, the origin of copyright law doesn't rest in its potential analogy to theft, but in its own economic and political considerations.
  
  Also, you're not going to be able to sneak in "theft" through the back door by saying intellectual property is a kind of property and therefore copying it is a kind of theft.
  
  First, theft covers intentional deprivation of a thing, not copying the thing without permission. It's a different rule. Theft always requires mens rea, for example, whereas civil copyright violations do not.
  
  Second, "intellectual property" as a term is relatively modern. Its consistent use didn't come about until the mid-20th century and its earliest use is about 150 years after the Statute of Anne.
  
  Using it in that way is a dirty kind of equivocation.
  
  You're also equivocating about what "law" means, now. If you were using a specific definition of "against the law" that is not what people usually mean then you should have stated it up front.
  
  I don't really have the time to play this game with you, so this'll be my last reply.
  
  Cheers,
  Jesse
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• 

  Eli

  1 year ago

  Uh, all property rights emerge as a result of economic considerations. Read, for instance, Harold Demsetz's 1967 article, "Toward a Theory of Property Rights."
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  Jesse

  1 year ago

  Eli,
  
  Yep.
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  matt m

  1 year ago

  It's pretty clear that Arrington's definition of "natural behavior" doesn't include rape and murder. You can say he's imprecise, but to say he's in favor of murder is a ridiculous strawman based on Maroon's definition of "natural behavior". Arrington's argument that it is ridiculous that the behavior of watching a show on YouTube for free is breaking the law, while watching it on Hulu for free is legal, deserves a more thoughtful analysis.
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  Tim Marman

  1 year ago

  Precisely! It's a distinction that many don't appreciate. I wrote about this awhile back in 2003 in the context of a "stealing music" discussion. (http://slashstar.com/blogs/tim/archive/2003/09/...).
  
  "We use our understanding of real property to help understand property rights and ownership of (digital) information, but in my opinion it's a weak analogy. The primary difference is that multiple parties can technically possess (and use) information without infringing on the value to or rights of others to consume the same information."
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  Ron

  1 year ago

  It is not theft per se. But when you share that song, you violate an unspoken agreement you have made with the holder of the copyright. You agreed to enjoy the work but not to copy it and sell the copies or give them away.
  
  So you say "I did not agree to anything", but law gives the holder the right to say if copies are made or not, you may not *like* the law but you are still subject to it. To the extent that you decide to copy what is not yours to copy you make a slave of the copyright holder.
  
  On the argument above, "What if I go into an artist's studio, and paint a painting that looks like the one they have done?" Trespass aside, Even if your skill were equal to the original painters, your version would look different. Now if you used a matter-duplicator that would be a better analogy. Good thing we don't have matter-duplicators yet.
  
  And I don't want to hear the old one "Well I never would have bought it anyway". It was important enough to you to copy it. You liked the song or the artist enough to want to keep it. If there were no way to copy it you would have bought it.
  
  Tim - You infringe on the value of the information by making it less unique than the copyright holder desired. (if even only by one copy although it's never just one copy) Also you infringe on
  the right of the "copy" "right" holder by usurping her position when you decide to make a copy and transfer it.
  
  On the following parts of the discussion we probably agree: Length of a copyright monopoly and the raw deal the artist get from the record label. But then the deal between the artist and the label is just that between them. And the length of the monopoly needs to be worked on using the legal route, get the law changed back.
  
  Oh and by the way "everything we do" with a computer may be copying but the line is not crossed moving the song from the hard drive to memory to play it, usually that copy dissolves away when the song is done playing.
  
  I do stand with when the RIAA says I can't rip a CD for my own use, but that's a somewhat different kettle of fishes isn't it.
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  Alex

  1 year ago

  Arguing there is a difference between copyright infringement and theft IS just semantics. 'Proving' that they are different justifies nothing and gets us nowhere. It's just meaningless point scoring over a fairly irrelevant part of the bigger legal debate.
  
  Is making a mixtape theft? Well, it's a crime, but a very minor one. Is making a mixtape then selling it out of your car boot theft? Well, It's a crime, and one that surpasses physically stealing single copies of the music from a store.
  
  Weak ending to an overall weak argument.
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  Jesse

  1 year ago

  Alex,
  
  The economics of copyright infringement and theft are totally different. Conflating them leads to bad arguments and worse policy.
  
  And, for what it's worth, most copyright infringement isn't a crime. Learn the difference between a crime and a tort and then we can talk.
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• 

  Alex

  1 year ago

  Well, they are different, (not sure I agree that they are 'totally' different though). Theft and Copyright Violation do have similarities, just like different types of traditional theft have similarities. My point is that to argue over the semantics is utterly fruitless. It's all down to the individual cases. the range of seriousness of traditional theft has a huge range, just as the range of seriousness of copyright violation also has a huge range. There are many, many cases of copyright violation that are far more serious than cases of traditional theft.
  
  Your second statement, 'most copyright infringement isn't a crime' also seems to be about to turn down semantic avenue. Before you do then, let's just call them offences and be done with it.
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  Jesse

  1 year ago

  Right, they're "just" semantic differences, even though the difference between a tort and a crime means difference burdens of proof, different measures of justice, and different court systems.
  
  *shrug*
  
  If you don't want to make a nuanced argument that's ok by me. These distinctions matter economically, legally, and philosophically, though.
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• 

  Mike Hunt

  5 months ago

  All the "semantic" arguments add up to the same thing:
  
  People don't want to pay for the things they can take seemingly for free. Any "moral"
  argument is just a way to justify your theft so you can still feel all cozy and warm and
  parade your self-righteous "virtues" in a forum or amongst your fellow thieves.
  
  In other words: "I ignore the laws that I don't agree with."
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  Jesse Farmer

  5 months ago

  I'm not sure what you're on about, but the point of the article was that copyright infringement isn't theft legally, morally, or historically.
  
  Feel free to actually advance an argument.
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• 

  syber

  2 months ago

  You should like my site here:
  http://www.geocities.com/the_syber/Theft_by_DRM...
  
  April 10, 1997 directv used there drm to turn off the programming I paid for. Attorney's generals from 31 states sued and won in what was Luaces V. Directv. Directv fined 11 million and I was a member of that class action I bought an access card to stop the theft having been told in advance of what Directv intended to do.
  
  In 2003, directv sued in Federal court asserting there drm rights. While having been found to have stolen consumer programming, they were permitted to file against someone for having defended there programming from an unlawful use of DRM.
  
  This was a case of theft by use of DRM and violation of DRM rights to defend from theft.
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