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I've seen the following argument a thousand times: "Well the marginal cost of a copy of [some digital good] is 0 so it isn't stealing!" That argument is actua

• chc 16y ago
  You're repeating the big media newspeak. "Breaking the law" is not identical to "stealing." If you enter a place you are not allowed to be but do not deprive anybody else of property already in his custody, you are committing trespass and any number of other crimes, but you are emphatically not stealing. So please correct everyone you see making that argument.
  • krschultz 16y ago
    Agreed, but what word would you use? We aren't trespassing when we use bittorrent. And I know people who have been attacked by pirates wielding guns onto their ships, so I just feel strange equating clicking on a link with a guy shooting a civilian with an AK47. So I equate it to "theft of services". Let's say I get a massage, and then I just walk out the door and don't pay for it. I have clearly stolen that person's valuable time. Which isn't a perfect analogy becuase they have finite time vs being able to make infinite copies, but either way someone worked hard with the intention of getting paid for it, and there are people out there depriving them of the money they would have gotten (and please don't say "but I wouldn't have bought it anyway! which is also crap, becuase most people are downloading music they would have bought, its just the nature of blockbusters vs the long tail). So I don't know what the word is, but it is definitely closer to theft of services than anything else I can think of.
    • chc 16y ago
      It's copyright infringement, that's what it is. If it were stealing, you wouldn't be able to get million-dollar verdicts against the people who do it.
      • ErrantX 16y ago
        Ok, but I think the point being made is that the artists (ignore the record companies, they're idiots) feel as if they are being stolen from. Not just in monetary cost. So; ethical theft?
        • jacquesm 16y ago
          > they're idiots The idiots are still laughing all the way to the bank. > So; ethical theft? No, copyright infringement.
        • bphogan 16y ago
          We've all heard that record companies are evil, but then again they often pre-pay an artist to produce a record, pay for studio time, mixing, mastering, etc. There's a lot that goes into producing music, videos, and books than you see. Open up a book and look at the production credits. People do indexing, typesetting, copy editing, distribution, translations, artwork, and on and on. So if nobody's buying books, those people get hurt. But let's look at the author directly. Authors often get advances against royalties. Let's say BigPublishingCo pays you $10,000 to write a book. Let's say your book doesn't do well. What are the odds you'll get to write a second book? As an author, you're looking at your future and trying to figure out how you can increase sales. One way to do that is to make the pirate copies disappear. That's what publishers try to do, so they can stay in business.
  • potatolicious 16y ago
    > ""Breaking the law" is not identical to "stealing."" You are technically correct (according to Futurama, the best kind of correct). But you're also repeating the digital-communist newspeak also. "Piracy is not stealing" is not identical to "Piracy is not wrong". I realize that's not the position you're trying to push, but bear in mind that "Piracy is not stealing" is way too often used to justify piracy itself, as if mere infringement makes it morally acceptable, but stealing is not. Associating piracy with stealing is problematic, technically incorrect, but is not entirely without merit. Similarly, dissociating piracy from stealing is problematic but not entirely without merit. The "I'm just copying your couch" argument that the internet likes to make is about as sensical as the "You wouldn't steal from a store would you?" that the MPAA/RIAA like to make. Both are attempting to use weasel words to justify their own position.
    • hxa7241 16y ago
      They really do have a different moral status though. Copyright and IP are purely pragmatic commercial arrangements. Any wrongness in infringement comes solely from it simply being against the rules of a particular game we have decided to play. If we had different rules, such copying would be harmless. The copyright-based industries have tried to present infringement as a fundamental moral wrong. It is not. Quite the contrary, communication is good, as people unconciously know and feel.
      • rick888 16y ago
        "They really do have a different moral status though. Copyright and IP are purely pragmatic commercial arrangements. Any wrongness in infringement comes solely from it simply being against the rules of a particular game we have decided to play. If we had different rules, such copying would be harmless." You're making his point. You could also the same thing about anything.
        • hxa7241 16y ago
          > You could also the same thing about anything. That is not accurate. Many laws -- those we probably most respect -- are grounded on actual basic factual effects. They have a justification prior to conventional or legal constructs. For example, if you take a material object from me, you deprive me -- directly and physically. That is the core justification of normal property, and there is no such justification for IP.
• tjr 16y ago
  I've worked on numerous music recording projects. In many cases, I did everything by myself. In one case, I hired (and learned from) some of the very best in the industry, and between my partner and I, incurred approximately $20,000 in costs... and had an awesome time doing so. But even when I do everything myself, I'm using high-end equipment and software that I've paid thousands of dollars for. It's not free of charge for me to be able to record music. And even if I were to deem those to be irrelevant sunk costs, to assume that my recordings ought to be free of charge just because they easily can be copied suggests that my time and expertise is worthless, if nothing else. [Edit: of course, I'm just some random guy on the internet, and certainly not nor attempting to be a full-time musician. I'm presently content to make money building software, and any income that results from my music is just a bonus. Full-time musicians surely feel even more strongly about such matters.]
  • krschultz 16y ago
    Exactly. I'm not a muscian (I'm freaking terrible at anything involved with music), and I have no stake in this game. But software development is the same freaking business model, but for some reason we don't collectively take a stand against piracy.
    • tjr 16y ago
      As a professional software developer, I've given my software work away free of charge, e.g., as a volunteer for Project GNU. I see nothing wrong with that, but I think it ought to be my own choice if I want to spend time working on something and then make it available free of charge, or if I want to sell copies of it. Likewise, I see nothing wrong with musicians giving away copies of music free of charge (and I've done so), but it should be their choice.
      • gnosis 16y ago
        It's very simple. If you don't want the music you created to be available free of charge, don't release it! It's absolutely your choice. If you want to keep control of it, keep it private. But once you (by your own choice) make it available, don't be shocked or surprised if people share it without sending you money for every copy. The system we have for paying artists is clearly broken. It has been for a very long time. The digital revolution is just putting the final nails in the coffin. But even before filesharing on the internet, artists were getting screwed left and right, and very very few could make a living creating art. Now it's clearer than ever that we have to find some other ways to compensate artists for the work they do. Some suggestions that I've heard along these lines are: - Put a PayPal (or choose your favorite non-evil payment system) icon prominently on your home page and ask for donations. - Release your music for free, but ask for money so that you can work on your next album. Don't release your next album until you've gotten enough of a payment to make it worthwhile. If you're good and have developed a large enough fan base, this should be quite a reasonable business model. - Give away the music for free, but charge for live appearances (make money touring). - Make it clear to your fans that you are giving away your music for free, but need them to chip in by buying tangible merchandise like t-shirts. Ok. None of these are perfect. And they all work best when the artist is already well known and has a large fan base. But relatively unknown artists have always struggled to get by, and filesharing does not change that equation. At least with all of the suggested payment methods above, the artist gets to keep a lion's share of the profit, instead of begging for pennies on the dollar when going through the established record company system.
• endtime 16y ago
  I don't think many people make only the case that the marginal cost is 0. But when the marginal cost is zero, and I wouldn't have bought the thing anyway (e.g. Photoshop), and when it's a non-scarce good, I really struggle to see the harm.
  • neild 16y ago
    It's astonishingly easy to convince yourself that you "wouldn't have bought the thing anyway". The best way to be sure that you aren't lying to yourself is to not pirate things.
    • endtime 16y ago
      Or just not lie to myself. I have sufficiently high confidence that I wouldn't have bought Photoshop that I can sleep at night. :)
      • scott_s 16y ago
        We are inherently irrational creatures susceptible to dozens of cognitive biases. As a consequence, we are very good at rationalizing things we want to do but would otherwise judge wrong. That was the point neild was making - in that context, saying you will "just not lie to myself" does not address his point.
        • endtime 16y ago
          In the sense I meant it, it does, though I guess my comment was ambiguous. I believe I am sufficiently introspective and aware of my own biases to determine whether I'm making such a basic rationalization, especially when the question is made explicit. If I make the question to myself explicit before pirating something, I feel secure.
        • r0s 16y ago
          > We are inherently irrational creatures susceptible to dozens of cognitive biases. Well then, apply that to your own reasoning.
• wwortiz 16y ago
  From the article: >“Books are priced too high,” said Berntsen when justifying his work. “One of the reasons why the pirate world is so big, is that publishers take crazy prices for something that isn’t even in physical form.” This is actually one of the better arguments in favor of piracy I have seen, though I'm sure most people don't see their pirating this way, pirating books isn't really the solution, and it is quite a bit misguided. The specifics of digital books is a little bit different from music, you do have those fixed costs but the argument is that the marginal costs make up for it. What a good amount of people don't realize is that with many books the marginal costs are actually pretty close to zero so an ebook doesn't really cost that much less to make. My personal problem with digital books, which I avoid by going to used book stores (So I guess I'm not really supporting anyone other than the book store), is that some publishers think there should be a convenience charge to the customer in order to obtain a digital copy, I believe in no way should an ebook cost more than the cheapest copy (be it paperback or hardback) available from the same store new.
  • jokermatt999 16y ago
    >My personal problem with digital books, which I avoid by going to used book stores (So I guess I'm not really supporting anyone other than the book store), is that some publishers think there should be a convenience charge to the customer in order to obtain a digital copy, I believe in no way should an ebook cost more than the cheapest copy (be it paperback or hardback) available from the same store new. Which, if you think about it, seems totally backwards. A paper or hardback book can be sold secondhand, and some of the value recouped. With an ebook, there's no way to resell and regain some of what you've spent. However, if you aren't discussing reselling, this is kind of a moot point.
• deleted 16y ago
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• todayiamme 16y ago
  Yes, you're right. The more I've thought about it over time the more I realize that your point is right, but the problem isn't the rational cost over here; it is the perceived cost of the good. People pirate things, because to them in their minds, emotionally, it isn't like stealing. After all, who are they stealing from? It's extremely hard to put a face on an entity like a record corporation and it's just that psychologically people can't relate to or grasp the concept at work over here. Our sense of morality is closely tied with our sense of empathy, but when there is nothing to empathize with what happens then? The central problem with the systems we now create is that our brains still look at it emotionally, while being unable to grasp at the true consequences of them intellectually. Think about the stock market; it operates on rational principles and belief, but now do you think anyone truly understands it? All that's left is messy human belief in a system no one truly understands. In shorter terms, we've created a recipe for disaster. I think that all of the problems we see today is a symptom of our short comings as a species. I really wish I knew how to solve this, but then again I have faith that someone else will. ;)
• InclinedPlane 16y ago
  There are still a fixed number of seats on the train (or plane). If someone "steals" a seat then that's a seat that someone else cannot have. This is dramatically different from the case of digital media where there is no similar impact. For music piracy the only cost is the potential lost sale of the music to the "pirate". Edit: to follow up, I'm a music pirate and proud of it. In my experience there are three types of people who pirate music. There are casual pirates who occasionally download the most popular songs of the day. There are hardcore pirates and digital packrats who refuse to pay for anything they don't absolutely have to and download music they might not even like, just to have it. And there are music lovers who have an insatiable hunger for lots and lots of music and enjoy discovering new music. From a financial perspective for the artists piracy is not generally a serious problem. Casual pop-music pirates generally download only songs that are already mega-hits, and the artists have been compensated thoroughly from. Hardcore anti-business pirates aren't necessarily a significant impact on artists because they wouldn't have paid for the albums they've pirated regardless. The really interesting aspect comes from the 3rd category of pirates. Music lovers may "pirate" music but they also buy music too, and being exposed to more music means only that they end up buying more music (and going to more concerts), which is nothing but good news for those artists. Some of my favorite music I've discovered only by first pirating it, and in many cases this has lead to supporting artists financially (through album sales, merch, and concerts) that I never would have known about and never would have given a dime to previously. I can't see that as anything other than a good thing. The current hypothetical non-piracy model for music is broken, and it always has been. There is too little variety on the radio and 30 second or 1 minute clips of songs don't cut it. Sometimes you just need to borrow an album and listen to it a few times before falling in love with it. This is the way it has always been. There's always been borrowing and copying in music, but the internet has made it infinitely more effective and so cast the issues into much sharper relief. There is an even more important point at play here. And that is that a train line can prevent you from sneaking onto a train without a ticket fairly easily, but it is nigh impossible to put the music piracy genie back into the bottle. Music piracy is going to happen. The technology makes it too easy now, and there is a cultural desire for it. There is no choice to stop it, the only choice is to figure out how to live with it. P.S. Some people might enjoy listening to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdRAQWp73S4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdRAQWp73S4 P.P.S. http://www.gemm.com/item/GEINOH--YAMASHIROGUMI/ECOPHONY--RINNE/GML12205369/ http://www.gemm.com/item/GEINOH--YAMASHIROGUMI/ECOPHONY--RIN... (perhaps this is an experiment?)
• rjprins 16y ago
  It's not all about costs. In music there are many people who love to write and record songs for fun. This devalues music regardless of costs. In fact I think most music in itself is practically worthless. It's the face and name of musicians which are worth money, usually because of successful marketing. For books it's a little different. Few people write long stories for fun and it's much harder to write a good book then it is to make a good song. Thus, there are not that many good books around and their value is higher. In this case, I would say copying is bad. However, my own opinion is that the world just has to adapt to it's own developments. Copying is easy? Writers get less money for their books? Then writers will have to change their profession. Sometimes markets shrink or disappear.
  • tjr 16y ago
    Few people write long stories for fun and it's much harder to write a good book then it is to make a good song. Probably. It might be more equivalent to compare a book with a whole album, or a chapter with a song. I'm not sure what quality of music you have in mind, or what quality of book, but I don't think writing good prose is of necessity significantly more difficult than producing good recorded music. Sometimes markets shrink or disappear. Certainly. But when markets disappear because the producers in the market say "I would like X dollars in exchange for this product" and the consumers say "No, we'd rather violate copyright law and procure your product free of charge", it seems to me that something is going on beyond the simple disappearance of a market. Consumers still want recorded music, and written prose, and all sorts of things that are easy to copy. Many of them just don't feel compelled to give the producers anything in exchange for their work [if they can avoid doing so]. Their work must have value, or else the consumers wouldn't want it.
    • bandushrew 16y ago
      If their work is of sufficiently high value that the consumer is willing to pay for it, then it will survive. isn't that capitalism 101?
      • tjr 16y ago
• T_S_ 16y ago
  Arguments about marginal cost of production don't matter when the cost of enforcement is high. The issue of piracy ultimately comes down to whether agreements are enforceable. In the long run society won't help people enforce the unenforceable. If we come up with some form of technological fix that "knows" when an agreement has been broken then piracy will dwindle. Otherwise these laws will eventually be taken off the books, like adultery and other former crimes. That's not meant as an ethical argument. Simply a forecast.
• Charuru 16y ago
  "Well the marginal cost of a copy of [some digital good] is 0 so it isn't stealing!" Many things DO work by this model. ie, art. Someone may pay for the 1st copy of a Picasso at 100 million dollars (the copy that actually required talent to make), but everyone else gets it at the marginal cost, free.
• makmanalp 16y ago
  I agree with all of this, but what bothers me is that the record industry is using a form of reverse pie fallacy in which they claim that they would have had X amount of sales, if only those darned pirates hadn't stolen the music. A more sophisticated (but still fallacious) version goes: Album Y has been pirated Z times, therefore we lost Z * (retail price of the album). This is blatantly wrong. They do not know that they would have sold X albums if it weren't for pirates. Furthermore, if a person pirates an album, it does not mean that they would have bought it if they couldn't pirate it or if they were more ethical. The people I know who horde large amounts of music do it exactly because it doesn't cost them - if they had to pay for it they simply wouldn't have even close to that much music. They wouldn't go and buy all the same albums. They also wouldn't be enthusiasts at that scale. tl;dr: Fallacies exist on both sides.
• aaronkaplan 16y ago
  You're attacking a straw man. Here are some arguments that people do sometimes make, and that somewhat resemble your straw man, but are less ridiculous: - Making a copy of a file isn't stealing because it doesn't deprive anyone else of the good. - When vendors claim that X pirated units of a product whose retail price is Y amount to X*Y of lost sales, they are full of shit, because this assumes that all the pirates would have bought copies at full price had piracy been prevented. - If the product were reasonably priced I would buy it, but it's not, so I steal it. This is the argument of the 19 year old in the article, and probably the one you're reacting to, but it's not the same as your straw man. Your straw man says, "it's not stealing," whereas the real person says "yeah, it's stealing, but it's stealing from thieves, so it's morally acceptable." I don't mean to advance any of these arguments personally, just to point out that they're arguments that some people actually make, unlike the one you so convincingly refute.
• jessriedel 16y ago
  For some deontologists, one key difference is that (they claim) you have a natural right to how your physical property is used, but you do not have a natural right to how your intellectual production is used. Rather, intellectual property is a device created by the state to foster intellectual production. One consequence is that right to your shoes never expires, but patents only last 17 years. So trains are fundamentally different, because to ride one is to use someone's property against their will, and so you violate a natural right. When you pirate music, you are only breaking laws. Although breaking the law might be considered immoral, it is for a fundamentally different reason. There are definitely more cases where people think it's acceptable to break the law, especially if there net utility to society goes up. Examples of this would be (1) parking in one of many handicap parking spaces at night when there is negligible chance that they will all be filled (2) pirating music that you would not buy if you had to pay for it (you sincerely claim!).
• pessimizer 16y ago
  I can't seem to pick out the argument that you're making here, other than that it begins with an assertion that no one who "really" understands economics can dispute it. I'm going to guess out loud at it, and hopefully somebody will jump in and help me. 1) In the case of goods or services with minimal marginal costs and large fixed costs in proportion to total costs, you are expected to pay for them. 2) If you don't pay for them you are breaking the law. Therefore, the argument that if marginal cost is zero on some digital good, then [something number 1] isn't stealing is completely irrelevant to [something number 2]. I'm sure that "something number 1" (referred to as "it") is related to free riding, due to a shared metaphor, and I'm going to assume that it is "a use of that good or service without paying," again due to the metaphor, where a single person took a single train ride without paying. Does "something number 2" = "whether a use of that good or service is illegal or not"? Because that seems to me to be setting up as a straw man a question that no one is asking, then begging the question with an answer that is identical to your second premise.
• RK 16y ago
  Without commenting on IP piracy itself, I don't think the train analogy works for the additional reason that it certainly costs less to transport a train with (say) zero people than a train at full capacity. Fuel cost is probably the biggest issue. Others have already pointed out that a train has a finite capacity, unlike copies of digital media.
  • ugh 16y ago
    That’s a negligible difference, irrelevant as far as this discussion is concerned. The marginal cost of an additional passenger on a train might no be literally zero but compared to the fixed costs it very nearly is.
• kedixed 16y ago
  There are two sides to the market though as well. What the music industry wants you to pay, and what you think you should pay. The music industry would like to get every penny it can from you, as would any share-holder based profit seeking company. It used to be able to dictate what we pay via the cd hard format industry. Paying $30 for a CD with 12-19 songs, and not all songs being equal, it seems that there would be some dissatisfaction with the price per product. You could view the current pirating activity of the general public as a back-lash to this long lasting penny pinching business. Couple this with the celebrity high-life led and promoted by the musicians and record industry, I for one don't want to be lining the pockets of these rich people. When I only get paid the equivalent of $30/h before tax, why the hell should I spend several hours of my time working in order to support the lives of richer people. Producing a remixed version of an old 80's song and adding the words 'dirty beat' does not mean you deserve several cars and houses and gold teeth. Its the fight club generation that does all the hard work, so we are going to take what we can from the corporate overlords. Pirating will lessen when the market properly reflects the actual value of these products, and the industry embraces the ease of the digital format. Online subscription services should allow several cds worth for $5/month. If they are worried how easy it is to copy mp3's, then find ways to make the actual music a by product. Offer sneak previews to new albums, and discounts on concert tickets and merchandise. Imagine if I was one of 50 people to attend a private gig of some awesome band. It would make a lot of other people sign up as well.
• arjn 16y ago
  I agree in general but IMO its even simpler than that. If you are taking someone else's work that they asked you to pay for, then you are STEALING. Its plain and simple.