Is illegal file sharing ethically acceptable?

Question

I see as thieves people who illegally make available works to which other people own the intellectual rights. Such people should be dealt with as thieves. There's nothing proletarian about stunting the career of an artiste who can't make money out of their own creations because as soon as it's made available in any format it appears as a free, illegal download online.

Has it not struck anyone but me how the entertainment business is increasingly being taken over by those from a class where they have parents or relatives financially supporting their art whilst other classes have to work, use their earnings to subsidise their attempts to produce work in their spare time only to have whatever they create promptly stolen by someone illegally sharing files who then has the gall to suggest they are striking a blow for the "common man" by file sharing when in fact, they are kicking the poor artiste when they are already down making it even easier for the wealthier, often artistically less adept a clear run at success.

It's quite simple. How do new artistes make money from their work if it's stolen as soon as it appears?

Is this why we are deluged with mass appeal rubbish? Struggling artistes can't afford to keep pace with digital rights management technologies so their material is easier to steal. New bands often lose money on gigs as it is and touring to promote an album that is going to be illegally shared is an option only available to those who are financially cushioned.

The proletarian thing to do is to pay for other peoples' work and get rid of the file sharers. The people the file sharers hurt the most are poor, struggling artistes.

Many well known artistes are far from rich.

Answer 1

Is stealing from someone or from your local store "ethical".



Illegal file sharing is exactly the same.



Hence the reason it is ILLEGAL.

Answer 2

1. Leaving aside the jurisprudential issue of whether there is a general obligation to obey the law regardless of its moral character, whether or not file-sharing is ethically acceptable is not nearly so simple a question as it first appears.



2. "copyright" in the modern sense is an early modern idea, first appearing in 1709, with the stated purpose (amongst others) of safeguarding the interests of authors against printers. The idea behind the copyright law was that it created an economic incentive and reward for creating copyright material, by giving the author a monopoly in the reproduction of that material. The duration of the monopoly was limited (originally to only a few years). Copyright is not therefore something that naturally arises, but instead, a state granted monopoly, created for a purpose.



3. infringement of copyright is unlike theft in that the copyright owner still has the copyright work - they can use it, sell it, reproduce it, and so forth. All they loose by infringment is some potential economic gain *from the person infringing copyright*. If the infringer would never have purchased the copyright work at the going rate, what has the copyright owner lost? The position of people making availible copyright works on a large scale might be different - particularly if they are making a profit, since then there is some definate economic loss.



4. It should be borne in mind that copyright law is far from perfect. Take, for example, the phenomenum of "abandonware" - software (usually computer games) published in the 1980s and 1990s, in which copyright subsists, but which is no longer commercially availible. I can see no violation of ethics in infringment on copyrights which are no longer commercially exploited - the copyright owners, if they attempted to supress free distribution of such "abandonware" would be in the position of the dog in the manger - denying use of the material to others when they themselves are not using it.



5. In the case of emerging artists/ niche buisnesses, the impact of copyright infringment is unlikely to be very great because:

(1) the wide circulation of one of their works is only likely to increase interest in anothers, whether circulation takes place by infringement or not - some artists have reached a wider audience by distributing material for free

(2) if consumers actually *like* a particular artist (particular new or independant ones) they will be less inclined to infringe (and are in any case likely to be able to purchase works at a reasonable price).



6. Taking a wider view, copyright infringment is a symptom of problems with the market in copyright materials - when the monopoly has become some powerful that the copyright owners (often companies, not artists) charge so high a price at the public at large violate the monopoly. The copyright industry itself engages in various anti-competative activities ( proprietary file formats, restricting the use of third party software, the region-encoding of discs) which extend the monopoly in ways set out in law.



7. DRM has not proven terribly successful. Consider, for example, the infamous sony DRM which created security weakeness in computer systems and wrecked disc drives. There is a constant war between the authors of DRM software and hackers, so that money spent on the latest DRM one year is money wasted on a circumvented and annoying peice of software the next. Some buisnesses are perfectly able to turn a profit without using DRM (consider gog.com), and the cost to a small artist of DRM is unlikely to cover any loss that would be incurred by file sharing, even assuming it worked.



8. We are, as you put it "deluged with mass appeal rubbish" because it makes money for publishers. It happened before file sharing and would continue to happen if there were no file sharing. Indeed it is "mass appeal rubbish" most commonly distributed through file sharing.



9. In conclusion, whether file sharing is ethical or not depends on the circumstances - availibility of the work shared, whether the provider or the user, whether the work is in fact commercially exploited etc etc. It is not possible to generalise from the particular situation you have in mind - wholesale sharing of a new, independant artist's work to every other situation in which copyright is infringed by file sharing. Whether file sharing is some sort of act of class warfare is irrelevant to whether or not it is ethical; the common man is no one special.

Answer 3

First off how have I stolen a person's intellectual rights if I copy a book I purchased from him? He retains full possession of his intellect, and may continue to use them as the same manner as before.



The music industry has witnessed increased revenues for all members except the record companies that insist on selling music in outdated formats. Revenue to artists, and venues for live music have increased. The fact is that file sharing has kicked the man in the pants and rewarded artist who provide valued music to their fans.



And all of it is old news anyways. It was claimed the VCR would kill hollywood. In fact VCR's made hollywood more successful than they had ever been before. It was claimed the phonograph would make musicians jobless, while it in fact increased the market for music.



Today the worst thing to do if you want to make money with your book is to sign away your copyright to a publisher. Who may stop publishing it after 6 months and prevent anyone else including you from ever publishing it in the next 70 years. Go to your local bookseller and look around. Almost a third of the books store are of expired copyright, but sell just fine. Newspapers receive almost no practical copyright protection and employ a very large number of people.



http://blog.mises.org/9273/authors-beware-of-copyright/



Two authors wrote a book against intellectual monopoly, released their book for free on their own internet page, and have still managed to make money off of it.



http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstnew.htm



The argument from effect just doesn't match up to reality. Copyrights began as a form of government censorship, and modern copyright continues to claim what a person may or may not print with their presses.



Struggling artists would benefit far more from a few marketing classes, than they do from copyright. Copyright sets artists and consumers are odds with one another where a more beneficial arrangements can be created. Serialized novels are one option of dozens that can produce revenue.



Copyright destroyed classical music, because the tradition of classical music was specifically one of copying, adaptation, and borrowing.



The pernicious affects of copyright and patent are far too numerous to list in full detail, but I hope I have given you some idea of the scope.