Women in Technology

Article:		Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution
Subject:		More foolishness
Date:		2002-12-13 12:07:28
From:		gecampbell
Perhaps you're right, Tim. Justice Blackmun called it "trespassing". I used trespassing in my example. Let's call it property trespassing. The real issue, as you point out, is "fair use". The fact is, sharing files on Napster is NOT fair use (at least, according to the US court system). I still take issue with the hordes of people who say that, because it's easy to make a copy of something, it should be legitimate to do so. That's a level of moral corruption that I simply don't understand. When you do that, you are trespassing on the rights of the holder. I agree; it's stupid for the record companies etc. to fight this in this manner. They do not understand the conversation that is the Internet, and how that could benefit them. They do, however, have one indisputable fact in their favor (as much as I hate to admit it). Sales of music have declined, and use of it has gone up. Is this all "fair use"? Somehow, I doubt it. My son is 11. Many, many of is friends have CD collections for which they have paid NOTHING. One of the children in his school has 40-50 complete CDs which he has acquired by either downloading from the Internet or being "loaned" the music from a friend. In my mind, that's $300 (or more) that he's taken from the record companies, who are entitled to it by contract and law. Are they being harmed? That's beside the point. They have the right to choose how their property is copied. Is this fair use? Again, I doubt that the courts would agree to that. The fact is, this 11-year-old kid sees absolutely nothing wrong with this; this is how he aquires music. And it's that attitude that is wrong.

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• More foolishness
  2002-12-13 13:48:46  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I think you're underlining one of O'Reilly's points rather than disproving it:
  
  I believe the friends of your son have their ripped cd-collections precisely because of the fumbeling of record companies. Their fumbeling and disrepect for consumers is what causes the ripping of content in the first place (often by persons quite a bit older than 11, not to mention the insiders making content available before official release dates).
  The result of the increasing hostility in tactics from RIAA and similiar "organisations" force people to change sides:
  - a 'light' example: buying a cd just to discover it will not work in the audio systems (in the car or at home) because it was "protected"...
  - a 'heavy' example: anybody aware enough to be scared my industry-backed propositions such as TCPA/Palladium/LaGrange ( http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html ), these are driven by the "RIAA version" of the copyright issue.
  
  The record and movie industries are slowly asphyxiating trying to choke the rights of their consumers, not realizing that the neck (consumers) supports the head (themselves).
  This has gone on for quite a while, so long that disrespect for said companies has become a norm in most parts of society. Norms are more powerful than laws, which do you think a kid would intrinsically follow? So your kid has hopefully learned that norms are not to be followed blindly (and maybe that the same applies to laws?).
  
  
  ...n...