Anything that lets us avoid a trip to the video-rental store, while simultaneously offering more choices of movies, sounds good at first glance. In some ways, it’s the future of home entertainment.
If such a service ever does take shape, however, it’ll likely include severe restrictions on what customers can do with what they’ve rented. The copyright wars ensure that.
The service would further reinforce a business model that reflects the entertainment industry’s narrow view of the world. To Hollywood, we are nothing but “consumers” of “content,” and as digital content takes over we will rent, not purchase, what we consume.
But the Internet is a more expansive place than that. The future of video should be an expansion of choices: into dimensions far beyond the traditional tube.
—Hollywood: It’s time to get creative, use the Net (SiliconValley.com)
We just had a spirited classroom discussion regarding file-sharing, as part of a panel called “Current Issues in Cyberspace.” I had to cut the discussion off, but I hope students will continue it on their blogs.
Several students complained that the price of albums is too high, and that they only want one or two singles and don’t want to purchase the whole album. But only one or two had any experience buying single songs from places like iTunes. That’s the very service they say they are being denied, but they’re not using it.
There were a few reluctant smiles when I turned their arguments around and said, “You know, I really like skydiving, but it’s just too expensive for my budget. I think I’m going to steal a plane so that I can practice my God-given right to enjoy skydiving.”
I have no real vested interest in popular music — financial, emotional, or otherwise, but I do enjoy watching the rock-n-roll industry try to teach morals. This is the third generation of young people who have been carefully groomed to respond to the aesthetics of rebellion.
I first started teaching with this handout in 1999 and posted it on my blog…
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. @thepublicpgh
[A] popular type of generative AI model can provide turn-by-turn driving directions in New York City…
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Smiley are for wimps!! Bring on the anger!
...
:)
err, re-reading my last comment it seems a little more "snippy" than I meant it to be. Maybe if I put a lot of smiley faces in there?
Well, if you deny someone income, you STILL haven't harmed the plane, now have you! :-P
"The law says that denying somebody income is a form of harm, so it depends on what you mean by 'harm'." What is this, the Bill Clinton school of law?
Clinton: Could you please explain what you mean by "sex", "harm" and "the number two"?
Seriously, there's not much room for misinterpretation in "harm the plane".
Depends on what you mean by "won't harm the plane in any way." The law says that denying somebody income is a form of harm, so it depends on what you mean by "harm". But I'm not sure how productive it will be to keep trouncing (or defending) my poor little analogy!
Several students have posted blog entries that make it clear their opinions weren't in the slightest swayed! (Moira compiled some of these comments.)
But did your students point out the flaw in your analogy?
You said that "...since you can't guarantee that your file-copying won't harm the performers", but, actually, that's *exactly* what is guaranteed. I guarantee you no one has every gone to the emergency room of the hospital because "someone copied my music", or called in sick to work because "someone copied my music", or said "Man, someone copied my music, and now I've been puking all day!". You could crash the plane accidentally, but your copying the artists music is no way is going to hurt them or destroy their guitar. :-)
You've made several good points yourself, and I was only disagreeing with your exact anology. :-)
Thanks for offering your feedback on iTunes.
Your example about photocopying money is a good one. It's not stealing when you photocopy money, but it's still wrong to buy something with that photocopied money -- in that case, you are stealing.
I'm not sure that a guarantee not to harm the plane in any way is a fair analogy, since you can't guarantee that your file-copying won't harm the performers. At the very least, the unauthorized borrowing of an airplane takes business away from people who want to make money giving airplane rides to skydivers. If you're a qualified pilot, of course, then you don't need to pay for someone else's skills -- though the question of who will fly the plane back after you've jumped out raises further questions that pretty much shoot my analogy to hell!
It was an analogy that I pulled out of the air on the spur of the moment -- my goal was to point out that nobody has the RIGHT to listen to the music they want, just as I don't have a RIGHT to go skydiving.
Why do people insist on listening to music published by evil record publishers, when there is (supposedly) so much free indie music published by fantastic groups who are begging to leap into your iPod?
You're right to note that no analogy is completely perfect, and you're right to note that I oversimplified... but I did in order to get the students to notice the flaw in my argument, so that they can come back with better arguments. You've offered several.
According to the law, the theft of intellectual property is still theft. Both the law and business models have already changed due to technology, and will continue to change. Big Media at one point fought the sale of VCRs because they feared it would cut into their ticket sales, but now plenty of studios make more on the sale of videos or DVDs than they make on ticket sales.
I
should add that people without a lot of money will probably always copy
music free, no matter how wonderful paying for it gets to be. When a
person has to choose between either beer or beer and music, well, you
know what they choose.
Your analogy about skydiving is fundamentally flawed, as are most analogies every since the record companies have insisted that copying their music is "stealing".
It's more like "Skydiving is to expensive, so rather than paying you to take my skydiving, I'm going to borrow your airplaine while you're not around and go skydiving. (and I will fill up the fuel tank and can guarentee I won't harm your plane in any way)".
Your first analogy is as accurate as is saying that because I paid for my class, and the professor failed me, that the professor stole the money I payed for the class from me. (aka - It's not an accurate analogy.)
Record companies try to call it theft to copy their music, but they attempt to redefine theft from it's intuitive meaning to do it. The first definition of stealing from dictionary.com is:
To take (the property of another) without right or permission. Take. If I take (or steal) your wallet, you don't have it anymore. If I steal your plane, you don't have it anymore. Even if I bring it back, you didn't have while I had it.
But music is different. If you copy a song, the record company still has it. If I photocopy dollar bills at the bank, am I stealing the money? No. It's not theft.
But it is something else, because it is true that if you didn't copy it, you might have purchased the music instead, so you may have deprived the record company of money they would have otherwise earned.
But that's why I think that people don't consider copying music stealing - when you steal something, the person who's property it was doesn't have it any more.
* Sidenote: The problem with iTunes and services like it is that the version you can get for free is better than the version you can get by paying for it. I would like to use iTunes or some similar service, but I don't want to have to deal with their restrictions (there are some sort of restrictions on how you can copy or play the music)