It’s legal to borrow a movie for free from the library or a friend, but it’s illegal to download a movie and watch it once. It’s legal to borrow a book for free from the library or friend, but it’s illegal to download an e-book without paying and read it.
What’s the difference? Either way they don’t make money.
Everything is legal till they can catch us!!!
A library has purchased the book or movie and thus paid the license for its use. A friend has also purchased the book or movie, and the fair use doctrine allows him to let you borrow it.
@jon: That’s true, but the library or friend has paid for the license either way. So I could go to the library to borrow it, or if I don’t want to drive there or wait for it to transfer from another library, I could download it. What’s the difference to the publisher? The result it exactly the same — I watch the movie and they don’t make any money from me.
I’m sure they’d make borrowing illegal if they could. I wouldn’t be surprised if it costs money to borrow from the library some time in the future, but maybe we’ll be lucky and the fair use laws won’t be repealed in the name of Capitalism…
The difference is that, if you borrow a book from a library or a CD from a friend, you’re the only person that has it. If you and your friend want to listen to the same CD at the same time, you both have to buy your own copy. If you don’t pay for the privilege of owning it, you have to give it back some time.
On the other hand, if you rip a CD to mp3 and give a copy of that to your friend, then you both have the same copy at the same time, and the number of copies in circulation is higher than the number of copies the copyright holder has been paid for.
Copyright, at it’s most basic level, is the right to make copies of a work. Sharing an existing copy does not infringe upon that right, but making copies to be distributed does. It’s no different from photocopying a book and selling it.
Arguably, it’s not a breech of copyright to download an unlicensed copy of a work, but only to make that copy available for others to download. You have the right to make a backup for your own use, but you are obliged to ensure that the original and the backup are not in use at the same time, so if I buy a CD and rip it to mp3 for my convenience, that’s legal. But if I listen to it on my mp3 player while my wife listens to the CD in her car, that’s not.
Some copyright owners think that “borrowing” is a good way to promote their content and build a fan base.
@MediaDweeb: I’m sure that’s the case, and I do believe it works. But at least for me, I recommend something if I like it whether I “borrow” or “download” it. So they benefit either way.
You have to return the book to the library (on the assumption you did not copy it), and you have to return the movie you rented (on the same assumption). In both cases you no longer possess the media, and you never owned it. When you download media without paying for it, you are basically stealing because you retain the media.
@Spammer: So if you delete it after downloading, then it’s not stealing? Also, how is something stealing if they are not hurt by it and still have what they had before?
It’s not stealing. It’s not piracy. It’s copyright infringement. I really hate the recent appropriation of “piracy” to denote illegal file sharing, rather than the still-common murder and theft on the high seas. These two things are not alike, people!
You do not have the right to make and distribute copies of copyrighted material. If someone releases a song, and they sell precisely one copy, which gets copied and downloaded by 5,000 people, would you say that the same harm is done as if they pass around that one copy, one after the other?
In one case, the copyright holder has been paid for every copy that is in circulation; in the other they have not. If someone wants a copy, they either take an existing copy out of circulation, denying others the ability to use it; or they buy a copy and pay the content provider for their effort. Copyright infringement changes this metric so that the cost to both potential lender and potential purchaser is zero. Naturally, this is to the detriment of the content providers.
Legally, I don’t think there’s any problem with receiving an unauthorised copy of a work, and that the liability rests instead with those making the copies available to others, or facilitating the transfer; this is why many ISPs block content from file-sharing sites – they’re arguably liable for making it possible for people to give you illegally copied files, and blocking that is cheaper than the potential lawsuits.
When you think about it, the library doesn’t make money unless someone keeps a book or video overdue. The money is needed for the librarians pay, the electricity, the maintenance, etc… The public library gets its money from our taxes, so in a sense, we are paying for it.
Don’t forget used CDs, which have been around for ages, and which give the artists not a red cent.
Ooh–one of my pet hobbyhorses.
Every time I buy blank media, no matter what the purpose, I am charged a “blank media levy”. This fee was imposed to counter losses from downloading.
I therefore consider that I have already purchased the license to download stuff. Otherwise I’m being charged this tax for no reason, correct?
When I purchase a CD, the RIAA (or its Canadian stooges, want it to be illegal for me to copy it ito my computer, just as in earlier years I taped my records for portable play.
Worse, when I buy music from many online retailers, it comes with spyware, crippleware, or other “digital management” content, bloating the files and sometimes rendering the music useless.
They want to force me to use their proprietary devices to play music, or “register” the ones I want to use. The equivalent would be having the sales clerk at Sam’s (rest in peace) write down the number of my record player and periodically send inspectors around to check.
Yet, perversely, they want to sell me faster, bigger hard drives and software specifically designed for ripping tunes, playing video and games, and downloading from the ‘net. Then they want to sue me for using them for exactly the purposes for which they were designed.
And when they sue me, they want damages out of all proportion to the “loss” they’ve suffered.
I’ve had a legal Napster membership. When the membership expired, so did the music. Their idea of “unlimited” was a joke, and the price for what I wanted was way too high for a product that came without packaging, liner notes, or even physical media.
And why? Because fifteen years ago, someone at a board meeting at Sony/BMG or Capitol or somewhere said:
“Hey guys–check this out. Pretty soon you’ll be able to transfer music digitally. We’re gonna need to rethink our whole business model–Pump-and-dump isn’t gonna work anymore.”
And the Board replied:
“Yeah? So?”
Now, to preserve their massive profit margin, they are reduced to suing their own customers. Wonder how that business model works for them?
&*^% the music companies, twice.
Viva the piratocracy.
I’ll happily buy any music I enjoy, direct from the band.
But I will no longer supply music companies with money to hire lawyers to sue me for downloading a copy of “Eleanor Rigby.”
Bands have been paying ridiculous amounts to these shysters for market access. Now they can go directly to the customer. Music management is becoming irrelevant.
If they succeed in bringing their ridiculous regulatory regime to this country, I shall build an oil lamp factory, and sue GE to stop them making electric light bulbs.
They like to change things to suit themselves. The MPAA, the organisation against movie pirating tries to close down all these sites that allow video streaming, even though there are no law in the world against this. Another example of “the mans” stupidity ;)
Do I understand you to say that a borrowed book is not bought by the book´s lender?
@jether: No, of course the book is bought by the lender. But my point is the library has bought it already — if I download a movie and watch it, or I borrow it from the library, they make the same amount of money from me: zero.
When I download something, or make an illegal copy for a friend, I do not consider it to be stealing for the simple reason that I never would have paid for the content anyway. While wintermute @ 10 brings up copyright, the point is made moot by Dan @16. Copyright is simply not a moral issue–”moral” meaning to maximize positive consequences and minimize negative ones–since no harm is done to the copyright holder.
Hmmmm,
Borrowing and downloading…that’s why I subscribe to the Open Source credo…Yes, open source software is buggy and Indie films and can be often times ‘intellectually indigestible’.
BUT…may I say with conviction, I can live with myself and NOT be on the RIAA’s radar c”,
Great Post, fellow traveller
@ Daniel Florien: Do I understand you to say that a borrowed book is always a book bought by the lender? Maybe it was a gift to the lender. If it was bought, the publisher did make money with that copy. Only if all borrowed books could not be bought in the first place, there would be no difference. / Do I understand you to say that the acts of borrowing a book and making a illegal electronic copy of it does not bring dough to the publisher? If so, sure. But nobody is claiming right over viewing of the product, it is over copy of the product, it´s “COPYright”. When you borrow a book, you are only viewing a copy of it. When you dowload or upload, you are automatically making another copy of it.
One big difference is that the copyright holder can be certain that the library paid for their copy. When you download there is no guarantee that the person you are downloading it from paid for it either.
Looking at it from a memetic point of view, if you read a borrowed book or listen to a track it can be argued that a copy exists in your brain. I wonder if that could be seen as copyright infringement.
Daniel, I see you are also an atheist. Perhaps you will find a short story I wrote on faith interesting:
http://scifiwriter.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/faith/
In the UK, authors are entitled to a fee from the Public Lending Right fund.
From their website (http://www.plr.uk.com/index.htm):
Public Lending Right (PLR) is the right for authors to receive payment under PLR legislation for the loans of their books by public libraries. To qualify for payment, applicants must apply to register their books with us. Payments are made annually on the basis of loans data collected from a sample of public libraries in the UK.
PLR is funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and in 2007-08 received £7.63 million pounds in grant-in-aid, of which £6.66 million was distributed to authors.
I think you’re asking the wrong question in your post.
The difference is not about whether or not they are making money.
And this has spiraled into a question of ethics – however you didn’t ask an ethical question really.
HOWEVER, to answer the question as is:
There are laws against the one and not the other. It is not about making money or not.
(Now if you want to get into a question of laws of downloading and ethics – that would be a whole separate post and conversation I think :) )
-Chris
http://sharpeningiron.wordpress.com/
I think Wintermute has answered the question quite well. Any counter point to his answer is based on morals, and hypotheticals.
Although you make a good point, Daniel, you speak of hypothetical scenarios where you “destroy” the copy after using it once… and others say that if they weren’t planning on paying for a copy of the work, and they download a copy of it, then we have the same result of no money being made by the author.
While these examples DO have the same result as a library – which is no money going to the author – they really are mostly hypothetical, and are not the reality of the majority.
The most popular argument for it being ok to download illegal copies of music is that they “probably” wouldn’t have ever bought it anyway.
Let’s say you have three people.
One of them does not like “X” band, and would never buy their music, and therefore would never download it.
The second person kinda likes X band, and might illegally download some of their stuff.
The third person loves X band, and will definitely download their stuff.
Now multiply these three people by many many thousands and thousands of times. You will have a LOT of cases where a person who would have bought the media, doesn’t because they downloaded it. Not just a few cases, a LOT.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I don’t do it myself.
On a related note: I’ve actually always wondered why it’s ok to sell used books and CD’s.
Peter Grant’s point is excellent. Copyright has always been based on the shaky premise that copying is something difficult and infrequent, and therefore amenable to regulation. In reality, just reading this web page meant at the very least copying it from the wordpress server to my computer. Information is only going to get easier to copy, and we’ve already long past the point where any kind of regulation of copying could be sustained. It’s time to find a new model.
@ Daniel Florien: The difference is this: when you borrow, you do not make a new copy, so no one´s COPYright is infringed. When you dowload, you do make a new copy, and somebody´s COPYright may be infringed. The book´s lender is “view”right holder, the publisher is copyright holder.
@ harriseldon: Do I understand you to say that people are product of their environment?
@ jether: I’m not so much concerned with people being a product of their environment as laws being practical in their environment. Imagine trying to make a law against humans having children (‘making copies’). It’s just concievable – no pun intended – that this could be enforced, because pregnancy, childbirth and children are highly visible and easy to stop. This is analogous with copying back when it was only possible for rich people with printing presses. Now imagine trying to extend this law to prevent BACTERIA from reproducing. It simply wouldn’t be possible, because no law enforcement agency in the world could cope with every single bacterial cell on the planet and their massive rate of division. Copyright in the age of the internet is a similar situation. There’s just so much information, and it’s so easy to copy, that ethical issues become moot in the face of practical possibility.
“On a related note: I’ve actually always wondered why it’s ok to sell used books and CD’s.”
Because no new copy is being made. The number of copies in circulation remains equal to the number of copies the creator was paid for.
Well, stealing is taking something away, downloading is just making a copy of the original so it’s not stealing at all and that is a valid point of view.
“Because no new copy is being made. The number of copies in circulation remains equal to the number of copies the creator was paid for.”
Of course that’s right. But going back to the fact that the author makes no money:
Stores that sell used books, cd’s, dvd’s, etc… buy, sell, and trade works with zero money going to the author. Lots of money is being made with no compensation for the artist.
I know this doesn’t violate any copyright law, but the idea of it seems like it would be a bigger deal than just downloading a copy, since people are actually making money from trading someone else’s work multiple times.
@ harriseldon: Do I understand you to say that might makes right?
@ Jorge Bucaran: Do I understand you to say that there are people against dowload per se? (And are you saying that you cannot copy a copy, only the original, when you dowload?)
@ jether: (this is harriseldon, I changed my handle a couple of days ago) My point is not that ‘might makes right’ so much as ‘might can put a practical limit on what is possible, irrespective of right and wrong’. I think that copyright in the pre-internet age was right because it was a sensible way to promote a market in creative goods in which the author could make a living on their work. I don’t think it is right now because (excluding the right to use the work commercially) it is no longer providing that function.
But hariseldon was so cool! I assume you were referring to the founder of Psychohistory. Always good to find an Asimov fan. What does your new name refer to?
You’re correct.
If someone is against downloading then they better not be borrowing anything either.
It is the same thing!
The person borrowing a book, magazine, DVD, CD, or whatever is still not buying the item from the seller. They are in fact as guilty as the downloader.
Don’t be a hypocrite. Are you against downloading?
The do not borrow anything either! Hypocrites!
@McBloggenstein – That is fortunately, incorrect. Again, all that every publisher, producer, manufacturer, etc. expects and is legally owed is compensation for the issuing of a single license or product from their implemented distribution channel (could be a million different ways) to a SINGLE party. Once the original purchaser has bought that product, it is their property with which they can do whatever they want…with the exception of distributing copies of that original product (only applies to electronic media at this point) to other parties.
The reason that it’s ok to sell to a used store, and for a used store to sell to someone else is that it is still the same, one and only copy, being circulated-the original manufacturer has already been compensated. So, what @wintermute said stands: no two individuals can benefit from the product at the same time. As long as only one of them has it, it doesn’t matter to the original publisher how the product was transferred (purchased, stolen, borrowed, etc). All the publisher cares about is that there is only one product being transferred.
So, as soon as everyone gets sick of transferring it around and decides they want their own copy, they would legally have to go to that publisher and purchase their own licensed copy.
This has got to be one of the more spectacular cases of necrothreading that I’ve seen.
I wonder if caderade is aware that we no longer burn whale oil in our household lamps, and that the telegraph is likewise obsolete.
“no two individuals can benefit from the product at the same time. As long as only one of them has it, it doesn’t matter to the original publisher how the product was transferred (purchased, stolen, borrowed, etc). All the publisher cares about is that there is only one product being transferred.”
We should lobby congress to tax people with eidetic memory as they can watch a dvd and resell it to someone else and still retain full benefit of the the viewed product.