Quote:
Originally Posted by Alisa
You're preaching to the choir, Harry. Sadly I think many people just don't get the ethical implications of downloading stuff without paying. It doesn't feel like stealing to them. If you ask them about it and actually make them think about it, they usually come up with a list of rationalizations. I've only met a couple of people who have actually said they realized they were stealing in a way but they weren't going to pay for something if they could get it for free without getting caught.
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I think the basic problem is that "intellectual property" is not really property at all. Most of us, by instinct, equate property with a physical presence. Since music and stories do not have a physical existence (only the media they are stored on does), it is harder for us to see it as property. This is reinforced by the fact that philosophically, copyright does not treat "intellectual property" as real property. Rather it is more a legal license to have exclusive use of a creative work for a limited period of time. It ultimately treats the natural state of "intellectual property" as being in the public domain. The point of the license is to encourage the creation of new work that will ultimately enter the public domain.
Now, before I go on, I want it clear that I believe that copyright's basic approach is the right one and that currently it has extended its terms far beyond anything that reasonably serves the actual purpose of the general public (who ultimately are suppose to be the real beneficiaries of copyright, not the artists).
All that being said, an intellectual leap is required to understand that illegal download or duplication of copyrighted works is in fact stealing from the author. It is not so much that you are stealing their property as you are stealing the means of their livelihood. However, assuming this leap is made, there are reasons beyond the merely ethical ones for not violating copyright. Ultimately of course we need to look back to the reason for copyright in the first place; if an author's work is stolen liberally, ultimately they loose the motivation to produce works. Essentially the more we pirate, the less there is to pirate or to sell. By stealing the work of an author we like, we may in fact deny ourselves of future works that the author now lacks motivation to write.
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Bill