Misleading Metaphors That Drive The War On Online Sharing

[Pinecone]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Yes, and yes. It's a felony, even.

Where is this?

Can you point to the actual statuate?

[Quexos]

Alllow me to answer (though you did not direct this question to me)
Back in the 80's if I loved one specific song on an album and that song was not available as a single, I had to buy the whole album. Companies did not care whether I just liked one song or all. So I either had to content myself by just hearing the song in my head or let the company con me into buying the whole album. Back when it was THEM stealing our money in this system where a young teen really wanted a song and had no other way to have it than to pay for the whole album. No one back then was arguing in favor of the little guy.
Someone asked: would you illegally download a car if you could ? Well we can't, can we ? So as a result if we want a car, we must accept anything they charge us, and sometimes it's so ridiculous, 100k, even more for some cars, plus taxes, repairs, gas ... They con the living heck out of us because a car cannot be downloaded. You could argue that nobody forces me to get a car. True, but what about food ? You cannot decide to stop eating cause food is getting artificially too expensive. You must eat no matter how expensive food is and nobody seem to realize how they abuse the little guy when you look at the price of food nowadays. I should say, what a pity that food cannot be downloaded.
So just don't count on me to shed a tear cause there's a huge non-monetary sharing community spreading on the net all over the world.
Now if you guys wish to take your wrath on the so called pirates out there, I suggest you direct it at those trying to make money by illegally selling copyrighted material on the net.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

So, taking something you have no right to is fine in your book?

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

Where is this?

Can you point to the actual statuate?

United States No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 or NET Act for sort. It was a kneejerk reaction to the dismissal of the US v. LaMacchia case.

Before then, in order for infringement to be felonious it had to be for profit, but NET Act changed it to

(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain or (2) involve the reproduction or distribution of one or more copies of a work or works within a 180-day period with a total retail value of $1,000

You can be punished up to five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.

The biggest problem with the NET Act, is that the retail value part is a bit vague. You can argue it two ways. Method one, that the RIAA have been pushing for is the total of the each count. So, if you bought a a single song for cents that you are torrenting, and 50 people download it from you. RIAA says each download count goes towards the total, and the RIAA is also saying that due to Title 17, Chapter 5, 504 the minimum in statutory damages is $750. So, they claim that $37500 as the total value. Argument two states that you offered one single song, and the retail value was the 99 cents, and so your total is 99 cents. Varying by $37499.01, is a not a slight difference.

NET Act is wrong all over. From the misuse of the word "theft", which doesn't even agree with any other law on the books over what theft is, to the poor wording. I remember a few years ago, there was a comparison of how the NET Act screwed with penalities, and in it they compared Capital v Thomas (where Thomas had 24 different songs that they shared over Kazaa) to that of someone convicted of a stabbing in Pittsburgh. Capital v. Thomas has gone through 3 jury trials, and Capital was initially awarded $222,000 [$9250 a song], $1,920,000 [$80,000 a song], and $1,500,000 [$62500 a song] after each trial. There was the first trial, because the Judge ruled that simply "making available" was not infringement. The second trial had its damages reduced to $54,000 [$2250 a song] under doctrine of remittitur. Capital rejected this, and filed for another trial. The third trial had its damages reduced once again to $54,000 as the defense argued that the plaintiff failed through Due Process to prove that the defendant specifically caused them damage, only that file sharing had. The record label has one again filed for an appeal against this latest ruling. Ok, so, you have this case where the plaintiff has repeatedly tried for extremely high amounts of damages, with the most recent being one point five million, as compared to the stabbing victim, that was awarded $53,824 [the amount of their medical bills]. The moral outrage aside, look at how much money that NET Act has cost us, because of cases like Capital v. Thomas (which has been dragging on since 2005).

Oh, if this gives you any idea of the genius behind NET Act, the guy who wrote and proposed NET Act also brought forth a bill that demanded that all presidental candidates submit their birth certificates, because he didn't believe that Obama was a citizen.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

That's a slippery slope, like saying "a little bit of speeding doesn't matter." The problem is, it doesn't stop there.

Bad choice of words, maybe, but I was trying to say that a lot more people bought second hand books or borrowed them from a library than download unauthorised ebooks now. Until or if that changes I don't see what the fuss is about. Books have always had a lot more readers than they have buyers.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Bad choice of words, maybe, but I was trying to say that a lot more people bought second hand books or borrowed them from a library than download unauthorised ebooks now. Until or if that changes I don't see what the fuss is about. Books have always had a lot more readers than they have buyers.

There is, however, compensation for authors when a book is borrowed from the library. The author receives approximately 6p per loan under the public lending right (PLR).

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There is, however, compensation for authors when a book is borrowed from the library. The author receives approximately 6p per loan under the public lending right (PLR).

However, not in all countries. There are only 28 countries that have PLR, 24 of those are in Europe. There is no PLR in Asia or Africa, and the only country in the entire western hemisphere with a PLR is Canada. So, basically, most of the world does not compensate via PLR.

[RichL]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

So, please, in the future, include a bit more thought into your argument.

Words on a screen (derived from 1's and 0's) are as real as words on paper derived from splashes of ink. You don't pay for a book on the internet you prevent the author from getting them ones and zero interpreted into money (a very physical thing eh?) that could have bought the authors food just as surely as if you had stolen an ink splashed paper book.

The way I see it, theft is taking what doesn't belong to you without paying for it. Any other definition is just a thief's self-justification or a legal squabble to earn a buck.

[Quexos]

So let us thank whatever god you believe in that those evil children that starve to death in some poor countries DO starve, as we all know they can't afford food so if they were eating, they would most likely be stealing it somewhere, making them thieves (by your definition which is also most if not all corporations' definition too) After all, Any other definition is just a thief's self-justification ...

Originally Posted by RichL

The way I see it, theft is taking what doesn't belong to you without paying for it. Any other definition is just a thief's self-justification or a legal squabble to earn a buck.

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by RichL

The way I see it, theft is taking what doesn't belong to you without paying for it. Any other definition is just a thief's self-justification or a legal squabble to earn a buck.

Theft is depriving someone of property that is rightfully theirs. If the "victim" has exactly what they started with then no theft occurred. This has been pointed out over and over again yet it still seems to be elusive to some.

[RichL]

Originally Posted by Quexos

So let us thank whatever god you believe in that those evil children that starve to death in some poor countries DO starve, as we all know they can't afford food so if they were eating, they would most likely be stealing it somewhere, making them thieves (by your definition which is also most if not all corporations' definition too) After all, Any other definition is just a thief's self-justification ...

Did I imply that theft was either right or wrong? Or did I simply imply that theft is theft and should be acknowledged as such?

[RichL]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

Theft is depriving someone of property that is rightfully theirs. If the "victim" has exactly what they started with then no theft occurred. This has been pointed out over and over again yet it still seems to be elusive to some.

I understand the point exactly, you cannot, so to speak, steal what's not in a persons pocket.

The way I see it is that that argument is simply a justification for stealing. The exact (I believe) equivalent in the physical world would be if I were some sort of a weird multi-millionaire and printed up thousands of books of a just released best seller then stood outside all the bookshops and gave them away to anyone that would accept one. Would that meet the legal definition of physical theft by those that accepted the book when they knew it wasn't one published by the author? Probably not (But who knows for sure. :-)) but the fact is, by willfully preventing the author from making as large a profit as would have been made without my giveaway they would be stealing those profits just as surely as if they had taken that money out of his wallet.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by RichL

By willfully preventing the author from making as large a profit as would have been made without my giveaway they would be stealing those profits just as surely as if they had taken that money out of his wallet.

This is true only if you assume that everyone who accepts a free copy would have purchased the book if they had not been offered it for free, and that is not the case. For the vast majority of pirates of any media they get it for free or they don't get it at all. The thought "I like this a lot, should I buy it or torrent it?" never enters their mind. The closest they get is, "hm, I like this, should I bother torrent it, or go do something else and forget about it?"

[Quexos]

Perhaps we are witnessing a major paradigm shift, the beginning of a transition from a money-driven society with all its inherent inequities towards something else. A new world of social justice, a world driven and motivated by the actual well-being of all its citizens and not just an elite minority. Perhaps there is already something of this new world, with us now. Perhaps the internet is it, the first tool implementing these profound changes. I must wonder whether the very nature of the internet is not the sharing of information on a global scale, not just as such but as a beacon showing us how things should be: free and accessible to all, everywhere and at all times.
Is it just a coincidence that such large free-sharing communities of millions and millions of people spawned from the net so soon after it became this tool of the masses ? Could it be that attempting to make the internet a place of business for money profit is against its nature just as it is against its nature to have it controlled by corporations, governments or any other type of elite minority ?

Maybe it's just the dreamer in me that's talking.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

This is true only if you assume that everyone who accepts a free copy would have purchased the book if they had not been offered it for free, and that is not the case. For the vast majority of pirates of any media they get it for free or they don't get it at all.

Absolutely

This is why the losses the entertainment, music and publishing industry so often quote are in fact a concocted pile of lies. They automatically and blatantly assume every download is a lost sale.

This is plainly not true at all. However they want the public, politicians AND the law makers to believe that. Unfortunately many believe this lie, in some cases aided by a little "inducement".

Those actual lost sales? Perhaps if prices were lowered and DRM/geographic restrictions were removed, that would reduce even further.

[RichL]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

This is true only if you assume that everyone who accepts a free copy would have purchased the book if they had not been offered it for free, and that is not the case... .

You're saying there's a difference between stealing with intend to defraud and stealing just for the hell of it?

Well yes I guess there is and I suppose that is more or less what that article was about. From my point of view the first sort should be fined, sent to jail or perhaps drawn and quartered while the second type should be slapped up side the head or if they are heavy users then double the price of the bandwidth charges or some such. But for whatever reason they chose to steal, they stole and a thief should always be called a thief.

Just out of curiosity how would you refer to a person that downloads and uses a product without paying for it. Say for instance a copy of TurboCAD Pro Platinum 18 which sells for about $1400?