Is there an ethical/ideological argument for torrenting and/or distinction from “piracy”?
Discussion
Piracy is an act of violence to take something that’s not yours. What is torrenting? Using your computer to tell people stuff that they are interested it. Hard to imagine more dissimilar activities.
That’s solid. What about the right of a productive individual to be compensated for their work?
So, I think nobody has a right to take from other people no matter how hard the work they use to justify doing so is.
Let’s say musicians for example. It’s totally fair for them to say “you can’t kidnap me and make me sing”. The sensibility stops when they say “here’s a cd for you to have, but I’m in charge of what you do with the 1s and 0s on it forever even though you’ve not agreed in any way to what I’m saying”
They are free to do different work if they feel they aren’t being paid well enough. I am free to pay them if I desire.
That’s an interesting take. The logic is apparently sound and the conclusion follows.
Is it fair? (Is it supposed to be?)
I would personally want royalties for my content being shared, but if I can’t enforce that through some type of mutual contract, I would likely need to increase the price of my “initial sale” to cover my potential losses if others buy my work from each other, rather than from me.
That said, there’s something “icky” about the idea of someone putting decades into developing a skill set, creating something that others value, and then selling that piece of art (in the music example) to someone who can then profit off of the artist’s work by doing little more than burning a cd.
Perhaps it’s logical, and unenforceable, but still unethical…
What do you mean by “is it fair? (Is it supposed to be?)”?
Yeah, I hear you. People who labor with the expectation that they will be paid a certain way have every right to feel icky to when someone flips that expectation. Unethical even. Though maybe nobody would feel icky about freely sharing I’d that were just what everyone expected while making the art. In fact, making the art might be even more of an act of love or creativity knowing that once you share the 0s and 1s, they fly out into the world to live on their own.
On the other hand, it feels very icky to me to say that we are gunna make SURE people don’t use the 0s and 1s on their own computers in their homes in ways we don’t like. Like how is that actually done… well people show up and use the real threat of overwhelming physical force to MAKE people to behave in a certain way with the 0s and 1s. Gross. Not 100% sure but I think that’s the only fundamentally unethical part of this.
On the last point, who would pay anyone but you in a DRM-free world? Maybe a few cents for the copy of the 1s and 0s, but then they might send you much more in appreciation for the original work. The first person may have been their doorway into your art, but you are and always will be the creator of it.
My first question involved whether or not the seemingly logical proof was in fact a humane/fair one. The second (“is it supposed to be?”) was around whether these sort of perspectives should take fairness into account as a starting point (or not). Open questions!
I do agree about the use of state violence (imprisonment etc) as a deterrent against relatively small - even if unethical - acts. That level of intervention should be reserved for the most severe anti-social behaviors, in my opinion (instances where another human is put directly in harm’s way because of one’s actions).
What is DRM?
(Digital Rights Management , it’s a way of preventing people from sharing songs without paying) but I’m being sloppy. To rewrite it:
On the last point, I’m wondering who would pay anyone but you in a free-to-share-1s-and-0s world? Maybe they pay the person who helped them get a copy a few cents for the effort… but enjoying your music they might send you much more in appreciation for your original work. The first person may have been their doorway into your art, but you are and always will be the creator of it.
RE: Is it fair and should it be:
Maybe it comes down to what do we mean when we say “fair”. If you were told that you’d be paid a certain way and so you work, then all of a sudden everyone realizes they aren’t willing to force people to behave a certain way for such low stakes. Yeah that feels unfair. But it’s also unfair to force people in such an arbitrary way. Maybe it’s like the people caught between the american revolutionaries and the British. I’m fuzzy on details for this analogy, but real people lost their shirts because they assumed that business would continue as usual, but when the Americans didn’t want to buy from where they were supposed to, suddenly they were at a huge business loss. That doesn’t feel fair. I’d argue it is though. They just had risk in their business that maybe they didn’t realize they had.
These are all good points! I’m about to hit the bed but I appreciate the discussion — will respond tomorrow when I’m able to think more criticallly about it 🫡
I like the idea that a fully open information economy could lead to better compensation for artists. Especially considering how frequently their production companies take advantage of them.
That said, it’s a tricky hypothetical. So many people are used to getting their content for free or dirt cheap - I want to believe that we’d all give greater recognition/compensation to artists in this scenario, but I have some remaining cynicism.
Nostr is a fascinating microcosm for exactly this idea, though. Perhaps this is the first time we can watch it play out in a real scenario 🤯
You make good points about fairness, too. Perhaps contractual agreements would help solve this: “I will sell you this content only if you agree not to redistribute it”. In that case, both parties have agreed on the terms of the transaction. If the buyer breaks the contract (ie burns 100 copies of the cd and sells them on the street), then the artist is entitled to seek damages.
Perhaps that’s the ethical boundary: civil litigation, not criminal penalty (state violence etc etc).
Thanks for helping me think through this a bit 🙏
"Intellectual property" is neither ethical nor enforceable. Its akin to fencing the commons - an attempt to extract rents beyond the work put into production.
Interesting take. If you produce something I value, and you put in years of training and hours of production to make it, and then I copy and resell it… something about that feels “wrong” to me. Like I didn’t do any work (besides burning a cd) yet I earn the same per-unit profit as you did, and you poured your life’s work into the thing I am profiting from.
I feel like the argument is theoretically sound but practically unethical. Or just “a shitty thing to do” if two parties disagree on the source of morality/ethics.
Then avoid producing something that's infinitely reproduceable in and of itself, like ideas, music, content... information, in one word... if your idea is to make money out of one single instance of them.
Property rights make no sense unless you have scarcity. You can own a CD. You cannot own the infinitely reproduceable (and in almost infinite supports and formats) information it contains, whatever it is.
Plus, it's futile. People will always copy information, there is no practical way to avoid it and all the resources put into trying are wasted ones thar should be put into producing newer, more useful ideas.
I didn't want to write a treatise here, but since I have five minutes, I will add:
In your example, you say that you put X time and effort to "produce" the specific arrangement of information that you think is original and useful and that people should pay to receive from you. But what you really did is two separate things: you "came up" with the arrangement, which resides in your brain, and THEN you "produced" a physical object supporting it, which is what you can really sell.
When the information is out of your brain, it's immediately readable by others (that's the whole point, right?), and you are accepting that anyone who can read it can possibly reverse ingeneer it, or straight out copy it. It will all depend on how reversible the arrangement is, and on which specific format you decided to put it on. It's not by pure chance that information on an electronic support (a mere sequence of binary code) is at the same time the one that allows for widest and cheapest distribution, and the easiest to copy.
If you don't want your latest novel's of your music album's "intellectual property" downloaded on a P2P torrent network, stick to reciting them orally in private closed-door sessions where you can make sure people attending cannot bring in recording devices.
Gm, and thanks for the thoughtful reply!
So, I think you’re not wrong in making the point that IP is unenforceable, and that it’s potentially futile to expect that people won’t copy and reproduce your work at low cost, in the absence of (potentially unethical) enforcement.
However, I don’t think you’ve made a case that it’s actually ethical to copy and resell or share the artist’s work (see OP). You’ve shown that it’s difficult to prevent, but not that it isn’t “wrong” to do.
Holding the position that an artist “shouldn’t make art with expectation of profit if it can easily be copied” sounds like another disincentive to artists making great work, not a way of “freeing them to work harder”.
What??? So I have a right to steal the book you wrote and put my name on it, signing that's my work, not yours?
I think someone lost the pills here. IP doesn't exist? Tellit to Michelangelo, Picasso, Einstein...
IP does exist. But it is not a mandatory think you have to pay for it. It's upon the owner of IP.
Yiu have to differentiate the personal rights and the economical rights. Personal rights are belongs to the owner, it isn't transferable in any way. Personal right is e.g. the owner has a right to everyone must admit that it is his work and no one else's.
The economical rights is an other thing. You probably discuss about this part.
We can discuss this issue, this is one of my areas of expertise.
