Why is online piracy bad

These are some of the ways in which a malum prohibitum can in fact have serious consequences. Bookstores will close; library and university administrators, when they see journals no longer being consulted because everyone is using Sci-Hub, will drop their subscription; those same administrators, when they see foot traffic and circulation figures drop precipitously in their libraries, will slash budgets, shelve expansion plans, etc.

The pirates will never address these issues — as I invited Eileen Joy to last week, and got no response, other than a few piracy kool-aid fueled rants. Current copyright approaches generally write a check to creators that they cannot and will never cash with their emphasis on theoretical control approaches that never bear fruit. Comparing art, culture and knowledge to mere chattel and property is a mistake.

Why is infringement a self-handled civil case and generally not a criminal matter? More to the point: Why so conditional? Why wrong now but OK after a time period, after which it intentionally becomes public property? Why extensive fair use defenses? Why so much creativity excluded from copyright application at all, and why does application vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, law to law 14 years for pharma patents, life plus 70 for music?

Why statutory licensing in so many cases? Is this a taking of property? What do we make of libraries, dedicated as they are to equalizing access to art, knowledge, culture — are libraries communism? If I copy a music disc borrowed from the library — or a photocopy made — is that, too, theft? Those who know the law assure me it is not in the US. Why do the same with knowledge shared that can lead to cures and general progress in the arts and sciences?

Remuneration and monetization are keys, not control, because they are the purposes of so-called IP protections, temporary monopolies intended to incentivize creativity. Putting the cart of control before the creative engine and its purposes deprives us of the benefits of stimulating progress in the arts and offers nothing but confusion to those seeking answers to the thought-provoking questions posed by this otherwise well-written essay. The focus should be on aggregating and licensing both content and users.

It is much more about motives than it is about mechanisms. About getting culture financed, not controlled. We can do the former but the latter recedes at a rapid pace once digital. Further, we need to find new mediums instead of doubling down on controlling the old ones.

The expression of modern science is increasingly incompatible with English language in a Western character set in black text on a white PDF background. Remember, we hold a great deal more in an open hand than we do a closed fist. It was only when the music industry turned from enforcement to creative, flat-fee licensing that it recovered from its slide, a canary in all our mines.

That said, these arguments are usually red herrings that distract away from the concepts being discussed, causing conversations to get lost in the weeds of specific legal vocabulary.

We request that such arguments over legal jargon be taken to other more appropriate forums. Agreed, I wrote what I did because I find such discussions misleading and I responded to just such claims that belong instead in legal forums than a discussion on finding our way forward. Many police agencies, such as the FBI and the Australian national police, no longer accept copyright infringement complaints from the public.

Thus the USA has an agency supposedly mandated to investigate complaints with a view to prosecution, while the Australians appear to have simply given up. Could part of the explanation be that in this particular case, the issue was much narrower than a question of whether copyright piracy represents property theft, and had more to do with the interstate commerce question and whether the physical records themselves constituted stolen property, as distinct from the intellectual content of those records?

Yet other statutes offer blanket licenses for set fees, govt completely substituting its judgment for that of those with claims to property rights. In our lifetimes, we will not regain control of digits, not in an effective, efficient manner. It is our responsibility, our challenge, our opportunity it monetize that lack of control, much as does insurance permit those who accidentally kill and maim to sleep in their own bed after an accident.

Governments frequently seize physical property through eminent domain, civil forfeiture and other activities. Governments can institute specific pricing schemes on physical products as well e. Just last month the US government substituted its judgment over my claim to my income, which it seems to want from me in taxes. This argument would suggest the IP is no different from physical property as far as governments are concerned.

Slippery, David. Those seizures have different justifications, and you know it. The key point I made: The law — especially copyright — is neither more nor less than what Congress says it is although with natural rights the law is irrelevant and can be over-ridden by Congress. In the beginning of , sound recordings were not covered by copyright. After the Spring of , they were covered. Did morality change? The law changed. A vote of Congress in response to rent seeking lobbyists.

Were sound recording artists in the years pre lacking incentive to create? Were we deprived of great music? And if incentive to create is the guide, how does our current status of being awash in quantity and quality of creative works reconcile with being awash in piracy? I agree. The remainder is a debate besides the point and ill-serves the creative community.

I will put it this way: Creativity is risk, and the response to risk is monetization ala insurance. Sometimes digital rewards, sometimes it deprives, but the response to risk is at its best actuarial. It is an opportunity, this sort of demand. Today we license and monetize just this activity, once considered on par with the most savage form of murder.

We increasingly cannot control supply against growing demand. The loss of actual control is surely a massive actuarial opportunity, not unlike Spotify. Jim, is anyone arguing that licensed use of copyrighted material is wrong?

The topic here is piracy i. The journey from piracy to licensing is precisely my point, and it addresses yours: Our focus should be less on how to prosecute and define piracy and more about how to transform the relationship into a licensed one. How do we get to yes? How do we get licensing to grow? What is that proposition? How does it work? Put simply, how do we reduce if not eliminate the motive for piracy? Dealing with its mechanisms has proved an endless mouse hunt, legislation and lawyers included, and the arc of digital suggests this will accelerate.

Apologies for that. I continue to think it is spot on, the very essence of the discussion, and I urge you to reconsider, but I accept your conclusion and bow out of your discussion. Piracy, not so much. Bank robbers also depend on the revenues from their work to feed their families. But this in no way means that stopping bank robbers is wrong. There are other ways to make a living. Copyright owners could work and live on daily wages like the rest of us. Your claim it is wrong for people to make their living through copyright, an activity that is perfectly legal, because you see it as analogous to robbing banks, which is decidedly not legal?

Tell us more. I do hope you are not suggesting that copyright activities are immune from legal scrutiny. After all, Jefferson and others found monopolies abhorrent, especially monopolies on ideas and their expression. All copyright collectives are under scrutiny for competitions issues, amongst other inquiries. Revealing the risks you need to know The internet is full of great content for children and young people. See the stats When asked, a group of survey respondents who infringed and illegally streamed claimed they had experienced these hidden horrors:.

Stick to services you can trust. Stay with the legitimate, trusted services that you know, online and on your TV. Real parents on: Piracy leading to camera access. Display video transcript. A lot of young children aren't aware that their computers are going to be hacked. Malware can control your device and access its camera.

That's really scary isn't it. I'm really scared to download anything that I don't already know is fully legit. In terms of piracy there's nothing free. I know as a parent I need to do more when it comes to this topic. Real parents on: The Dangers of Digital Piracy. Our kids don't know what piracy is one in three people using illegal streaming sites were exposed to age inappropriate content that's scary this is very scary that could be anything it's not just about pornography it could be anything that they're not supposed to see that's why we are so adamant about the right kind of sites i don't like this i think we need to talk to the kids yeah.

Real parents on: Piracy leading to fraud. The pirated market, in turn, pressured the entertainment industry to create legal options such as iTunes and Hulu. The illegal competition is a valuable consumer pressure on the industry. This is not to say that we should have no copyright law or that there should be no penalties for piracy. If infringement got out of hand, we might face a bleak scenario in which bands stop recording albums and no new TV shows are released.

There are plenty of books to read, things to watch and music to listen to. Indeed, the US consumer has never been better-entertained than she is today. Digital technology has reduced the price we pay for new works and made them cheaper to create. I can watch a feature film on my telephone. The US economy has plenty of problems, but lack of adequate entertainment options is not on the list.

By Matthew Yglesias Congressional bill names are a reliable indicator of the state of conventional wisdom in the US. Trending Latest Video Free.