I think I’m morally corrupt–you, too?
I read these examples, and I have to admit I wasn’t too upset by any of them. Sounds like I’m not alone.
What do you guys think?
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December 20th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I don’t see anything so wrong with it either-to me,the big crime is if you made a copy of a film or song in order to sell it for profit. Doing so simply for personal use(especially from the examples given,from originals that had been paid for either by a rental company/library or a friend)is not that horrible.
When I went to Jane Austen’s house in Chawton,our guide showed us a handwritten music book of Jane’s that featured many of the popular tunes of the day. According to the gentleman,she had copied out the sheet music(borrowed,no doubt,from more well off friends and family) to have on hand for home entertainment purposes,which lead me to comment that it was her version of Napster:).
Now Jane was a parson’s daughter and a rather moral person but not a saint,so if she could do it without any major qualms,I don’t see the harm in someone taping a movie off of HBO or burning a CD for their own personal use there.
December 20th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
I agree actually! XD I mean the last one I think it was, “If you want a dvd or song and just don’t want to pay for it so you dounload it.” I think that’s wrong, but other then that there’s usually a pretty good reason it seems like behind getting dounloading a diffrent copy.
December 20th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
“You want a movie or an album. You don’t want to pay for it. So you download it”
Even the download movies/albums for free because you don’t want to pay? No problem with that?
Are you planning on posting your books online for free?
I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, just that it really isn’t any different.
December 20th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Lady T, I love it! Who would have thought today’s issues had anything to do with Jane Austen? What a great story!
Dylan and Patrick, now that you mention it, I do have a problem with that last one. So maybe I’m not so corrupt after all.
And to carry it a little further, I have a policy of hardly ever checking out books from the library. I prefer to buy people’s books so they can have the royalties. How’s that for Pollyanna?
December 20th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Geez, Robin. You set a high standard there! I’d love to buy all the books I wish to read, but mostly I have to settle for those I treasure. The good thing about buying is that you yourself can pass them on and on…unless you’re like me and hoard them on your shelf so you can open them whenever you wish.
I haven’t checked out library books for myself in a long time, but I check out books for my girls every two weeks. It’s the only way to keep up with my oldest’s craving for new stories! Picture books would break me, seriously. Of course, we still have at least a couple hundred around the house that belong to us.
As for the morality, I am with Patrick and Dylan. That was really the only issue that gave me pause. So we’re only partially corrupt.
December 20th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Let me be clear, Kelley: I’m in no way dissing the library. I am forever indebted to my own childhood library, where I got to check out an armful of books every week. I love libraries. Libraries are salvation.
It’s just that now I’m sort of applying that well-known philosophy of Tipping Karma. I learned it from a friend of mine who worked a service job for years. She always tipped waiters and waitresses very well, as a way of bringing herself the same good fortune.
So I’m just applying Bookbuying Karma. May all my fellow writers prosper in 2008!
December 21st, 2007 at 9:32 am
Some of it may be a real disconnect between the younger generation and the older, but I think part of it’s a matter of visualizing a “victim.” My impression is that the younger generation more firmly believes that the movie and music businesses are little more than gangsters, robbing “artists” right and left (more so the music business). Just as someone else might feel few qualms about stealing from a gangster — even though stealing in general is thought of as a bad thing. So while there may technically be a victim, the victim in question is seen as not worthy of empathy.
December 21st, 2007 at 10:03 am
Yeah, Bill, maybe there is some of that, too. But I also think it’s just this overall impression we have that if something is on the Internet or otherwise available digitally, it’s free for all to use.
And I was talking to someone about this last night, who said, “What’s the difference between sharing software or movies, and giving your friend a book you’ve already read? Someone has only paid for it once–same thing, right?”
Hmmm . . .
December 21st, 2007 at 10:07 am
I’m someone who likes to make mix cds for people. When I was a teenager, I made mix tapes all the time for penpals, and they did likewise. What happened was that we ended up buying more music because of all those samples than we would have had we never been introduced to different kinds of music. That’s something the music industry doesn’t seem to be aware of.
As I understand it, one of the reasons why our copyright laws in America are so stifling is because of Disney and other corporations with gobs of money to persuade the lawmakers twice to extend copyright protection. That’s why the words to “Happy Birthday” are still owned by Time/Warner, but the tune is in the public domain.
Here’s a blog article about copyright, fair use, and the spirit of things that may be interesting to you: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/10/do_as_i_say_not.html
December 21st, 2007 at 11:27 am
It’s all in how you look at it. Giving a book to a friend isn’t a big deal. It’s always done. No one is trying to change that. Giving a book to 6 million friends, well that can be a problem, in theory.
Certainly the business model is changing, but for the artist, we are getting back to being the person on the corner doing our thing with a tip jar. If it is all available for free, what can you do besides ask for tips?
Either way, if that is the way the youth of today wants to go, well, I’ll adapt.
By the same token that downloading a movie or two for free isn’t different than me borrowing the DVD from a friend who purchased it, it is the allowing 6 million people to download it that is, uh, questionable.
December 21st, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I think the big difference between lending or giving a book to a friend and sharing a download with them is that at the end of the exchange, only one person has the book. The other doesn’t. Whereas if you share something digital, that implicates a copy, and now there are two copies floating around where only one was paid for.
For the record, I’m guilty of a couple of song downloads off a freeware site. Most of the rest of the stuff on my MP3 was either copied off a CD I own or there when it was given to me by a friend. I felt bad about the downloads, though.
But I refuse to feel guilty about book sharing. One copy was paid for and one copy is being used. Period.
December 21st, 2007 at 4:49 pm
i think that if i wanted a CD bad enough, or if i wanted to make my friend a remix or something, im not going to the store to buy every CD for one song. Why should i go out buy 12 diffrent CDs just to make one remix for my friend? im going to donload them. if you ask me to steal the CDs from the store, i wouldn’t, but isnt donloading the CD the same thing, only with out all the servalence cameras, and the detectors? i think that if artists dont want us to share what we bought they shouldn’t give us the optoin to. i don’t think that it is fair for us to not buy the CD, but does it matter if i buy one CD when my best friend already bought it? does it matter if i donload Hannah Montana songs, when she is already a million air? i think not.
December 22nd, 2007 at 6:56 am
does it matter if i donload Hannah Montana songs, when she is already a million air? i think not.
Would she be a millionaire if no one bought that first CD?(Ok, I realize Hannah Montana is a bad example, given who her parents are.)
December 22nd, 2007 at 7:34 am
if you ask me to steal the CDs from the store, i wouldn’t, but isnt donloading the CD the same thing, only with out all the servalence cameras, and the detectors?
So you wouldn’t steal the CDs, but you would download them, having just admitted they’re the same thing? I’m not following. Is the difference the greater chance of getting caught stealing in person?
i think that if artists dont want us to share what we bought they shouldn’t give us the optoin to.
Artists don’t mean to give us the option to, I think. It’s just the way technology turned out.
i don’t think that it is fair for us to not buy the CD, but does it matter if i buy one CD when my best friend already bought it? does it matter if i donload Hannah Montana songs, when she is already a million air? i think not.
So you don’t think it’s fair, but it doesn’t matter.
I’m just trying to get some insight on what you might be thinking here, and I have to say, it’s not making sense to me.
December 24th, 2007 at 12:26 am
They aren’t giving you the option to. that’s what the original article is about — software that is meant to BREAK the protection on the CD so that the user CAN’T copy it.
I will record CDs from my iTunes to play in the car, because stupid iTunes doesn’t have a good car analogue yet, but when I can just plug my iPod into my car, I’ll do that.
The problem with assuming so and so is a millionaire is that most people assume every artist is. Sure, Hannah Montana is selling very well, but that doesn’t mean all twelve of those songs in the mix are. People talk about JK Rowling, but most novelists are lucky to make 5 figures off their writing per year.
I will make Mix CDs, but I won’t steal the music to do so. It will be something I own. Like the tape I borrow from my friend if I forget to tape the episode. I also lend friends books. But again, there is still only ONE book. not multiple copies of books. Books that are available as ebooks can be put on a site and dowloaded a gazillion times.
So I guess I’m halfway down the list. Right now, we’re in a debate with a friend because he wants us to make him a copy of a CD we bought of a local band, and we strongly feel that he should drop the $15 and buy his own copy of this poor, local, unsigned band’s CD.
December 25th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
I think the generational gap is because of the “genie out of the bottle” syndrome. Because of the ease of sharing that has resulted with the internet, societal mores are in the process of changing. That change is also being pushed by the RIAA and the MAFIAA and their unbelievably reprehensible actions. Read here:
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/
and any of the posts/comments here:
http://slashdot.org/tags/mafiaa
One of the things that has become apparent to me, at least where music and video are concerned, is that we, the creators, have the right to sell our creations directly to the people who want them, cutting out all “middle men”. The RIAA and the MAFIAA are determined to make a buck off people who don’t wish to be represented by them, and have lobbied congress to get laws passed so they can legally do so. They’ll also sue the pants off people who have never “stolen” a file on the basis of an IP address (which can be spoofed.)
The younger generation has followed this issue, and has developed a (some might say healthy) disrespect for the RIAA and the MAFIAA.
Reading the posts on those slashdot threads will give you a better overview of the issue than anything Big Media is saying, mostly because Big Media is invested in protecting their own turf, in the same way they’re not covering Chris Dodd’s at least temporary win against Telecomm Immunity and his incredible stand for the US Constitution and the Rule of Law.
Our sucky media in this country has a lot to answer for . . .
But I digress.
Things re copying are less clear when it comes to books, since there is a real need for print, and there is a real cost involved in creating/publishin/promoting/distributing any book, and, Kindle aside, it is damned uncomfortable trying to read a book’s worth of text on a screen. So I think copyright and fair use and all that make more sense in that context (after all, it’s the context for which the laws were originally written.)
Anyway, that’s my two cents.