Letters to the Editor
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What You Mean to Say Is...
"...students' stealing of copyrighted songs...", not trading them. That's theft, old friend. If I broke into your house, took your latest column, and then sent it all over the net just before your deadline, and your boss said to you, when you turned in your now not-so-new aticle "Hey, no dough for you this week, pal. We pay for fresh articles." would you say your article was "traded" or... stolen?
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@Reply, Ridiculous analogy
Right, you break into my house, that's stealing. I don't see how that applies to file trading. In fact, it doesn't.
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Potential = Done
Let's see, by the current [non-]standards the music/movie distribution industry is using the following is true:
- owning a car makes you guilty of manslaught because comeone could steal the car and be part of a hit-and-run
- being a male makes you guilty of rape [I remember some very radical feminists who would easily subscribe to that]
- being a female makes you guilty of rape [because someone could force you to sex]
- own a bank account and you are guilty of robbery
This goes on and on - just redefine one of the most basic foundations of our modern democracies, 'Innocent until proven guilty', to 'Innocent when not proven guilty'* and everybody is is a copyright-stealing terrorist.
*The fine difference is that you are seen as guilty from the outset and only if there is positive proof you are not guilty you are assumed innocent.
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replytothenews
It's actually more akin to me looking through the window of your home, seeing that have an original Renoir on the wall and I photograph it, only to have you come after me for the theft of the original. One could I think flatten that suit pretty readily. If you didn't want me to photograph it you should have taken steps to prevent that. See I don't think anyone has a problem with the RIAA encrypting content for their own benefit. But they don't do that and instead rely on lawsuits as a business strategy. They're saying in essence, "there is a potential that what you the customer does could in theory harm us, so we will sue you for the utterly imaginary, projected value of that loss which hasn't happened and might never happen."
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Electro Robot
I don't think anyone has a problem with the RIAA encrypting content for their own benefit
Actually, plenty of people have a problem with that as it prevents "fair use" under copyright law. If I want to make a copy of a song for my personal use, that's perfectly allowable. I cannot, however, sell it. I can even distribute (very) limited numbers of copies, if I recall the judgements that happened during home taping lawsuits of the 70s and 80s. Essentially, making a few mix tapes is legal.
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Lynx
So what? That's an engineering problem not a legal one. Sell the decypt key with the content give a usage parameter so that it can be used some finite # of times. Or not and add a few bucks to it with the assumption that you will rip it. Like the new "digital' edition of Juno.
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The Approach is the Problem
First, the idea that this is akin to a photograph of a Renoir is flawed. That analogy may have worked with mix tapes in the analog world, but not in digital where there is no distinction between a copy and the original.
A closer analogy might be if I had my Salon Premium password in a file that someone else could see and Salon came after me because maybe someone else might look at it. And where is that line drawn? What if the folder was accidentally shared or a security vulnerability exposed previously unshared material?
In the bigger picture though, isn't the real problem the tactics that the RIAA is using? If I am obtaining copyrighted material and sharing that with as many folks as I can so that I can get my hands on more and more music, that's theft. I fail to see how that is any different that swiping a bunch of CD's from the CD store.
There are listeners and there are musicians who fall on both sides of that argument. Maybe it's good marketing, maybe it's not. Notoriety and a large number of nonpaying users is not the same as earning a living. At issue, even after removing the greed of the industry and certain musicians, is that no one's sure what the new model is. How do we value music? How do musicians get paid and how do customers pay a fair price? How do we stop digital theft without handcuffing honest users?
The RIAA's approach is the problem. There is no cooperation, no openness to new models, but simply this extortionate mafioso model of fear and retaliation, crushing any notion of honest discussion of the issues at hand.