Piracy, theft or sharing?
Sunday, October 11, 2009 by cbic004
In an attempt to ward off piracy, downloadable digital content is often compared with tangible goods. Of course you wouldn’t steal a handbag. However, you would feel a lot different about "stealing" that handbag if you perceived it was in fact given to you.
I think the flipside of comparing reproducible content with tangible goods is that the intended notion of theft with regards to piracy could possibly get caught up in a perceived notion of sharing. For example, just as we would share a packet of chips or a bottle of coke with a friend we feel similarly inclined when it comes to sharing CDs, DVDs etc. Once we have purchased a copy of a copyrighted good, we feel we own it and thus can do anything with it. When a friend offers you a CD they have purchased in order to copy the music, we equate the copied content to the tangible CD which belongs to your friend, rather than an imagined duplicate CD we have ‘ripped’ off the artist. Similarly we accept a mixed CD given as a romantic gesture as a gift, rather than a compilation of pirated goods.
The flaw of equating intangible files with tangible goods is, as Yar (2008) identifies, tangible goods are a ‘one-time’ use thing. You may share your chips and bottle of coke but once it’s consumed it’s gone. However, when it comes to intangible files you can retain the original file, whilst sharing it to your hearts content. We can turn this notion on its head and consider what it would be like if you could reproduce tangible objects in the same way. You could walk into your local dairy, buy can of coke, replicate it into a six pack and share it with all your friends. Clearly this would thoroughly irritate the Coca Cola Company. I guess this is the imaginary idea such anti-piracy campaigns are trying to provoke, which I guess does make sense in a round-a-bout, trivial kind of way…
I believe copyright laws need to recognize that intangible goods are different from intangible goods and thus need to be treated differently. You can’t claim that music and video piracy is equivalent to stealing tangible goods and yet expect the rights to such content to continue once the content has been purchased. This speaks out against the rights of the consumer – once an object is purchased, we generally feel we have the right to do with it what we like, even if this is sharing it with a less well off friend who doesn’t have the means to purchase the item themselves. After all it would seem pretty ridiculous if you were fined for letting your friend have a sip of your coke or a handful of your chips.
I think the flipside of comparing reproducible content with tangible goods is that the intended notion of theft with regards to piracy could possibly get caught up in a perceived notion of sharing. For example, just as we would share a packet of chips or a bottle of coke with a friend we feel similarly inclined when it comes to sharing CDs, DVDs etc. Once we have purchased a copy of a copyrighted good, we feel we own it and thus can do anything with it. When a friend offers you a CD they have purchased in order to copy the music, we equate the copied content to the tangible CD which belongs to your friend, rather than an imagined duplicate CD we have ‘ripped’ off the artist. Similarly we accept a mixed CD given as a romantic gesture as a gift, rather than a compilation of pirated goods.
The flaw of equating intangible files with tangible goods is, as Yar (2008) identifies, tangible goods are a ‘one-time’ use thing. You may share your chips and bottle of coke but once it’s consumed it’s gone. However, when it comes to intangible files you can retain the original file, whilst sharing it to your hearts content. We can turn this notion on its head and consider what it would be like if you could reproduce tangible objects in the same way. You could walk into your local dairy, buy can of coke, replicate it into a six pack and share it with all your friends. Clearly this would thoroughly irritate the Coca Cola Company. I guess this is the imaginary idea such anti-piracy campaigns are trying to provoke, which I guess does make sense in a round-a-bout, trivial kind of way…
I believe copyright laws need to recognize that intangible goods are different from intangible goods and thus need to be treated differently. You can’t claim that music and video piracy is equivalent to stealing tangible goods and yet expect the rights to such content to continue once the content has been purchased. This speaks out against the rights of the consumer – once an object is purchased, we generally feel we have the right to do with it what we like, even if this is sharing it with a less well off friend who doesn’t have the means to purchase the item themselves. After all it would seem pretty ridiculous if you were fined for letting your friend have a sip of your coke or a handful of your chips.