The Case for File SwappingShlomiFishshlomif@shlomifish.orgShlomi Fish’s Homepage2004Shlomi Fish
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License (or at your option a greater version of it).
14172005-10-14shlomif
Forked the text from a previous document, and starting to
adapt it. Tagged as CC-by 2.5
14222005-10-21shlomif
Added a rudimentary introduction and the entire terminology
section.
14262005-10-21shlomif
Added a “Why File Swapping should be Legal?” Section.
14272005-10-21shlomif
Wrote the ”About this Document” section.
14282005-10-22shlomif
Wrote the “Refuting Common Arguments” section.
14292005-10-22shlomif
Added two more examples for why file-sharing does
not hurt media sales.
14312005-10-22shlomif
Added the “more legal uses” section.
14322005-10-22shlomif
Added the “Reflections on Online Stores”.
14342005-10-22shlomif
Added the “Conclusions”.
14352005-10-22shlomif
Added the “Other Important Copyrights Issues”.
14362005-10-22shlomif
Added the “more links” sub-section.
14382005-10-22shlomif
Went over the article and corrected many problems.
14462005-11-06shlomif
Added the “Can File Swapping Really be Stopped?” Section.
14472005-11-06shlomif
Added the “How you can Help” Section.
14522005-11-10shlomif
Fixed a grammatical problem courtesy of t1ber from
kuro5hin.org.
16012006-08-18shlomif
Added a footnote about the benevolent felons, a note
about “stealing from the rich and giving to the poor”,
a note about “The Golden Rule”, an entire setion about
“The Internet as an Alternative Medium of Distribution”,
a section about the historical perspective of copyright
law, some links and some corrections. Second Revision.
16042006-08-28shlomif
Fixed a typo (“who” → “which”).
16182006-11-19shlomif
Fixed a grammatical problem pointed by a correspondent.
17732007-05-20shlomif
Corrected some errors (such as spelling, phrasing or
grammatical); added more discussion of why copying an
artwork is moral; added the merchandise way of making
profit, the “Pirates of the Caribbean” anecdote,
“Don’t Download this song”, and DRM and the Sony rootkit.
48542011-06-05shlomif
Convert to Unicode-style quotes.
52302012-09-22shlomif
Fix some spelling errors.
Introduction
The purpose of this article is to explain why Internet file
swapping (of media such as music files, video files, etc.) is moral,
ethical and should be legal. Plus, people who share files on the
Internet or download them, must not be prosecuted.
Debunking Some Misleading Terms
The Human Language is primarily a tool of thought, and only afterwards
a tool of communication. As such, mutations in the meaning of words
can affect clear thinking about issues. The issue of file swapping
is no exception. Before we continue, allow me to explain about the
improper validity or application of some terms.
“Intellectual Property”
As noted by Richard Stallman, the term Intellectual property is a
seductive mirage. Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks
are not equivalent to property, not even “intellectual” one.
Furthermore, they shouldn’t be grouped together as they are
intended for different purposes and do different things. (And are
treated differently according to law).
Some people claim that since a copyrighted work is
“intellectual property”, then copying it is equivalent to
“stealing”. But that is not the case here.
“Stealing” or “Theft”
Copyright apologists like to say that copying a work that is
copyrighted and was published to the public, is equivalent to
“stealing” or “theft”. However, stealing involves taking tangible
property without permission, and depriving the owner of one less
instance of it. On the other hand, with a public work, we can
make an unlimited number of copies, while not harming the original,
and while respecting the exclusive rights of the author for his
work. This is because we just copy it - we don’t claim it is ours.
Accusing people who share or duplicate media non-commercially of
“stealing” obscures two other forms of media-related crimes that
are in fact stealing:
If someone has somehow gained access to my private
files and used it to prepare his own copies (or worse
delete the originals), then he has performed stealing.
Not of “Intellectual Property” but of actual property,
because the files are private and I do not wish them
to be inspected by someone else. And privacy must be
respected.
If someone has made an inclusive work of someone’s
else’s work, and claimed it was his, then it may be
called “stealing” of copyrights.
But copying a work that was released for public consumption, can
never be considered “stealing”. Instead it is merely “copying”,
“swapping”, “sharing”, etc.
“Piracy”
The term “Piracy” is very common for the action of copying files,
either for money or free of charge. One thing that should be noted
about it is that the original pirates were sea-faring robbers, who
took hold of ships, stole the goods, killed the people who
were on board, and burned the ships. It would be a bit of a
stretch to label a 10-years-old child who duplicated a
CD of Music or several copyrighted files to his friend, after such
villains.
I personally believe that the term “Piracy” in its applied context
is quite harmless and is cognitively sound. However, I will not
use the term here below.
“Crime”
If one violates the letter of the law of my country did he commit
a crime? Not necessarily. A crime is an action that is globally
accepted to be unethical, according to well-defined, absolute
Ethics.
People who hid saved Jews during the Nazi regime, violated the
law that took place in their lands. But can you call them
“criminals” with a honest face? Not at all - they were very noble
people, who did something almost everyone would agree was an
ethical action.
Now, were people who bought Alcoholic beverages during
the
time the U.S.A. had alcoholic prohibition criminals?
Again no. The Law at this point was completely irrational, and so
the American Government could not have prevented such
violations, and it was a regulation that the public could not
withstand.
One correspondent to this article complained that I
shouldn’t have given these two examples, because one cannot
compare downloading files to the highly moral acts of the
people who hid Jews during the Nazi reign, and because the
Prohibition on alcohol was a starting point to the
American mafia.
However, this is the style over substance fallacy, where one
criticises the style of a writing instead of what it says.
My point was to bring two cases where people were acting
illegally yet were acting either ethically or just
morally, and that the Law was not on Ethics’ side in this
case.
Similarly one cannot argue that people who violate laws that
prohibit the non-commercial duplication of digital works are
criminals. Just because the law is there does not necessarily
make it a right law or a beneficial law. One can argue that these
people are felons (or “Avaryanim” in Hebrew), but that’s
not the same thing as a criminal.
Many times in history, acts of civil disobedience proved to be
beneficial in the long run. The classical example for it is the
American Revolution, but there are many other examples.
Conclusion
In one IRC conversation I had with supporters of actions against
file sharers, I realised that while I gave a lot of arguments for
my stance, they had nothing better to do than to repeat the same
mantras of: “You’re stealing someone else’s (intellectual) property
so you are a criminal.” or “You’re violating the law so you are
a criminal.”, etc. It was obvious that their cognition was
contaminated with the misinterpretations of these terms, which
caused their thoughts and speech to be mutilated as well.
Thus, it is high time one eliminates all the mis-applications of
these terms from his or her vocabulary, because they prevent
clear thinking and growth on the matter.
Why File Swapping should be Legal?
So why should file swapping be legal? Let’s examine the reasons one
by one.
It is not a Crime
The primary reason why file swapping should be legal is because
it’s not a crime, at least not an ethical one. Sites or services
that point to where to download the content are just referencing
the presence of the information. Referencing or linking is
never a crime. It’s like
instructions on actions like how to prepare bombs, where to find
illegal drugs,
how to cheat various systems, or where to find stolen goods.
By itself this information is not a crime to know, because it’s
protected speech. So does pointing to a copyrighted resource.
So now we’re left with the question whether sharing a copyrighted
work (or downloading it) is an objectively criminal action. The
answer is again “no”. It’s not a crime since the originator of
a copyrighted work that was made public cannot prevent
non-commercial copies from being made and distributed. As of today,
many countries passed such laws, but these laws are unethical.
Sharing of copyrighted work is common-place, and many of the
people who do it (including many children) do not feel they’re
doing something wrong, or feel guilty about it. So it is ethical,
and moral and should be legal.
Note that selling copies commercially (as in stores of pirated
media), can be prohibited by the copyright holder. But
non-commercial copying (from friend to friend, or via
Peer-to-Peer services) cannot.
Several respondents to early versions of this article, claimed
that I should prove that copying
or receiving a copy of an artwork that was released to the public
is ethical and moral. Well, I’d like to ask those critics
“Why it is not moral?”. And they’ll probably have no answer.
According to the definition of Ethics and Morality
that I accept (presented there as
“Constitutionality and Beneficiality”), then file sharing is
ethical, because it does
not involve an initiatory force, threat of force or fraud against
one’s property, which as I demonstrated here does not include
the so-called “intellectual property”. Moreover, it is also moral
or at least not immoral, because it does not harm or prevent the
filling of human biological needs.
Copyrights are not an absolute “nature-given” right like the rights
for life and freedom. Instead, they are a state-enacted monopoly
that is meant to protect the originators of artworks from
abuse by commercial distributors. However, due to the computers
and Internet revolutions, it makes no sense to try and prevent
non-commercial digital distribution of them.
There are other ways to make money
There are many other ways in which originators of media can make
money even if they allow free distribution. First of all, they can
regulate the commercial use of the works. That way, commercial
entities (such as Music stores, online music download services,
D.J.’s in charge-for-entrance parties and commercial radio
stations) must pay them royalties.
Another financial option is to restrict derivation of
the work. That way, persons who wish to build upon the work
or include substantial parts of it in their own must consult the
originator.
Another option (of less substance) is to require attribution for
the originator. That way, people who wish to build upon a work
without crediting the originator must purchase permission from
him.
These three methods together give enough options for an artist
to make money off his art, without restricting non-commercial
copying.
This is naturally excluding live performances of artists of
various sorts, like Rock concerts, that are also a huge potential
source of revenue, as well as sales of Merchandise. The Grateful
Dead made more money on merchandise than they ever did on
selling records.
File Sharing Does not Hurt Media Sales
Many people erroneously believe that file sharing hurts media
sales. However, there is a lot of evidence to the contrary:
Legal Music Downloads Increase in 2005
Slashdot Article about CD-R’s and MP3s not hurting record sales in Australia
CD Sales in Israel went up by 15% in 2004.
Success
of the single “No Meaning No” by
Chuck D and the Fine Arts Militia that was
released under a liberal
Creative
Commons license, that allows free distribution.
The U.S. band
Wilco
released their album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” as mp3s online
after their record label demanded they remix their songs.
After a different record label decided to distribute their
songs instead, and distributed the album, it became their
best-selling album, selling over 500,000 copies.
The Movie “Pirates of the Caribbean”
was
heavily “pirated”, yet also had
very successful sales and was incredibly profitable.
Some new artists that published albums and singles
in recent years, have proven to be very successful
commercially, despite the fact that their songs are commonly
available for download on the Internet, via Peer-to-Peer
networks or otherwise.
Media Organisations hunt File Sharers and Prosecute Them
You’ve probably all heard stories of the Media organisations’
witch-hunt against file sharers. From suing a female 12-years-old
honour student, to a grandpa in his 70’s, to a college player of
American Football. They also were closing many online sites.
In New Delhi the police gave the media companies an unlimited
warrant to raid the houses of people suspected of media sharing.
Lots and lots of “1984”-style terror. And for what? For preventing
the supposed loss of sales by a limited private sector of the
industry? For preventing a practically costless operation of
distributing an mp3 that can be done by the “criminals” at the
comfort of their homes?
In a presentation he gave, Richard M. Stallman (of the Free
Software Foundation and GNU project fame) gave another good reason
why it wasn’t unacceptable. He said that when he was a kid in
school, his teacher asked the children to share their sweets with
the other children. And now, suddenly they have to tell them
something like “No, Tommy, don’t share your music/software/videos/etc. It’s illegal!”.
What’s a child to feel in this case? Sharing is a nice
part of living in a friendly society, and there’s no reason we
should prevent it, or else we ourselves will become more and more
selfish.
Put it into Perspective
Let’s put things into perspective. What the media companies do
is sell entertainment to people. Entertainment. They don’t save
lives and the economy does not depend on them, as there are
many other sources of entertainment a consumer can choose
instead that are available independently.
The worst case (and extremely unlikely) scenario is that no-one
pays for online media, and everybody just share and download music
from the Internet. Would that be a bad scenario? No, the world
will go on. Without people making money off selling media, but
nevertheless.
Refuting Common Arguments against File Swapping
This section aims to refute some common arguments against file
swapping.
The Domino Effect
Some people are using “the Domino Effect” as an argument that file
swapping should be stopped. What they say is that if the
profitability of the Music industry would be harmed, then it will
cause an economical chain-reaction that may devastate the rest
of the economy, because other dependent industries may be harmed.
There are two problems with this argument. The first is that there
is no evidence that the profitability of the music industry is
harmed due to file swapping, so there is little risk of this
happening. The other is that assuming that would happen, it won’t
be a bad thing. That’s because we essentially reduce the money
that is transferred to a heavy taxer, and make the public, as a
whole, richer. The public in turn, can spend this money on other
merchandise, and make other industries as a whole more
prosperous. This is similar to reducing income tax, while laying
off some government workers.
Violating the Law against File Swapping will Cause
Anarchy
Some people say that if the law of a country prohibits sharing
files, then this law must be obeyed, because otherwise there
will be anarchy. However, one must understand that if certain
laws are irrational, they cannot be practically expected to
be obeyed.
I also personally don’t see how assuming everyone share files
online, the integrity of a country will be harmed. Sharing files
does not involve killing people, stealing from them, nor does it
involve force, threat of force or fraud.
20% of Americans enjoy file swapping, and yet the United States
is functioning perfectly fine, and no anarchy is in sight.
Sharing Files is like Disobeying Traffic Laws
The comparison of sharing and downloading files to disobeying
traffic laws seems to be quite prevalent. But naturally, copying
files does not endanger lives, nor is it actually a crime. The
worst thing that can happen if one shares works of art, is loss
of profit. If you disobey traffic laws, you risk the lives of
yourself and of other people. This makes it a difference of Heaven
and Earth in this analogy.
“Stealing from the Rich and Giving to the Poor” is still
Stealing
Some people claim that because the main entities that will
supposedly be harmed from making file swapping legal are media
conglomerates, and to a lesser extent best-selling artists
who are very rich, and those who would benefit are the poor
everyday people, then this is a case of
“stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.”, which is still stealing.
One thing that has to be understood about the Robin Hood myth
is that Robin Hood supposedly stole from the exploiters and
gave to the exploited. Secondly, it’s not really true in this
case.
Copying a copyrighted work is not stealing, because the money
that the author can charge for its commercial copying is due
to copyright law - a civil (not criminal) contract between the
State and the artists, in order to encourage original creation.
However, breaking this contract
is not stealing.
It should be understood that record labels and other distributors
of entertainment and non-technical media should either adapt to
the new situation where Internet users can download such files
for free and enjoy them, and to a greater extent contribute such
media on their own, without much help from them, or simply perish
as a no longer necessary establishment, that just gets in the way.
This is not about stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
This is about cutting down the middle man.
The Golden Rule Argument
A few people who criticised the article, claimed that by proposing
that media will be free to be non-commercially copied, I’ve been
violating the
Golden Rule
(“Treat others as you wish them to treat you”) as I don’t want
copyright to be undermined for my own
works.
However, this results from two confusions. The first is the
belief that I too will mind people re-distributing my work. However,
I don’t have problems with that: all my work is freely
re-distributable and a most of it is also Free Content. The second
confusion is that I completely reject copyrights. However
that’s
not the case as I still accept that some copyright principles
are valid.
So I did not violate the Golden Rule in voicing this opinion.
Uses of File Swapping Services, which are More Legal
Aside from gaining a copy of a file one didn’t buy, there are many
ways to use file sharing services, that are more legitimate:
Getting tracks from a misplaced CD by downloading them from
the Internet. Alternatively some people are too lazy to find
the CD in their collection, and instead download it from the
Internet.
Getting a digital recording of a file from a purchased audio
recording like an audio cassette or a Vinyl record.
Getting the video clip of a song one has bought. These are
usually hard to acquire separately.
Try before you buy.
Sharing songs that were declared freely-distributable by their
originators.
Getting singles with different variations for albums that were
purchased, especially a long time after the release of the
singles, when they are very hard to find.
Prohibiting file swapping entirely will, thus be like throwing the
baby along with the water. Nevertheless, all of this is secondary to
the fact that preventing the non-restricted non-commercial distribution
of artworks is bad.
Reflections on Online Music Stores
Lately we’ve been seeing online music purchasing services such as
iTunes,
Real Music Store,
etc. Such services are a good thing as they allow Media companies to
make money off selling music files, while allowing users to buy and
download their favourite songs without too much hassle.
Some of these stores attempt to use one of the so-called
“Digital Rights Management” (or “DRM”) systems, to prevent the users from
making use of the files as is. However, since players to play the
files are present on the users’ computers and these players can
be reverse engineered, then this offers only fig leaf protection, and
is just an annoyance. Online stores would do better to avoid such
schemes altogether and just provide the plain, non-scrambled, music
files.
While online music stores are a good thing, it still doesn’t imply
that file-swapping services like Peer-to-Peer network are
illegitimate. There is room and legitimacy for both.
Can File Swapping Really be Stopped?
People who fight file swapping would like to believe it can be
stopped. But the opposite is the fact. The first part is the fact that
there are distributed Peer-to-Peer networks, that are not controlled
from a central place and in which search, uploads and downloads are
not centralised.
So they can say “that’s fine. We’ll log in with a fake client and find
people who upload files are prosecute them according to their IPs”.
Enter Tor, the
anonymous Internet communication system. Within the Tor network,
traffic to the actual Internet is trafficked to different nodes in
the network, and everything is encrypted, so one cannot determine
the real origin of the request. If someone uploads a file from
a Tor node - the file may actually reside on the host of
a completely different Tor user.
The measures that copyright conglomerates have taken to try and
stop file-sharing were appalling. From pulling out file sharing sites
and services under legal threats, to demanding ISPs to give the
identities of their file-sharing users (against any reasonable
measurement of privacy), to prosecuting and harassing file sharers.
All of this for fighting against a non-existent loss of profits. Will
you sell your soul to the Devil in order to make a profit of
1.2 billion dollars instead of 1 billion?
The Internet as an Alternative Medium of Distribution
Now that the Internet is becoming more and more common and more and
more integral for life, artists should consider that instead or as
well as publishing their artworks via traditional means, they should
publish them online. First of all, it makes one have much better
chances of people noticing his creations, rather than the very slim
chances of having his song, book, or video distributed by traditional
distributors.
It is also often a way to eventually get published like that, after
being noticed by such distributors. Let’s inspect the various venues
for each content type.
Music
There are several venues for having freely re-distributable Music
on the Internet:
GarageBand.com
is an online community for artists which have made some
tracks available online. GarageBand allows one to download
the music for free, rate it, review it, and link to it from
other places on the Internet.
From experience, I can say that a lot of the music that is
available there is very good.
ccMixter is
a Creative Commons sponsored community for sampling, mixing
and sharing music under licences that allow that.
MagnaTune
is a records’ label which publishes artists whose music is
licensed under freely-redistributable licences.
One can distribute music using web sites and BitTorrent
torrents.
Text
Most of the Web is text, and publishing text works that you
wrote is possible in several ways:
Wikis
such as
the
Wikipedia and friends.
One can set up a web site for his textual works, or have
the PDFs downloadable via BitTorrent.
Weblogs and blog comments are an increasingly popular way
of publishing content online. Many blog services such as
LiveJournal,
or
Blogger
will publish your blogs free of charge, as will many
community web sites.
Several writing or artist communities like
MySpace and
Writing.com
accept submissions to publicise one’s artwork.
Images
Images are de-facto freely distributable, and to a slightly lesser
extent modifiable. Trying to protect the gratis use of your
copyrighted photograph or image is becoming more and more futile.
There are several images’ search engines online, and there’s also
photos sharing communities such as
Flickr.
Videos and Animations
One can distribute videos and animations in the following means:
Animations using the proprietary (but de-facto standard)
Flash technology, or using the open
SVG (“Scalable Vector Graphics”)
technology
Web sites and torrents can be used to distribute videos.
Video sharing sites such as
Google
Video, and
YouTube.
The Value of Linking
By having a legitimate link to a piece of content one can
immediately enjoy and experience it. For example I can say:
“Jenna
Drey’s single ‘That’s What They All Say’ is very nice,
follow the link to download it.”, or
“Austin
Acton’s ‘Two Point Six’ is lame but still cool.”, or
“Pearl Jam made their new single ‘Life Wasted’ freely
distributable. Here’s the torrent.”. Etc. (These are all
legitimate downloads).
This is much better availability and accessibility than having to
go to the store and buy it, or even buy it from an online store. And
it an excellent publicity.
For more information consult Paul Graham’s essays
“Web
2.0” and
“What
Business can Learn from Open Source”.
Weird Al Yankovic’s “Don’t Download This Song”
Weird Al Yankovic,
the famous musical comedian, has released the track
“Don’t
Download this Song” out of his album Straight
outta Lynwood. Despite its ironic title, it is available for free download.
The
Lyrics for the song are illuminating the absurdity of the
big copyright owners’ fight against file-swapping in a funny way.
A Historical Perspective
This section aims to give a historical perspective to why copyrighted
work ought to be freely and non-commercially re-distributable.
Ancient Times through the Middle Ages
During ancient times (before the invention of paper, and the
press), texts were written on stone or on animals’ hides and
required a lot of effort to duplicate. As such, the authors
encouraged people to copy, quote, and re-use their text, as long
as they maintained proper attribution.
After the Invention of the Press
After the Press was invented, and became cheaper, commercial
books started to appear. Eventually copyright on texts emerged
to make sure that:
Artists would be protected so their works will not be
re-printed by publishes and prints.
Make sure other prints won’t be able to re-print the
works of other publishers.
At first it was applied exclusively to written works. Not to
audio or video recording, which did not exist yet, nor to to
melodies, pictures, videos, etc.
It was decided that after a limited time when the author or his
estate held the exclusive copyrights for the work, the work would
be transferred to the public domain, to make sure it can be
freely reused and manipulated by future generations. The first
such term in the USA was 14 years with a potential extension of
another 14 years.
My Analysis of This
The
Copyright
Act of 1790 granted the originator of a text “the
sole liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending” of
a work. Note that it does not talk about mere duplication. Printing
and reprinting were at the time very costly operations, produced
works of good quality, and required a non-negligible amount of
money to perform. On the other hand, if a person was to copy the
work by hand, it would not have fallen under this law.
Furthermore, it makes sense that now that we have the Internet that
can “copy arbitrary blobs of data from one place to another at
virtually no cost, in virtually no time, with virtually no
control” (to quote Cory Doctorow), then the copyright laws
will once again be amended to reflect the new technological
reality.
Trying to stop such copyright “infringement” on the Internet is
not going to be successful. And so far, it seems the Internet
helps the originators of such works, more than it harms them.
Conclusion
File swapping must be legal, because it’s ethical, moral, makes
economical sense, and is otherwise beneficial for artists,
distributors and consumers.
There’s a book on my bookshelf by Ashleigh Brilliant with a very good
title: “I Feel Much Better, Now that I’ve Given up Hope”. I think this
is one thing the Media companies don’t understand. If they accept
Internet File Sharing as a necessary “Evil”, they will be able to make
the best out of the new situation. Instead, they have chosen to
perform a large-scale witch-hunt, which does not really help prevent
file sharing, and just makes them look like the public enemy.
Once the Media companies try to fight file swapping by using lawsuits,
or threats, then they should be fought back in order to protect the
people’s ethical right to share songs. All laws that are passed to
prohibit non-commercial distribution of public works, are unethical,
and should be replaced with more reasonable laws.
How you can Help
There are several ways in which you can help fight for the cause of
protecting file swapping:
Write. Write school reports, university theses, essays, news
items and articles about this cause. Feel free to use material
from here, or to link to it.
Publish the art you create under a freely-distributable
license. The Creative
Commons licenses can give you enough protection,
while still retaining this right.
Link and mention this essay on your web-site, in your blog,
in your posts to online forums, in real-life (in chats, on
newspaper items), etc. Get people to know it.
Write to your representatives at the government and tell them
that you wish file swapping and all related issues to be
legal. Don’t vote for people who fight against file swapping,
and vote for those who do.
Donate money, time and other resources to support the legal
battle for file swapping.
Together, we can stop this insanity faster than it will be stopped
on its own.
Other Important Copyrights Issues
This section will cover other significant copyright issues that are
at stake today and require a struggle.
The first is the lengthening of the copyright term. Recently
the
Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act that was passed in
American congress extended the copyrights act by 20 years. One should
note that the term was already extended several times in the past,
since the first American copyrights law. 95 years for a copyrights
of works of corporations is far too long, and we also risk that
copyrights will be extended indefinitely this way. (“Forever minus a
day”)
A different issue is the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (or DMCA for short). This law that
was passed in the 90’s criminalises a lot of valid activity. It
prohibits the writing of “circumvention devices” to bypass copyright
protection (and some say every computer security measure, in general).
It is actively used to threaten to remove allegedly copyrighted content
from web sites, because they may violate it. (See
Cory
Doctorow’s excellent essay “Save Canada’s Internet
from WIPO”.) It also contains a lot of other damaging
clauses.
The Free Expression
Policy Project has an excellent
report
on the various issues in copyrights law in the past and
today. It is a very recommended read.
A different issue is that of the so-called “Digital Restrictions
Management” measures (or DRM for short), which are measures
meant to prevent the copying or ripping of digital media. Perhaps the
most extreme form of this is The
“Sony Rootkit” scandal, in which a copyright-protection
measure, turned out to put one’s Windows installation at risk, once the
CD was inserted to the computer.
The Electronic
Frontier Foundation has many resources related to
activity against various harmful copyrights regulations.
About this documentCopyrights
This work is licensed under the
Creative
Commons Attribution 2.5 License (or at your option a
greater version of it). The CC-Attribution is almost
Public Domain except for a requirement to make an attribution to the
original author.
It was written by Shlomi
Fish who also holds the copyrights.
About the Author
Shlomi Fish was born in Israel in 1977, and has lived there most of
his life. He is a user, developer, advocate and activist of
Open Source Software. His greatest contribution so far in this
regard has been Freecell
Solver, a Public Domain Library for solving games
of Freecell and other types of Solitaire. However, he also
initiated
several other projects and
made
important contributions to projects he did not initiate
some of them very large scale.
Otherwise, Fish has written several
humorous novellas, stories and aphorisms, which he
has released online, under the CC-by or CC-by-sa licenses. He also
wrote many
essays and articles as well as
material
for presentations which (unless specified otherwise)
were released under the CC-by license.
To conclude, if you think that “this guy attacks Intellectual
Property so he obviously doesn’t have any significant IP of his
own”, then this myth, in his case, cannot be farther from the
fact.
Shlomi Fish is a Jew and an Israeli by nationality, an atheist
by faith (or lack of it) and a
Neo-Tech
Objectivist by ideology. As such he is a firm believer in both
individual rights and freedoms, and freedom from oppression, as well
as a free economy (Laissez-Faire Capitalism) that is free of
government intervention. He also does his best efforts to live by
the values of honesty, integrity, individualism, independent
thought, passion, and rational self-growth.
More Links
“Acting
against anti-File-Swapping Lawsuits in Israel” was
an early attempt to convey this message written by me. It
sparked a
discussion at the Linux-IL mailing list and
a
discussion at the Hamakor Discussions mailing
list.
Glyn Moody maintains a blog titled
opendotdotdot
where he talks about Open Source, Open Content, Open Access, and
various other Internet paradigms. It is well worth reading and
following.
Finally, Wil Wheaton has some interesting insights in a Slashdot interview with
him:
I’m no expert, but it seems like the MPAA would get a much
bigger return on their investment if they stopped going after
college students and went after the factories that turn out
legitimate movies by day, and switch over to pirated material
at night.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the members of the Linux-IL and Hamakor Discussions
mailing list for discussing an
early
incarnation of this article.
Thanks to
Talash
for referencing
the
local Israeli file-swapping protection activity.
Thanks to Lawrence Lessig
for an excellent
related presentation called “Free Culture” and for
the Wilco anecdote.