Debunking Some Misleading Terms

“Intellectual Property”
“Stealing” or “Theft”
“Piracy”
“Crime”
Conclusion

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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. [1]

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.



[1] 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.