File Sharing is Stealing. Or is it?
January 2nd, 2009
Here’s a conversation topic that came up the other day. A friend of mine likes the show Dexter. But, because he doesn’t have cable, he can only watch the show after it is released on DVD or, as he prefers, download the show illegally. He doesn’t believe downloading the show constitutes theft, and further, it is not immoral. Another friend held the opposite opinion. Here are the 2 basic arguments
File Sharing IS NOT Stealing:
- Intellectual property is intangible: When you steal a car, you deprive someone of that car. When you download a file, you aren’t depriving anyone of anything. The property is intangible, and you can’t really ‘take’ it. Therefore, it isn’t stealing.
- Downloading a file doesn’t prevent the creator from making money: A writer, movie maker, song writer , etc., can still make money from their creations. They can use alternate distribution models, they can use subscriptions, etc. Not only that, but people downloading files often go out and buy the tangible good. (The CD or DVD, etc.) They also become fans of the artist and pay them money in other ways, like going to their website, concerts, etc.
File Sharing IS Stealing:
- You are taking something of value: The file you are downloading is someone’s property, and it has value. That you can’t hold it is irrelevant. There are lots of things you can’t hold (a logo, your cable subscription, your neighbor’s wi-fi access), but that doesn’t mean everyone can use them. If you cut into your neighbor’s cable, or access their wi-fi, or use a corporate logo for yourself, you are still stealing. It has value and doesn’t belong to you. So taking it is theft.
- How do you know: Lots of people depend on intellectual property for their living, and more specifically, on the right to exclusively make and sell copies of their work. (Anyone who makes music, entertainemnt, etc, or is involved in the process.) If you remove the copyright protetions, that may take all, some or a portion of those jobs away. Yes, those jobs might still exist if you change the protections, but that’s a hell of a gamble. If it doesn’t, the jobs are lost and all you have left is “Oops, my bad.”.
What do you think? Where is the line when it comes to file sharing (or illegally downloading)? Is it theft? Is it immoral?
Is it….EVIL?!?!?
(Photo courtesy KUNTA.TOKYO’s Flickr page through Creative Commons. Thanks, KUNTA.TOKYO!)