The Morals of Grabbing Free Content From the Web

[nsane.forums]

For many years free content has been readily available on the Internet, from the latest movies, music and software, to books, games and research documents. Big entertainment often argues that those grabbing such content without permission have no or few morals, but is that the case? Doing ‘the right thing’ can be the product of a moment’s decision, isn’t it up to content producers to squeeze themselves into that time slot?

As most people reading this post will be aware, free media of all kinds is just a few clicks away.

No matter what content is required, a quick Google search (or a Bing one if the relentless pace of DMCA notices is spoiling results) is the only thing required to get almost anything without paying.

But just because one can, does it necessarily follow that one should?

Last evening during a barbecue I found myself chatting with the owner of a manufacturing company about some of what I believe to be the driving forces behind piracy. He told me that his business doesn’t suffer from copyright infringement in any meaningful way and it soon became apparent that with his computing ability he wouldn’t know how to share a file even if i’d taken the time to show him.

Nevertheless, we discussed the issue of availability, of how pirated content is readily and simply on tap. This, versus many of the comparatively off-putting and complex solutions offered by entertainment companies.

We chatted about the possibility that many pirates would not have bought the content in the first place and therefore no real damage had been done by them downloading a copy.

The guy, already into his 70s, was also fascinated by the “sharing is caring” idea, where people gift content in order to enrich the lives of others and society as a whole.

And then he dropped the bombshell. Had I heard of Matza and Sykes? No, I responded. Were they coming to the barbecue? “Unlikely,” he said.

Ipad in one hand and a burger in the other, I searched for these gentleman and discovered that they’d come up with an interesting theory in the 1950s.

The duo theorized that people are well aware of their moral obligations to abide by the law so therefore, when those people commit crimes, they have to employ techniques in order to overcome their inbuilt desire to do the “right thing”. They do this, Matza and Sykes said, through denial and by justifying their behavior.

So how does their theory apply to what we’d just been discussing, I asked. Well, it may not, my beer-drinking friend explained, but he gave me his interpretation anyway.

On the first point, that for many years content providers have failed to make media easily available, I was informed that Matza and Sykes may have explained this in two ways:

Denial of responsibility: The offender (in this case a copyright infringer) would justify his actions by stating that he’d been forced into a situation beyond his control (needed content, but stupid movie studio didn’t make it easily available).

Denial of the victim: The offender (file-sharer) believes that the victim (movie studio) deserved an offense to be committed against them – in this case due to their incompetence in making content available.

So what about the notion that many file-sharers would never have bought the content they download? Yep, Matza and Sykes apparently have an explanation for that too.

Denial of injury: The offender justifies his behavior due to a belief that no harm has been caused by their action. These huge companies don’t need any more money, do they?

But Sharing must be Caring, right? Well maybe, but there’s a theory on that too.

Appeal to higher loyalties: The offender believes that their ‘crime’ was actually for the greater good, with positive long-term consequences. Enrichment of society via the sharing of culture, perhaps?

Playing devil’s advocate, I questioned whether a person’s moral obligations in these instances should always be aligned with the law of the land. For example, if a law existed today but was abolished tomorrow, should individuals immediately change their moral values to suit?

In this case, would today’s justification for committing a crime become tomorrow’s straightforward reason for carrying out a legal activity? Are all laws necessarily moral anyway, or do we sometimes have a moral obligation to fight back?

With more than a few beers consumed and definitely no psychology or sociology degree to fall back on, the conversation was already running away from me – but then it struck me. Most people grabbing free content from the Internet aren’t required to justify their behavior to anyone. They click – and obtain – and there’s rarely any subsequent debate over morals.

However, that doesn’t mean that people won’t play fair. At TF earlier this week we were discussing the new ‘Downloaded’ movie which tells the story of Napster. The reviews aren’t very good and none of us here have yet seen it, but perhaps we should. Despite its availability on dozens of torrent sites, Ernesto put his hand in his pocket and tried to buy it from Amazon. He was informed that it wasn’t available in his location. Clearly the makers of the movie haven’t learned very much.

What this shows is that people can and will do the “right thing” but in order to capitalize on that content providers must also do their bit. It’s easy for Matza and Sykes to say that those committing social wrongs are merely trying to ease consciences with their denials, but their ‘excuses’ in the file-sharing space are valuable indicators of where file-sharers’ morals lie.

So maybe if all the soul-easing excuses uttered by file-sharers were taken away – by making content available, by not being a greedy corporation, by not lobbying for aggressive laws that conflict with social norms – perhaps we’d be left with a situation in which many more people would buy content freely.

Whether that would be through guilt or simply because their service requirements (sorry, excuses) had been listened to would be here nor there. Content would be bought and after all, isn’t that what the fight’s all about?

View: Original Article

[Ambrocious]

Not all laws are moral and not all moral decisions are lawful. For example, Gandhi displayed acts of civil disobedience where he got many other people to disobey corrupt laws that were causing all sorts of troubles in the country he was in. His example stands today for MANY different reasons and people should be readily on hand to do the right thing if a completely unjust or bad law is passed. I’m not saying that just because you want to shoot somebody in the face that you should be able to even though the law says it's murder. I’m saying that we should be more than willing to not comply with laws designed to hurt or in some way, limit people's freedoms.

Downloading of content freely goes beyond mere piracy. As it has been explained many times over, it is a form of cultural share as well. I think that eventually if the people of the world were allowed to share as much as they wanted, it would actually unify nations by engaging in free exchanges of intellectual property. This may seem bad to some people but sharing stuff like movies and TV shows online is a HUGE convenience to countless people who would otherwise not be able to access it in a better way.

[Tweety.Abd]

This may seem bad to some people but sharing stuff like movies and TV shows online is a HUGE convenience to countless people who would otherwise not be able to access it in a better way.

You're appealing to the utilitarian principle to justify piracy?

[alaindc]

So maybe if all the soul-easing excuses uttered by file-sharers were taken away – by making content available, by not being a greedy corporation, by not lobbying for aggressive laws that conflict with social norms – perhaps we’d be left with a situation in which many more people would buy content freely.

Probably.

But we all know that this won't happen.

Each year, they use lots of cash in lobbying for aggressive law, to keep their archaic business model.

[rasbridge]

Old people, living on a very small fixed income, simply do not have the financial resources to pay the admission fees at movie theaters or buy dvd's etc. We are simply priced out due to corporate greed. If prices were affordable, then fewer people would "need" to pirate.

Edit: My primary interest is in watching sporting events and I absolutely have no interest in watching movies and listening to music. Anyway, I do not pirate movies etc. However, people that I know have explained to me there reasoning for doing so and I was merely sharing them.

[dMog]

ok..i am old enough to have purchased LP's 8 tracks cassettes and cd's thousands of them in fact... so many formats i have owned and was forced to purchase an entire album when i only wanted one single song off that album... so yes i will be pirate to get all the content already purchased 4 times over... and yes i actually do purchase some content form itunes also

edit... recently quite a lot of my new content is purchased through Itunes...and subscribe to apple itunes match so now ALL my content is legal

[Tweety.Abd]

Old people, living on a very small fixed income, simply do not have the financial resources to pay the admission fees at movie theaters or buy dvd's etc. We are simply priced out due to corporate greed. If prices were affordable, then fewer people would "need" to pirate.

Can you name any other situation in which the argument “I think the price is too high, so I stole the item” is valid? As consumers, it is not our responsibility or privilege to determine the price for an item; rather, we must weigh the price versus the value that item has to us, and determine whether it is a worthy purchase. If the value cannot justify the price, you will not spend the money on it. If enough people come to that same conclusion, the item’s producer will either lower the price, somehow increase the value, or go out of business. But theft – whether literal, physical theft or just “digital” theft – is not an ethical option.

[MidnightDistortions]

There's a couple of things to consider here.

1. If you download an album, liked it.. then went to a store to buy it, bought it. Is this act considered wrong?

2. You download it, like it but can't afford to pay for it but decide to keep the album is it considered wrong?

3. You download it & whether or not you could afford it you simply won't buy it is it considered wrong?

Then, is the album you downloaded available to purchase somewhere? I have been in heated debates before about this on how downloading is wrong, illegal ect.. but the bottom line here is that you haven't really stolen anything yet, but you haven't purchased the music you're listening to.

However this doesn't change the fact that downloading an album is essentially the same as listening to a song on the radio, while recording it, borrowing a cd from a friend or listening to a cd your friend just bought or going to a party and hearing an album you like. It's just wide open over the internet. Essentially torrents or other file sharing sites are basically just that party you just went to or that album you are borrowing from your friend. If you don't have the money in the first place to buy that album it just sits there with lesser listeners because if you happen to really like that album, you'll want to share it with your friends or family. It's really up to them if they want to buy the album or forget about it. No, this doesn't justify piracy but it should encourage record companies and the like to stop worrying so much about piracy because it has existed since music was pretty much invented. If your downloading or filesharing the media without some kind of moral standpoint or you are doing it to make money yourself then it's just wrong. Most of the companies make enough money and it's really up to the companies themselves to reduce cost without impacting it's business. Everything is so expensive now that if businesses worry so much about theft or piracy that maybe they should take a look at themselves and see how much money they could be saving if the utilize the knowledge that is clear as day. They're too busy worrying about how 10,000 people download an album when 500 or more of them actually run out to the store to buy it. The rest, probably would have not have bought the album in the first place.