Re: in a quandry

[Don Smith <dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu>]

Hi,

I'm no legal scholar, so I certainly don't consider my musings on the subject
authoritative, but this whole subject of "natural law" strikes me as untenable.
I don't really care whether or not people "consider" themselves criminals; the
issue is whether what they're doing is wrong.  There are lots of CEOs out there
who don't consider themselves criminals, regardless of how many lives they've
wrecked in pursuit of unfettered profits.  Heck, I bet Hitler didn't think he
was a criminal (whoops!  Godwin's Law alert!  Ah-ooo-ga!  Ah-ooo-ga!  Dive!
Dive!).  That doesn't seem to me to be a useful criterion for evaluating
morality.  Let's get back to your argument about natural law.  You say an apple
can't be copied, more apples must be grown to replace them, so to take an apple
is theft.  I'm not sure "can be copied" really legitimately implies "copying is
a natural law", but I'll go with it for now.  I don't think you're paying for
1s and 0s, you're paying for the right to listen to a song at your convenience.
Bootlegs notwithstanding, performers and venues have a right to expect
compensation for their work in providing you with a chance for entertainment
and/or inspiration.  Copyright law (as I understand it) was originally put into
place so that someone who had an idea could be protected from someone else who
might not have an idea, but had the machinery to exploit that idea before the
first person can capitalize on it.  It doesn't always work, like when Paramount
asked Joe Straczynski tons of questions about how his proposed space station
show would work, and then said "sorry, we're doing our own space station show",
and when Mr. Straczynski finally did get the funding to do Babylon 5, lots of
people ironically labelled it a Deep Space Nine ripoff.  But I digress...

The ultimate question here is, I think, "do you as the owner of something have
the right to control something you've sold to someone".  My understanding is
that technically when you buy a CD, you are buying the right to *listen* to it,
*not* the right to copy it (beyond the rules of fair use).  You've bought the
ones and zeros, you have *not* bought the song.  That is the contract you are
entering into when you purchase music.  It's like buying land but not buying
the mining rights to whatever might happen to be under that land.  Perhaps not
intuitive, but that's the legal contract.  So the people who are "only sharing"
are actually in breach of contract.  That's how I understand the legal argument
(see my disclaimer in the first sentence.).  That actually makes sense to me,
oddly enough.  There are some artists who put their stuff freely on the web for
all to download, there are others who choose not to do that.  That's their
choice and they are under no obligation to choose one way or the other.  If
you don't want to enter into that contract, you every right to choose not to,
but then you don't get the music.  

The next question is whether a corporation can (or should) hold a copyright.
There are many reasons why it might be better for an artist to have a
corporation hold the ownership of the art.  If there is a lawsuit, for example,
the corporation is the plaintiff, not the artist, and thus the artist is under
less liability.  If the artist goes bankrupt, the corporation still retains
ownership of the art.  On the other hand, one could argue that the corporation
did not create the art, and thus has no moral authority to dictate what to do
with the art.  Of course, by that argument, I could steal paintings from your
house as long as you didn't actually paint them, because they're not really
yours.  You just bought them.  But in buying a CD, you are not buying ownership
of the song, unlike when Michael Jackson bought all of Paul McCartney's songs.

I think the real problem is that government deregulation has led to massive
media consolidation and megamergers.  If there were lots of little RIAA-type
organizations, artists could choose which ones to go to, and thus competition
would drive the market into terms more favorable to artists.  But with the
government not enforcing anti-trust laws, the artists get screwed over by the
people who control the reins of distribution, and they have nowhere else to go.
Witness Pearl Jam's failed attempt to break the stranglehold of Ticketmaster.
And this was one of the biggest bands at the time.  What's a little band with
no fan base to speak of to do?  There are very cool acts like Eddie From Ohio,
Jim's Big Ego, and The Nields who keep plugging away at trying to build their
own fan base to a point where they can make a stable living, and others like
Ani who start their own empire, but most are caught up in the vortex of "The
Industry" or at least its myth.

So is copying music an act of civil disobediance to try to chip away at the
wall of corporate control?  Or is it simply unethical laziness to save a buck
while still getting what you want?  I don't know.  I'm completely talking out
of my butt here.  :-) I would love to see the media conglomerates crumble a la
Fight Club, but my approach is to buy from people I know.  And as far as your
quandry goes, my suspicion is that a boycott of OtR's stuff would barely cause
a blip on RIAA's radar.  Now, if everybody suddenly stopped buying Eminem or
... I don't even know who's in the top 40 these days ... I'm sure the loss of
that income would loom much larger in their sights than our favorite band from
Ohio.  

Gack! I'm late for rehearsal!  See ya!
-- 
Don Smith                           Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                http://www.rotse.net/dasmith/

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