Ask HN: What are the strongest moral arguments against piracy? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are the strongest moral arguments against piracy?

17 pointscsallen28 comments

It's common for people to draw ethical comparison between file-sharing and theft, shoplifting, etc. I'm considering writing a blog post that argues against that point of view. However, in the words of Charlie Munger, "I feel that I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition." So I'll ask those of you who would be my opposition: what are the best arguments you have for why downloading a song, movie, application, etc is unethical?

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The file-sharing/theft analogy is a fairly sound one. If I steal tangible property--say, a pack of gum--very few people would argue that my decision to do so was ethically defensible. Given that intangible property--say, a song--may be much more expensive to produce and arguably adds much more social value for having been created, why should we treat intangible property any differently?

Lets keep analogizing...

Like the manufacturer of the pack of gum, the song's creator has invested time and money into the development, production, and distribution of that product. And like the gum, the song has some intrinsic value (or else why would I take the time to download and listen to it?). Why should I be able to realize that value for my benefit without compensating the person responsible for its creation any more than I should be able to enjoy a delicious pack of bazooka joe without ponying up to the candy store?

One might argue that the ability to reproduce the digital download without imposing any cost on the creator of the intellectual property differentiates the intangible from the tangible. If my friend has 10 apples for sale at $1 a piece and I eat one while he isn't looking, he now only has 9 apples that he can sell, limiting his maximum gross revenue to $9. This feels wrong because the product is tangible & the loss quantifiable. On the other hand, if my other friend records a digital video that she is selling and I download it for free, she can still sell 10 more copies of the song and earn $10. However, had I paid for the download, she would have $11 rather than $10.

In each case, my unauthorized consumption left the person who had spent their own resources (both human and capital) with $1 less at the end of the day.

I might try and justify having downloaded the video for free by telling myself that my illicit consumption whet my appetite for her films, making me more likely to make purchases from her in the future. However, the same could be said for the juicy apple that I took from my other friend. Perhaps because I stole my first apple I will now come back and patronize his fruit stand regularly. Ultimately he will sell more fruit because of my indiscriminate apple theft, yet my original sin still feels unethical. As well it should.

When Curebit allegedly violated the intellectual property rights of 37 Signals, they suffered quite the backlash here on HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523024).

Of course, it is easy to distinguish between downloading someone's intellectual property for personal use and misrepresenting another's intellectual property as your own, especially for commercial purposes. Yet, at their core, both acts simply represent varying degrees of the same unethical behavior.

Like it or not, your gain, whether tangible or intangible, comes at the expense of the counter-party to the would-be transaction. Further, if enough people felt justified in their apple theft, it would be harder to find a decent fruit stand. Fruit vendors would close up shop or begin selling cheaper, lower-quality apples in order to minimize their losses to theft. Similarly, if enough people feel as though misappropriating intellectual property is acceptable, it is much more difficult for creators of such to continue to afford create.

The ability to monetize one's work, whether it be apple mongering or song writing, incentivizes and finances the production and distribution of higher quality apples and songs. Remove those incentives and both the artist and the entrepreneur will ultimately be unable to sustain their efforts in the long-run.

Thanks for the post. I find myself both agreeing with some of your points, but disagreeing with the way you've chosen to frame the debate:

  I agree that:
    - theft necessarily deprives the victim of property
    - an of act copyright infringement *can* adversely affect the victim
    - copyright gives many people an incentive to create art
    - some artists support themselves entirely via profits from copyright
  I disagree that:
    - copyrighted material is the equivalent of property
    - copyright infringement *ever* deprives the victim of property
    - an act of copyright infringement necessarily affects the victim adversely
    - copyright infringement today noticeably harms the progress of the arts

Your view -- that copyrights make an author's work the "property" of that author -- is extremely common. Given the historical evidence, however, I believe that view is completely at odds with the purposes of copyright (in the US, at least). In the words of Thomas Jefferson:

  "Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give
  an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men
  to pursue ideas..."

Our copyright laws do not treat words, ideas, thoughts, etc as property that can be owned. They simply give artists exclusive rights to how their creations can be used: copied, sold, displayed, performed, etc. Infringing upon someone's copyrighted work by performing it without permission, for example, is therefore not the same as theft. Even the Supreme Court of the United States agrees: "...interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud."

This technical/legal difference translates into a moral difference, because it necessarily changes the way you view the issue. The Constitution's framers consistently espoused that speech, ideas, and invention should be free, and that copyright is an exception to this freedom. It was created solely to provide incentives for creation, not because it's "morally necessity" to compensate authors. If anything, it was viewed a moral wrong, allowed only because of the incentives it created. More quotes:

  "That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the
  moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to
  have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature... Society may give an
  exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to
  pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done,
  according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint
  from anybody... generally speaking, other nations have thought that these
  monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society"
  -- Thomas Jefferson

  "That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be
  glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we
  should do freely and generously."
  --Benjamin Franklin

So copyright infringement is certainly not the equivalent of theft. All that said, you may claim that it remains immoral because it decreases artistic incentives, and in doing so hinders the progress of the arts and sciences. If you were to say that, I would agree with you completely. However, today we've expanded the umbrella of what qualifies as an "infringement" much too far.

Original copyright law focused almost exclusively on profits. Works could be shared, read, performed, displayed, etc, as long as it was done in private and for free. Only for-profit public uses of a work required permission from the author. The point was not to force everyone who enjoyed your work to pay, but to ensure that you had a monopoly. In other words, to ensure that no one could compete with you financially. For example, another artist using your work and selling it.

Today, things are different. We have the internet, CD copying, file sharing, etc. These allow people to enjoy share and enjoy artistic works freely and privately. It's not the same as, say, copying 1000 VHS tapes and selling them to passersby on the street.

So when the record labels lobby Congress to make file-sharing illegal, because now they only make $10billion a year instead of $14billion, that's a perversion of copyright law. That's what's immoral. Copyright law doesn't exist to guarantee middlemen insane profits. Nor does it exist to control what citizens do for free in their own homes, whether or not that activity ultimately affects artistic profits. It exists to provide sufficient incentives, and that's it.

The ONLY argument for the immorality of piracy must revolve around whether it is actually harmful to the progress of the arts. My question to you is this: Has the rampant file-sharing made possible by the internet harmed artistic or scientific progress? Are books and movies and plays and inventions disappearing? Is the current state of things unsustainable? Most certainly not. If anything, the opposite is true: sharing on the internet has only spurred the creation of new arts and invention by creating a bigger and more easily-accessible market than has ever existed.

The question can also be presented in reverse: Has the repeated extension of copyright terms, lobbied for by giant content companies, helped the arts? When oure forefathers created copyright law, it lasted a maximum of 28 years. Today it lasts for an entire lifetime PLUS 70 years. Entire decades worth of movies, books, music, etc are being lost, as they remain under the control of copyright owners who have abandoned them because they are no longer profitable. The public could have and would have maintained them and improved upon them. But instead, we have to watch them rot. I'll finish with this quote, from a court case in 1821:

  "While one great object was, by holding out a reasonable reward to inventors, and
  giving them an exclusive right to their inventions for a limited period, to
  stimulate the efforts of genius; the main object was `to promote the progress of
  science and useful arts;' and this could be done best, by giving the public at
  large a right to make, construct, use, and vend the thing invented, at as early a 
  period as possible, having a due regard to the rights of the inventor. If an
  inventor should be permitted to hold back from the knowledge of the public the
  secrets of his invention; if he should for a long period of years retain the
  monopoly, and make, and sell his invention publicly, and thus gather the whole
  profits of it, relying upon his superior skill and knowledge of the structure;
  and then, and then only, when the danger of competition should force him to
  secure the exclusive right, he should be allowed to take out a patent, and thus
  exclude the public from any farther use than what should be derived under it
  during his fourteen years; it would materially retard the progress of science and  
  the useful arts, and give a premium to those, who should be least prompt to
  communicate their discoveries."

I find it slightly easier to look at arguments justifying copyright. That's related to arguments opposing piracy, but the latter can be more complex. For example, if you've established (via an argument justifying copyright) that it is ethical and correct for a country to have copyright laws, why it's unethical to pirate then boils down to why it's unethical to violate just laws, which is a whole argument in itself (social-contract arguments, deontological arguments, utilitarian arguments, etc.).

That might be too fine a distinction, but in any case, there are two main varieties of arguments justifying copyright (though there are also some others, advanced less often):

1. Utilitarian arguments, that copyright improves well-being in some important way. These divide (as I see it) into a more strongly stated utilitarian-ethics approach, and a more weakly stated public-policy approach. The stronger approach argues on utilitarian grounds that it is ethically required to have a copyright system, because of the moral good it produces. The public-policy argument makes the more limited argument that a country adopting a copyright system will improve the country's society, so it ought to do so (but is not necessarily being unethical if it chooses not to).

2. Right-of-the-author type arguments that argue for a property or quasi-property interest in ideas, or some ancillary things around ideas. This is somewhat more prevalent in French thinking than Anglo-American thinking, as suggested by the French translation of the word "copyright", droit d'auteur. The quasi-copyright category of "moral rights" is related to this, and can support some middle-ground positions, such as a belief that copyright itself is not a right, but that being accurately identified as the author of a work is a right (i.e. some kind of anti-intellectual-theft position, where it's ethical to copy a book, but not ethical to copy a book and claim you wrote it).

There's an extra level of complexity when you look at contract law, corporate copyright, and transferability. For example, some of the droit d'auteur based approaches consider it an immutable, untransferable right of the original author specifically, who can enter into licensing arrangements for the work, but cannot transfer or sign away their fundamental moral rights.

Even if we were to accept the strong utilitarian argument, it doesn't really say that it's "required" to have a copyright system. Copyright is a means, not an end, and utilitarianism is about ends. Specifically, it's about increasing the total amount of happiness among people. Which isn't so different from the public policy approach, which is about improving society as a whole.

Neither of these systems hinges on the existence of a copyright system, and even if they did, there are many many ways to implement a copyright system. Certainly, you can't say I would argue that the system as it exists today flies in the face of both approaches. To understand why, it's necessary to understand the history of copyright. Both copyright and patents

Both patents and copyright were justified in a single clause of the constitution for the following purpose (and this quote comes directly from Congress in 1988):

  "Under the U. S. Constitution, the primary objective of copyright
  law is not to reward the author, but rather to secure for the public
  the benefits derived from the authors' labors. By giving authors an
  incentive to create, the public benefits in two ways: when the original
  expression is created and ... when the limited term ... expires and the
  creation is added to the public domain."

Or, if a quote from 1988 isn't interesting enough, let's look at a quote form the court in 1829, a date much closer to the initial creation of the Constitution:

  "While one great object was, by holding out a reasonable reward to
  inventors, and giving them an exclusive right to their inventions for 
  a limited period, to stimulate the efforts of genius; the main object 
  was `to promote the progress of science and useful arts;' and this 
  could be done best, by giving the public at large a right to make, 
  construct, use, and vend the thing invented, at as early a period as 
  possible, having a due regard to the rights of the inventor. If an 
  inventor should be permitted to hold back from the knowledge of the 
  public the secrets of his invention; if he should for a long period 
  of years retain the monopoly, and make, and sell his invention publicly, 
  and thus gather the whole profits of it, relying upon his superior skill 
  and knowledge of the structure; and then, and then only, when the danger 
  of competition should force him to secure the exclusive right, he should
  be allowed to take out a patent, and thus exclude the public from any
  farther use than what should be derived under it during his fourteen
  years; it would materially retard the progress of science and the useful
  arts, and give a premium to those, who should be least prompt to
  communicate their discoveries."

This is about as utilitarian as it gets. The entire purpose is to help the public, the populace, society in general. Allowing for the perpetual monopoly of ideas, language, and art would be a crime against free speech and harm society. However, failing to protect it at all would provide 0 incentive for artists to create new work. So the most utilitarian balance is to grant protection to artists ONLY if they go through the copyright system, which would soon force their works into the public domain.

What we have today is an extreme perversion of this system. The content industries have become the very monopolies we sought to prevent. Copyright was originally 14-28 years maximum, but the content industries have successfully petitioned Congress to extend that to the entire lifetime of the author PLUS 70 years. And why not? They profit tremendously by doing this. But it doesn't help authors (who are usually long-dead), it doesn't incentivize the creation of new work, and it completely fucks over the public.

The main argument I have against piracy is this...

If you create something (movie, song, naked pictures of your wife, whatever), you do not have to show it to other people. You don't have to sell it. You don't have to give it away. If you want, you can keep it just for yourself and not show it to anyone.

Or, if you choose to you could allow other people to see it if they give you something that you want for it. You don't have to allow others to see/use it. And if they don't want to give you what you want for it they are not forced to take part in this transaction.

If you ask for a million dollars in exchange for watching your film, I can either pay you a million dollars and watch your film, or not pay a million dollars and not watch your film, simple. If you say that you want twenty dollars for your song, and I am only allowed to play that on my zune, and not on my iPod, then, again, I have a choice, I can pay you twenty dollars and take your song and use it according to your rules, or not. No one is forcing me to buy your song, and you have no obligation to let me have it.

What I can't do is say "A million dollars is too much, I know I'll just download and watch the movie anyway". I also cannot say, "I hate DRM so, I'll just bit-torrent the song so I can use on my iPod". And of course I cannot say "I really want to see your wife naked, but you won't show me your photos, I'll just take a copy off your computer anyway". If I don't like the terms of use, then I just shouldn't use it.

This is how the free market works, when you realise that no one is buying your film, because you're asking too much for it, you can lower the price and hope more people buy it. When you realise that no one is buying your music because they want to be able to play it on all their devices - not just their zune, you can sell it without DRM in the hope that more people will buy it. But, you don't have to, and if you don't I can continue not buying it for as long as I want - but I can not just say, "I don't like your terms of use, I'll just pirate it anyway".

  > But, you don't have to, and if you don't I can continue
    not buying it for as long as I want - but I can not just
    say, "I don't like your terms of use, I'll just pirate it
    anyway".

I'll ask you what I asked someone else. What if me, you, and a few others are hunter gatherers living off the land. I somehow get the bright idea to build a house on some land, herd animals, and grow crops. Then I say, if anyone else wants to copy this, it'll cost you 10,000 bananas. So what's the verdict - is it right for me to have a monopoly on my idea? I came up with it after all. Is it immoral for you to copy it without paying what I ask?

I'll take a thirty second stab at it - piracy is unsustainable. It costs money to create music, movies and games - movies like Transformers, and video games like Portal are unlikely to be created without a significant amount of funding. While piracy doesn't directly take money away from the creators, it can potentially subtract from their income.

Thanks for your response. I think there are two distinct points in your paragraph, so I'll respond to them one at a time:

------------

  1) "The Promoting of the Arts Argument"
      Wherein if we don't work to provide a significant
      amount of funding to artists, they won't be able to
      create expensive works.

It is true that, unless studios can see a significant amount of return on their investment, they won't have an incentive to create massively expensive content. But there are more than a few problems with this line of reasoning.

First, is there any evidence that technology and innovation will cease if piracy continues? The mount of illegally-acquired content is increased dramatically in the last 10 years, but artistic progress hasn't stopped. In fact it's increased. We still have expensive and technologically-groundbreaking blockbusters like Avatar being produced. And there are more self-published authors and independent filmmakers than ever before.

Secondly, where do we draw the line? There has to be a cutoff point. We could theoretically create laws that force people to buy movies, guaranteeing that the film industry has $100 million in funding for every movie it makes. Or $1 billion. Or $10 billion. But would that really be justifiable? At some point, you're going behind "promoting art". There are plenty of movies that cost 1% of Transformers to make, but contributed much more to society by almost all accounts. I don't think it's the government's place to guarantee the financial success of the artistic industry. And if they're going to do that, it should be done via taxation, and the public should own some stake.

Third, why can't artists rely on supply and demand? If the public values art so highly, it will pay for it. Louis C.K. released his new standup online in an easily-copyable way, and he made millions. People still go to see movies in the theater. They still see plays. They still go to art galleries, and live concerts, and book signings. Hell, they still buy books and even e-books. This is how artists have survived for centuries, and how art will continue to progress. If you're good enough, people will want to see you and your work.

Fourth, why should anyone be guaranteed success in the digital marketplace? The downside to the digital world is that file-sharing, which will obviously be a problem when audio and video are converted to bits. The upside is that you can easily reach billions of people, so the potential for exposure and revenue is huge. But as an artist, no one is forcing you down this path. As I pointed out above, there are plenty of other ways that you can succeed. So how is it justifiable for us to have laws that limit the populace's digital freedoms, just so artists and companies can make business decisions with less risk?

------------

  2) "The Consequentialist Argument"
      Wherein piracy must be bad, because it ultimately
      results in less income for artists.

I don't think this argument is as strong as the first. We live in a capitalist culture where nobody is guaranteed to succeed at any business venture. I don't see why there should be an exception just because the business is related to art.

Your argument implies that, if the ultimate consequence of a decision is a reduction in someone else's income, the decision is unethical. If that was the case, then early car owners would have been immortal for failing to support people still in the business of selling horses. And it would be unethical to share a lawnmower with a neighbor instead of buying your own. And it would unethical to borrow a friend's DVD (or copy its data) instead of buying a new one.

This doesn't seem sufficient to me. It not that you deprived someone else of income: it's how you did it. Compare all of the above to, say, copying DVDs and selling them.

> First, is there any evidence that technology and innovation will cease if piracy continues?

That is, indeed, a flaw in my argument.

> Secondly, where do we draw the line? ... We could theoretically create laws that force people to buy movies

Reduction ad absurdium, bored.

> Third, why can't artists rely on supply and demand?

But in this case the supply doesn't really follow traditional economic models, because once a song is recorded, the supply becomes effectively infinite, since you can download the song as much as you want. And as far as Louis C.K., one anecdote is not proof.

> why should anyone be guaranteed success in the digital marketplace?

They're not guaranteed success in the current marketplace, either.

(ok, back hurts too much to type anymore)

  > Reduction ad absurdium, bored.

It's a valid question, is it not? The protection of artists must fall along some continuum: either no protection whatsoever, the strongest protection imaginable, or somewhere in between. So where do we draw the line?

In the last few days since I wrote my response to you, I've read up a lot on the history of copyright, and why we have it in the first place. And the line drawn by the framers of our Constitution and our early courts was this: Speech and ideas cannot be property. Giving people control over them endangers free speech and harms the public. But failing to do so disincentivizes authors. Thus, the goal was to give the minimum possible protection that would encourage the progress of art and science.

All the evidence suggests that the amount of protection that exists today far exceeds that minimum level. How can we justify that?

  > They're not guaranteed success in the current marketplace, either.

Exactly, and that's great. That's how it should be. Copyright law wasn't created to force people to buy artists' work. It was created to prevent people from profiting off of someone else's work. It was created to promote progress in art and science. But today, it's clearly not. I've gotta run, but I'll leave you with this example:

Every 20 years, when the copyright on Mickey Mouse is about to expire, Disney spends a ton of cash to convince Congress to retroactively extend the length of copyright terms. They always succeed, but the consequences are grave. Something like 99% of copyrighted material is no longer commercially viable more than 10 years after its creation. But since copyright terms are continually extended, all of these works remain under the control of their creators, and are never released to the public. Entire decades worth of movies from Hollywood in the 1920s an 1930s have been left to decay, because their owners have no incentive to promote them, but the public isn't allowed to access them. Our entire history is evaporating before our eyes so Disney can keep making money off of Mickey Mouse. So to recap:

1. A great many historical works of art are being lost. 2. New artists are not allowed to re-imagine old stories and art from a century ago, because it's still under copyright. (Ironic, because Disney created its art by re-imagining old fairy tales.) 3. Content companies like Disney have no incentive to make new art, because they retain control of their old art.

So where's the progress? How does this system make art better?

Fairness/cheating: It violates reciprocal altruism with respect to the artist. The act of taking without compensation implies the work has no value.

Authority/subversion: Arguments that the compensation is indirect (and therefore excuses taking without payment) implies artists do not have the right of entering into contracts to support themselves. (This dimension is with respect to the law. Anyone arguing for piracy already values respect for the law less and may actually value subverting authority instead.) (Arguing for alternate payment models is arguing not for piracy but for a valid alternative that is not piracy.)

Your moral argument for piracy will likely rest on Liberty/oppression, implying the requirement to pay for something that has low/no marginal cost is oppression. That may or may not be true, but it is independent of fairness/cheating.

Loyalty/betrayal: This dimension speaks to self sacrifice. I don't think it comes into play here.

Sanctity/degradation: This speaks to whether altering content is moral or not. (Think about a your favorite song being rendered as elevator music ... very immoral. Or someone altering Star Wars so that Han Solo didn't shoot first.)

And I grabbed these dimensions straight from here: http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.php

Thanks for responding.

  Fairness/cheating

What about the open source movement? I code using a lot of free technology. Rather than implying the tech is of no value, I think the fact that I (and millions of others) use it is a testament to its value. We hold the creators in high regard. The stated purpose of copyright law in the Constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If anything, invoking copyright law for nothing other than personal financial gain is immoral.

  Authority/subversion

I may be misinterpreting your point here, but I have no problem with paying artists indirectly through representatives. If they want to enter into a contract, that's their right.

  Liberty/oppression

My neighbor buys a book from Borders, reads it, and gives it to me. At this point, I'm entering into a transaction with my neighbor, not with the author of the book, and not with Borders. This is perfectly legal behavior in accordance to the doctrine of first sale, which prevents owners from retaining control over copyrighted material after it's been bought. This is also a very moral doctrine, in my opinion, because it's excessively greedy to try to maintain control over something even after you've sold it.

Where the confusion comes into play is with digital goods. Digital goods are MUCH easier to manipulate (copy, trade, give, etc) than physical goods. Theoretically, ONE person can buy a CD, then make it available to everyone else on earth in a matter of minutes. This destroys business models that worked with physical goods, but I would argue that destroying business models is not immoral in a capitalist society. We don't condemn Henry Ford for ruining the businesses of horse-and-wagon sellers.

The stated purpose of copyright law in the Constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If anything, invoking copyright law for nothing other than personal financial gain is immoral. Instead, the law should be used to stop those who would hinder scientific and artistic progress; for example, by creating knockoffs and masquerading them as the original, thus preventing the original creators from ever reaping rewards.

File-sharing does indeed make some forms of art a lot less profitable than they could be. And you may be tempted to argue that this equates to hindering progress. However, I'd respond by pointing out that profit is not the same as progress. There is no evidence to suggest that art has stopped progressing due to file-sharing. If anything, it's only gotten better in the last 10 years.

  Sanctity/degradation

Haha, well I wouldn't agree that it's immoral to modify art or music. In fact, that's kind of the purpose. It's about expression, speech, creativity, and the flow of ideas. This behavior is explicitly allowed by the fair use doctrine.

With open source both the producer and consumer sides are agreeing to share. There's nothing wrong with that, it implies nothing about the value of what is shared, and it is not piracy.

Piracy is where the consumer side of a transaction takes without permission. That's cheating. It is immoral.

>invoking copyright law for nothing other than personal financial gain is immoral. >This is also a very moral doctrine, in my opinion, because it's excessively greedy to try to maintain control over something even after you've sold it. >invoking copyright law for nothing other than personal financial gain is immoral

It sounds like you believe personal financial gain is inherently immoral. Many people do feel this way. Many people don't.

You should assume the opposite of your bias and form your argument on that basis. It will make for a stronger argument.

  > Piracy is where the consumer side of a transaction takes 
    without permission. That's cheating. It is immoral.

That's not what piracy is, actually. Piracy is simply "an infringement of copyright". And copyright is the exclusive right to copy a work, distribute it for sale to the public, perform it publicly, display it publicly, or create derivatives from it. It's not really comparable to a normal transaction.

  > It sounds like you believe personal financial gain is
    inherently immoral. Many people do feel this way. Many
    people don't.

Well, that's not really what I believe. I do own a company after all. It doesn't get much more financial gain-seeking than that :)

The original intention of copyright was as follows: Ideas, expression, and information have no owners. They belong to the public because of free speech and all. However, this discouraged their creation, because if you wrote a book someone could just put their name on it and mass-produce it, giving you no credit. So lawmakers said how about we give authors a limited time to benefit financially from copyright. That will be a great incentive for them to create new works. However, after that time ends, the public should enjoy unrestricted use. That way we don't create monopolies on free speech and expression.

My problem is that we're straying from this original intent. The entire purpose was to prevent monopolies* on information. You used to only have copyrights for 28 years, max, before the public got full control over it. Since then, content companies and artists have endlessly lobbied Congress to give them more power, and today copyrights last an entire lifetime PLUS 70 years. Nothing ever enters the public domain.

So the real question is: How can you argue that copyright infringers are immoral, when the reality is that copyright holders are the ones who've violated the original intent of the law purely for personal gain? Their actions are ion violation of almost every moral foundation you listed (fairness, liberty, authority, betrayal, degradation).

  > You should assume the opposite of your bias and form
    your argument on that basis. It will make for a stronger 
    argument.

Thanks for the feedback.

>How can you argue that copyright infringers are immoral, when the reality is that copyright holders are the ones who've violated the original intent of the law purely for personal gain?

I'd rephrase this as taking from copyright holders (violating the terms proffered) is moral because the holders are immoral.

This is precisely an argument based on justice/fairness. It sounds like you are taking a moral stand that piracy is equivalent to principled protest.

Taking a song for free when you are expected to pay for it isn't the same as refusing to go to the back of the bus, unless you do so with the explicit intent of suffering unjust consequences in the service of changing a bad law or social norm.

I believe it is uncontroversial that most piracy is done with the expectation of not being caught. Arguing for piracy is a difficult moral position because it is a 'small wrong' (breaking a proffered contract) with highly unlikely consequences. If you wish to take the principled protest stand you need to argue that it is right to pirate content with the intent to get caught.

Getting away with piracy doesn't really work as a moral stand. (Advocating piracy can be a pragmatic stand for the creative destruction of specific industries ... but that alone doesn't transform the individual act of piracy into moral one.)

A clean separation of 'pragmatic' or 'force of history' arguments from 'moral' arguments may serve you better.

For moral arguments you cannot ignore the moral consequences of the individual actions advocated. It's the classic doing wrong for the greater good. Breaking the law for principled protest is moral because the protester is seeking the consequences of breaking the law rather than avoiding the consequences.

Basis for argument:

I am probably not in the minority in thinking that I own the fruits of my labor. If I raise some corn in my garden, I own it. I, and I alone, possess the right of disposal of that corn. Would you agree that the following factors would not change that:

(a) It's easy to steal. (There isn't a fence around it.) (b) It (seems) easy to make. (Just drop some seeds in ground.) (c) I sometimes give my corn away. (d) Other people sometimes give their corn away. (e) Some people can't grow corn but really like corn. (f) I have lots of corn. (g) Historically, people couldn't sell corn. (h) People who stole my corn liked it so much they told their friends and their friends bought my corn. (i) Growning corn is an outdated way to make a living in the 21st century.

Expansion on the above:

Suppose I create a cake recipes instead of corn. I can come to an agreement with someone else to control the distribution of that recipe. Anything from: "Here is my special recipe dear, please keep it in the family." to "In exchange for $X dollars you can use my recipe for a year."

How is stealing/copying my cake recipe by taking it from my kitchen any different than taking corn from my garden?

Notice that the above argument does not depend on patents, copyright or some definition of "intellectual property".

I agree with everything you said, but do not agree that this is relevant to laws about copyrights or patents. This is THE most important thing that people fail to understand about the copyright debate, because they are not aware of the history or the purposes behind copyright law:

Ideas and words are NOT property. They cannot be "owned". Any system that allowed otherwise would be a blatant attack on the freedom of speech. The framers of our Constitution (and the creators of our copyright laws) were keenly aware of this. In the words of Thomas Jefferson:

  If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive
  property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an
  individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the
  moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and 
  the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
  ...
  That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the
  moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to
  have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them,
  like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any
  point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being,
  incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in
  nature, be a subject of property.

Copyright law does NOT make an idea your property.

What it does do is give you a financial monopoly. It gives you the exclusive right to publicly display your work, publicly perform it, distribute copies of it for money, etc. If that's all copyright law does, why was it created? Well, let's look at what life was like in the old days:

Let's say you were a brilliant author, and you just wrote a book. You would begin the laborious task of making copies of said book, and either selling them or distributing them to libraries, friends, etc. Then some rich guy who owned a printing press would find it, make a zillion copies, and you wouldn't get a dime.

Nothing was innately wrong with this, because one has no right to own or control an idea or speech. But from a utilitarian point of view this was a bad system, because nobody had any incentive to create works of art. And so for the sole purpose of incentivizing the creation of art, governments began the "embarrassment" (Jefferson's words, not mine) of restricting speech in order to give artists monopolies, rather than giving monopolies to the printing press. And I actually agree that the copyright system was a sensible thing to do.

However, the laws we have today are an absolute perversion. Copyright is meant to prevent businesses from profiting by ripping off artists. It was not meant to prevent individuals from sharing or enjoying art for free in the privacy of their own homes. But we're allowing big media companies to reframe the debate using misleading terms like "intellectual property", "piracy", and "theft". And we're allowing them to strip our rights away from us, not to promote the progress of science and the arts, but to line their pockets.

This is a very leading question. "Piracy" is immoral within the context of copyright. But if the copyright system itself is immoral (because, for example, the successful enforcement of copyright is in total conflict with important digital freedoms), then we should get rid of copyright. Or maybe reduce it in some way. In which case the term "piracy" will lose meaning, and we will just call it "copying".

The context I'm considering is one in which copyright itself may be justifiable. In such a case, it's still possible to create "copyright" laws that don't actually serve these justifiable purposes.

For example, let's pretend that everyone agrees on the following: A country which produces no art is bad, and we should therefore protect incentives for people to produce it. It wouldn't immediately follow that digital piracy is unethical, unless it could be shown that it destroys incentives to produce music.

So you're not asking the question "What are the strongest moral arguments against piracy?", you're asking the question "What are the strongest moral arguments against piracy, if we all pretend to agree that a country which produces no art is bad, and we should therefore protect incentives for people to produce it?"

Firstly, that's a lot of assumptions to make, and to anyone who disagrees with them, any further discussion may be uninteresting.

Secondly, the assumptions are somewhat confused or ambiguous. "A country which produces no art is bad". What do you mean by "bad"? (And is there ever going to be any circumstance where a "country" never produces any art at all?) And what precisely do you mean by "art"? "We should therefore protect incentives?" Protect which "incentives"? Incentives provided by copyright laws as they exist right now? Natural incentives, like "I like painting"? Incentives like "200,000,000 people downloaded my art on the internet, which makes me happy to know they they all like my art, even though no one paid me"?

And if we can decide which incentives it is that need protecting, and that we _should_ protect them, are we agreed on _how_ we are going to protect them, or to what lengths we should go to protect them?

Conclusion: we will need to spend a lot of time discussing the premises of the question before we ever get to the point of answering the question itself.

You're right, of course, but I don't think a deep dive into the premises is a practical. There's just not enough time. Any high level discussion is going to require the participants to many layers of premises.

Whether we like it or not, there are basic beliefs about copyright already entrenched in American culture and law. And even that is based on a common sentiment regarding property and ownership. Which can't be justified without a shared belief in having a government in the first place. Etc. I could keep going.

Instead of starting from the bottom up, or from some arbitrary point in the middle, I think a top-down approach is more practical. As messy as it is, that's how the law has to work, otherwise decisions can never be made. Let's just take the status quo for granted, and ask: "Are recently-passed and newly-proposed laws even consistent with the primary goals of copyright?" Or, to frame it ethically instead of legally: "Does digital file-sharing conflict with the societal values that led us to value copyright in the first place?

I suppose it's necessary to clarify exactly what those societal values are. But, from a practical standpoint (not a theoretical one), it would be premature to begin debating the justification behind the values themselves.

The definition of ownership is the right to exclude others' access to the thing that is owned. By circumventing that right, you are depriving someone of ownership - in other words, you're stealing.

To invalidate that argument you have to redefine ownership, and that is a tricky thing.

Well put... I like the way you frame the argument around the concept of ownership.

However, we can't conflate access to another's property and the deprivation of that property. If I walk on my neighbor's lawn without his permission, I am accessing his property but not depriving him of ownership. Similarly, If I misappropriate someone's copyright, I am accessing his property but not depriving him of ownership.

In each case, the owner's rights are being invaded, but the owner is not deprived of ownership.

Perhaps this explains the problem analogizing copyright infringement to theft. It doesn't quite fit. Theft necessarily deprives the owner of his property, copyright infringement does not.

Therefore, a more appropriate analogy in the law might be to trespass. If someone trespasses on my property, they violate my right to exclude other's access to such property without stealing it. The same can be said for misappropriation of intellectual property.

I think we have to be careful with using the term "property". People are very familiar with the concept of property. So when they hear that word in the context of this debate, they (understandably but mistakenly) assume the copyright makes artistic works the "property" of the author. From there, one automatically begins to draw analogies to stealing, etc. However, none of these terms are in keeping with copyright law, because copyright law is not about property. The law is very careful to draw a distinction. Here's the correct terminology:

- Copyright law provides authors a financial monopoly. It gives them exclusive rights as to how a work may be sold, displayed publicly, or performed publicly. It does not make that work the "property" of the author. - Copyrighted material is known as "infringing material", which is not the same as stolen goods. - Violators are said to have "misappropriated" a copyright, or to have "infringed" upon the province of a copyright, thus committing "copyright infringement". This is not the equivalent of piracy.

Even trespassing doesn't seem like a valid analogy. But I would argue that we don't really need to analogize. Why not just look at the law for what it is?

The point is incentive authors to create new works by granting them a financial monopoly on their works, but to protect public interests and the freedom of speech, information, and ideas by making this monopoly limited in time and scope. It wasn't designed to prevent people from accessing an author's work. It was to prevent them from profiting off of it.

Perhaps simpler: If you make something and I take it without permission, I'm a dick. Going around being a dick is bad karma. Morally, we should all strive to not be dicks.

  > Perhaps simpler: If you make something and I take it
    without permission, I'm a dick.

Yes, I agree. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright law.

If you record a song, and I copy it to my hard drive without permission, I'm a dick. Same same.

Your reasoning is too simple. It doesn't have enough rules to reflect the complex nature of reality:

- If I breathe, and you grow a plant that utilizes the carbon dioxide from my breath without my permission, are you a dick?

- If I go to the park, make a snowman, and leave, and you use the snow to build an igloo, are you a dick?

- If I'm singing a song in a subway, and you're also in the subway, and your tape recorder picks up a faint echo in the background from a mile away, are you dick if you keep the recording?

- If we live in a hunter gatherer society, and I create the idea to build a house, and you take my idea and build a house on your land, too, are you a dick?

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