THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT DOWNLOADING MUSIC WITHOUT
PERMISSION IS MORALLY EQUIVALENT TO THEFT
Until the 1990s, copying
music was a tedious task: you needed to go out and buy an album. If you wanted
to copy it, you needed to buy a cassette and then play the entire album while
the cassette was recording it. Two developments changed this: one was the invention
of easily copyable audio-file formats, most notably MP3. This allowed
music-lovers to copy a song with the click of a mouse-button. The second was
the spread of the internet, and with it special software which consumers could
use to share files, like peer-to-peer-software (p2p, torrents) and
Usenet-groups (with the NZB-filesharing method). Now, everyone could both copy
and distribute music very easily.
It is important to understand
the difference between “distributing” music and “copying” music. Distributing
means making the music available for other people, either for profit or not.
This is in any case illegal, because even if you buy a copy of a song legally,
you never have permission to pass the song on to other people. In the context
of peer-to-peer software, uploading is the same as distributing.
Copying means making a copy
of a song or album for your own use. Before the MP3-format and the internet,
making a copy was a little bit of a grey area. You were allowed to make a copy
for private and personal use, but legally speaking only under the following
three conditions (this is called the Berne three-step test, after the Berne
Convention which laid it down).[1] Copying is only allowed in
“certain special cases”.
Copying should not mean that
the artist who produced the music cannot exploit their work normally. copying
should not hurt the lawful interests of the rights holder (this is often seen
as meaning that the private copy exception is only allowed when there is also a
way of charging for the private copies being made, so that the artist gets some
payment). Before the internet other forms of copying were considered illegal,
but probably you would never become involved with any other forms of copying,
unless you actually became a professional (criminal!) music pirate with a
factory in your backyard, copying and cranking out music CDs for your own
profit. But, as noted above, the internet changed all that by making it easy
for anyone to copy and distribute music files. Today uploading music without
permission is globally considered illegal. Downloading without permission is
considered illegal in most but not all countries (i.e. in the Netherlands until
2009, it was legal to download under the private copy exception. Just recently,
the Dutch government announced they would make downloading without permission
illegal there too). This casefile only examines the case of downloading, not
uploading.
[1] Schonwetter, Tobias, ‘The
three-step test within the copyright system’, 31 July 2006,http://pcf4.dec.uwi.edu/viewpaper.php?id=58&print=1
Points for
Theft
is an assumption of property rights
FOR
Theft is taking
something from someone who is the rightful owner without their permission. It
doesn’t matter if the rightful owner keeps an original version or not. If you
are downloading music from an unofficial source, you are stealing it: you can start listening to that song,
without the permission of the original owner. The only way you can get the
right to listen to that song is via a legal transaction from which the rights
owner can make a profit
AGAINT
Theft always involves a
thief taking something away for themselves with the result that the original
owner can’t use it anymore. For example, if I steal your bike, you can’t use it
anymore. And this is exactly why theft is wrong: you had something which you
wanted to use, and now you can’t anymore, simply because I took it.
That’s why downloading
music is not theft because it is a form of copying. You download a copy from an
original, but the first owner still has the original on his or her computer,
and can still enjoy it. In more complicated terms: music files are “non-rival”
goods, meaning that my use of the good does not diminish your future use of it.[1]
[1] Investopedia, ‘Rival Good’,http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rival_good.asp#axzz1eWJ4ImSp
A
legal transaction is the only way to achieve free exchange of value
FOR
Because the artist made
the song, it is their property, in this case “intellectual property”. Property
means that the owner/artist has the right to ask something from you in exchange
for you gaining access to the music. This may be money. It may also be the
requirement that you clearly recognize the artist’s moral right to always be
mentioned as the creator of that song. This is called the “free exchange of
value”, and this is the most fundamental relationship in our free market
economy.
Whatever the artist
chooses as payment through a legal transaction, it is his/her basic right to
ask this of you. The only way to make sure that he/she can actually exercise
that right is by making sure you only take music from the artist through a
legal transaction, i.e. with their permission. Only then can we be sure that
the desired free exchange of value has taken place
AGAINT
Realistically speaking,
music is not even property - for property to really be property, it needs to be
tangible (something physical you can touch).[1] If it is tangible, it is easier to
keep you from using it, whereas when it is intangible, I can’t. What if you
hear a song on the radio which stays in your head all day long because you
liked it so much? In economic terms, we call such a good “non-excludable”.[2]
Private property is both
a rival good (see above), and excludable. The above shows that music is
neither, even though we happen to call it “intellectual property”. That means
that music can’t be private property, and copying it can’t really be theft in
any normal sense of the word (see above). In addition, the moral right of the
artist to be known as the author of a piece of music is also not broken by
downloading. People usually sort the music on mp3-players by musician’s name,
which means that we’re always recognizing that a certain artist made a certain
song.
[1] Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’,http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html
[2] Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, inThe Economics of
Knowledge: What Makes Ideas Special for Economic Growth, New
Zealand Policy Perspective Paper 05/05, November 2005,http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...
Musicians have to eat
FOR
Apart from the moral
reason, there is also a simple societal reason why it is wrong to download
music without permission. The reason is that musicians have to eat, too.
Suppose you are an up-and-coming young musician thinking about what to do with
your future. You can either become a full time musician or take up a job. If
you become a fulltime musician, you’ll be doing what you love. But at the same
time, everyone will be downloading all your music for free, simply because they
can. This means that music won’t be a good, stable source of income for you,
and this means you’d rather take up a job. Since you’re not working on your
music every day, your talent will be underdeveloped, and the little pieces of
music you do write, for example in the weekend, are not as good as they could
have been. So, downloading music without permission will lead to fewer good
musicians. That’s not only bad for the musicians, but also for us: we’ll have
less
AGAINT
It’s true that musicians
have to eat, too, but it’s not true that downloading cuts their income. Most of
the money spent on music goes to record companies, not to artists, from each
retail CD sold the artist only gets between 3 and 10%.[1] Those record companies have been
keeping musicians on a leash for decades, paying them less than they could.
They paid them enough to make sure they would remain fulltime musicians, but
not so much that they didn’t bother to create new albums. So if downloading
music files means record companies miss out on some income, we shouldn’t feel
bad about it.
[1] Information is Beautiful, ‘How Much Do
Music Artists Earn Online?’, 13 April 2010,http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-ear...
There is a private copy exception
FOR
Downloading music
without permission is allowed under the “private copy exception”. Practically,
the exception meant that you were allowed to copy, but not distribute any
music. Downloading music from a torrentsite or newsgroup is essentially the
same. People who download music do it purely for their own enjoyment and use.
They have no intention to resell the songs and make a profit from it. So, if it
was legal to make a copy for personal use before the internet was invented, why
then should it suddenly be different afterwards? Indeed while the private copy
exception is not universal it is allowed under the Information Society
Directive within the EU.[1] And when it comes to peer-to-peer
software, you can turn off the option to upload automatically. This allows you
to only download, but at a slower speed.
[1] European Parliament, Article 6/4,
‘Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May
2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in
the information society’, Official Journal,
L 167 , 22 June 2001, pp. 10 – 19, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32001L0029:EN:HTML
AGAINT
Downloading does not
fall under the so-called “private copy exception”. The private copy exception
only covered those rare cases when you took the effort to make a copy from a
lawful source (perhaps putting a song you owned on CD on to a cassette so you could
listen to it in your car). With the internet, the situation changed hugely.
Firstly, copying became a lot easier. Secondly, the home copy-exception applies
to when you borrow an album from a friend - someone you know. Online, you’re
downloading from anyone, anywhere who happens to have the song you want.
Thirdly, when you start downloading using peer-to-peer software, you will
usually also start uploading at the same time. It’s the nature of
p2p-technology that you both distribute and consume. So, you’re not just making
a copy for yourself, you will also be distributing the same song, and that
distribution is in any case wrong. These changes together mean that the three
step-test is not met, so downloading does not fall under the private copy
exception and is therefore illegal.
Downloading is morally right
FOR
Even when downloading is
illegal, it still is right from a moral viewFOR. The reason is that by
downloading, you’re not hurting the artists, but the record companies. And
these record companies have engaged in unfair practices towards consumers for
decades. They asked €20 euros for a CD, when a blank CD only costs about 5
cents. They still engage in unfair practices, for example via DRM. DRM stands
for Digital Rights Management, and it means that companies limit how and when
you can listen to a song. For example, you can buy a song and listen to it on
your MP-3 player, but if you want to play it on your laptop, you have to buy
the same song again. Moreover, record companies have sued individual consumers
for huge fines for downloading just a few songs. Most recently one ordinary
woman was fined $1.92 million dollars, which just doesn’t add up to the
“damage” these individuals are supposed to have done.[1] That’s unfair, and because it’s
unfair, we are justified in download without permission.
[1] Kravets, David, ‘Feds Support $1.92
Million RIAA File Sharing Verdict’, Wired.com,
14 August 2009,http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/feds-support-192-million-file-sharing-verdict/
AGAINT
Record companies have
been blamed for unfair practices, like DRM, “milking” artists (see opposition
argument 3), or suing individual downloaders for unfair damages. But record
companies also have a very positive role to play: they scout every day for new
talent, and offer training and production studios for up-and-coming musicians.
Moreover, they provide valuable marketing services, making sure that new
artists get heard instead of drowning in the vast sea of information that is
the internet. Consider this, how do you even know which song to download? A
large part of that is because record companies get the music out there, on to
radio stations, all over MySpace, on MTV, so that you get to hear it for the
first time. Those are things a musician is not trained to do and very often
does not want to do, which is why it is good to have record companies[1].
[1] Hole, Max, ‘The future for record
companies’, ifpi,
June 2007,http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20070607.html
Downloaders spend more on music
FOR
Downloading songs could
mean more income for musicians. Concerts (plus merchandise like T-shirts) are
becoming a bigger source of income. But suppose a new musician comes to town.
How am I supposed to know if I want to go to their concert if I don’t know their
music? Previously, I wouldn’t have gone since I didn’t want to spend money on
first buying their album and then buying the ticket. Now, I can quickly check
out their music by downloading some songs to see if I like it, and then go to
their concert. I save money on the albums, and will go more to concerts. Indeed
a study by Demos has shown that people who illegally download music spend £30
more on music per year than those who do not.[1]
[1] Demos, ‘Illegal downloaders are one of
music industry’s biggest customers’, 1 November 2009,http://www.demos.co.uk/press_releases/illegal-downloaders-are-one-of-mus...
AGAINT
It is a mistake to think
that when you’re downloading, there isn’t someone else making a huge profit.
Torrent sites and other “pirate” sites gain huge amounts of income from the
advertisements on their site. This means that they profit from material which
is not theirs. Why should they profit from material they have gotten unfairly
and without permission?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blakeley, Nic et al., ‘Non-excludability’, in The Economics of Knowledge: What Makes Ideas
Special for Economic Growth, New Zealand Policy Perspective Paper
05/05, November 2005,http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/research-policy/ppp/2005/05-05/...
Demos, ‘Illegal downloaders are one of music
industry’s biggest customers’, 1 November 2009,http://www.demos.co.uk/press_releases/illegal-downloaders-are-one-of-music-industrys-biggest-customers
European Parliament, Article 6/4, ‘Directive
2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the
harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information
society’, Official Journal,
L 167 , 22 June 2001, pp. 10 – 19, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32001L0029:EN:HTML
Hole, Max, ‘The future for record companies’, ifpi, June 2007,http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20070607.html
Information is Beautiful, ‘How Much Do Music
Artists Earn Online?’, 13 April 2010,http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/
Investopedia, ‘Rival Good’, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rival_good.asp#axzz1eWJ4ImSp
Kravets, David, ‘Feds Support $1.92 Million RIAA
File Sharing Verdict’, Wired.com,
14 August 2009,http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/08/feds-support-192-million-file-sharing-verdict/
Law.jrank.org, ‘Theft – Larceny’, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2188/Theft-Larceny.html
Schonwetter, Tobias, ‘The three-step test within
the copyright system’, 31 July 2006,http://pcf4.dec.uwi.edu/viewpaper.php?id=58&print=1
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