In the interest of deciding whether or not i should feel unethical when i download MP3s, i've asked myself and others to evaluate the ethics of certain situations, such as:

- Alice is about to buy a book, but then decides to read it at the library instead.

- Bill is about to buy a book, but then finds out that his friend already owns it. So he just borrows it from the friend instead.

- Connie is about to buy a book, but then finds a copy on the Internet and reads it instead. She immediately deletes it after reading it.

- Dave is about to buy a book, but then discovers that a friend on another continent already owns it. His friend scans it and sends the file to Dave over the Internet. Dave reads it and immediately deletes it afterwards.

I've found that most people seem to draw the line as follows: "When a person purchases a copy of some content, they can ethically make as many copies as they want and distribute them to whomever they want so long as only one of those copies is in use at any given time."

But rather than settling the matter, it seems to open a Pandora's Box of new questions. For example, let's say there was a global book club that worked as follows:

- I decide i want to read 1984 - I broadcast a message asking if anyone has a copy - Some guy in Prague does - I ask him to ship his copy to me for a few weeks - He does so - I read it and ship it back - Later, i return the favor to the club by lending a book to another member in the same fashion

I can't see any reasons such a club would be illegal or immoral. Now, what happens when the Internet makes this faster, cheaper, and more convenient? Does it become immoral? I don't think so. But book purchases plummet. As do movie and music purchases if those are tradable too. Is this bad for the world? I'm not sure yet.

I'd really like to see some of your opinions on this.

-- Anonymous, June 01, 2001

Answers

I don't draw the line where you do. My rule of thumb, certainly for the case of the book, is "Once you've bought a copy of it, you have unlimited rights to THAT COPY." So your A and B cases are OK, but C and D are not. Your global book club, however, is fine as described - - but what do you mean by "when the Internet makes this faster, cheaper and more convenient"? Are you still talking about putting books in the mail -- in which case it's never going to get more convenient than a library -- or are you now talking about zapping electronics copies around the world, which is a whole different thing?

MY intuition is, it is *exactly* the relative inconvenience of lending over e-copies that makes them OK; it means that it limits the amount of "damage" done by lending.

The intuition you ascribe to others -- "When a person purchases a copy of some content, they can ethically make as many copies as they want and distribute them to whomever they want so long as only one of those copies is in use at any given time" -- have you heard this in so many words, or is it your deduction? It sounds like some software licenses from 10 or 15 years ago, but I don't think it would ever occur to me without that knowledge.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 2001

I remember seeing some software license in the eighties (WordPerfect? Turbo Pascal?) that explicitly said you can use it "just like a book", i.e., you can make as many copies of you want, but you can only use one copy one one computer at a time. Of course, this was in a more innocent age....

-- Anonymous, June 05, 2001

> have you heard this in so many words, or is it your deduction

It's a frequent conclusion when i discuss the matter with others, like the Slashdot crowd or my coworkers. While i don't intentionally steer the conversation to that conclusion, i may be subconsciously doing so.

Again, i'm not talking about what's legal, i'm talking about what's ethical.

> My rule of thumb is "Once you've bought a copy of it, you have > unlimited rights to THAT COPY."

I think that was the traditional interpretation. But there are problems with it, both in what it allows and what it prohibits.

For example, if i buy a copy of Microsoft Word, it comes on a CD. I have to install the software to use it, but by doing so i'm copying it onto my computer. When i execute it, i'm copying it to RAM. This may seem like petty semantics, but if we just declare that copying to a hard drive is fine, then you can take the CD to all your friends' houses and install it on their computers. Or, if we just declare that copying to RAM is fine, you can install it on a network fileserver and have lots of client computers run it right off the server. Doing that feels wrong. Why?

On the other hand, there are lots of legitimate reasons to make a copy. You might have a CD that you want to listen to in the car, but you don't have a CD player in your car. So you make a copy onto a cassette. That doesn't seem unethical, but it's forbidden in that moral model.

> MY intuition is, it is *exactly* the relative inconvenience of > lending over e-copies that makes them OK; it means that it limits > the amount of "damage" done by lending.

That's very interesting. How would you state it in the form of a "law"?

-- Anonymous, June 05, 2001

[Me:] MY intuition is, it is *exactly* the relative inconvenience of lending over e-copies that makes them OK; it means that it limits the amount of "damage" done by lending.

[Mike:] That's very interesting. How would you state it in the form of a "law"?

[Me again:] If you're talking about people's intuitions *about* law, I can propose a couple:

1. An action that is trivially performed in private will be intuited as private, and beyond the reach of law. This is the pressure that leads me to *feel* that Napster use is my God-given right, even though that's not my considered intellectual opinion.

2. In direct opposition is the Categorical Imperative -- if everybody who wanted to do something did it, would the system collapse? (You need the "who wanted to" to get around the trivial cases of "what if EVERYONE became a farmer?") As long as millions of people are buying CDs, thousands can use Napster. If everyone uses Napster, nobody's buying the CDs and so nobody makes them. This is the intuition that leads to the term "freeloader" or, slightly less perjoratively, the free rider problem.

2a. But if my contribution to the damage done in a #2 case is tiny, I may just not care. Realistically. Which is why freeloaders are everywhere.

Easy electronic copying sets #1 and #2 head-on against each other. The book-lending-club, to my mind, doesn't trigger #2, because it's still inconvenient enough to discourage its use -- but I may be biased, because I have a good library system with state-wide (almost) inter-library loans, so I have access to close to the same thing, but without postage. And your example, I notice, envisions that all borrowers are also lenders -- because, if may ascribe a motivation to you, you don't approve of free riders so much yourself.

So *maybe* the one-user-at-time solution for software feels right to many people because it's a damage-limiter, and we're looking for the "right amount" of damage. It may not, in the end, even be exactly right, but it's the right magnitude.

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

I'm not so sure the "If everybody who wanted to do something did it, would the system collapse?" rule works.. If everyone stopped buying books and instead went to the library, the system would collapse.* But i wouldn't say that it's unethical for an individual to do that.

*Well, at least to the same extent that the world of music would collapse if everyone stopped buying CDs and instead went to the Internet

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

I think your ethics depend very much on your point of view. Mark Twain, for instance, was a driving force behind getting copyright terms extended and was purported to have hated the lending done at libraries. On the other hand, Jessica Litman, with her recently published book "Digital Copyright" would have the entire work available on the internet if her publisher would allow it.

Both are authors, but they have different ways of looking at their work. Mark Twain was in the Entertainment Business and he wanted to make money from his work - a prime candidate for the pay-per-view model of copyright. Jessica Litman is in the education business and published her work in book form to reach more people. The money is secondary and education is her prime objective.

All of your examples seem perfectly ethical to my point of view, but I am an advocate for the Public Domain and the Public Interest is one of my prime concerns. Were copyright term more limited, say to the original 14 years, I think my viewpoint would be altered a little. The limited scope of exclusive rights would make it a greater imperative to support the author. With nearly unlimited exclusive rights and the fact that copyright owners are often NOT the same as those who created the works, it becomes more important to stretch the use rights to their limits.

Susan Aker http://www.limitingcopyright.com

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

>I'm not so sure the "If everybody who wanted to do something did it, would the system collapse?" rule works.. If everyone stopped buying books and instead went to the library, the system would collapse.

That's why the words "who wanted to" are there. Everyone *who wants to* use the library already does, and the system doesn't collapse. And from the point of view I've been using, that's because although the library is cheaper than a bookstore, it's not vastly faster and more convenient too, so the demand is kept down to a managable level.

I'll also sign on to Susan's points that an author will have different intuitions from someone who's just a reader, and that different authors will have different desires -- the entertainer- moneymaker vs. educator distinction being key. I think it's going to be difficult to get typical people to care about length of copyright, except in the extreme cases of works being in copyright for a hundred years -- I'm not willing to take Carrie away from Stephen King, for exmaple, and that's over 25 years old. But who knows?

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001

I think it's all a question of convenience. Going to the library and dealing with the possibility of late fines (I am LAZY) can perhaps be more inconvenient than going to a bookstore, or better yet, going to an online bookstore and buying the book. Taking the time to install Napster or some other software, just so I can painstakingly download songs at 28.8k, is hardly more convenient than purchasing a couple CDs a month. So who wins? The RIAA. I still buy CDs, way more than I "steal" MP3's online.

It's all about convenience. That's why libraries haven't put book manufacturers out of business. That's why Napster hasn't put the RIAA out of busniess.

> That's why the words "who wanted to" are there. Everyone *who wants to* use the library already does, and the system doesn't collapse. And from the point of view I've been using, that's because although the library is cheaper than a bookstore, it's not vastly faster and more convenient too, so the demand is kept down to a managable level.

I think there's something you aren't taking into account here. Libraries haven't put bookstores out of business, true. Napster hasn't put the RIAA out of busniess, true. In fact, in America, to a certain extent, I truly believe that Napster has helped the RIAA by making people more aware of and more interested in music.

BUT, there's a point of diminishing returns. There's a point where Napster and P2P music networks become so convenient, and broadband becomes so widespread, that CD sales WILL begin to drop. As time goes by, if things keep getting more and more convenient to "borrow" over the internet (be it music or online books), the industries will begin to dry up. Then you will see a drop in the quantity of quality material available.

My dad is an avid reader. He has literally over a thousand sci-fi books in our garage. I've only paid for about three sci-fi books my whole life, because I just read his. But it would be very inconvenient for my friends to borrow my dad's books, or my fiancee's family, or my workmates. Put those books online, and now my dad's collection can be available to hundreds. Even if only one copy is in use at a time, he has enough books that all our friends and family can be reading from his collection at once.

This is good, because we're helping to enlighten the minds of hundreds of our friends and family. But now, only one copy of a book is getting sold per several hundred people. It's good for us, in the short term, because more education/entertainment is available. But in the long term, many a bookwriter is going to find it very difficult to make a living. And that means fewer books, less choice. That's bad.

So ethics aside, I think people need to admit that the one copy/one use at a time principle is flawed in light of the convenience technology will soon provide. Perhaps we do need to go back to the days of 14/20/30 year copyrights, instead of 75/95/115+ year copyrights, and make copyrights during that 14 year period more strict than "one copy/one use". People don't write books for free unless they're already rich, or they have a job. And people who have jobs don't write books/music/free software as fast as people who don't have regular jobs and support themselves on books/music/not-so- free software. That said, MicroSoft sucks, so don't think I support evil corporations, just honest hardworking artists.

Sorry about the long reply. Feel free to disagree with me, that's what discussions like these are all about.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

Jay, when you say that if your dad were to put his books online, "many a bookwriter is going to find it very difficult to make a living. And that means fewer books, less choice," are you concluding that in this hyptothetical situation, your father and the people participating in his sharing network are doing something unethical? Should they feel bad about it?

I usually frown upon the search-and-replace method of rhetoric, but i'll use it this time. Forgive me if it sounds sarcastic or straw-man; i don't necessarily disagree with you, but i'm playing devil's advocate:

Mr. Edison, now that you've invented the phonograph, it's possible to record a performance and listen to it over and over again. Many a singer is going to find it very difficult to make a living. And that means fewer songs, less choice.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

Correct me if I'm wrong here... were traveling singers and storytellers a viable trade in the 19th and earlier centuries? I imagine there were many of them. In medieval times you have the well- known image of travelling minstrel, for example. Now, in the 21st century, it's virtually unheard of. The closest analogy is a band doing a tour.

Maybe in a way, something was lost thanks to the phonograph, vinyl, tapes, etc. Michael the Troubadour was put out of business, so you can no longer hear the special twist he and other bards added to the popular hit "Move Thy Wylde Hind" by the group Apricots & Mandrake. On the upside, you have this disk that has the sound of the song as performed by Apricots & Mandrake themselves, that you can play without having to pay A&M to lug their lutes and huge drums all the way out to your village on a wagon.

How many musicians' works go unheard by we masses, simply because they can't afford the financial barrier imposed by the present-day recording industry? What do those would-be stars do instead?

This might all be a straw-man, though. But if not, it serves as an example of the tradeoff society made when the phonograph came about. Or indeed, any other invention designed to create, copy, or transmit information faster, easier, or cheaper. Some trades are dealt a fatal blow; new ones spring up in their wake. Many people don't get to make a living by performing; on the other hand, you could look it as society freeing up a huge population from having to spend its time singing or playing the fiddle, and instead doing something else equally productive.

-- Anonymous, June 07, 2001

Jay: I said:

>> That's why the words "who wanted to" are there. Everyone *who wants to* use the library already does, and the system doesn't collapse. And from the point of view I've been using, that's because although the library is cheaper than a bookstore, it's not vastly faster and more convenient too, so the demand is kept down to a managable level.

... and you said ...

>I think there's something you aren't taking into account here. Libraries haven't put bookstores out of business, true. Napster hasn't put the RIAA out of busniess, true. In fact, in America, to a certain extent, I truly believe that Napster has helped the RIAA by making people more aware of and more interested in music.

>BUT, there's a point of diminishing returns. There's a point where Napster and P2P music networks become so convenient, and broadband becomes so widespread, that CD sales WILL begin to drop. As time goes by, if things keep getting more and more convenient to "borrow" over the internet (be it music or online books), the industries will begin to dry up. Then you will see a drop in the quantity of quality material available

...and I say...

Yes. This was intended to be my point, so we agree. It's in my sentence "If everyone uses Napster, nobody's buying the CDs and so nobody makes them."

-- Anonymous, June 08, 2001