From the readings, what exactly the DMCA say about piracy? What provisions does it have for dealing with infringement? What exactly are the safe-harbor provisions?
Is it ethical or moral for users to download or share copyrighted material? What if they already own a version in another format? What if they were just “sampling” or “testing” the material?
Have you participated in the sharing of copyrighted material? If so, how did you justify your actions (or did you not care)? Moreover, why do you think so many people (regardless of whether or not you do) engage in this behavior even though it is against the law?
Does the emergence of streaming services such as Netflix or Spotify address the problem of piracy, or will are these services not sufficient? Is piracy a solvable problem? Is it a real problem?
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) contains two important provisions when considering internet piracy, and they are the Anti-Circumvention and Safe Harbor provisions. The anti-circumvention provision criminalizes software/systems that circumvent measures to protect copyrighted work, generally digital rights management (DRM) (thanks, Wikipedia, for another concise summarization). To put it in perspective, this act was signed all the way back in 1998, but it’s still alive and well today and it’s very much changed the landscape of the internet and copyrighted material, especially media.
When dealing with infringement, the DMCA follows “notice and takedown” procedures. These are meant to help protect Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from lawsuits. When an ISP is alerted of possible copyright infringement (someone who cares notices), then the ISP has the opportunity to simply remove the offending media and avoid being sued. This is part of the safe harbor provisions within DMCA. Since ISPs are technically liable for the offending media, the safe harbor provisions are in the DMCA to offer monetary protection.
So what does (did) that mean for online piracy? Well, over the last decade, we’ve seen many file sharing sites rise and fall due to federal intervention. In general, each successor tried to be a little more clever than the last, and in doing so, needed more money to stay profitable. So free file sharing sites turned into obligatory contribution sites. Those gave rise to monthly memberships. Finally, “companies” were just flat-out asking for donations to fight legal battles. You can find a pretty entertaining account of the chronology here.
All the while, industry got smart and decided to stop fighting the battle through lawsuits and just make it more convenient and economical to lease out media for a low cost. And thus Spotify came into being (although if you ask me, Google Play Music is hands-down the better alternative), and regardless of whether you miss the good ol’ days of The Pirate Bay and hate online music subscriptions, the fact is that Spotify works.
Is it because humanity had a come-to-Jesus and realized that robbing artists and software developers blind was unethical (I mean, come on, you wouldn’t steal a car, would you?) — not exactly. To be honest, I think people just got tired of the overhead of having to look for legitimate, high-quality, low-leeching links to the latest albums, all the while fighting advertisements and click-traps galore. Spotify and Netflix each have much cleaner interfaces, they’re practically cents on the dollar for the amount of media you get, and it avoids clogging up your hard drive.
Now for the question that’s on everyone’s (Peter Bui’s) mind: Jesse, do you engage in piracy? Answer: not for a long time. Back in my angsty teenage days, I thought piracy was the bee’s knees. It never really occurred to me that it was on the same level as physical theft or that it really had any serious consequences. But somewhere along downloading my umpteenth discography of an artist in whom I was only tangentially interested, I realized that I was a crook… Okay not really. To be honest, Google sent me a nice ad for an $8/month subscription, and I decided that was my ticket out.
Now some people say, “But Jesse, I just want to test the software before I buy it. Adobe Photoshop CC is expeeennssiivvee.” To those people I say, “1. Show me the last actual purchased software license after your trial period. 2. Why in the heck to you even need that software?” If you have a need for the software, you generally know what you want and what will work best. Even if you have some copy of a song or software that you either lost or is in the wrong format, you ought to obey the copyright laws that you implicitly agreed to upon original purchase.
While I think the number of pirates online today has significantly decreased, I still know more than a handful of friends that steal music, movies, and TV shows. I don’t think they intend to be malicious or hurtful. It’s just that free is a hard price to beat, and downloading some files online generally feels pretty innocuous. For this reason, piracy is still a problem today, though not nearly as serious. I don’t think we’ll ever fully get rid of it, mainly because I don’t think users understand or care enough to fully abide by copyright laws. But as the Spotify’s and Netflix’s of the world continue to arise and drive costs down, pirate ships will continue to sink.
P.S. Maybe I should have gone about it like this: suppose you had this amazing Krabby Patty formula you’d worked on for years, but then someone got their hands on it and distributed millions of copies…
Jesse's Ethics Blog 