[wrigby]

After studying copyright law for music business classes in college, I think that most conversations about piracy could be enhanced by a common understanding of some concepts that current (US) copyright law is based on.

The most important, I think, is an understanding of the first-sale doctrine[1], and how it differs from reproduction and distribution rights.

Many advocates for piracy argue that distributing copyrighted materials on the Internet is no different than reselling a DVD they previously bought. However, the distinction becomes more clear when we consider that by distributing a movie or song through the Internet, we are also making a copy of it. Modern computers have made it incredibly easy to make a copy of a work, to the point that it doesn't even feel like we're copying something. Because of this, it doesn't feel wrong to share a song or movie.

The actual amount of lost sales is immaterial when addressing the binary question of whether or not someone should be allowed to share a movie publicly on the Internet. The right to reproduce and distribute a copyrighted work to the public is solely that of the copyright holder - whether your doing so results in them losing money or not.

The question of appropriate penalties, though, is much less clear, and I think it's a shame that prosecutors and rights-holders have pursued defendants as viciously as they have. In many of these cases the judgments are unfairly strict (or at least appear that way), which just makes the MPAA and RIAA look more evil, and hurts everyone in the long run.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

[klagermkii]

I feel that by reducing it to a binary legal question you've already dropped so many layers of nuance which help shape peoples own moral or ethical view of it. We all know that distributing copyrighted goods is against the law, reducing a complex question to an irrelevant simple one does nothing to help settle what people may feel is legal overreach.

Also even the "right to reproduce and distribute a copyrighted work to the public is solely that of the copyright holder" is not an absolute when you look at things like mechanical royalties.

[wrigby]

That's a very good point - I wanted to point out that the issue is clear from a binary legal perspective, and my personal stance from an ethical perspective is that reproduction and distribution _should_ be the sole right of the original creator (unless otherwise assigned). I don't think I communicated that effectively though.

I can definitely see that it's not a simple issue, and I think you're right to point out the nuance that I didn't acknowledge.

Compulsory mechanical licenses are an interesting beast for sure. I'm not really sure what to make of them from an ethical standpoint.

[klagermkii]

I feel like most people are acknowledging the legal perspective in this thread. The comments are using words like "draconian" or "going too far" or "The law is clear: complicity in copyright violation". There's very little doubt that the four top pirates on that site are breaking some kind of law, it's more about how hard they should be punished or if the law is fair as it currently stands.

There's this interplay between the law and ethics as to how much your ethics are shaped by what the law currently says, vs the law being shaped by the communal ethics of people. I think when you reference a detail of the law (say first-sale doctrine) as a black-and-white first principle for your view of ethical IP handling it feels like there's not much room to move the ethical line. If there is some kind of absolute author moral right to first-sale, why even put a time limit on copyright or patents etc?

Personally I feel that people should be able to make a living (and more) from producing creative or useful work. Everyone benefits from that. I think the legal details beyond that including copyright terms, exclusivity, first-sale, reselling used software, importing of trademarked goods, mechanical royalties, license agreements, patent pools. All of that to me is ugly hacks on ugly hacks to try and make a workable system out of it. And I don't care if people throw all of it out so long as they can still come up with a viable way for people to make movies, make video games, make music, make medicine and make useful software applications while still being able to support themselves and their family that doesn't just depend on charity.

[donatj]

> Modern computers have made it incredibly easy to make a copy of a work, to the point that it doesn't even feel like we're copying something.

Which is why copyright should simply die. It's need has been replaced. The car has been invented and we're in court defending the horse. It's silly and backwards.

[esrauch]

Except with digital content you must make a copy of it to transfer it as your sale. For that matter, you must make a copy (in some cases several copies) in memory simply to play it. Without any right to copy you have no rights at all.

Luckily for everyone the actual law is pragmatic. They don't set out some set of philosphy and then enforce whatever is concluded by these axioms being applied. The rules can be made arbitrarily to mitigate practical harm and neither the "but every number is technically in pi!" or "only rights owners have the right to control copying!" have any real world weight.

[doozy]

The public library doesn't seem to care about your theories.

They've been lending books, mags, cds, movies, etc. for longer than I've been alive

[wmf]

And the first-sale doctrine is why libraries are legal. (I imagine that book publishers once waged an MPAA-style war against libraries.) But libraries really have nothing to do with P2P piracy.

[xj9]

That's not the same as building a publishing operation and creating new copies of the items in their catalog for anyone who wants one. Lending doesn't create new copies.

Personally, I think IP is nonsense, but a lot of people disagree with me.