Posted by Christopher Campbell on 12/08/06 21:26

On Fri, 8 Dec 2006 12:00:17 -0800, Colin B wrote
(in article <4579c452$1@clear.net.nz>):

>
> "Christopher Campbell" <christophercampbell@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:0001HW.C19EEECA001B80FFF0407500@news.wavecable.com...
>
>> I might find all kinds of arguments about why I am entitled to use your
>> car,
>> or even why it might be a benefit to you for me to use your car. But I
>> suspect that if I took your car without asking you or paying for it, you
>> could still have me arrested. Sure, I might claim "fair use" by only using
>> the car for a little while and while you were not using it but, selfish
>> and
>> unreasonable person that you are, you probably would think I was simply
>> stealing your car. No matter how beneficial to you it might be for me to
>> steal your car, you probably would insist that the decision be left up to
>> you, not to me.
>>
>> It is disingenuous to steal intellectual property and then rationalize it
>> by
>> insisting it was a benefit to the property owner. The fact remains: you
>> took
>> something that belonged to somebody else and used it for your own benefit
>> without the owner's permission. All the rationalization in the world does
>> not
>> change that fact. Some property owners might allow the use of their
>> property
>> on YouTube. Others might not value the so-called 'benefits' as greatly.
>> Their
>> circumstances or the nature of their property might be different. The
>> decision should be theirs, not left to a bunch of covetous juveniles on
>> YouTube whose only interest is getting something for nothing.
>>
>> It should be up to the owners of intellectual property to decide who gets
>> to
>> use that property and under what conditions. Thieves should not be the
>> ones
>> who make up the rules about using intellectual property.
>
> You say that "the fact remains: you took something that belonged to somebody
> else and used it for your own benefit without the owner's permission". I
> would agree with this statement entirely if I made exact copies of a
> commercial DVD without the owner's permission and then sold them on the
> black market for a profit for myself.
>
> But isn't the Youtube situation slightly different? If I were to upload one
> track from a commercial DVD without permission, then I haven't gained any
> financial benefit from doing this. In these circumstances, isn't it really
> Youtube who gains all the benefit from this upload, and isn't it Youtube who
> made the site available for me to do the upload? Isn't it the uploaders who
> are taking all the risks and Youtube who are gaining all the benefits?
>
> I have been told in this thread that, all the present law requires Youtube
> to do, is to remove offending items when (and if) the legitimate owners
> complain. If it is obvious to Youtube that huge numbers of uploads are
> "stolen property" then wouldn't it be better if Youtube refused to publish
> these items in the first place (despite the current law) instead of waiting
> for the copyright holders to ask for such items to be removed? Aren't
> receivers of stolen property who use it for their own benefit also
> committing a crime?
>
> But as has been pointed out in Fred's blog, perhaps the rights' owners don't
> mind that poor copies of a few tracks from their DVDs appear on Youtube? If
> huge numbers of these "stolen items" remain on internet for a long time,
> then couldn't we assume that the owners are pleased to get the free
> advertising from having these items on Youtube? If they were concerned about
> the situation, wouldn't they have asked Youtube to delete these items long
> ago?
>
>

Ah, so if I let you use Fred's car without Fred's permission, then you won't
mind if you let me use Jill's car and Tom's car without their permission. As
long as I don't benefit from your using Fred's car and you don't benefit from
my using Jill's and Tom's cars, then none of us are stealing, eh? Especially
if what we are doing is just taking everybody's cars to a central lot (with
or without the owners' permission; who cares?) then nobody is stealing
anything? And the lot owner is doing nothing wrong if he simply promises to
return a car to its rightful owner if he or she comes along and claims it? No
matter how long it takes the rightful owner to notice that their car is
missing? What, you expect that people have to go out to the garage every day
to make sure that their car is still there or forfeit their legal right to
the automobile?

Legal technicalities aside, I find the ethics more than a little hazy. If I
am a recording artist, I might not have the time or the resources to check
every music-sharing web site every day to see if anyone is stealing my music.
It does not mean that I do not mind; it might merely mean that I am poor or
that I have to spend time working for a living instead of checking to see if
anyone is stealing from me. Now, maybe the big labels have the resources to
do that for me. But the big labels are a more than a little picky about who
they will take on, so if I am a young and starving artist, I am on the road
all the time selling my own CDs at every podunk town and bus stop. Maybe the
free exposure on YouTube is a great benefit for a guy like me, but that
should be my choice, not that of someone who just wants a free copy of my
music.

And, let's face it. We are not talking about single tracks here. People
upload whole collections of CDs and DVDs, and download them just as fast.
Your description of wholesale larceny as "poor copies of a few tracks" is
rather inaccurate. This is the digital age, and a copy can be an exact
duplicate of the original. It is not a few tracks; it is all of them --
everything the artist has ever done, his entire life's work, now possibly
made worthless and irrelevant by the arrogant irresponsibility of a bunch of
self-serving YouTube clowns.

Of course, there is a certain sense of poetic justice for the record labels
that is not lost on me. They exploited artists for generations, making them
little better than slave labor. When CDs came out, we all had to go out and
buy new copies of music we already had, paying full price. Now the labels are
crying that people don't appreciate them. And new artists are finding that
YouTube is just the ticket for bypassing the labels entirely. But none of
that is an excuse for intellectual property theft. I might not like the way
the labels do business, but that does not excuse me from responsibility if I
steal from them. And I sure do not want to hurt the artists who produce the
songs I like. If no one can make a living making music, who then will make
music? Who will make videos? Do I really want everything to be the quality of
a bunch of teenage amateurs out screwing around with their parents' video
camera?

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