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The Anachronism of E-book Piracy
By convention, piracy essentially refers to robbery at sea. The crime lies here in the violent theft of property. [1] What I question first, though, is whether the analogy of online piracy, in particular e-book piracy, is accurate. To start with, online piracy involves no violence. This pares the problem down to theft, and thereby the idea of ownership of property. Theft, which is basically a change of possession of physical property without the owner’s voluntary and informed consent, is problematic because it necessarily deprives the owner of his own property through wrongful means. However, digitized material such as e-books is different in the sense that it can be shared without deprivation to others. In this respect, insofar as the analogy of “piracy” is meant to designate theft, the term “online piracy” is a misnomer. | |
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< | Yet, despite this non-exclusive nature of digitized material, might online piracy somehow still be a wrongful means? In some sense, it is “wrongful” precisely because it duplicates and subsequently circulates digitized material, thereby infringing copyright law, which grants a copyright owner the exclusive right “to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies […]” and “to distribute copies […] of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.” 17 U.S.C. § 106(1), (3). However, I am not convinced that online piracy is wrong simply because it is incompatible with the letter of the law. Copyright has two broad objectives: (1) to incentivize the creation of works; (2) to incentivize the efficient exploitation of works. [2] The basis of (2) is the likening of intellectual property to conventional private property: just as a person will bother to manage, maintain and improve a piece of property only if he has exclusive property rights over it, so an author will be encouraged to make his work better only if he is the exclusive owner of it. But this analogy is fallacious because ownership is necessarily linked to exclusive property under this model. Yet digitized material, unlike private property, is non-exclusive; changes effected by somebody else other than the author to a digitized copy of the work do not preclude improvements made by the author himself. If anything, it would be more accurate to compare this to making a separate copy of the private property, in which case the owner would not be prevented or discouraged from doing whatever he wants to do to the original. Nevertheless, the difference remains here that making a digital copy costs nothing. | >
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It's propaganda. So?
Yet, despite this non-exclusive nature of digitized material, might online piracy somehow still be a wrongful means? In some sense, it is “wrongful” precisely because it duplicates and subsequently circulates digitized material, thereby infringing copyright law, which grants a copyright owner the exclusive right “to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies […]” and “to distribute copies […] of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.” 17 U.S.C. § 106(1), (3). However, I am not convinced that online piracy is wrong simply because it is incompatible with the letter of the law. Copyright has two broad objectives: (1) to incentivize the creation of works; (2) to incentivize the efficient exploitation of works. [2]
I thought its purpose was to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
The basis of (2) is the likening of intellectual property to conventional private property: just as a person will bother to manage, maintain and improve a piece of property only if he has exclusive property rights over it, so an author will be encouraged to make his work better only if he is the exclusive owner of it. But this analogy is fallacious because ownership is necessarily linked to exclusive property under this model. Yet digitized material, unlike private property, is non-exclusive; changes effected by somebody else other than the author to a digitized copy of the work do not preclude improvements made by the author himself. If anything, it would be more accurate to compare this to making a separate copy of the private property, in which case the owner would not be prevented or discouraged from doing whatever he wants to do to the original. Nevertheless, the difference remains here that making a digital copy costs nothing. | | | As for (1), unless the incentive in question is solely the abstract idea of exclusive ownership itself (as opposed to the ultimate aim of profit), I fail to see how online piracy, at least in the case of e-books, does not add to the incentive, since e-book piracy has been repeatedly shown to boost overall book sales. Paulo Coelho, who licensed the exclusive right to HarperCollins? to sell his books in the US for a given period of time, and who does not own any of the translation rights either, nonetheless enabled the unauthorized free downloading of his books previously in various languages. This is an unambiguous instance of deliberate e-book piracy, yet it clearly spurred book sales. [3] The phenomenon was also observed by Neil Gaiman, who subsequently changed his opinion on e-book piracy. [4] Even research on a larger scale has affirmed this. [5] In view of these empirical results, how can e-book piracy be incompatible with copyright law in spirit? | | | [5] http://toc.oreilly.com/2011/01/book-piracy-drm-data.html
[6] H. Ward Classen, A Practical Guide to Software Licensing for Licensees and Licensors (USA: American Bar Association, 2007), p. 16 | |
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Why are these
footnotes, instead of links? What use are they to the reader at
the end of the page, when you can make it easy for her to click
anytime she needs to and ignore anything she doesn't require?
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I don't understand the
point of this essay draft. An "e-book" is just a file on the Net.
If an author wants to make it available on terms that permit
sharing, she can do so. That's what the Creative Commons portion of
the free movement is designed to make easy. That's what copyleft is
for. If she wants to make it available on terms that prohibit
sharing, copyright exists to make that possible, too. You don't
dispute that these current rights allocation schemes exist, and that
violating rights so allocated is a civil wrong, and can under some
circumstances be a crime, whether the rights being violated have
been licensed in copyleft or copyright styles. Nor are you
apparently arguing that copyright should be repealed, to be replaced
either by copyleft or by an unrestricted public domain. So what is
the draft's actual thesis?
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