Naivete. Painful innocence. I've still got it in spades. In fact, the older I get, the more naive I seem.
For instance: torrents. Downloading things, a.k.a. "stealing", is still (technically) legal in Canada, albeit not for much longer. (I know the bill that's eventually going to pass is not C-61, but it will look a lot like it).
Google "legal use of torrents" and you'll be informed that Bittorrent is completely legal so long as you use it legally. Legal uses of torrent technology include downloading anything with a Creative Commons license and downloading a copy of an item you already legally own. To which I say, huh? The only Creative Commons stuff I've run across is from Cory Doctorow or Jonathan Coulton (and, incidentally, I can't recommend either's works highly enough). Doubtless there's lots more, but I'm not all that inclined to stumble around looking for it. And as for procuring a copy of a work I already own...why? Seriously, why? If I want to put music on my iPod from a disk, I put the disk in the computer and sync the iPod. No torrent required. If I have a movie on DVD...oh, yeah. Some people like to watch movies on little tiny screens. Weirdos. Still don't need to torrent it to transfer it, though.
No, to me, the free lunch will always be illegal, whatever the laws say. And let's face it, most people use torrents to download all manner of content, completely irrespective of copyright.
I equate torrents with radar detectors. Both let you break the law with relative ease and impunity. And so I'm not surprised that the entertainment industry is up in arms trying to shut the things down, any more than I'm surprised that "radar detector detectors" exist. Part of me's even rooting for The Man, as hard as that is to admit. Information may want to be free, but artists want to eat. Too many people seem to ignore that in the hopes it will go away. Naive of them, says I.
But then, I'm naive myself. Right?
5 comments:
Well you've read me enough to know that I agree with you.
What pisses me off about these anti-piracy measures is that they throw the baby out with the bathwater. I try to legally obtain a license for all media I want. But for instance, my kids love the animated movie Cars. Which we purchased the DVD for. I ripped a copy of that, because toddlers are not that careful with DVDs and easily scratch the crap out of them.
Under this legislation, that action is illegal because I circumvented the encryption.
Apparently I have to buy a new DVD every time we scratch one.
Yeah right. The government and the media companies can get down on their knees and suck my you-know-what before that happens.
Make it hard to legally own, and I won't want to legally own anything anymore.
Charlie Stross--sci-fi author, and a good one--writes a damning indictment of DRM on the grounds it jerks legal owners around while doing nothing whatsoever to deter pirates. (In that respect it kind of reminds me of Canada's gun registry...)
See, there, you just came up with a good reason to have the ability to derive multiple copies of something you own. As usual, it has something to do with kids. Great big blind spot, here. I do disagree that you should have to pay more than once for anybody's intellectual property...how to force people to pay once, but only once? Is it even possible?
I agree that it is stealing but here's a question that shows you how blurry the line is... back when we were younger when vinyl was still around, cassette tapes etc... we used to borrow a cassette and copy it right? Or record an album, both fully legal. It's just that the technology has made that 'friend to friend' transfer easier. Were we stealing back then, when it was fully legal to copy a freinds tape?
Rocket:
It weren't legal to do that up here. It was technically stealing. As was taping the radio during a live broadcast.
Canada's copyright legislation only allowed you to make (1) copy of material you had legal right to.
But that brings up another point. If you purchase media, and you want to view it/listen to it on a different device that uses another format, that transfer could be deemed illegal IF there is DRCM tech on the source media. Hell, if they create DRCM with one-time decrypt ciphers, they could legally lock you down to a single device.
Answer: make DRM itself illegal, THEN go after the pirates with both barrels...
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