The high ground in file sharing …
p2pnet news view P2P:- “A number of people I have talked to claim that they do not engage in filesharing because ‘it’s wrong,’ a sentiment that seems deeply rooted in the idea that sharing files involves taking something that doesn’t belong to you; that is, stealing,” says Michael on his mistypedURL blog, going on »»»
These people believe they are taking the “moral high ground” by refusing to participate in this “theft” even when millions of others around the world are doing so. For once I’d like to avoid getting into all of the specific reasons of why filesharing isn’t stealing at all and investigate the idea that this position is actually closer to a moral wrong.
In Society, Sharing is Good
As children, our parents encouraged us to share as soon as our concept of “mine” began to develop. Sharing is one of those behaviors that benefits society as a whole and helps to break us out of a strictly Darwinian existence. If I have two sandwiches, and you have none, I can share with you. We’ll each have a sandwich to eat, helping both of us survive. Instead of a zero-sum situation, where my having food denies you food, sharing creates a net positive situation where both of us can win.
It is through sharing that we develop a culture and advance humanity. Creative works like art and music are, at their core, about sharing with others. They tell stories, reveal personalities, or comment on the world in ways that others can appreciate, forming a part of our culture as they are spread around. Gregor Mendel’s discoveries about genetics had no value while they were gathering dust on the monastery bookshelf; it is only when those discoveries were shared with the world that they became vital.
Infinite Goods Should Be Shared
Say you have something that is good for others, and it is infinite, so you will not lose any of it by giving some away. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that most people’s idea of morality would dictate that they should share that thing. In general, information is something that can be seen as a public good. If somebody has a discovery or an idea, it costs nothing to give it away, it is not scarce, yet it can potentially benefit the world. Thomas Jefferson said it well:
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
Content is an Infinite Good
The 21st century has transformed the content that comprises our shared culture from a scarce good to an infinite good. When we were constrained to physical media, a situation was created where only one person could have a given item at a time. Today, thanks to digitization, anybody can make an exact, lossless duplication of their content, effectively increasing the total “units” available. In a situation rather similar to Jesus pulling bread and fish out of a basket, no matter how many times something digital is copied there is always one left.
Thanks to p2p (people-to-people) filesharing technology and the internet, we now have a global distribution network that allows these infinite goods to be shared with anybody who wants it. Anybody with access to content in the form of digital information can spread it around the world, and why wouldn’t they want to? There is no loss to them, yet sharing it can improve the lives of any interested person anywhere in the world with a computer and an internet connection.
Putting it Together
Faced with an infinity of good things in the form of content information, why would somebody chose not to give it away? What is gained by hoarding something that can help others and costs nothing to share? Let’s say you figure out that you can protect people from a deadly virus, say, influenza, with a vaccine. While it costs something to manufacture physical vaccines and mail them to everybody in the world, sharing the information behind it is free. Others can chose whether or not they want to invest money in creating their own, but sharing has given them the option to do so where before it did not exist. Faced with this situation, who would chose to let thousands of people perish by denying them even the potential opportunity to save themselves?
Yet this is exactly the choice many people are making in the name of “intellectual property.” They would rather see others suffer than share something infinite with them, desperately clinging to business models that depend on scarcity. In the 21st century, ideas, information, digitized content are all infinitely available. For these things, the Star Trek replicator has been made, and it’s time to use that as a stepping stone to greater things.
“Faced with an infinite supply of information that can potentially benefit billions of people, I chose to share,” says Michael, adding:
“Those who try to hoard this information are both attempting to drink the ocean and doing wrong.”
(Cheers, Michael)
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
mistypedURL – Who Really Has the Moral High Ground on Filesharing?, September 22, 2009
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September 23rd, 2009 at 10:35 am
If you want to understand the fundamental ethics of file-sharing you have to distinguish between the intellectual effort that went into producing an intellectual work, and the fact that it may be copied indefinitely.
Work is a finite resource, whether it involves the manipulation of matter or information. The fact that information can be reproduced extremely cheaply without practical limit does not make the work insignificant. Otherwise all intellectual workers can sit back and await file-sharers to produce great intellectual works without any intellectual effort.
So, this currently popular notion that intellectual work is an infinite or ‘non scarce’ commodity is an egregious confusion. It is just as confused as the belief that each copy represents a container of the author’s intellectual work as a precious magical fluid, and is consequently the property of the author to control or transfer as they see fit.
It may be that only those with an aptitude for computer programming can grok the difference between a copy and the intellectual work it is a copy of, but it is a vital and real difference nevertheless.
The monopolists mistakenly believe that copy=work and belongs to the copyright holder. The IP nihilists mistakenly accept that belief that copy=work, but because it is infinitely reproducible hold that it should not be recognised as property, i.e. that it should belong to everyone. Both of these beliefs are flawed because they equate the copy as the work.
The copy is not the work. A copy can be produced by a machine. The work takes human intellect. There is a difference.
You are naturally free to make copies of the material and intellectual works in your possession – unfortunately, your natural liberty is unnaturally and unethically suspended by copyright and patent.
You are NOT naturally free to make copies of the material and intellectual works in your neighbour’s possession – your natural liberty is naturally delimited by your neighbour’s privacy. The fact that you could copy your neighbour’s intellectual works without limit does not constitute a right to do so.
So the entire ‘Content is an infinite good, copies aren’t scarce, so I should be able to copy’ argument is spurious – to put it mildly.
The notion of a copy as a receptacle for ‘content’ (an infinitely reproducible yet valuable comestible, ‘protected’ from theft by copyright) is the anachronistic and fundamentally flawed thinking that results from indoctrination by copyright. There is no argument against content, because content doesn’t exist – it’s an illusion. The proper argument is against copyright, against this 18th century privilege’s suspension of the public’s liberty to make and sell copies of their own possessions.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
@Crosbie:
1) At no place on this page do I see Michael using the term “infinite” to describe the “work” itself. Obviously, it is the disseminated copies that are infinite. (Which, as you keep saying, are also “worthless”.)
2) The article was merely discussing the role in human culture played by sharing, and to reflect on the common misconception that the very activity of file sharing itself is “wrong”. The argument over “intellectual effort/work/content/property” and “copies” isn’t really called for.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
In some way it is too bad that the corporation of parasites can not have their way.
If they did the world of entertainement would split into copyrighted enforced and hard to access content who will be soon forgoten and ignored and easy to access content who will pRoliferate and thrieve.
If they had their way the corporate parasites would dissapear even faster than with the boycott campaign and we would not even have to move a finger.
The good new is one way or another
THEY WILL DIE!
September 23rd, 2009 at 7:41 pm
It always astounds me how some people, such as Crosbie above, believe that if all the people of the world were to stop paying for music, music would completely cease to exist (music being just one example). Intellectual works do indeed have value, but that value doesn’t necessarily have to be of a monetary nature. If the people involved with producing intellectual art are doing it solely in the hope of obtaining fame and fortune, then perhaps there is something very wrong with society that needs reevaluation. This, I think, is what file sharing is forcing on the world and that is a good thing.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Crosbie,
While we differ elsewhere, I think we can both agree that once something has been voluntarily released “into the wild,” individuals are not in the wrong when they choose to share it so that others can benefit.
September 24th, 2009 at 5:49 am
Reader’s Write: You might want to re-evaluate your comment after fully reading Crosbie’s statement. Crosbie identified the difference between “work” and “copy”, stating that “work” has value, while “copy” has no such value.
Crosbie’s position forms the basis of an excellent argument against the people you described, those who believe that music will cease to exist if people stop paying for it. It’s not the music that will become valueless, but the copies of that music.