Re: NY Times Ethicist Condones Ripping Off E-books

joseph harris wrote:
> Nothing you say above justifies stealing written works - nor actually
> anything else.

ARGH!  It’s not stealing!  It’s copyright infringement, and there is an
important difference.

Stealing deprives someone else of their own possession: if I steal your
car, not only do I have an ill-gotten car, but you no longer have your
car.  If I copy your book: YOU STILL HAVE YOUR BOOK.  I have an
ill-gotten book, and I *may* have deprived you of potential income, but
it is *not* the same as stealing.

I am not making apologies for the act, but calling it stealing is
*harmful* to the process of educating the public.

Let me draw an analogy: in the US, at least, there is widespread drug
education that tells kids that Drugs Are Bad.  All drugs, all bad, all
equally bad.  When a kid then later finds out that marijuana is not
actually *all* that bad, he or she may then conclude that, having been
lied to about marijuana, clearly cocaine and heroin are not that bad
either.  And so these drug education programs have the paradoxical
effect of *increasing* drug abuse.  (According to studies, they actually
have no effect in urban populations, but do increase drug abuse in
suburban populations.)

When you call unauthorized copying “stealing,” the hyperbole is
transparent, and Joe Leet may well then disregard everything else you
have to say on the subject, or even engage in copyright infringement
just to prove a point.

It also goes back to Chris Meadows’s point.  If I have bought a copy of
a book, and I am considering making a convenience copy in a different
format, and I have only your argument to dissuade me, the notion that I
am “stealing” a book I already bought — and from whom am I stealing it?
— is so laughable that I will not pause a second before making that
copy.  But if you have instead attempted to educate me that unauthorized
copies mean loss of income for the writers whose works I evidently
admire, you will at the least stand a better chance of dissuading me.

It’s not stealing.  Accurate terminology is far more likely to be effective.

~Chris
-- 
Chris Maden, text nerd  <URL: http://crism.maden.org/ >
“Four freedom boxes: / Soap, ballot, jury, ammo. /
 Use in that order.” — haiku after Ed Howdershelt
GnuPG Fingerprint: C6E4 E2A9 C9F8 71AC 9724 CAA3 19F8 6677 0077 C319


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