A lot of people like to see morality as a clear line dividing the world between good and bad, white and black. As Randall Munroe would say: ” My hobby: making a thought experiment to test where exactly they put this line” (XKCD point, checked).
When I told you why I was a pirate, I received a lot of reactions telling me that I was only trying to give a justification to something inherently bad. When I wrote an open letter to artists and suggested a new way of being paid, I also had those kind of reactions and I was told that I had to respect the artist’s choice. If the artist doesn’t want to be found on The Pirate Bay, it was inherently bad to download his content there.
Inherently bad? But to what extend?
Let say that I legally bought a CD from an artist which is against the evil pirates of the internet. You know what I mean.
Is it bad to rip the CD to my hard disk and make MP3 files? Probably not.
I regularly backup my data on an external USB disk. The MP3 are then also on that disk. Is it bad? I would say no.
Being tired of the music, I sell the CD in a second hand store. Or I give it for free to a friend. Is that bad? Some would say that I have to delete the MP3s from my computer. Being honest, I do it. I delete the files.
One week later, my hard drive crashes. Hopefully, I have a week old backup and I restore from there. At this point, the MP3s are restored too. But, being busy recovering important files, I completely forgot those MP3s.
Am I a pirate because I have illegal MP3s on my computer? Even if I forgot about it? Is that morally bad? If yes, then piracy is the mere possession of a given information on a computer. In that case, listening to a streaming website should be OK, isn’t it? I can also make all my friends become pirates just by sending them the files. As long as they don’t delete the email and empty the trash, they are pirates! So, I would guess that only having the file is not inherently bad.
What if I didn’t originally bought the CD but received it for free from a friend who was tired of it? And who had a backup too?
When I listen to music, it’s usually random. There’s then a good chance that I will listen to those MP3. Do I become a pirate when I listen to the music, even if I forgot that I sold the CD weeks ago? If yes, then I’m also a pirate when my neighbour listen to loud music.
Or do I become a pirate when I realise that I don’t have the CD and willingly choose to not delete the music? Then, being a pirate is only a thought, it’s something completely intangible in your head.
I don’t know what you think but, to me, living in a society where you can be punished for a thought is probably the worst nightmare I can dream of.
How do you rate a “Thought Police” on your morality scale?
Picture by Scott Ogilvie
The The Morality of Filesharing and the Thought Police by Lionel Dricot, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Belgium License.
Funny text. Questioning some “law” often raise the issues of morality and ethics (laws simply being a structured application of “common” ethical/moral values). Digging down until the origins of a law, we often found out that its roots are weak and even pose serious doubts.
The reasoning from “pirate” to “thought police” is a bright sample of such. Like it very much.
Hi Ploum,
I enjoy reading your articles and usually share most of your thought. Though, I began to note in your recent posts a small tendency to a kind of sophism.
Yes, indeed, the current business model of culture is doomed with dematerialization and spread of electronic sharing. Yes, I understand that, like me, you’re in the ones that argue for a rebasement of this model. But…
You make numerous shorcuts or simplifications in your articles (the one on the neighbour is a intended one but it’s a good example). This subject deserves the same quality of analysis than the one you have developped on articles about open source/free software for instance. But, here, you write numerous articles which flatter those who think like you, but not convince the others.
If I can give you an advice, write less but better articles and don’t give in loosy argumentation. “À la manière du petit Nicolas” was one of your best articles on the subject, and there were some other ones.
On the other hand, perhaps you just want to throw here your casual thoughts and think I’m not legitimate at giving you advice. Feel free to go on, but I will not give you as much credit as before and will less easily cite you in talks with friends on those subjects.
A faithful reader.
Misleading article IMHO.
Copying data for your own use / backuping & restoring it may or may not be legal, but obviously this does not turn you into a bloody pirate.
Nor typing dirty linux command lines makes you a hacker. Or does it ?
Furthermore, listening to you neighbor’s music is not illegal in our countries I think. Broadcasting may be, but not listening.
Finally, I don’t catch “being a pirate is only a thought”. You realize that you don’t own things and that you are willing to keep them. Does “thought” means “conscience” (yours) ? And the whole article asks that you don’t know how to cope with it ?
The fact is that copying another’s work is generally not legal. Doing so because 1)it’s easy 2)it’s easier (than having a single copy) 3)it’s cheaper 4) it’s cool 5) legal options do not compete with the first 4 points does not make it more acceptable from that point of view. But it may well alleviate the “thoughts” you’re talking about.
IANAL, but for what I remember of the few law course, the intent of the perpetrator of an act is a determining factor when it comes to determining of legality and full qualification of the act. The difference between a murder and an homicide is the intent, not the act. I think the morality of an act is directly related to the intent of the perpetrator, not the act itself.
Arrête de jouer sur les mots. Il est *intrinsèquement* mal de ne pas respecter la loi, et tu le sais très bien.
Si tous les gens trouvant qu’une telle loi était injuste se mettaient à ne pas la respecter, ce serait le bordel à tous les niveaux.
Si t’es pas content, tu demande de changer la loi. Mais vu la tatouille que tu as prise aux dernières élections, tu attendra les prochaines.
Hey, consider giving this talk a watch: http://www.cato.org/events/copyright-unbalanced-incentive-excess
@Laurent quoi? “intrinsèquement mal” …?? vous confondrez “loi” avec “moralité”.
@Laurent Claessens: les gens n’ont pas attendu l’apparition du piratage pour ne pas respecter les lois qu’ils trouvent injustes. La loi n’est pas un dogme, et elle ne puise sa force que dans le consensus.
S’il n’y a pas un minimum d’adhésion aux règles, alors une proportion non négligeable, voire une majorité de gens cesseront de les respecter, ce qui couvre des cas bidons, par exemple une 4 voies limitée à 50 km/h où tout le monde roule à 80 km/h, à d’autres plus délicats comme l’avortement quand cette pratique était interdite, ou bien les lois de ségrégation raciale quand elles existaient encore.
A partir du moment où une restriction n’est pas comprise ou semble infondée, elle ne sera jamais efficace. On peut le déplorer, en attendant, c’est quelque chose *intrinsèquement* lié à la nature humaine. Ca se solutionne au travers de la pédagogie, ou bien de l’assouplissement des règles, en tout cas certainement en infantilisant les gens façon “T’as pas le droit” / “Pourquoi?” / “Parce que c’est comme ça et c’est tout”.
Après, je trouve le cheminement de pensée de Ploum est un peu capillotracté, donc pour ma part, je ne me cherche pas de justification ni d’excuses quand je télécharge du contenu.
Je ne comprend pas pourquoi on continue à m’imposer des limitations qui n’ont souvent pas lieu d’être (disponibilité, interopérabilité,…), donc je passe outre.
Je ne perçoit pas l’intérêt général dans l’arsenal de lois protégeant l’industrie du divertissement, donc je ne les respecte pas.
En résumé, je suis hors la loi, mais je m’en fout. Ils me font chier, mais je les emmerde.
@Laurent Claessens: Depuis quand sommes nous dans une démocratie où qui veut peut changer les lois ? À part quelques idées innovantes, je ne crois plus en la politique perso, corrompue par les lobbys, si tu espère changer une loi, toute la bonne volonté du monde ne te suffira pas.
Alors doit-on être soumis à un système qui pourrait abuser de nous ? Trop facile.
Ceci dit, un peu plus de bons sens ne nous feraient pas de mal et nourrir l’esprit critique est primordial pour ça.
Bon je vais éviter de feed the troll … Ce débat là ne mènera à rien si on prend de tels partis (Moi y compris, je suppose)
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Pour en revenir au sujet, je pense que l’achat d’un CD (même si c’est de plus en plus rare) devrait être séparé en deux, le droit de posséder cette musique (aliénable) et le support CD. Donc théoriquement si on revend le support CD, on ne devrait récupérer que cet argent là, le reste devrait retourner à l’artiste (pas aux majors du cd multimilliardaires).
Donc comme on peut le voir ici, les vrais problèmes sont de toutes façons plus graves, on nous les occultes et on nous induit en erreur avec d’autres problèmes n’étant pas les *vrais* problèmes actuels. Ce débat-ci, certes intéressant, est un peu de la chipoterie, mais il est bon de le rappeler (ainsi jusqu’où certaines dérives pourraient nous mener) et de nourrir l’esprit critique.
Just want to say that I regularly read your political posts on Planet GNOME and appreciate them quite a lot.
You have a sharp wit and uncommon wisdom. Please keep going!
What?
You simplified things to justify your hobby of “sharing” music.
To say it in a nutshell : As long as we do not figure out an effective, efficient, practicable way to deal with dematerialized goods while rewarding those who produced it, that is the quest to pursue. Until then, we will do nothing but to look at anecdotes and consider particular cases.
(Yeah, I tend to consider that the only appropriate way to look at things is to try to see a coherent system ruling them. I come to pratical limitations more often than not, but the benefits beat it.)
@Laurent : La raison d’être de l’État est de protéger quelques libertés fondamentales de ses citoyens et des hommes en général, considérées intrinsèquement bonnes, telles que les libertés d’opinion, de parole, de déplacement. Il dispose pour cela de trois pouvoirs : le législatif, l’exécutif, et le judiciaire. Personne ne garantit que ces trois-là sont infaillibles à leur mission et que tous leurs actes héritent en conséquence de l’intrinsèque bonnitude attribuée à leur cause. Les plus grands maux du siècle passé ont été légaux.
On pourrait mettre en place un système de valeurs dans lequel la cohérence et l’uniformité sociale surpassent les libertés susvisées, mais 1) faut le mettre en place ; 2) il suppose que le légilateur fasse bien son boulot (ces dernières semaines, je parcours – la cohérence des temps le cède à la licence poétique- les archives du blog de Maître Eolas, qui ne sont pas de nature à me faire admettre ce point aisément).
(Milles excuses pour le ton professoral du premier paragraphe ainsi : J’aime mes prémisses explicites -ça compte pour mille.)