The Ethics of Filesharing

Filesharing is a very pertinent issue for the modern world. If the naysayers of the media and software industries are to be believed, it is wreaking havoc upon the profitability of music and film and computer programs. It's probably the most widespread 'guilty pastime' of the technological world. If asked to consider the statement "I know filesharing is wrong, but I do it anyway" most filesharers would probably say it describes their own position accurately. Many people, filesharers and non filesharers alike, would probably agree with the statement "sharing copyrighted files is stealing, though maybe not a very serious form of it."

Personally, I find this unacceptable. It's time to come to terms with the ethics of what we are doing. It's time to admit the truth about filesharing, and I'm prepared to step up and do it from the inside.

My name is Jeff, and I fileshare. But I don't believe it's wrong. In my opinion, most people have not studied the ethics of filesharing carefully. Instead, they have accepted the mantra that filesharing is stealing without considering it critically. They have accepted comparisons like "you wouldn't walk into a music store and take cds without paying, so why would you take songs off the internet without paying?" It's time to debunk some of these myths and point out some of the realities.


Myth #1
Filesharing is stealing

Before the digital age, stealing was cut and dried. If you took something from someone else that you had no right or legitimate reason to take, you were stealing. How could you verify if someone had stolen something from someone else? If the accused had the item and the owner of it did not, then it had been stolen. It was that simple. So when the digital world came around, what changed? The answer is nothing. This is still the way we can tell if something has been stolen. If the owner of the thing still has it, then it obviously hasn't been stolen. But what if someone else has it that didn't have it before? The answer is simple: they didn't steal it, they copied it. It's a completely different act. It may be unethical for other reasons we shall later discuss, but it is a different act from stealing. This is clear from the way we view things other than filesharing in society. For example, in architecture the vast majority of design elements are copied from other locations in history and in the present. Everything from the silverware you eat with to the furniture you sit in to the light bulbs you light your home with has been copied from somewhere. This is the mechanism by which good ideas are spread throughout society. And what about non-physical items, like ideas or methods? Every time you quote a famous person, or teach someone else something that was taught to you, or tell a story that was told to you, you are copying an idea. Again, this is the mechanism by which good ideas are spread, and it's an act totally unlike stealing. That doesn't mean copying can't be done in an unethical way, but whatever copying is, it is different from stealing.


Myth #2
Filesharing is plagiarism

Many people say, "maybe filesharing isn't stealing, but it's taking something which isn't yours and pretending it is, which is plagiarism." It's important to understand that plagiarism isn't wrong because it involves copying someone else's ideas. It's wrong becuase the plagiarist claims that those ideas are his own, which is lying. So yes, if you download a song and claim you wrote and performed it, or if you download a movie and claim you filmed it, or if you download some software and claim you programmed it yourself, you are obviously lying. But the unethical act you committed here was not to download the item in question. It was to claim it was your own creation, a lie. Again, we can point out that it is not considered unethical to quote someone if you acknowledge the author of the quote, or to include the ideas of someone else in a paper if you acknowledge that they are not your own. This is all because it is wrong to lie.


Myth #3
If it's easy, it's wrong

I haven't heard anyone actually articulate this position, but it seems to be behind a lot of the thinking on filesharing. People, it seems, are more likely to think something is wrong if it's easy. For example, imagine there was a man who heard a beautiful song composed and played by a master pianist. He went to all his friends to see if anyone knew what the song was and where he could get the music, but no one had it. So the man went home and went to work at his piano, doing his best to emulate the amazing song he had heard. At first he struggled, but as he worked on it week after week, he soon began to figure out the complicated array of notes. Eventually, he was able to perform the same piece with all the power, emotion, and impact of the master pianist. Most people would applaud this man for his perserverance and accomplishment. But what if one of his friends had already figured out the music for that piece and given it to him, allowing him to perform it with a lot less hard work? We might appreciate him a little less. And what if the man owned a piano that could read music itself, and all he had to do was feed the music in? Now our appreciation for him is almost gone. In fact, if right and wrong were a matter of how much we empathised with the person performing the action, we might even say that he had done something wrong by taking a song from another performer and enjoying it without permission. Right and wrong, however, are not a question of empathy. Simply because an action can be accomplished in a much easier fashion does not change a right action into a wrong one. If an action is wrong, it is wrong no matter how hard or easy it is, and the same applies if it is not.


Myth #4
copyRight, copyWrong

So what does it all boil down to? If filesharing is not wrong because it is stealing, if it is not wrong because it is plagiarism, and if it is not wrong because it easy, why is it wrong? The wrong act must be in the act of copying itself. In fact, most countries have laws against copying copyrighted material, right? Well, there are a few things to address there. First of all, the actual injunction is typically against distributing copyrighted material. But more importantly, simply because something is illegal does not make it inherently unethical. What we have to look at is why something is illegal in the first place.

But first, let me make a clarification on distribution versus copying. In Canada, at least, there is no law against copying copyrighted material. The law is against distributing it. And, until further notice, the canadian courts have ruled that filesharing does not constitute distribution of copyrighted material, with both uploading and downloading encompassed. Furthermore, all canadians pay a 'copy levy' on burnable cds for the right to put copyrighted material on it, such as music downloaded off the internet. So in Canada, filesharing is legal.

But back to the ethics. Why do copyright laws exist in the first place? If we look carefully, we see that copyrights are not a question of ethics, but of economics. Copyrights are not rights. There is no right to control ideas that you make public. Simply because someone has come up with some sort of innovation before anyone else does not mean that they have an inalienable right to release it into the mainstream and then try and micromanage the exact ways in which it must be used, a right which can be bought and sold and rented. This is not the way that human rights work. In fact, it could even be unethical to try and control ideas in certain ways after you make them public. For example, what if a person developed a new breed of plant that grew under any conditions and supplied complete nutrition for the human body, and made the plant public but declared that under no circumstances was it to be introduced to third world countries. That person does not have the right to prevent other people from supplying that plant to the people who need it simply because they happened to have been the ones who discovered it first. There is no such right. Andf if people have no particular right to control the ideas they have made public, then it is not unethical to share those ideas with others.


Reality #1
Copyright is not a matter of ethics; it is a matter of economics

Copyright laws are economic incentives provided by the government to encourage innovation and new ideas. Copyright laws might more accurately be called copycontrol laws. Basically, the government makes an agreement with someone who has produced something new, be it a physical device or an idea, to give them a special place in the market so that they will pursue their idea. In the past, these incentives have been helpful because it required a lot of work and investment to get an idea going. Copyright laws helped encourage people to put in the effort to make their ideas spread. The times have changed, however, and instead of encouraging the spread of good ideas for the benefit of society, copyrights now limit it.


Reality #2
There are effective alternatives to copyright

New business and economic models are now possible because of the highly connected world in which we live. In the modern world, inventors and innovators can profit by receiving a small amount of voluntary money from each of a very large number of people without incurring any significant costs in areas like advertising, distribution, and physical media. They need not force people who use their ideas to pay, because the amount they request is very small for each person and the people they benefit realise that without their continued support no further innovation would be possible. Alternatively, an innovator could publish the effect but not the method of an innovation and request voluntary gifts before releasing it. If a million people decided it was worth one dollar to have the innovation released, the innovator would make a million dollars. Similarly, if 800,000 users of a freely released program considered it worth enough to them that would donate 50 cents to the person who created it, his wages would be well-paid for several years. Because of the existence of potential like this, it is no longer neccessary to enforce copycontrol laws because innovation will continue in their absence. As well, there are more and more people on the planet who can easily disseminate their ideas around the world, so there is no shortage of people willing to take advantage of these new systems and provide the world with new innovations.


Reality #3
Filesharing is not hurting industry

Industry players in areas like music and movies are quick to list large figures of money that they claim they have 'lost' because of filesharing. However, these figures are misleading. These estimates start with the maximum realistic estimate of how many times a movie or song has been downloaded. Then, this figure is typically multiplied by the cost of a theatre ticket in the case of a movie or the cost of a cd in the case of a song. In the first place, every time one of these files is copied does not represent a person who would have otherwise paid that sum of money. In many cases, people will download a movie or a song that they would never have paid money for. Second of all, it would be much more accurate to multiply by the cost of a video rental in the case of movie, since watching a movie on your home computer is totally unlike a theatrical showing and the downloader bears the expense of the time and equipment involved instead of the theatre. In the case of a song, there are many songs on a single cd, so the cost of the cd does not represent the value of an individual song on it. As well, a downloaded song does not cost the production company the expense of producing a physical cd and printing the insert. even before these gross miscalculations are taken into account, however, claimed 'losses' to filesharing still do not represent a significant portion of total revenues. All in all, there is no solid evidence that filesharing is significantly hurting either the music or the film industries.


Reality #4
Change is good

Finally, however, all the hype about lost profits is totally irrellevant. The entire point of the digital age is that things are intended to be copied. This is, in fact, the only difference between analog and digital formats, namely, that digital information can be copied over and over again without alteration. Digital information is designed from the ground up to be copied. The basis of the whole industry in the first place is that the songs sound the same across every cd and on every computer, stereo, and portable device. The reality that digital information can be copied is not going to go away. It will probably force a fundamental change in how our economy works. That shouldn't be considered a bad thing, however, even if it damages industries which are based on outdated notions of how information and control work. The development of the automobile fundamentally transformed the economy and decimated the horse and buggy industry. It may be in the future that film and music will not be multi-billion dollar industries, but that's okay. First, increasing availability of digital tools for both film and music are making them both cheaper and easier to create. Second, most arts thrive in environments where the megacorporations are no longer able to control them. Take paintings, for example. What if everyone in the world hung all the same paintings, or copies of them, on their walls, and what if only a handful of corporations controlled all the major paintings worldwide and made billions of dollars every year? Well, it might be mistaken for the music industry, that's what. Art will not be destroyed by digital realities.



Reality #5
Transition is tough

The reality is, there may be some bumps along the road to realising the full implications of digital devices in our lives. Certain things may be necessary to help individuals and companies adapt. Some re-education might be in order. We will need to help companies reshape their profit models to take into account the reality of how digital business must funciton. We will need to help the public understand that exactly how much money goes to which person for which item is less enforced in the digital world, and people who develop important things still need to get paid. Companies and individuals will have to develop policies on how to donate to software and art projects they support in order to keep development in those areas alive even if payment is no longer mandatory. Whatever it takes, our world must adapt to the undeniable realities of how computers will change our lives. And in the end, we'll come out the better for it.


Reality #6
Other changes are in store

Finally, if you thought filesharing was the last thing we would have to re-examine in the new world of technology, it's time to think again. The reality of how we treat software will have to alter when computer programs can write other computer programs or when computers can efficiently accomplish tasks based only on a description of the desired effect. Many other changes are in store, too, though I won't ruin the suspense for all the other things that are certainly coming. All in all, unless we are capable of examining carefully our responses to new technologies and adapting to the realities they present, we're in for a very hard run of it.



As anyone who managed to last this long can probably tell, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. However, I understand that some people with different opinions have also spent a lot of time thinking and have come to different conclusions, so I'm opening this up for discussion. If you disagree with me, leave a comment. I'd love to hear other sides of this important topic.