Alright, so I didn't get any kind of comments on my last stab at filesharing. That might have had something to do with its length. Here's a much simpler way of putting my position which I think is a little more approachable, and hopefully this time we'll get some responses.
Digital anything(software, video, music) is a service, not a product.
That's it. What we are used to thinking of as coherent digital 'objects' because of how our computers are set up are in fact just terms we have for ways our computers are configured, and configuring them as such is a service, so as long as the person who provides it doesn't charge us we should feel ethically vindicated. Thus by analogy from computers to humans, with regards to software our computers are just like people who can learn skills very quickly from anyone else who knows them; with regards to music our computers are like very skilled musicians who can perform a song in exact detail after hearing it only once; and with regard to movies our computers are like skilled storytellers who can give us a whole story in all its visual detail after hearing it only once, none of which are unethical, and in none of these cases would we expect the originator to be able to micromanage these other skilled individuals.
In the end, I guess it all comes down to the 'if it's easy, it's wrong' thinking.
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3 comments:
Your previous post was revewed here:
http://www.ethicsscoreboard.com/list/filesharer.html
Thank you for your comment, anonymous(1), but the file you posted a link to was not of particularly high quality and relevance, so I removed it so people won't be confused as to my association with it(which is nonexistent). Anyone looking for the file can probably find it under that same name on any p2p network. Sometime I will post on this site a copy of "The Filesharer's Manifesto" which will be a lot more detailed and contain a lot more of the philosophy involved. Whenever I finish it, that is!
(original post follows with link removed)
Yet Another Filesharing Faq
Yeah this is just another lame filesharing faq/nfo. Something to pass along to newbies and distribute through the p2p networks (gnutella, edonkey2000, fasttrack and others).
Filename FSFAQ.pdf
Download Link
Intended mostly for newbies and kazaa users, it is not too overly detailed or technical for them. Just something simple and easy to understand for them.
Kind of intended as a introduction they presents them with a basic view of things.
By Anonymous, at 10:26 PM
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