By the way, although I didn't originally go out looking for stuff like this, I've gone to the trouble of tracking down some links and information people might find interesting.
There are other people out there of note promoting similar ideas to mine on filesharing, like Robert Hamilton, a professor on internet law at Ohio State, contrary to the suggestions in a recent debate that no one out there is promoting alternate views on filesharing. He was mentioned briefly at
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/11.6.03/filesharing_debate.html
Or, take a look at the ideas of Professor Larry Lessig of Stanford at
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/march17/fileshare-317.html
Not to mention, of course, the entire Open Source Culture movement.
Also, here are some sources that, whether they are right or not, share my interpretation of the Canadian ruling on filesharing:
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5182641.html?tag=st_pop
-"In a far-ranging decision, the court further found that both downloading music and putting it in a shared folder available to other people online appeared to be legal in Canada."
http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/48323.html
-"A Canadian judge has dealt a blow to the global record industry's anti-piracy campaign by declaring that sharing music over the internet is not illegal"
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051208.gtjkcolumndec8/BNStory/Technology/
-"that activity is still legal in Canada"
and finally,
http://www.mondaq.com/i_article.asp_Q_articleid_E_36846
-"The motions judge held that, with reference to subsection 80(1) of the Act, downloading a song for personal use does not amount to infringement. He also said that placing personal copies of songs onto shared directories, such that the songs were accessible by other computer users over the Internet, did not amount to authorization or distribution contrary to the Act."
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Abstract concepts as services instead of property
Someone posted the following comment:
Certainly. The main difference between property and services under the law is that property can be 'rented', whereas services are either performed or not, and any future actions resulting from the performance of services without rental of property do not necessarily need to be controlled by law.
The reasons I think this would be an immense improvement are many. One is that it is much easier to enforce a model based on treating intellectual 'property' as a service. Currently we have very complex models for trying to describe intellectual property in ways which differ from tangible property such as having expiry times on patents, allowances for 'fair use' requiring legal judgments on 'artistic value' and the 'obviousness' of abstract concepts, uncertain status of intellectual property between jurisdictions, unclear action in the case of simultaneous discoveries, punishment for coincidental but not derivative innovations, etc. By contrast, when describing intellectual 'property' as a service, all this complicated law can be boiled down to a simple economic incentive program where the government allows a certain entity the exclusive right to perform a service, or, in the event that such an incentive is deemed unnecessary, research can be funded by private entities with vested interests in the results or by donations after the fact from people who benefit from the innovation, all of which is simple to legislate and enforce. By contrast, when viewing abstract ideas as 'property' one is forced to try and monitor, for example, all data transferred over the internet, or all communications between people, which is not a feasible task.
An important feature of this new structure would be that the government would be able to remove these incentive programs in areas where they are no longer necessary to encourage innovation: for example in the area of computer software where technological advancements will soon render the human programmer an irrellevant component. Currently, because all intellectual 'property' is treated the same, the government is forced to spend enormous resources essentially enforcing private entities' particular business models' viabilities when in fact some of those models may be ready to be replaced in the market because of their inefficiency. These alternate models may be much better suited to a digital, interconnected world but currently we have no mechanism for selectively targeting our incentives in the areas that need the most development.
Possibly the most important advantage would be that treating the transfer of abstract ideas as a service rather than a transfer of property is much better suited to the digital world, which is becoming increasingly important as computers become part of every part of our lives. From a computational perspective, there is no difference between a mechanic reconfiguring the parts of a car from a less useful state, say where it doesn't drive around, to a more useful state where it does, and a programmer reconfiguring a computer from a less useful state, say where it can't manipulate text documents, to a more useful state where it does. The same thinking, in the language of the digital world, would apply to a builder reconfiguring a pile of raw materials into a house, or a doctor reconfiguring a person with a badly broken leg into a person with a good chance of recovery. Thinking in the language of information theory, it is easy to see that the idea of services translates well to the application of intellectual 'property' and that the idea of education, or teaching, translates well to the transfer of abstract concepts. When a student learns something in school, they are allowed to tell other people about those things. In the same way, unless the government chose to intervene with an incentive program or something, when information is transferred to a person or their computer, it would be their choice as to whether or not to 'teach' it to another person or their computer. The difference in the digital world? Computers are much better and faster at 'learning' from each other than humans are. Think of the benefit to society.
Another important note is that treating intellectual 'property' like this would help ease the problem of transferring abstract ideas, such as software, to developing nations where people cannot afford the premiums we currently charge. This would no doubt speed industrialization of these regions, significantly boosting the world economy.
Finally, as an aside to any and all critics, I am reasonably convinced that any sort of 'protection' currently offered for intellectual 'property' could be easily implemented under this alternate system if it was deemed necessary or useful to the function of society. It would, however, be much simpler in law and in enforcement, if one can manage to put up with such a difficult inconvenience.
Anonymous said...
Please elaborate on how services are treated differently from property under the law and why you think intellectual property would be more aptly administered as intellectual service? In exactly what way would this be an improvement?
7:30 PM
Certainly. The main difference between property and services under the law is that property can be 'rented', whereas services are either performed or not, and any future actions resulting from the performance of services without rental of property do not necessarily need to be controlled by law.
The reasons I think this would be an immense improvement are many. One is that it is much easier to enforce a model based on treating intellectual 'property' as a service. Currently we have very complex models for trying to describe intellectual property in ways which differ from tangible property such as having expiry times on patents, allowances for 'fair use' requiring legal judgments on 'artistic value' and the 'obviousness' of abstract concepts, uncertain status of intellectual property between jurisdictions, unclear action in the case of simultaneous discoveries, punishment for coincidental but not derivative innovations, etc. By contrast, when describing intellectual 'property' as a service, all this complicated law can be boiled down to a simple economic incentive program where the government allows a certain entity the exclusive right to perform a service, or, in the event that such an incentive is deemed unnecessary, research can be funded by private entities with vested interests in the results or by donations after the fact from people who benefit from the innovation, all of which is simple to legislate and enforce. By contrast, when viewing abstract ideas as 'property' one is forced to try and monitor, for example, all data transferred over the internet, or all communications between people, which is not a feasible task.
An important feature of this new structure would be that the government would be able to remove these incentive programs in areas where they are no longer necessary to encourage innovation: for example in the area of computer software where technological advancements will soon render the human programmer an irrellevant component. Currently, because all intellectual 'property' is treated the same, the government is forced to spend enormous resources essentially enforcing private entities' particular business models' viabilities when in fact some of those models may be ready to be replaced in the market because of their inefficiency. These alternate models may be much better suited to a digital, interconnected world but currently we have no mechanism for selectively targeting our incentives in the areas that need the most development.
Possibly the most important advantage would be that treating the transfer of abstract ideas as a service rather than a transfer of property is much better suited to the digital world, which is becoming increasingly important as computers become part of every part of our lives. From a computational perspective, there is no difference between a mechanic reconfiguring the parts of a car from a less useful state, say where it doesn't drive around, to a more useful state where it does, and a programmer reconfiguring a computer from a less useful state, say where it can't manipulate text documents, to a more useful state where it does. The same thinking, in the language of the digital world, would apply to a builder reconfiguring a pile of raw materials into a house, or a doctor reconfiguring a person with a badly broken leg into a person with a good chance of recovery. Thinking in the language of information theory, it is easy to see that the idea of services translates well to the application of intellectual 'property' and that the idea of education, or teaching, translates well to the transfer of abstract concepts. When a student learns something in school, they are allowed to tell other people about those things. In the same way, unless the government chose to intervene with an incentive program or something, when information is transferred to a person or their computer, it would be their choice as to whether or not to 'teach' it to another person or their computer. The difference in the digital world? Computers are much better and faster at 'learning' from each other than humans are. Think of the benefit to society.
Another important note is that treating intellectual 'property' like this would help ease the problem of transferring abstract ideas, such as software, to developing nations where people cannot afford the premiums we currently charge. This would no doubt speed industrialization of these regions, significantly boosting the world economy.
Finally, as an aside to any and all critics, I am reasonably convinced that any sort of 'protection' currently offered for intellectual 'property' could be easily implemented under this alternate system if it was deemed necessary or useful to the function of society. It would, however, be much simpler in law and in enforcement, if one can manage to put up with such a difficult inconvenience.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Filesharing: the debate part 2 (the end?)
Jeff: I would normally enjoy a debate on this or any other topic. And I do appreciate your determination to be civil and respectful: kudos. BUT...it is a waste of my time and frankly angina-producing to attempt to discuss anything with someone who, like Humpty-Dumpty in "Through the Looking Glass," refuses to stick to what words and legal concepts mean. That makes debate impossible. That makes logic impossible. In your first three responses, you scored a zero in honestly agreeing on terms and accuracy of definition.
1) Although it doesn't matter to the larger issue, your use of "ethicist" is so broad as to be meaningless, though it is consistent with your other uses of words and concepts.
I think we're still at a level of miscommunication on this one. My use of 'ethicist' is pulled right from the dictionary. I'm sorry that the term in its common(rather than professional) usage is so broad, like 'artist' or 'philosopher,' but I certainly meant no disrespect to your profession, which I think I tried to make clear. My only point, which I'm sure you must accept, is that I wasn't deliberately misrepresenting myself. I pointed you directly to my blog, which contains a precise, accurate profile, and for those who would dig deeper I have mentioned my actual profession on a couple of occasions. I was merely referring to a description of my interests, since in fact I spend a considerable amount of time thinking about and discussing issues of ethics.
I think anyone who examines my posts through our entire discussion will find I have stuck to my same usages/definitions of terms throughout. If your impression was otherwise please understand that this is not the case. I have remained very consistent in my own position throughout. What you have observed is merely my feeble attempts to explain that singular position in a manner which will not be misunderstood.
2) The Canadian Courts have NOT declared file-sharing "legal." That is not what the opinion about file-sharing software said. The opinion inviolved whether software used by others for file-sharing was implicated when it was so used. It's a bad opinion as it is, but it still doesn't "clarify" the legality of file-sharing. And copying an entire book by photocopy is as illegal in Canada as it is in the U.S.
I think I've failed to clarify myself properly here. According to most people who know significantly more about the law than I do, the decision does in fact deem file-sharing legal. To clarify: this does not mean that certain actions taken with the shared files do not then constitute copyright infringement. The ruling is as to the actual act of sharing files which might contain copyrighted information on your computer with other people over the internet.
Using your photocopy analogy, downloading a copyrighted book and then printing it out on your computer(maybe even to sell to someone else), which corresponds to the photocopying of a book, would in fact be illegal. It would not be illegal, however, to merely fileshare(downloading and uploading encompassed) the book. This is much more akin to putting the book in the photocopier and pressing the button that converts the book to digital information, but not actually putting paper through the machine.
Once copyrighted material is on your computer, there are in fact many things you can do with it which do not constitute infringement since at that point it is not yet considered distributed. You could, for example take songs which you have downloaded and burn them to a cd, which is legal in Canada because when you buy cds you pay a copy levy which is intended to cover any losses artists may allegedly incur because of this practice.
Another thing you could do with the material prior to distributing it in some form would be to use it in a manner appropriate under "fair use" legislation as a part of a new work of art or to quote it for purposes of review.
This is what I mean when I say that in Canada filesharing is legal. The people I've talked to seem fairly clear on the above points. It's possible of course that they're wrong, but it seems to me your objection to my pronouncement may have been based on a slightly different interpretation, i.e. something similar to the idea that in Canada we can just do whatever we want with copyrighted material. Am I right?
3) No lawyer, no ethicist, no educated person that I have asked about your very strange definition of theft agrees with it. That is because it is nonsense. There are so many kinds of theft that do not involve a physical removal that thinking them up would be a good parlor game. You are not a lawyer, my friend, give it up; I am, but you shouldn't have to be a lawyer to figure out that taking music that belongs to one owner and duplicating it for one's own use without permission, license or fee is stealing. Similarly, while the person sneaking into the theater would be committing trespass whether he watched the show of not, when he watched the show with out paying for it, THAT IS STEALING TOO!
Again, we're getting caught up on terminology, which is what I tried to head off in my response by clarifying what I meant. I could care less about how different people define the word 'theft' or 'stealing' or whatever. I'm talking about the concept that we all agree is wrong. Call it klajsghlk if you want, but when someone has property and another person takes it away so they no longer have it, we all agree that action is wrong. The reason I have included this point is that the entertainment industry is working hard to equate klajsghlk with filesharing, which is totally inaccurate and misleading. The action of duplicating something someone else has or has designed is very different both in implementation and in how society as a whole is inclined to view it, as I tried to point out in the way our copyright and patent laws are defined, which treat abstract ideas differently than physical property already, with 'rights' on exclusivity that run for a very brief period of time and then expire, which is not how we view property at all. With regards to society, I think it's safe to say that many people see this form of legislation as an expression of economic incentive rather than the protection of an inalienable right to micromanage particular abstract concepts because one holds a particular piece of paper.
To clarify the point, it's often easier to step away from the new and sometimes confusing digital world and look at a simple example:
A small village on the shores of a lake subsists entirely on fishing. Unfortunately, they are not a very advanced society and fish by wading out into the water and grabbing fish by their hands. Thus, despite the bountiful fish everywhere, they have to spend every waking moment fishing to break even.
One day, a slightly-more-clever-than-the-rest fellow is walking along the shore procrastinating from his fishing when he comes across a fish skeleton lying in the sand. There is only one kind of fish in his area, and their skeletons are an incredibly common sight. This time, however, he notices something: one of the bones on this skeleton is curved with a slight barb on the end. He thinks to himself: "if I were to convince a fish by means of some sort of bait to clamp down on this interesting shape with its mouth, it would get caught!" and right then and there he invents the fishhook.
The man calls a huge meeting of the surrounding area, telling everyone he has important news. He explains to all the people his incredible new invention. The best part, he tells everyone, is that the necessary materials for the fishing apparatus can be found literally lying on the ground all over the place. However, the man also makes a demand of all these people: every time they, or their children, or their friends, or anyone they tell, makes a fishhook using the method he has invented, they must give him 50 fish since it was his idea.
Now, this example seems ridiculous: obviously the man has no inherent right to demand payment for the use of his idea when these fish skeletons are in ready supply all over the ground.
However, it may have been that some time previous to this the town elders got together to address the problem of how inefficient their fishing was, and in order to encourage new ideas, they promised that if someone came up with a new and different way of catching fish, everyone in their village would pay that person 5 fish every time they used the idea. Now, it's a different story. The town made a promise, which they now have to keep. One can clearly see that rather than upholding the man's right to manage an abstract idea he has come up with as if it were his own property, the town was merely offering an incentive to encourage much-needed innovation.
What if, however, another town had met at the same time and considered this option but decided it was unnecessary. In their opinion, there were so many people working at fishing with all the same resources available to them that new ideas would come up as a matter of course, and no pricey incentive was necessary to encourage them. So, in that town, they refused to honour the man's request, although many of those people presented gifts to the inventor in thanks for his work. Did this town do the man an injustice? Clearly not! The man had no inherent rights to be upheld. It was only an issue of what had been agreed to. The second town did nothing unethical.
Furthermore, what if that second town had hundreds of millions of smart, innovative people in it who were able to exchange ideas easily and who had incredible resources to work with? Would it be wise for that town to offer a pricey economic incentive for things that many people were willing to do anyway? Of course not. This is why I think our societies should adjust our own usage of such incentives as well.
It goes on and on...you say that ideas aren't property. Well, what can I say...the entire world disagrees with you, because they are right and you are wrong because the world, not you, decides what it regards as "stealing.". You seem to believe that because stealing a patent has its own term, that means it isn't stealing. Wrong again.
In fact, the laws on ideas, their buying, selling, rental, etc., in every country in the world differ from the laws on physical property. We already treat them as fundamentally different! Furthermore, the out-dated fashion in which many of these laws are expressed makes them ill-adapted to our changing world, which is why I advocate reforming these laws to express the exchange of ideas in the language of services, which more accurately and capably reflects the ways in which they are now being and will continue to be used.
I have to ask you, how well will our current laws function when computers can produce music, videos, and software from scratch? This is not very far away from reality, and our legal systems as they currently stand are not ready to deal with these new developments. Already digital technologies are making it fundamentally easier for people all over the world to produce high-quality films, music, and software. Present laws already fail to reflect the incredible amount of power in a computer which is the real cause of effective filesharing: namely that for all practical purposes 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. I have posted on this topic before.
Unfortunately all of this sidetracking has meant that I actually haven't heard any feedback from you on my core idea, namely that our laws would be more consistent, adaptable, and efficient if they treated the transfer of abstract concepts as a service rather than the transfer of a product. This is the essential part of my entire outlook on the future of filesharing's legal status, and the part I am most interested in having public debate about since it is the part of the debate which can most quickly be used to improve our societies.
As for the rest, you have an infuriating technique of mounting arguments that have nothing to do with what you're arguing against, such as your arguments that breaking a law is not unethical. This isn't rocket science...it is wrong to wilfully break laws unless there is an over-riding good that comes of it...and "wanting free music" doesn't count.
What can I say? I apologise that you're infuriated by my posts, although I have to say you have a tendency to view me through a coloured lense of where you think I'm coming from. Philosophically it is entirely necessary when proposing a change in law to explain the inherent rights at stake(a clarification I think I've been careful to use) as opposed to merely the current status of the law. I haven't claimed anywhere that it is ethical to break the law. I've merely pointed out that not all things enshrined in law reflect inherent rights that we all agree upon. If I may quote from my original essay, what I want "to look at is why something is illegal in the first place."
As far as the over-riding good involved, you don't know much about me if you still think that the reason I want to promote file-sharing is "wanting free music." People who know me understand that I view technology as a tool for improving the function of our world rather than simply as a toy for my own enjoyment. I want to promote filesharing as an effective way to spread new ideas, especially throughout the developing world where people don't have the luxury of paying what to them are enormous fortunes for the privilege of using their own computers effectively. In this respect, I'm thinking not so much about music as about theoretical literature(think economics, philosophy, social structure, etc.), computer software(the possibilities are almost endless), and access to virtual markets.
Frankly, and with all respect, I cannot tell whether you are just ill-informed, have a logical deficit, are intellectually dishonest, or just slippery as hell, and at this point, I don't care. Arguing under such conditions is a waste of my time, and maybe even yours. But you may have a career in politics.
Again, thanks for being civil, keep blogging, don't give up your interest in ethics...but this argument is a loser, and maintaining that it isn't approaches delusion. I can't argue with delusions, and I'm not qualified to treat them.
I know you can't, and until you can tell that I'm none of those things I fear you will be unable to understand the perspective I'm putting forward. If there's any way that you can step past the image you have of a non-serious, illogical, spoiled, selfish little kid, I would really appreciate it. I'm very serious in my rigour; I try my absolute best, and typically with good effect, to be as logical as possible, almost to a fault; and I'm brutally honest with myself intellectually, very willing to change my position immediately as new information and perspectives are made available to me. If there's any way you can understand that, I would really encourage you to reread my writings from this perspective. I think you'll find I'm anything but the person you have made me out to be. I'm sure you're very aware that in an online environment where verbal and nonverbal cues are lacking, it can be very difficult to grasp something as tricky as character, but if you can find it in yourself to put out the extremely large effort to do so, I really think we could accomplish a lot in our discussion.
I know you said you won't be replying any further here, but from what little I already know of you I think there's a part of you which desperately wants to continue. It's the part that says you've never seen another filesharer like this one before, and you're unlikely to have a chance to discuss filesharing with one on these terms again. If you can slow down, take a deep breath, and quietly review my writing without allowing a sense of frustration to rear up when you see things that on the surface resemble all those other things that have so frustrated you in the past, I just know this exchange can change from something frustrating into something incredibly useful.
sincerely,
Jeffery Coleman
Monday, December 26, 2005
Filesharing: the debate part 1
I have been trying to decide whether to post Jack Marshall's responses in piecemeal, responding to each section, or in one large block with my responses after it. I think I have hit upon a compromise: I will post a link to his article so that it can be read in its entirety first, which I suggest you all do, and then I will break it up and respond to it here. That way, we avoid the confusion of having everything quoted twice and making the post much longer than necessary.
Jack's article appears here.
Here is my response, section by section:
I won't spend long on this, since as you say it doesn't affect the validity of my analysis, but I think it is important to clarify for the sake of our mutual respect that I wasn't trying to misrepresent myself. I use the term 'ethicist' in the same sense as most dictionaries, i.e.
I use the term in the same sense I would use 'philosopher' to refer to people who have never been paid to lecture, speak, etc. I did not intend to refer to the profession, with regards to which I would say that the small number of ethicists who are able to sustain themselves financially on the sole basis of their ethics are very fortunate and to be applauded, in the same fashion that I would appreciate an artist who was able to sustain him or herself financially on the sole basis of his or her art. For those interested, although I am also and always a student, I am currently employed as the Winnipeg representative of a wine marketing company. See more about that at www.finewinesmanitoba.com
Again, I must respond not because I think it has any bearing on the topic at hand, but because I think it would better promote a good rational exchange if we can both maintain our respect for the other party. For the record, I am a recent file-sharer and formed my position on the ethics of the matter prior to engaging in the practice, which I also did not do before the Canadian courts had clarified the legality of the matter. The reason I have posted these ideas here is not because they are newly formed, but because I think many other people would benefit from the discussion of this very relevant topic. As I mentioned at the beginning of my first post, the reason I posted was because I found the position "I know it's wrong but I still do it" to be far too common and totally unacceptable.
I am certain that these first two points of yours were genuine mistakes given the limited information available to you, Jack, but in the future I think it would better behoove both of us to focus on the topic at hand instead of on the 'topicee' and hopefully we can thereby avoid having our rational discussion descend to an exchange of ad hominem attacks which are entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. I think we can both agree that a true statement is true even if pronounced by the devil himself, and a false one false even if spoken by the wisest sage ever to walk the earth. Furthermore, I think we will be best capable of obtaining a synthesis of our positions into a stronger whole (either by me accepting yours, or by you accepting mine, or some combination of the above) if we can maintain a proper respect for each other both in our postings and in our own personal opinions because this will allow us to view the actual discussion at hand instead of colouring it with our own misconceptions of the other person. I have seen far too many discussions between rational, intelligent people collapse into name-calling and wild accusations which are not the least bit relevant or helpful to the discussion.
If you persist in the position that "File-sharing is obviously stealing" then it will be difficult to have a rational debate since you have essentially defined filesharing to be unethical without considering what it actually is. Stealing as we typically observe it is a simple and obvious act where one person has property and another person takes it, thereby depriving them of it. By contrast, filesharing is copying of property, an act which functions in a totally different way. It is essential for you to even understand my position that we differentiate the idea of the 'stealingness'(in the sense that most people use it, the taking of physical property) of filesharing from the 'ethicalness' of filesharing(which may be an entirely different issue, and on which you still may have a good argument). This is the real issue, so let's not get hung up on terminology.
That said, I don't consider any of your examples to effectively support your position. If someone owns a well or a stream, assuming that they own the water in the well or stream, and someone takes that water, then they have stolen the water, and it is no longer there. They have not stolen the usage of the well or the usage of the stream. One might ask to clarify, is it theft if a person lowers a bucket into someone else's empty well and comes up with nothing, or if a person dips their bucket into someone else's stream and muddies the water but pulls their bucket out without taking any water? Clearly not. The person who lowers their bucket into an empty well may be trespassing, and the person who muddies their neighbour's stream may be vandalising, but if neither comes away with property that the owner now doesn't have, it isn't stealing as we would typically define it.
In the case of the unpaying movie-goer, by entering an establishment not his own without following the terms of that establishment, he is trespassing, not stealing. One might also argue that the theatre provided him a service by displaying the film, and was not paid for services rendered, which is the breaking of a service contract or agreement for services to be rendered. If the unpaying movie-goer had a fake ticket, then he was guilty of fraud. If he claimed he already had a ticket he was guilty of lying. All this things are unethical, but none of them is stealing.
We must also be careful not to become sidetracked on the issue of whether the owner is aware of the act or not. If I have a car out back and someone takes it but I don't notice, it has clearly already been stolen. This is not something I dispute. My claim is not with regards to our awareness of whether the stolen property is still present, but with regards to whether it is present at all. In this case, the car is definitely gone, and thus theft has occurred.
This is also not a standard usage of the term 'stolen.' The typical legal and common term for someone's legal rights not being respected is 'infringement.' If the right to dictate these terms had been stolen, then future 'infringements' on the terms would not be considered illegal since there was no longer a right to dictate them(this right had been stolen). In reality, however, this is not the case. In the United States, for example, where filesharing is illegal, one individual can be prosecuted multiple times for downloading the same file on different computers, and can also be charged with downloading the same file again even if already charged previously for the same act.
One might ask, what if the owner is not given the right to dictate such terms by the laws of his particular jurisdiction? In that case, what exactly has occurred? You will note, of course, that my own position is that there is no inherent right to dictate terms on intellectual 'property' or ideas, although it may or may not be economically useful to provide such an opportunity to the residents of a jurisdiction.
Again, the noticing or not noticing is a red herring. As far as having use of the property goes, that would centre around what one means by 'convert.' If, for example, a Muslim converts to Atheism, they cannot still be a Muslim, or if ice is converted to water, it cannot still be ice. Typically one would thus interpret the above definition to mean that the owner has lost use of the property.
Since of course 'unlawful' is included in Webster's definition this is a measure of legality rather than ethics, and by that definition filesharing would not be 'theft' in jurisdictions where it is legal. Which is entirely, of course, my point.
As far as your picture goes, I would of course reply that your picture has definitely not been stolen. The law would support me on this, as a person who did this would not be charged with stealing, but rather with a form of copyright infringement, depending on how the picture was used. Your picture is in fact an excellent example, since it is copied to every computer which views your website, although none of them 'steal' it from you. Your issue is not that it is copied, but the particular way in which it is. Clearly, when something is stolen we do not nitpick about how it was stolen in determining whether an unethical act has occurred. There is no right way to steal something, even if by some loophole the person cannot be prosecuted under the law.
This is, again, my entire point. We define what property is, and as far as consistency goes, it would be inconsistent to define ideas and purely digital representations as property. We should more accurately define these things as services, which is what they really are since they take things that are already ours (our minds, our computers, etc.) and modify them in their configurations rather than adding anything to them. This is a service, just like getting your car modified from a less useful to a more useful state, like a mechanic does, or getting a pile of raw materials modified from a less useful to a more useful state, like a builder does. If a mechanic works for you for free, do you steal something from the person who taught him to fix cars? This makes no sense whatsoever.
None of these are examples of stealing. These are all examples of copyright infringement, which is totally different. If our ideas were our property in the same sense that physical objects are, why does their ownership expire, and in many cases, do so before their author has done so? When you have owned a car for a given number of years can it suddenly cease to be your property? Not unless it was a rental, in which case it was never yours to begin with. The reason our governments typically define a brief period in which one person has the exclusive control over a particular idea is merely economic incentive. These economic incentives are not declarations of property. They are declarations of an exclusive right to provide certain services, which is my entire point. Clearly copyright infringement protection, as an economic incentive, is not an issue of ethics, but rather of legality. With regards to law, I am much more interested in our decision as to whether or not we should keep such economic incentives in place or remove them. With regards to ethics, however, the mere fact that our government has chosen to espouse something does not mean alternatives would be unethical if our governments chose to espouse them. This is in fact what I advocate: that our governments select an alternative method than these economic incentives to encourage innovation. All of this has everything to do with economics and nothing to do with ethics.
Patent infringement--correct. Stealing--incorrect. Different act. Patents are also economic incentives rather than reflections of ethical realities, and essentially establish an exclusive right to provide a service rather than a declaration of the ownership of property. Again, if patents reflected the existence of property, why would that exclusive right be able to expire when the holder of the patent has not? The answer is that patents are not proof of property, they are even more proof that we should consider digital representations and ideas as services rather than property. Again, however, these are economic rather than ethical questions. I might add that I myself am a possessor of significant intellectual 'property' and do not mind the economic incentives offered by my government which allows me exclusivity on performance of certain services. I just don't think I have any inherent right to those incentives, and think that our laws would be in better shape if they were more clear about the differences between services and property, with transfer of intangible ideas being clearly defined as a service rather than a transfer of property.
If ethics are defined by our society's practice, than filesharing is clearly de facto ethical because of the large number of people who do it. Clearly a significant segment of our society does not agree that filesharing shouldn't be practiced, and as far as a land where filesharing is allowed, I don't call it "File-sharinglandia," I call it "Canada." Tradition is fairly useless to any rational person, since traditions can be very, very wrong. All that leaves is law, which is my main concern. I am concerned that our laws are not currently set up in a consistent, rigid fashion which reflects the opinions of people in society, which is free from self-contradiction, and which will be able to continue effectively in a changing world, namely, a largely digital one. What I advocate legally is to redefine the transfer of intangible ideas as services, and then implement our copyright and patent laws as economic incentive programs, which I believe is legally stronger and will prevent such possible pitfalls as a man being prosecuted for rotating his tires in the same fashion as his neighbour, or for having a doorknob which turns the same way. Clearly, this fundamental difference is already reflected in the legal prevention of the patenting/copyrighting of 'obvious' things, although this is a terribly hard to nail down definition and is thus a potential problem with our current legal system which would be solved by my modification of its structure. Thus my definition of stealing is reflected in the reality of both the real world and current law.
I can clearly skip Myth #2, which you agree with.
The reason I bring up Myth #3 is because many people will accept actions which are equivalent to filesharing as ethical if they are made more difficult. This is not a straw man. This is an observed reality. It does not appear to be your position, and thus I won't labour the point here.
You appear to have missed the word "inherently." Laws are whatever we make them, and thus we could easily redefine the laws on digital information transfer, as Canada has done. My point was that laws are not necessarily reflections of inherent realities. They reflect the decisions lawmakers have made. If this were not the case, it would always be unethical to change the laws on something, which we do all the time in both Canada and the United States. This is why there must be a clear differentiation between inherent ethics and legality.
As far as the entire section on Canadian law, I have this to say:
Canadian law is not the sum of whatever law firms choose to put on their websites. It is the sum of our statutes and the rulings of our judges. My clarification on current law is pulled from the very ruling that you noticed and wrote about which started our exchange. If you disagree with this position, you can take it up with the judge who ruled thus, but because of his ruling this is the way Canadian law currently is. It is a little ironic that you included the photocopier example since the ruling specifically went the way it did so that photocopiers being placed in libraries would not have to be made illegal.
The second portion of my essay does not consist of rationalisations. The shift from 'myths' to 'realities' represents the shift from my argument on the ethics of filesharing to my expression of the logical consequences of my argument, so of course if you do not accept my argument you would not accept this portion of my essay, which is to be expected. If you perceived this second half as part of my argument, you would of course then consider it insufficient argumentation, since it is not intended to be argumentation at all.
I think you can now see that I would be the last person to make the argument that "It's free, it's convenient, and I want to do it" and that my position is in fact more thoroughly grounded in ethics than you thought.
Thank you for your interest, Jack, and I hope you will respond to my clarifications if you have the time.
sincerely,
Jeffery Coleman
Jack's article appears here.
Here is my response, section by section:
Open Letter to a File Sharer
(12/15/2005)
A correspondent on the Ethics Scoreboard Forum who described himself as an ethicist referred the Scoreboard to his blogged arguments that file-sharing...acquiring copyrighted music over the internet without paying for it...was ethical. After reviewing the longer of two articles he referenced, the Scoreboard offers the following response:
Dear File-Sharer:
When I first read your post on the Forum, my written response was that I had yet to see an ethical analysis that supported file-sharing, and that I was eager to read your essay on the topic. Now that I have read your piece, I am absolutely convinced: I still haven't seen an ethical analysis that supported file-sharing. What you have provided is a self-serving and breath-takingly flawed argument that is not grounded in ethics, logic, research, facts, common sense, or even accurate observations.
[Before I expand on all this, I have to inject a comment. You referred to yourself in your message as "an ethicist." That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? You are 20 years old, according to your blog, and presumably a student. There is no evidence that you teach ethics, have been published on the topic (other than your own blog), lecture on ethics or have ever been paid a penny to render an ethical analysis of anything. This doesn't affect the validity of your analysis...it is what it is...but honestly, referring to yourself as "an ethicist," which is a profession, is a bit like saying you're "a dog breeder" because your Golden Retriever had puppies. Misrepresenting yourself is never a good beginning to an ethics discussion.]
I won't spend long on this, since as you say it doesn't affect the validity of my analysis, but I think it is important to clarify for the sake of our mutual respect that I wasn't trying to misrepresent myself. I use the term 'ethicist' in the same sense as most dictionaries, i.e.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Main Entry: eth·i·cist
Pronunciation: 'eth-&-s&st
Function: noun
: one who specializes in or is very concerned about ethics
Source: Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
ethicist
n : a philosopher who specializes in ethics [syn: ethician]
I use the term in the same sense I would use 'philosopher' to refer to people who have never been paid to lecture, speak, etc. I did not intend to refer to the profession, with regards to which I would say that the small number of ethicists who are able to sustain themselves financially on the sole basis of their ethics are very fortunate and to be applauded, in the same fashion that I would appreciate an artist who was able to sustain him or herself financially on the sole basis of his or her art. For those interested, although I am also and always a student, I am currently employed as the Winnipeg representative of a wine marketing company. See more about that at www.finewinesmanitoba.com
Your essay is entitled "The Ethics of File-Sharing," though a more accurate title would be, "The Excuses of a File-Sharer." You state at the beginning that that is indeed what you are, and frankly, it explains a lot. The essay is not a dispassionate and open-minded examination by someone inquiring into the ethical implications of a new behavioral phenomenon. It is a retroactive attempt at justification by someone who has been doing something wrong and fully intends to keep doing so without wanting to invest in the inconvenience of a squawking conscience. In other words, you begin with a personal bias and an interest in the outcome. It shows.
Again, I must respond not because I think it has any bearing on the topic at hand, but because I think it would better promote a good rational exchange if we can both maintain our respect for the other party. For the record, I am a recent file-sharer and formed my position on the ethics of the matter prior to engaging in the practice, which I also did not do before the Canadian courts had clarified the legality of the matter. The reason I have posted these ideas here is not because they are newly formed, but because I think many other people would benefit from the discussion of this very relevant topic. As I mentioned at the beginning of my first post, the reason I posted was because I found the position "I know it's wrong but I still do it" to be far too common and totally unacceptable.
I am certain that these first two points of yours were genuine mistakes given the limited information available to you, Jack, but in the future I think it would better behoove both of us to focus on the topic at hand instead of on the 'topicee' and hopefully we can thereby avoid having our rational discussion descend to an exchange of ad hominem attacks which are entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. I think we can both agree that a true statement is true even if pronounced by the devil himself, and a false one false even if spoken by the wisest sage ever to walk the earth. Furthermore, I think we will be best capable of obtaining a synthesis of our positions into a stronger whole (either by me accepting yours, or by you accepting mine, or some combination of the above) if we can maintain a proper respect for each other both in our postings and in our own personal opinions because this will allow us to view the actual discussion at hand instead of colouring it with our own misconceptions of the other person. I have seen far too many discussions between rational, intelligent people collapse into name-calling and wild accusations which are not the least bit relevant or helpful to the discussion.
Your essay is divided into ten arguments for the ethical nature of file sharing, four "myths" and six "realities." I must admit that if I had not agreed to review your article, the first section, "Myth #1: File-sharing is stealing," would have provoked me to stop reading after the first paragraph.
File-sharing is obviously stealing, and the only way you "prove" that it isn't is by using a definition of stealing that has no moorings to reality:"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.
This description has a teeth-jarring logical pot-hole: it ends up using "the way we tell if something has been stolen" as an element of the act itself. But this is not so. There are many, many situations in which something is stolen but the owner would not necessarily be able to tell that he had been robbed. The owner of well or a stream may never discover that someone is stealing his water: there is still water for his use, and the finite amount of the property is not known. A movie-goer who sneaks into a theater without paying for a ticket has stolen his viewing of the film, yet the film is still available to others and the theater owner may never be aware of the theft. Certainly the film's investors, the actors and the studio that made it won't, and they may have lost a portion of the unpaid ticket price...
If you persist in the position that "File-sharing is obviously stealing" then it will be difficult to have a rational debate since you have essentially defined filesharing to be unethical without considering what it actually is. Stealing as we typically observe it is a simple and obvious act where one person has property and another person takes it, thereby depriving them of it. By contrast, filesharing is copying of property, an act which functions in a totally different way. It is essential for you to even understand my position that we differentiate the idea of the 'stealingness'(in the sense that most people use it, the taking of physical property) of filesharing from the 'ethicalness' of filesharing(which may be an entirely different issue, and on which you still may have a good argument). This is the real issue, so let's not get hung up on terminology.
That said, I don't consider any of your examples to effectively support your position. If someone owns a well or a stream, assuming that they own the water in the well or stream, and someone takes that water, then they have stolen the water, and it is no longer there. They have not stolen the usage of the well or the usage of the stream. One might ask to clarify, is it theft if a person lowers a bucket into someone else's empty well and comes up with nothing, or if a person dips their bucket into someone else's stream and muddies the water but pulls their bucket out without taking any water? Clearly not. The person who lowers their bucket into an empty well may be trespassing, and the person who muddies their neighbour's stream may be vandalising, but if neither comes away with property that the owner now doesn't have, it isn't stealing as we would typically define it.
In the case of the unpaying movie-goer, by entering an establishment not his own without following the terms of that establishment, he is trespassing, not stealing. One might also argue that the theatre provided him a service by displaying the film, and was not paid for services rendered, which is the breaking of a service contract or agreement for services to be rendered. If the unpaying movie-goer had a fake ticket, then he was guilty of fraud. If he claimed he already had a ticket he was guilty of lying. All this things are unethical, but none of them is stealing.
We must also be careful not to become sidetracked on the issue of whether the owner is aware of the act or not. If I have a car out back and someone takes it but I don't notice, it has clearly already been stolen. This is not something I dispute. My claim is not with regards to our awareness of whether the stolen property is still present, but with regards to whether it is present at all. In this case, the car is definitely gone, and thus theft has occurred.
...In the case of file sharing, as it happens, there is a valid argument that the owner doesn't still have what was stolen, which was his right to dictate the terms under which the particular user (the file-sharer) could benefit from his creation. But whether it is the creation that is being stolen or the right to use it, it is still stealing.
This is also not a standard usage of the term 'stolen.' The typical legal and common term for someone's legal rights not being respected is 'infringement.' If the right to dictate these terms had been stolen, then future 'infringements' on the terms would not be considered illegal since there was no longer a right to dictate them(this right had been stolen). In reality, however, this is not the case. In the United States, for example, where filesharing is illegal, one individual can be prosecuted multiple times for downloading the same file on different computers, and can also be charged with downloading the same file again even if already charged previously for the same act.
One might ask, what if the owner is not given the right to dictate such terms by the laws of his particular jurisdiction? In that case, what exactly has occurred? You will note, of course, that my own position is that there is no inherent right to dictate terms on intellectual 'property' or ideas, although it may or may not be economically useful to provide such an opportunity to the residents of a jurisdiction.
Did you consider consulting a dictionary before putting into print your strange definition of stealing? Here's one legal dictionary's definition of "theft," which is the technical term for stealing:
theft n.: the generic term for all crimes in which a person intentionally and fraudulently takes personal property of another without permission or consent and with the intent to convert it to the taker's use (including potential sale).
I see nothing in this definition that says the owner must notice the property stolen is missing or not still have use of it himself.
Again, the noticing or not noticing is a red herring. As far as having use of the property goes, that would centre around what one means by 'convert.' If, for example, a Muslim converts to Atheism, they cannot still be a Muslim, or if ice is converted to water, it cannot still be ice. Typically one would thus interpret the above definition to mean that the owner has lost use of the property.
This definition accurately describes file-sharing. So does this one, from Merriam Webster:
theft n.: an unlawful taking of property
Is it stealing if you take my picture off the internet and use it in ads for file-sharing software without paying me or getting my permission? Absolutely, but I still have my boyish good looks. My image is my property no matter how many times it is duplicated and used this way, and taking it is theft. So much, therefore, for this argument of yours:"...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."
Since of course 'unlawful' is included in Webster's definition this is a measure of legality rather than ethics, and by that definition filesharing would not be 'theft' in jurisdictions where it is legal. Which is entirely, of course, my point.
As far as your picture goes, I would of course reply that your picture has definitely not been stolen. The law would support me on this, as a person who did this would not be charged with stealing, but rather with a form of copyright infringement, depending on how the picture was used. Your picture is in fact an excellent example, since it is copied to every computer which views your website, although none of them 'steal' it from you. Your issue is not that it is copied, but the particular way in which it is. Clearly, when something is stolen we do not nitpick about how it was stolen in determining whether an unethical act has occurred. There is no right way to steal something, even if by some loophole the person cannot be prosecuted under the law.
In order to support your argument, you have simply devised a narrow definition of property that isn't used in this society...and that's how we define theft, by what we define as property. What you define as property is factually incorrect...
This is, again, my entire point. We define what property is, and as far as consistency goes, it would be inconsistent to define ideas and purely digital representations as property. We should more accurately define these things as services, which is what they really are since they take things that are already ours (our minds, our computers, etc.) and modify them in their configurations rather than adding anything to them. This is a service, just like getting your car modified from a less useful to a more useful state, like a mechanic does, or getting a pile of raw materials modified from a less useful to a more useful state, like a builder does. If a mechanic works for you for free, do you steal something from the person who taught him to fix cars? This makes no sense whatsoever.
...Continuing on from the last paragraph......This is clear from the way we view things other than file-sharing 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...
Ah...so much misinformation, so little time! One can indeed ethically copy from great works of architecture because they are centuries old and the architects are long dead, but use the original design of a living architect and you will find yourself in court, because it's stealing. If you copy an original Valentino dress for your own use, it's also stealing: just try wearing it on "the red carpet." If an artist friend copies an abstract Bruce Gray painting for you to hang in your house, you've robbed artist Gray of the proceeds he would receive from a licensed copy or the original; you've robbed him. If you are choreographing a professional production of "Grease" and use Patricia Birch's choreography without her permission, you have stolen it, and she will get a court judgement against you for its value.
None of these are examples of stealing. These are all examples of copyright infringement, which is totally different. If our ideas were our property in the same sense that physical objects are, why does their ownership expire, and in many cases, do so before their author has done so? When you have owned a car for a given number of years can it suddenly cease to be your property? Not unless it was a rental, in which case it was never yours to begin with. The reason our governments typically define a brief period in which one person has the exclusive control over a particular idea is merely economic incentive. These economic incentives are not declarations of property. They are declarations of an exclusive right to provide certain services, which is my entire point. Clearly copyright infringement protection, as an economic incentive, is not an issue of ethics, but rather of legality. With regards to law, I am much more interested in our decision as to whether or not we should keep such economic incentives in place or remove them. With regards to ethics, however, the mere fact that our government has chosen to espouse something does not mean alternatives would be unethical if our governments chose to espouse them. This is in fact what I advocate: that our governments select an alternative method than these economic incentives to encourage innovation. All of this has everything to do with economics and nothing to do with ethics.
As for your light bulb example, you appear to be blissfully unaware of the concept of a patent, which legally establishes a property right in an original idea, an invention. For as long as a patent lasts, nobody can copy an originator's invention without permission or paying for the privilege, though people try. It's called stealing a patent...patent infringement. Similarly, your charming belief that intangible ideas are not property would be quite a surprise to the thousands of people who hold intellectual property rights, the drafters of the laws that protect their ideas, and the lawyers in the billion dollar intellectual property protection industry.
Patent infringement--correct. Stealing--incorrect. Different act. Patents are also economic incentives rather than reflections of ethical realities, and essentially establish an exclusive right to provide a service rather than a declaration of the ownership of property. Again, if patents reflected the existence of property, why would that exclusive right be able to expire when the holder of the patent has not? The answer is that patents are not proof of property, they are even more proof that we should consider digital representations and ideas as services rather than property. Again, however, these are economic rather than ethical questions. I might add that I myself am a possessor of significant intellectual 'property' and do not mind the economic incentives offered by my government which allows me exclusivity on performance of certain services. I just don't think I have any inherent right to those incentives, and think that our laws would be in better shape if they were more clear about the differences between services and property, with transfer of intangible ideas being clearly defined as a service rather than a transfer of property.
Now, you may say, as some have, that this shouldn't be, that ideas should not be property. And that is a perfectly respectable idea, except that the concept of property is defined by our society, not individuals. The native American tribes didn't believe that land was property. Some of the Hippies in the Sixties didn't believe anything (except maybe drugs) should be property: ever hear of Abby Hoffman's Steal This Book? You are certainly free to start a society in which ideas and music and art aren't property, or where turnips or LEGOS or cats aren't property, for that matter. In that society, these things can't be stolen. Go ahead, establish it, call it "File-sharinglandia;" see if anyone wants to live in it. Good luck to you. But while you're in this society, you are not free to live by definitions of property that are counter to practice, tradition, and law. File-sharing is stealing, and stealing is wrong. Your definition of stealing, in which file-sharing is something else, exists only in your mind.
If ethics are defined by our society's practice, than filesharing is clearly de facto ethical because of the large number of people who do it. Clearly a significant segment of our society does not agree that filesharing shouldn't be practiced, and as far as a land where filesharing is allowed, I don't call it "File-sharinglandia," I call it "Canada." Tradition is fairly useless to any rational person, since traditions can be very, very wrong. All that leaves is law, which is my main concern. I am concerned that our laws are not currently set up in a consistent, rigid fashion which reflects the opinions of people in society, which is free from self-contradiction, and which will be able to continue effectively in a changing world, namely, a largely digital one. What I advocate legally is to redefine the transfer of intangible ideas as services, and then implement our copyright and patent laws as economic incentive programs, which I believe is legally stronger and will prevent such possible pitfalls as a man being prosecuted for rotating his tires in the same fashion as his neighbour, or for having a doorknob which turns the same way. Clearly, this fundamental difference is already reflected in the legal prevention of the patenting/copyrighting of 'obvious' things, although this is a terribly hard to nail down definition and is thus a potential problem with our current legal system which would be solved by my modification of its structure. Thus my definition of stealing is reflected in the reality of both the real world and current law.
I can clearly skip Myth #2, which you agree with.
The reason I bring up Myth #3 is because many people will accept actions which are equivalent to filesharing as ethical if they are made more difficult. This is not a straw man. This is an observed reality. It does not appear to be your position, and thus I won't labour the point here.
Take "Myth #4: copyRight, copyWrong" (cute title!), for example. Right off the bat, you make an assertion that is just plain ethically wrong:...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.
Fascinating. Since conduct is made illegal because a society decides that it is in some way damaging to individuals in the society or society itself, what legally prohibited acts are ethical? I suppose there are a few, such as some victimless crimes, but as discussed above, stealing property, as in file-sharing, isn't victimless. And you miss one very basic point: breaking the law is itself unethical. It is a violation of a promise, through your social contract with your country, province, and town, to abide and respect rules of conduct, or pay the penalty of breaking them.
You appear to have missed the word "inherently." Laws are whatever we make them, and thus we could easily redefine the laws on digital information transfer, as Canada has done. My point was that laws are not necessarily reflections of inherent realities. They reflect the decisions lawmakers have made. If this were not the case, it would always be unethical to change the laws on something, which we do all the time in both Canada and the United States. This is why there must be a clear differentiation between inherent ethics and legality.
As far as the entire section on Canadian law, I have this to say:
Canadian law is not the sum of whatever law firms choose to put on their websites. It is the sum of our statutes and the rulings of our judges. My clarification on current law is pulled from the very ruling that you noticed and wrote about which started our exchange. If you disagree with this position, you can take it up with the judge who ruled thus, but because of his ruling this is the way Canadian law currently is. It is a little ironic that you included the photocopier example since the ruling specifically went the way it did so that photocopiers being placed in libraries would not have to be made illegal.
The rest of your essay, the so-called "realities," descend into typical rationalizations and occasionally non-sequiturs...
The second portion of my essay does not consist of rationalisations. The shift from 'myths' to 'realities' represents the shift from my argument on the ethics of filesharing to my expression of the logical consequences of my argument, so of course if you do not accept my argument you would not accept this portion of my essay, which is to be expected. If you perceived this second half as part of my argument, you would of course then consider it insufficient argumentation, since it is not intended to be argumentation at all.
There may yet be an ethical argument for file-sharing to be made. You're articulate and thoughtful; maybe you'll be the one to make it. But in order to do that, you'll have to do the work of acquiring real facts, learning about real laws, and applying disciplined analysis. For now, your argument for file-sharing is no more or less than "It's free, it's convenient, and I want to do it."
It isn't ethical, but it's the best you have.
Sincerely,
Jack Marshall, President, ProEthics, Ltd.
I think you can now see that I would be the last person to make the argument that "It's free, it's convenient, and I want to do it" and that my position is in fact more thoroughly grounded in ethics than you thought.
Thank you for your interest, Jack, and I hope you will respond to my clarifications if you have the time.
sincerely,
Jeffery Coleman
Filesharing: the debate!
First, I want to get everybody on the same page, so I will include all the correspondence that led to an exchange of ideas.
To begin with, I read this and posted this:
Then, I received this reply:
Which I was very happy to read, since as many of you know I am also frustrated with the 'inevitability,' 'they make too much money,' etc. non-ethical 'arguments' for filesharing.
and then, later, this:
Which of course, really intrigued me with the 'it does not use your name' clause. Then, I was off to spend christmas with family. As that time comes to a close and I have now had a chance to read that article, I will post it and my response to it in my next post.
To begin with, I read this and posted this:
Posted by Jeffery Coleman (24.79.84.77) on December 09, 2005 at 09:41:41:
I found this article looking back on the site, and was quite surprised at it's one-sided take on filesharing. The author seems unaware that many ethicists have come down on the other side of the ethical debate here as well. I happen to be one of them. I've outlined the reasons why here:
http://fugitivethoughts.blogspot.com/2005/12/filesharing-ethics-revisited.html
and more extensively here:
http://fugitivethoughts.blogspot.com/2005/09/ethics-of-filesharing.html
It seems this is a very split issue; that is, I have met people who come down very heavily on each side, but not many who are willing to consider a move to 'the other side' for any reason. Furthermore, there doesn't seem to have been a lot of public debate on this topic at all. So, if any of you share the views of the author here, and are willing to contribute to the debate, I'd love to have you comment on the ideas I've posted.
sincerely,
Jeffery Coleman
Then, I received this reply:
Posted by Jack Marshall (202.131.253.182) on December 10, 2005 at 02:11:20:
In Reply to: "Canada's File-Sharing Surrender" posted by Jeffery Coleman on December 09, 2005 at 09:41:41:
Jeffrey: Thanks for the post and the refernces. For some reason the internet can't find blogspot out here (I'm in Mongolia on a legal ethics assignment) so I can't read your pieces. I will when I get back (soon) and comment here. And I hope someone else does as well. For some reason, readers only seem to debate with, me and not with each other. If we can change that convention, I'll be very happy.
I admit to being eager to read a coherent defense of file-sharing that is based on ethical rather than non-ethical (it's inevitable; it can't be stopped; everyone's going to do it anyway; those music guys make too much money; music should belong to everyone)considerations.
Which I was very happy to read, since as many of you know I am also frustrated with the 'inevitability,' 'they make too much money,' etc. non-ethical 'arguments' for filesharing.
and then, later, this:
Posted by Jack Marshall (208.226.48.103) on December 12, 2005 at 23:47:29:
In Reply to: "Canada's File-Sharing Surrender" posted by Jeffery Coleman on December 09, 2005 at 09:41:41:
Jeff: I read your longer article, and you should look for the long article I have written in response to appear on the home page very soon. It does not use your name.
Which of course, really intrigued me with the 'it does not use your name' clause. Then, I was off to spend christmas with family. As that time comes to a close and I have now had a chance to read that article, I will post it and my response to it in my next post.
Finally!
Finally, I've found someone interested in discussing the ethics of filesharing, although their first response seems very dismissive of the very idea that one could form an ethical position which supports filesharing.
Nonetheless, they appear willing to discuss the matter rationally and carefully, so I will be posting our first exchange here shortly. You can expect these exchanges to get rather long, but I hope that anyone currently considering the ethics of this issue themselves will read through both sides carefully and then add their own comments as they like.
This person comes from the site ethicsscoreboard.com so check out that site for a lot of content from a similar perspective and to get an idea where they're coming from.
Nonetheless, they appear willing to discuss the matter rationally and carefully, so I will be posting our first exchange here shortly. You can expect these exchanges to get rather long, but I hope that anyone currently considering the ethics of this issue themselves will read through both sides carefully and then add their own comments as they like.
This person comes from the site ethicsscoreboard.com so check out that site for a lot of content from a similar perspective and to get an idea where they're coming from.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Ye old carolers
We've all seen them: the quaint, picturesque groups of carolers dressed in the full costume of 17th century british peasants. They stand in perfect 'choir' formation and sing beautiful christmas songs.
But what, you may ask, do these carolers do when they have finished caroling for the day and it is time to go back to their 21st century homes? Do they disband and head for their suv's and minivans? Do they slip into a phonebooth and pull off a miraculous time-shifting transformation?
Earlier this evening as I walked through the Portage Place shopping centre, I chanced upon a group of carolers in just such limbo, stuck between their two realities. Having apparently finished their carols for the day, they were wandering around the mall window-shopping. As I passed them, they paused to look at some t-shirt designs displayed in a clothing store window. Whether it was force of habit, some form of conditioning, pure chance, or simply artistic dedication to their performance, they came to a halt in exact choral formation without seemingly paying any attention to it.
As they stood their conversing in hushed tones about t-shirts with designs like 'Pot Nation' and 'Ask my wife--she's always right!' I marveled at their juxtaposed realities. A given passerby might equally well mistake them for time travelers as identify them as modern-day winnipegers browsing through the mall. For a moment, they seemd childlike in their blissful ignorance of the startling reality they presented.
Then one of them suggested they head over to Tim Hortons. "F* that! I'm going home'" was the answer, and the paradox dissolved as the temporal shift was completed and the group dismantled.
Good old Winnipeg.
But what, you may ask, do these carolers do when they have finished caroling for the day and it is time to go back to their 21st century homes? Do they disband and head for their suv's and minivans? Do they slip into a phonebooth and pull off a miraculous time-shifting transformation?
Earlier this evening as I walked through the Portage Place shopping centre, I chanced upon a group of carolers in just such limbo, stuck between their two realities. Having apparently finished their carols for the day, they were wandering around the mall window-shopping. As I passed them, they paused to look at some t-shirt designs displayed in a clothing store window. Whether it was force of habit, some form of conditioning, pure chance, or simply artistic dedication to their performance, they came to a halt in exact choral formation without seemingly paying any attention to it.
As they stood their conversing in hushed tones about t-shirts with designs like 'Pot Nation' and 'Ask my wife--she's always right!' I marveled at their juxtaposed realities. A given passerby might equally well mistake them for time travelers as identify them as modern-day winnipegers browsing through the mall. For a moment, they seemd childlike in their blissful ignorance of the startling reality they presented.
Then one of them suggested they head over to Tim Hortons. "F* that! I'm going home'" was the answer, and the paradox dissolved as the temporal shift was completed and the group dismantled.
Good old Winnipeg.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
They call it stealing
I found a wonderful site which, unlike most of the entertainment industry campaigns, seems legitimately interested in developing a workable ethics of filesharing. You can find them at:
http://theycallitsharing.com
I suggest you read through their website before continuing.
Using the 'contact us' form on their site, I posted the following response to their website:
----
Hi,
Your position on filesharing is a lot more thought-through than most that I've heard. Clearly, you're interested in having concise and accurate reasons for your stance. I have to say, though, that some of your arguments are not sound.
For example, a large part of your argument is based on the fact that musicians put a lot of hard work into their music. Unfortunately, although this argument pulls on my heartstrings, that doesn't mean it's a legitimate reason that filesharing is wrong. Just because someone works hard on something doesn't mean they have a right to get paid for it. I have many artist friends who have worked very hard but have not been financially successful, with many of their pieces remaining unsold. Have they been wronged by the people who did not buy their art? No, because there is no such thing as a 'right to get paid.' In order to get paid artists also have to convince their patrons to support them.
Another portion of your argument suggests that stealing has occurred because the artists and record companies do not make any money when a song is downloaded. Again, however, part of the picture is missing. There is no right to be profitable. Every day businesses fail and go bankrupt. This is not neccesarily because someone has wronged them. It may simply be that they failed to understand the market, or that the service they provided was replaced by a more advanced one. For example, when the automobile was invented it put horse and buggy retailers out of business in short order. This is not because it did something wrong to them, but simply because it was a better technology. In the reality of the digital world, there may be better technologies and business models for how to make money.
The problem with your position on filesharing is that it fails to understand the incredible transformation that has occurred in the world through the digital revolution. The world is different now, and some businesses may have to adapt. In the digital world, where one person can share any music they have on their computer with anyone else, the whole world is like a big open courtyard. When any musician plays there(ie releases their music on the open market), everyone can hear the music all over the courtyard. It's not wrong for them to hear it. It's just the way the sound can propogate through the air without costing the musician anything extra(free distribution on the internet). So how do you make money in this environment? The street performer has the answer: put out your hat or your guitar case. You have to convince people to give you their money. Sure, you probably won't make millions this way, but maybe that age is over. Maybe the car has replaced the horse. Maybe the indie performer with a paypal 'donate' link on his website will replace the superstar with their huge record label and advertising agency and agent. Technology is making good music cheaper to produce all the time.
In the digital world, every computer is like a skilled musician who can replay any song after hearing it only once. In such an environment, human musicians who originate music have to find new ways to operate. It might be tough to adapt, but the fact is, the world changes from time to time. And in the end, music will be better for it, because instead of being overproduced and overhyped and fake and marketed, it will be genuine art right from the artist.
I would like to cordially invite you to enter into a discussion on this topic at my blog, fugitivethoughts.blogspot.com
I think this is an important issue for us all to discuss and come to agreement on, so that we can build laws into our various legal systems which reflect the way the world actually works and thereby allow us to maintain a functional society.
See you there!
sincerely,
Jeffery Coleman
----
Hopefully, someone from there will be interested in discussing the issue here.
http://theycallitsharing.com
I suggest you read through their website before continuing.
Using the 'contact us' form on their site, I posted the following response to their website:
----
Hi,
Your position on filesharing is a lot more thought-through than most that I've heard. Clearly, you're interested in having concise and accurate reasons for your stance. I have to say, though, that some of your arguments are not sound.
For example, a large part of your argument is based on the fact that musicians put a lot of hard work into their music. Unfortunately, although this argument pulls on my heartstrings, that doesn't mean it's a legitimate reason that filesharing is wrong. Just because someone works hard on something doesn't mean they have a right to get paid for it. I have many artist friends who have worked very hard but have not been financially successful, with many of their pieces remaining unsold. Have they been wronged by the people who did not buy their art? No, because there is no such thing as a 'right to get paid.' In order to get paid artists also have to convince their patrons to support them.
Another portion of your argument suggests that stealing has occurred because the artists and record companies do not make any money when a song is downloaded. Again, however, part of the picture is missing. There is no right to be profitable. Every day businesses fail and go bankrupt. This is not neccesarily because someone has wronged them. It may simply be that they failed to understand the market, or that the service they provided was replaced by a more advanced one. For example, when the automobile was invented it put horse and buggy retailers out of business in short order. This is not because it did something wrong to them, but simply because it was a better technology. In the reality of the digital world, there may be better technologies and business models for how to make money.
The problem with your position on filesharing is that it fails to understand the incredible transformation that has occurred in the world through the digital revolution. The world is different now, and some businesses may have to adapt. In the digital world, where one person can share any music they have on their computer with anyone else, the whole world is like a big open courtyard. When any musician plays there(ie releases their music on the open market), everyone can hear the music all over the courtyard. It's not wrong for them to hear it. It's just the way the sound can propogate through the air without costing the musician anything extra(free distribution on the internet). So how do you make money in this environment? The street performer has the answer: put out your hat or your guitar case. You have to convince people to give you their money. Sure, you probably won't make millions this way, but maybe that age is over. Maybe the car has replaced the horse. Maybe the indie performer with a paypal 'donate' link on his website will replace the superstar with their huge record label and advertising agency and agent. Technology is making good music cheaper to produce all the time.
In the digital world, every computer is like a skilled musician who can replay any song after hearing it only once. In such an environment, human musicians who originate music have to find new ways to operate. It might be tough to adapt, but the fact is, the world changes from time to time. And in the end, music will be better for it, because instead of being overproduced and overhyped and fake and marketed, it will be genuine art right from the artist.
I would like to cordially invite you to enter into a discussion on this topic at my blog, fugitivethoughts.blogspot.com
I think this is an important issue for us all to discuss and come to agreement on, so that we can build laws into our various legal systems which reflect the way the world actually works and thereby allow us to maintain a functional society.
See you there!
sincerely,
Jeffery Coleman
----
Hopefully, someone from there will be interested in discussing the issue here.
Monday, December 05, 2005
Filesharing Ethics Revisited
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Confusing your peers 101
Quote of the week:
"Mackey's axiom system is somewhat unsatisfactory though, since it assumes that the partially ordered set is actually given as the orthocomplemented closed subspace lattice of a separable Hilbert space."
For those of you who don't know what that means, memorise it and slip it into a conversation sometime.
For those of you who do: shame, shame, shame!
For those of you who encounter this line at your next cocktail party, the safe response is something like, "Yeah, that set is so unorthocomplemented!"
Cheers!
"Mackey's axiom system is somewhat unsatisfactory though, since it assumes that the partially ordered set is actually given as the orthocomplemented closed subspace lattice of a separable Hilbert space."
For those of you who don't know what that means, memorise it and slip it into a conversation sometime.
For those of you who do: shame, shame, shame!
For those of you who encounter this line at your next cocktail party, the safe response is something like, "Yeah, that set is so unorthocomplemented!"
Cheers!
Monday, November 21, 2005
static
stat·ic
adj.
Having no motion; being at rest; quiescent.
Fixed; stationary.
When you flick to a channel without a nice, coherent signal on the television and you get a screen filled with constantly changing little black and white dots, why is it called static? Shouldn't it be called something other than the exact opposite of what it is?
Well, tonight I discovered the holy grail of static: static static. That's right: on channel 24 on my television is a random pattern of black and white dots that doesn't change. The pattern stays exactly the same, with none of the dots ever changing position in any way. It's quite the enigma, really. It looks like the little gremlin inside the tube who spatters the screen with white paint 30 times per second got tired and went to bed, too lazy to fulfill his essential duty to maintain the paradox. And now the paradox has collapsed. On channel 24.
adj.
Having no motion; being at rest; quiescent.
Fixed; stationary.
When you flick to a channel without a nice, coherent signal on the television and you get a screen filled with constantly changing little black and white dots, why is it called static? Shouldn't it be called something other than the exact opposite of what it is?
Well, tonight I discovered the holy grail of static: static static. That's right: on channel 24 on my television is a random pattern of black and white dots that doesn't change. The pattern stays exactly the same, with none of the dots ever changing position in any way. It's quite the enigma, really. It looks like the little gremlin inside the tube who spatters the screen with white paint 30 times per second got tired and went to bed, too lazy to fulfill his essential duty to maintain the paradox. And now the paradox has collapsed. On channel 24.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
random nuggets in the goldmine of life part 1
Today I met a man at a bus stop. His first words to me were 'You look a bit young to be a spineless corporate bastard.' The man was not hardened and embittered by a lifetime of experience. Rather, he was no older than 25. As it turns out, he was a freelance artist. He was quite flabbergasted and, I think, a little dissapointed to learn that I represented distinguished wines from all over the world, many of which are particularly recognised for their social and environmental commitments, and that I placed social responsibility very high on my list of priorities. Unfortunately, my bus arrived just then and interrupted what was erupting into a positively scintillating conversation.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
What are the chances?
I friend of mine was recently telling me an interesting story about his grandmother. Apparently she had a punctured tire recently, and when she took it to the shop, they discovered a whole, undischarged bullet imbedded in it! She had been driving around on it for some time. Imagine if she had hit a pebble just right and set it off; now that would have been an impossible crime to solve!
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
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.
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.
Monday, September 05, 2005
A technological irony
For those of you who follow technology, here's a neat little experience I had, rooted in the deepest of ironies:
finding an article on google news about something ironic: 0$
following the steps through to a download page: 0$
downloading normally pay-for software for free: priceless
No, I'm not talking about the latest p2p file-sharing program. I'm talking about the somewhat unique and sometimes controversial Linspire operating system. For those of you who haven't heard of it or don't remember, this was a linux-based operating system originally called 'Lindows' because it could run many windows programs and was simple to use. Microsoft sued the company because it said the name was too similar to windows, and eventually forced them to change the name to 'Linspire'.
Linspire, unlike most linux projects, is not free. It is cheaper than windows and more virus- and crash-resistant. Some people think it's a great alternative to windows. Some people think it pollutes the whole idea of open source programming by selling something based on free software. Anyways, one guy decided to take Linspire and strip out all the non-open source software. He called his little project 'Freespire.'
Now here's where the massive irony sets in: Linspire took issue with his name and asked him to change it! The same company that changed one measly little letter(although they claim the next two were just a coincidence) to form their own product name had issues with a name that differed from theirs by a full four letters, or half of the whole name! Rarely in history has anything ever been as ironic as this.
Realising the precarious position they had put themselves in and the potential damage to their 'free spirit' image, Linspire attempted to counteract the move by allowing people to download a free copy of the Linspire operating system at linspire.com/freespire with the offer expiring on September 6th.
Immediately, their servers were completely flooded. I managed to beat my way through and actually download a free copy. I'm not sure if they even require a license, since I couldn't see one in my receipt, although my order number may count as one. Anyways, I found the entire experience fairly enjoyable and hilarious.
Now, to be fair to Linspire, they didn't threaten legal action or anything. They just had problems with people getting confused about what exactly Freespire was and who was behind it. Nonetheless, plenty of irony that they would face confusion over a product name given their history with Windows.
finding an article on google news about something ironic: 0$
following the steps through to a download page: 0$
downloading normally pay-for software for free: priceless
No, I'm not talking about the latest p2p file-sharing program. I'm talking about the somewhat unique and sometimes controversial Linspire operating system. For those of you who haven't heard of it or don't remember, this was a linux-based operating system originally called 'Lindows' because it could run many windows programs and was simple to use. Microsoft sued the company because it said the name was too similar to windows, and eventually forced them to change the name to 'Linspire'.
Linspire, unlike most linux projects, is not free. It is cheaper than windows and more virus- and crash-resistant. Some people think it's a great alternative to windows. Some people think it pollutes the whole idea of open source programming by selling something based on free software. Anyways, one guy decided to take Linspire and strip out all the non-open source software. He called his little project 'Freespire.'
Now here's where the massive irony sets in: Linspire took issue with his name and asked him to change it! The same company that changed one measly little letter(although they claim the next two were just a coincidence) to form their own product name had issues with a name that differed from theirs by a full four letters, or half of the whole name! Rarely in history has anything ever been as ironic as this.
Realising the precarious position they had put themselves in and the potential damage to their 'free spirit' image, Linspire attempted to counteract the move by allowing people to download a free copy of the Linspire operating system at linspire.com/freespire with the offer expiring on September 6th.
Immediately, their servers were completely flooded. I managed to beat my way through and actually download a free copy. I'm not sure if they even require a license, since I couldn't see one in my receipt, although my order number may count as one. Anyways, I found the entire experience fairly enjoyable and hilarious.
Now, to be fair to Linspire, they didn't threaten legal action or anything. They just had problems with people getting confused about what exactly Freespire was and who was behind it. Nonetheless, plenty of irony that they would face confusion over a product name given their history with Windows.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Winnipeg part 2
I had a chance today to see some other parts of Winnipeg and they were really nice. That wasn't, however, my intention when I headed out of my apartment. I was intending to hop on a bus, ride out to the eastern part of town, catch a ride with someone to a place just outside the city, and have a fun time with some friends. Little did I know what an adventure I had just embarked upon.
First, I have to back up a little bit. My brother and I were running a little late. Well, we were running a lot late. Well, I was running a lot late and keeping my brother waiting. I suggested he head on over to the bus stop so that he wouldn't have to travel at the supersonic speeds I was going to have to achieve to make the scheduled connection. A couple more delays and a found set of lost keys later, I bolted out the door, my sonic boom rattling nearby windows. By this time, I had already made several crucial mistakes:
1)I had forgotten the name of the street at the bus stop we had agreed to head to.
2)I had forgotten the exact time the pertinent vehicle was scheduled to stop there.
3)I had forgotten to suggest a route for him to take so that I could find him along the way.
Of course, these things, having been forgotten, were the furthest from my mind as I raced to reach Main Street, somewhere along which a number 47 bus would stop (that much I knew), in the process inventing a new illegal act, the crime of jay-sprinting. I arrived on Main Street and headed north, the direction I knew the 47 would take. It was nowhere in sight, and I had no idea whether I had missed it or beaten it. I had, after all, left almost ten minutes later than my brother. Then I spotted it, down a side street! It was just about to turn on to main, and ahead lay a vacant bus stop.
"Perfect!", I thought. My method of running directly over to Main and then north had apparently enabled me to intersect it prematurely. I sprinted to the bus stop as fast as I could. When I reached it, the bus was still waiting for its turn to turn. Then I glanced at my watch, and paused. My lightning-fast sprint had apparently taken me a little longer than expected.
As I stepped onto the bus, I made a feeble attempt to delay it, just in case, by inquiring about the cost and destination of its service. In reality, I suspected my brother would be waiting further up Main at our appointed stop, whatever it had been, so I established myself near the front of the bus and began to carefully scan the sidewalk and bus stops as we passed.
A few blocks further up Main I was growing concerned. There was still no sign of my brother, and then the bus turned off onto a side street and began making its way east. At this point I was faced with a conundrum. It was possible that my brother had simply not made it to whatever bus stop it was we were supposed to meet at. It was also possible that he had arrived in time and caught the appointed bus while I had arrived late enough to catch a later bus of the same number. After all, he had left the house long before me, and I was not entirely sure when it was that the bus was supposed to arrive. It was possible that for any of several reasons he had returned to our apartment but had forgotten to bring his key with him and was locked out. There was also the minute possibility that intervening circumstances had prevented my brother from getting to Main Street at all, such as his getting hit by a vehicle or being hit by a stray improperly tightened bolt from a poorly assembled passenger aircraft jostled far above by some unusually heavy turbulence. Deciding my priority was to make sure I didn't leave my brother behind, I got off my bus at the next station and headed back down Main Street to look for him.
Now at this point I must step aside from my narrative to point something out. Traditional wisdom, and many of its practitioners, would have held that I did the right thing by allowing my concern for my brother to supersede the logical course of action. As I understand it, this would be because by allowing my concern for him to take precedence over logic, I demonstrate the genuine nature of my love for my brother. However, if I had more carefully analysed the situation, I would have realised that since my brother had left long before me, it was more likely that he was ahead of me than behind me. I would have realised that any accident or misfortune that could befall him could occur just as easily after he got on the bus and headed east as before. I would have realised that when two people have lost track of each other while en route but both have a common destination, the way they can be most certain of finding each other is if they both attempt to reach that destination. I would have realised that my brother is an intelligent person who would be aware of this and would thus strive to continue along to our destination rather than to search pointlessly the many possible different routes I could have taken and places I could have gone. I would have realised that the whole point of us trying to find each other in a short amount of time would be to keep our appointment at our destination. I would have realised that I should have stayed on that bus. So in fact, by allowing my concern for my brother to supersede my logical faculties, I actually perform both him and myself a disservice. So, if love means that one wants the best for someone else above all, one ought still to apply logic. In reality, if one wishes to do what is best for someone else, one still does best to stick to one's rational deductions rather than allow misapplied emotion to interfere with their proper application. So much for traditional wisdom.
We left our beleaguered character running south down Main Street searching earnestly for his brother. Now of course, within a few minutes after exiting the transportation vehicle, I realised that I should not have. Running south all the way to Portage, just north of where I had gotten on the bus, I still had not spotted my brother and was coming to a fuller realisation of my mistake. Since he was clearly not here, I would do best to rectify it by navigating my way as quickly as possible to our destination. Fortunately, while it would be a while before another convenient 47 came along, there were buses of every other imaginable number streaming by at a regular rate, and since there is rarely only one way to take buses to a common destination, I stepped aboard the first one that came by and inquired of the driver of that fine conveyance how I might arrange to have myself deposited at one Kildonan Place, the largest landmark near our Tim Horton's rendezvous that I could bring to mind. He kindly informed me that not only would a number 11 bus do me just nicely for my purposes, but that one would be along shortly and that it was an express bus of sorts that would take me speedily to my destination. I thanked him and stepped off to wait for it. It arrived in short order, and I stepped aboard, ready to be reunited presently with my brother.
Now the plight of the common bus driver is a difficult one. I was made explicitly aware of this shortly after boarding as a passenger began to loudly complain that whilst he had depressed the signalling device, the driver showed no signs of stopping. In the first place, the bus was clearly labeled as an express bus, which meant to my mind that it was not intended to stop at every little possible venue but rather to focus mainly on getting its rather large quantity of passengers to their specific destination much further ahead. Second of all, we were at the time in the process of crossing a rather large highway of some sort on an overpass without a sidewalk, and even if the driver had risked life and limb to come to a stop in that very dangerous and precarious position, there would have been absolutely nowhere for this individual and his equally impatient wife to go unless their only intent was a swan dive from the overpass into the speeding crush of traffic below. I can just imagine the suicide note now:
“Dear cruel world: We would like to file a complaint against the impertinent bus driver who refused to allow us to debark at our chosen venue of depontification.
P.S. We can't go on living. Goodbye!”
Whoever the couple were, they were clearly just the sort of difficult folk who would make up a word of unclear derivation, as in was 'depontification' an attempt to remodel the word 'defenestration' by replacing the Latin root 'fenestre' for window with 'pontis' for bridge, or was it based somehow off of the word 'pontificate' and meant that they were attempting to take the air out of some pompous accusations that had been made against them, or perhaps through some combination of the two ideas they intended their own jump to be itself a statement of how they were so dogmatic about their opinion that they were willing to leap off a bridge to prove it; or, finally, was the actual basis of their construction the word 'pontiff' and was their leap into oncoming traffic actually an attempt to assassinate a passing bishop in a vehicle below? I suppose we shall never know.
As we headed further along our route (we appeared to be headed north now) I watched carefully for street names. My destination was on Regent and Lagimodiere, and I knew that Regent also had a rebellious portion that preferred to be known as Nairn, so by watching for these names I hoped to be able to assure myself of my location. However, I saw none of these as I headed further north. Then, I had a revelation. My brother, if he was uncertain of my location, might call home looking for me. Since we had voicemail, this would be an opportunity for me to find out where he was, or for him to find out where I was. We had a means of communication! I hopped off the bus at the next stop and stepped into a phone booth. After a couple of quarters and a couple of tries, I succeeded both in leaving a message and in ascertaining that no one else had done so recently. Remembering that Regent or Nairn or whatever it was called was north of where I had boarded locomotive device 11, and that I still had not passed a road purporting to pass itself off as either of those names, I continued north at an accelerated pace. There was no point, after all, in walking slowly when a brisk trot would get the job done faster.
A couple blocks further north, I began to grow unsure of my surroundings. I was certain my destination was not that far north, and so I walked into the nearest 7-11, picked up a large spiral book which allegedly contained detailed cartographic information about the city of Winnipeg, and carried it to the counter to purchase it. There I discovered that for the price it went for it should have contained detailed cartographic information about the location of every lost and buried treasure in all of history and legend combined, but I was in as much of a bind as the pages I held in my hands, so I relented and purchased it anyways. As I exited that now-tainted establishment I saw a taxicab pull up and thought to compare its driver with those poor drivers of public buses once again.
Apparently we have no idea of the sorts of situations which face bus drivers every day. Take the kind fellow who had directed me to the number 11 bus, for instance. For all I knew, he had had to come into work at 5:00 or some other ridiculous hour that morning, and all day he had to drive around the unappreciative public, taking the flak for doing his job properly, stuck inside the same little chair all day, from time to time having to answer the most idiotic and mind-numbing questions of clueless travellers, such as “how might I arrange to have myself deposited at one Kildonan Place?” It was possible he had been up late the night before having a row with his wife while his seven septuplets screamed the night away because he didn't have enough money to provide for them and he had to work every waking hour just to pay the mortgage on his house to keep them from being thrown out into the freezing cold frostbite of a Manitoba summer. It was possible that he was new on the job and had to study for hours every day in all his free time to understand locations in the city and be able to recognise street names and destinations that people would ask about. It was possible that despite all he went through he managed to keep a cheery manner throughout his day, thereby displaying himself a real hero, one of those fine people we look up to to show us there is still some good left in the human race, some pristine honour that is worth hoping in and dreaming in. Or maybe he was just an imbecile. Whatever the cause and case, he had made a slight miscalculation in directing me, as the map in my hands confirmed. He had failed to distinguish between Kildonan Place, a shopping centre on the eastern end of the city, and Kildonan Park, which lay a considerable ways west and north of there and rather far away from where I wanted to be an hour after I had left my apartment and a good 15 minutes late for my rendezvous at Tim Horton's.
My northward progression, of course, had only hurt my machinations and had been greatly misinformed, as in fact the Henderson Highway along which I now travelled intersected neither with any street called Regent nor even one disguised as Nairn, which ended abruptly a tiny distance from Henderson and was connected only by a tiny side street called Talbot, ironically located almost exactly at the position where the impatient couple had demanded to disembark.
With the image of the bus system now sullied and no convenient way to reach my destination, I finally gave up and called a cab. I hadn't really spent much time in North American taxicabs before, and I figured it would be an interesting and enjoyable experience which could also get me to my rendezvous in short order and put a satisfying end to my little saga. The taxi arrived in about 5 minutes and we headed off.
Now there is an entire mythology built up around taxicab drivers, and the legends therein are very explicit. For one, about half of all cab drivers are supposed to be first generation immigrants. In this regard, I was fortunate. The driver of my taxi spoke in a distinct Hindustani accent that suggested either he or his parents had been the ones who had immigrated to Canada. A second part of the mythology clearly dictates that cab drivers are supposed to do their best to ratchet up the fare by taking the long way or 'accidentally' making wrong turns, etc. In this regard I was either unfortunate or fortunate, I'm not sure which, as my driver took a very direct route, the most direct I could possibly find on the map. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the only thing I was carrying with me happened to be a map, which I had lying open on my lap throughout the entire trip.
The most important element of the cab driver mythology, however, is supposed to be their conversation. The legends clearly state that cab drivers are supposed to talk incessantly on either pointless or obscure subjects. Well, in my cab as soon as we drove off the driver began talking earnestly about things that I didn't understand. That was because he was earnestly discussing something on his cell phone in Hindustani. I felt entirely robbed of the genuine taxi experience. As his conversation progressed, the party on the other end of the line began to do most of the talking, and since he was wearing an ear piece and listening attentively, this meant that the entire cab was perfectly silent. From time to time, he would jut in with something in just the same tone that one would use if one were trying to start a conversation, and I had to carefully listen to ensure that he was still talking to his little microphone, especially since a couple of these comments were actually clarifications about my destination directed to me. All that was left for me to do was to watch the minutes slowly ticking away on my wrist and the numbers not-so-slowly climbing on the meter.
I arrived at the intersection of Lagimodiere and Regent at almost exactly 9:00, a full hour late for my arrangements. I walked over to the Tim Horton's with a little bounce in my step. At the very least, I would be certain I was no longer delaying the poor person who had been waiting for my brother and I to navigate the complex labyrinth that is the streets of Winnipeg. Later, looking on the map and realising how small of a city Winnipeg actually is, I realised that in the process of all my running back and forth between taxis and buses and looking for my brother I had actually covered an equivalent distance to what it would have taken me merely to head to my destination on foot, and also that to do so instead of taking any bus whatsoever would still have allowed me to arrive on time.
When I stepped up to the Tim Horton's, I did not immediately see my brother waiting for me inside. The reason I did not immediately see my brother waiting for me inside is that he wasn't there. I walked up and down regent to ensure he wasn't anywhere else waiting for me. By this time I was more than a little confused. Where exactly was my brother? I stepped into a nearby phone booth to supply a situation update to the poor lonely woman who sits somewhere in a little booth all day saying, “Please leave your message after the beep.” Instead of the woman, however, who was become quite well-acquainted with me, I heard the voice of my brother on the other end of the phone, and was finally treated to the missing half of the story.
He had not left the apartment immediately, but rather he had waited outside for me for a few minutes. Then, he had headed off for the bus stop by a different route than the one I was later to take, and arrived just in time to see the back of the bus pulling away, although he had no idea that I was on it. It had, in fact, been that very bus stop at which we were supposed to meet, and the bus which I supposed to be the second had actually been the first which we had planned to take. At this point, if I had merely realised this, or taken the trouble to glance backward as I boarded the bus, or even been slightly more successful in delaying the bus driver, our entire debacle could have been avoided.
My brother waited for me at the bus stop until it became clear that I was not coming, and by this he properly deduced that I had been on the bus which he had just missed. This was during the time at which I was going up and down Main Street looking for him. Ironically, as he was waiting just south of Portage and I was convinced the appointed bus stop was north of Portage, I probably came within a couple blocks of him at some point or another. Then, when the next 47 arrived half an hour later, he hopped on it and got all the way out to Regent and Lagimodiere by the correct time. By this point, I was somewhere up along the route of the number 11. Again, if I had either stayed on the first bus I got on, or waited patiently for the next number 47, we would have relocated each other and still have been on time for our rendezvous. However, when he arrived he didn't remember where exactly we were supposed to meet up, so instead of heading in to the Tim Horton's, he waited by the Superstore and completely missed the person we were supposed to meet. After waiting for a while, he decided to head back home and arrived back at about 8:40. He had been in communication with the person who had been waiting for us and sent them on their way, although they had waited for a full hour while I gallivanted all across the city.
With everything finally straightened out, I crossed over to the west-bound side of the road and waited for the number 47 bus. It arrived in good time and I hopped on, ready to get home and glad to have had the whole thing sorted out. Now there is a peculiar thing about buses. Their windows are tinted to block the harsh glare of the sun during the day, and at night the inside of them is lit quite brilliantly, apparently with the express intent of developing a one-way mirror effect and making it absolutely impossible to see outside unless travelling through brightly lit areas. Upon leaving its stop on the west-bound side of Regent, the number 47 does not travel through brightly lit areas. It travels through dark, apparently residential areas. Neither does it head west, as one would expect. It heads east for a tour of that outlying end of the city. It heads east through poorly lit residential areas, thereby making it next to impossible to see where exactly it has headed, and rather confusing me quite completely when after about 40 minutes we still had not made it to downtown and I could not for the life of me see anything outside of the vehicle to tell me where exactly we might be. When I finally arrived back in downtown at about 10:30, I had, however, made some good use of my time. I had faithfully memorised every major landmark and street name in the entire city of Winnipeg. For the next time I go walking.
First, I have to back up a little bit. My brother and I were running a little late. Well, we were running a lot late. Well, I was running a lot late and keeping my brother waiting. I suggested he head on over to the bus stop so that he wouldn't have to travel at the supersonic speeds I was going to have to achieve to make the scheduled connection. A couple more delays and a found set of lost keys later, I bolted out the door, my sonic boom rattling nearby windows. By this time, I had already made several crucial mistakes:
1)I had forgotten the name of the street at the bus stop we had agreed to head to.
2)I had forgotten the exact time the pertinent vehicle was scheduled to stop there.
3)I had forgotten to suggest a route for him to take so that I could find him along the way.
Of course, these things, having been forgotten, were the furthest from my mind as I raced to reach Main Street, somewhere along which a number 47 bus would stop (that much I knew), in the process inventing a new illegal act, the crime of jay-sprinting. I arrived on Main Street and headed north, the direction I knew the 47 would take. It was nowhere in sight, and I had no idea whether I had missed it or beaten it. I had, after all, left almost ten minutes later than my brother. Then I spotted it, down a side street! It was just about to turn on to main, and ahead lay a vacant bus stop.
"Perfect!", I thought. My method of running directly over to Main and then north had apparently enabled me to intersect it prematurely. I sprinted to the bus stop as fast as I could. When I reached it, the bus was still waiting for its turn to turn. Then I glanced at my watch, and paused. My lightning-fast sprint had apparently taken me a little longer than expected.
As I stepped onto the bus, I made a feeble attempt to delay it, just in case, by inquiring about the cost and destination of its service. In reality, I suspected my brother would be waiting further up Main at our appointed stop, whatever it had been, so I established myself near the front of the bus and began to carefully scan the sidewalk and bus stops as we passed.
A few blocks further up Main I was growing concerned. There was still no sign of my brother, and then the bus turned off onto a side street and began making its way east. At this point I was faced with a conundrum. It was possible that my brother had simply not made it to whatever bus stop it was we were supposed to meet at. It was also possible that he had arrived in time and caught the appointed bus while I had arrived late enough to catch a later bus of the same number. After all, he had left the house long before me, and I was not entirely sure when it was that the bus was supposed to arrive. It was possible that for any of several reasons he had returned to our apartment but had forgotten to bring his key with him and was locked out. There was also the minute possibility that intervening circumstances had prevented my brother from getting to Main Street at all, such as his getting hit by a vehicle or being hit by a stray improperly tightened bolt from a poorly assembled passenger aircraft jostled far above by some unusually heavy turbulence. Deciding my priority was to make sure I didn't leave my brother behind, I got off my bus at the next station and headed back down Main Street to look for him.
Now at this point I must step aside from my narrative to point something out. Traditional wisdom, and many of its practitioners, would have held that I did the right thing by allowing my concern for my brother to supersede the logical course of action. As I understand it, this would be because by allowing my concern for him to take precedence over logic, I demonstrate the genuine nature of my love for my brother. However, if I had more carefully analysed the situation, I would have realised that since my brother had left long before me, it was more likely that he was ahead of me than behind me. I would have realised that any accident or misfortune that could befall him could occur just as easily after he got on the bus and headed east as before. I would have realised that when two people have lost track of each other while en route but both have a common destination, the way they can be most certain of finding each other is if they both attempt to reach that destination. I would have realised that my brother is an intelligent person who would be aware of this and would thus strive to continue along to our destination rather than to search pointlessly the many possible different routes I could have taken and places I could have gone. I would have realised that the whole point of us trying to find each other in a short amount of time would be to keep our appointment at our destination. I would have realised that I should have stayed on that bus. So in fact, by allowing my concern for my brother to supersede my logical faculties, I actually perform both him and myself a disservice. So, if love means that one wants the best for someone else above all, one ought still to apply logic. In reality, if one wishes to do what is best for someone else, one still does best to stick to one's rational deductions rather than allow misapplied emotion to interfere with their proper application. So much for traditional wisdom.
We left our beleaguered character running south down Main Street searching earnestly for his brother. Now of course, within a few minutes after exiting the transportation vehicle, I realised that I should not have. Running south all the way to Portage, just north of where I had gotten on the bus, I still had not spotted my brother and was coming to a fuller realisation of my mistake. Since he was clearly not here, I would do best to rectify it by navigating my way as quickly as possible to our destination. Fortunately, while it would be a while before another convenient 47 came along, there were buses of every other imaginable number streaming by at a regular rate, and since there is rarely only one way to take buses to a common destination, I stepped aboard the first one that came by and inquired of the driver of that fine conveyance how I might arrange to have myself deposited at one Kildonan Place, the largest landmark near our Tim Horton's rendezvous that I could bring to mind. He kindly informed me that not only would a number 11 bus do me just nicely for my purposes, but that one would be along shortly and that it was an express bus of sorts that would take me speedily to my destination. I thanked him and stepped off to wait for it. It arrived in short order, and I stepped aboard, ready to be reunited presently with my brother.
Now the plight of the common bus driver is a difficult one. I was made explicitly aware of this shortly after boarding as a passenger began to loudly complain that whilst he had depressed the signalling device, the driver showed no signs of stopping. In the first place, the bus was clearly labeled as an express bus, which meant to my mind that it was not intended to stop at every little possible venue but rather to focus mainly on getting its rather large quantity of passengers to their specific destination much further ahead. Second of all, we were at the time in the process of crossing a rather large highway of some sort on an overpass without a sidewalk, and even if the driver had risked life and limb to come to a stop in that very dangerous and precarious position, there would have been absolutely nowhere for this individual and his equally impatient wife to go unless their only intent was a swan dive from the overpass into the speeding crush of traffic below. I can just imagine the suicide note now:
“Dear cruel world: We would like to file a complaint against the impertinent bus driver who refused to allow us to debark at our chosen venue of depontification.
P.S. We can't go on living. Goodbye!”
Whoever the couple were, they were clearly just the sort of difficult folk who would make up a word of unclear derivation, as in was 'depontification' an attempt to remodel the word 'defenestration' by replacing the Latin root 'fenestre' for window with 'pontis' for bridge, or was it based somehow off of the word 'pontificate' and meant that they were attempting to take the air out of some pompous accusations that had been made against them, or perhaps through some combination of the two ideas they intended their own jump to be itself a statement of how they were so dogmatic about their opinion that they were willing to leap off a bridge to prove it; or, finally, was the actual basis of their construction the word 'pontiff' and was their leap into oncoming traffic actually an attempt to assassinate a passing bishop in a vehicle below? I suppose we shall never know.
As we headed further along our route (we appeared to be headed north now) I watched carefully for street names. My destination was on Regent and Lagimodiere, and I knew that Regent also had a rebellious portion that preferred to be known as Nairn, so by watching for these names I hoped to be able to assure myself of my location. However, I saw none of these as I headed further north. Then, I had a revelation. My brother, if he was uncertain of my location, might call home looking for me. Since we had voicemail, this would be an opportunity for me to find out where he was, or for him to find out where I was. We had a means of communication! I hopped off the bus at the next stop and stepped into a phone booth. After a couple of quarters and a couple of tries, I succeeded both in leaving a message and in ascertaining that no one else had done so recently. Remembering that Regent or Nairn or whatever it was called was north of where I had boarded locomotive device 11, and that I still had not passed a road purporting to pass itself off as either of those names, I continued north at an accelerated pace. There was no point, after all, in walking slowly when a brisk trot would get the job done faster.
A couple blocks further north, I began to grow unsure of my surroundings. I was certain my destination was not that far north, and so I walked into the nearest 7-11, picked up a large spiral book which allegedly contained detailed cartographic information about the city of Winnipeg, and carried it to the counter to purchase it. There I discovered that for the price it went for it should have contained detailed cartographic information about the location of every lost and buried treasure in all of history and legend combined, but I was in as much of a bind as the pages I held in my hands, so I relented and purchased it anyways. As I exited that now-tainted establishment I saw a taxicab pull up and thought to compare its driver with those poor drivers of public buses once again.
Apparently we have no idea of the sorts of situations which face bus drivers every day. Take the kind fellow who had directed me to the number 11 bus, for instance. For all I knew, he had had to come into work at 5:00 or some other ridiculous hour that morning, and all day he had to drive around the unappreciative public, taking the flak for doing his job properly, stuck inside the same little chair all day, from time to time having to answer the most idiotic and mind-numbing questions of clueless travellers, such as “how might I arrange to have myself deposited at one Kildonan Place?” It was possible he had been up late the night before having a row with his wife while his seven septuplets screamed the night away because he didn't have enough money to provide for them and he had to work every waking hour just to pay the mortgage on his house to keep them from being thrown out into the freezing cold frostbite of a Manitoba summer. It was possible that he was new on the job and had to study for hours every day in all his free time to understand locations in the city and be able to recognise street names and destinations that people would ask about. It was possible that despite all he went through he managed to keep a cheery manner throughout his day, thereby displaying himself a real hero, one of those fine people we look up to to show us there is still some good left in the human race, some pristine honour that is worth hoping in and dreaming in. Or maybe he was just an imbecile. Whatever the cause and case, he had made a slight miscalculation in directing me, as the map in my hands confirmed. He had failed to distinguish between Kildonan Place, a shopping centre on the eastern end of the city, and Kildonan Park, which lay a considerable ways west and north of there and rather far away from where I wanted to be an hour after I had left my apartment and a good 15 minutes late for my rendezvous at Tim Horton's.
My northward progression, of course, had only hurt my machinations and had been greatly misinformed, as in fact the Henderson Highway along which I now travelled intersected neither with any street called Regent nor even one disguised as Nairn, which ended abruptly a tiny distance from Henderson and was connected only by a tiny side street called Talbot, ironically located almost exactly at the position where the impatient couple had demanded to disembark.
With the image of the bus system now sullied and no convenient way to reach my destination, I finally gave up and called a cab. I hadn't really spent much time in North American taxicabs before, and I figured it would be an interesting and enjoyable experience which could also get me to my rendezvous in short order and put a satisfying end to my little saga. The taxi arrived in about 5 minutes and we headed off.
Now there is an entire mythology built up around taxicab drivers, and the legends therein are very explicit. For one, about half of all cab drivers are supposed to be first generation immigrants. In this regard, I was fortunate. The driver of my taxi spoke in a distinct Hindustani accent that suggested either he or his parents had been the ones who had immigrated to Canada. A second part of the mythology clearly dictates that cab drivers are supposed to do their best to ratchet up the fare by taking the long way or 'accidentally' making wrong turns, etc. In this regard I was either unfortunate or fortunate, I'm not sure which, as my driver took a very direct route, the most direct I could possibly find on the map. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the only thing I was carrying with me happened to be a map, which I had lying open on my lap throughout the entire trip.
The most important element of the cab driver mythology, however, is supposed to be their conversation. The legends clearly state that cab drivers are supposed to talk incessantly on either pointless or obscure subjects. Well, in my cab as soon as we drove off the driver began talking earnestly about things that I didn't understand. That was because he was earnestly discussing something on his cell phone in Hindustani. I felt entirely robbed of the genuine taxi experience. As his conversation progressed, the party on the other end of the line began to do most of the talking, and since he was wearing an ear piece and listening attentively, this meant that the entire cab was perfectly silent. From time to time, he would jut in with something in just the same tone that one would use if one were trying to start a conversation, and I had to carefully listen to ensure that he was still talking to his little microphone, especially since a couple of these comments were actually clarifications about my destination directed to me. All that was left for me to do was to watch the minutes slowly ticking away on my wrist and the numbers not-so-slowly climbing on the meter.
I arrived at the intersection of Lagimodiere and Regent at almost exactly 9:00, a full hour late for my arrangements. I walked over to the Tim Horton's with a little bounce in my step. At the very least, I would be certain I was no longer delaying the poor person who had been waiting for my brother and I to navigate the complex labyrinth that is the streets of Winnipeg. Later, looking on the map and realising how small of a city Winnipeg actually is, I realised that in the process of all my running back and forth between taxis and buses and looking for my brother I had actually covered an equivalent distance to what it would have taken me merely to head to my destination on foot, and also that to do so instead of taking any bus whatsoever would still have allowed me to arrive on time.
When I stepped up to the Tim Horton's, I did not immediately see my brother waiting for me inside. The reason I did not immediately see my brother waiting for me inside is that he wasn't there. I walked up and down regent to ensure he wasn't anywhere else waiting for me. By this time I was more than a little confused. Where exactly was my brother? I stepped into a nearby phone booth to supply a situation update to the poor lonely woman who sits somewhere in a little booth all day saying, “Please leave your message after the beep.” Instead of the woman, however, who was become quite well-acquainted with me, I heard the voice of my brother on the other end of the phone, and was finally treated to the missing half of the story.
He had not left the apartment immediately, but rather he had waited outside for me for a few minutes. Then, he had headed off for the bus stop by a different route than the one I was later to take, and arrived just in time to see the back of the bus pulling away, although he had no idea that I was on it. It had, in fact, been that very bus stop at which we were supposed to meet, and the bus which I supposed to be the second had actually been the first which we had planned to take. At this point, if I had merely realised this, or taken the trouble to glance backward as I boarded the bus, or even been slightly more successful in delaying the bus driver, our entire debacle could have been avoided.
My brother waited for me at the bus stop until it became clear that I was not coming, and by this he properly deduced that I had been on the bus which he had just missed. This was during the time at which I was going up and down Main Street looking for him. Ironically, as he was waiting just south of Portage and I was convinced the appointed bus stop was north of Portage, I probably came within a couple blocks of him at some point or another. Then, when the next 47 arrived half an hour later, he hopped on it and got all the way out to Regent and Lagimodiere by the correct time. By this point, I was somewhere up along the route of the number 11. Again, if I had either stayed on the first bus I got on, or waited patiently for the next number 47, we would have relocated each other and still have been on time for our rendezvous. However, when he arrived he didn't remember where exactly we were supposed to meet up, so instead of heading in to the Tim Horton's, he waited by the Superstore and completely missed the person we were supposed to meet. After waiting for a while, he decided to head back home and arrived back at about 8:40. He had been in communication with the person who had been waiting for us and sent them on their way, although they had waited for a full hour while I gallivanted all across the city.
With everything finally straightened out, I crossed over to the west-bound side of the road and waited for the number 47 bus. It arrived in good time and I hopped on, ready to get home and glad to have had the whole thing sorted out. Now there is a peculiar thing about buses. Their windows are tinted to block the harsh glare of the sun during the day, and at night the inside of them is lit quite brilliantly, apparently with the express intent of developing a one-way mirror effect and making it absolutely impossible to see outside unless travelling through brightly lit areas. Upon leaving its stop on the west-bound side of Regent, the number 47 does not travel through brightly lit areas. It travels through dark, apparently residential areas. Neither does it head west, as one would expect. It heads east for a tour of that outlying end of the city. It heads east through poorly lit residential areas, thereby making it next to impossible to see where exactly it has headed, and rather confusing me quite completely when after about 40 minutes we still had not made it to downtown and I could not for the life of me see anything outside of the vehicle to tell me where exactly we might be. When I finally arrived back in downtown at about 10:30, I had, however, made some good use of my time. I had faithfully memorised every major landmark and street name in the entire city of Winnipeg. For the next time I go walking.
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