The Ethics of Piracy

little Facebook feedback. That's a thing, well it could have. It's not listener mail our Facebook. So I heard it that way everymore. Yeah, I just made it up. So Facebook feedback lots of fs and that. Uh. This listener mail comes to us from home. Ecebook feedback comes to us from someone whose name I can't pronounce because my pronunciation for names and Indian languages is terrible. But I'm going to give it a shot and he can write to me on Facebook and tell me how wrong I

got it. On Tricks says Hey, I've got an awesome podcast idea, the ethics of pirating media. You have already bought. Well, if I'm not that clear, here's an example, you buy a music CD and you travel somewhere. You had the music from the CD on your computer, but you accidentally deleted it. Is it right to download the music from an illegal source? Maybe torrents? Downloading without purchasing is illegal anyway, but people argue that this is ethically right. I'm one

of them too. You could read this as a listener mail and you can mention my name too. I tried. UM. So we're gonna talk about piracy ethics. You know, when is it is it ever all right to download something uh for free? You know, whether you've purchased it or haven't purchased it, and sort of the issues that surround this and make it more complicated than you might first imagine.

So let's get started, shall we. Yes, Now it does become more complicated as you start uh crossing international boundaries. This is uh. If it was a piece of music recorded and save Britain, UH and you were in Germany when you had your files deleted and you wanted to download them, uh, it makes things even more complicated. Unfortunately,

well fortunately and unfortunately for the pirates. I suppose, UM, there are treaties in between these different countries, including those but around the World Intellectual Property Organization or Weepoh wow, Yeah, I I focused mainly on the United States because that's, for one thing, is the easiest for me to get information on in a language that I can read. Yes, that is our sphere of operation, of course, so it's a little easier for us. But you know, on tricks,

we do know from his frequent feedback on Facebook. Hey, that's lots of alliteration there. Um does live in India, so you know, he might have a different perspective than the media. Right. But in the United States, copyright law as it stands is already fairly complicated. Yes, okay, So in general, a work created on or after January one, nineteen seventy eight has a copyright that will last through the duration of the author's life plus seventy years. Yes,

before January one, ninety eight is more complicated. Um. And also you could, uh, from the ones from before then, corporations and authors had the opportunity to extend copyright further if they wanted to, which could not bring it up to the same amount of time as if it were created after nine. But it's it's complex. So, uh, what copyright allows you to do? Is it it allows you to dictate how how your your content can be purchased and distributed. Uh. So let's say that I create an idea,

I've got it under copyright. What I choose to do with that content, that content belongs to me, and I can license it out to people as I see fit. Uh, that's really a lot of the arguments I see kind of ignore this whole licensing issue, which is to me right at the very heart of the problem. But UM, go ahead, you're better to say something. Yeah, well, I was just going to say, at least in the United States. UM,

let's say you're an author and you're writing a book. Well, as soon as you finish it and you you've you've you know, say, printed it out, it's in a fixed form and you're done with it. Copyright already is protecting that work in the United States. As soon as they exists in a fixed form, it is under copyright. You are the copyright holder. Um. You do not have to file paperwork for it, although for some protection it does help you to do that. Um, but you've already got

it. It It starts right then and there. Now, say you want to have your work published. You'd like to see your name in print. You want to go on tour and do book signings. This is the dream that you've always been wanting to pursue. Well, you're going to need a publisher to help you with that. You could self publish it, but you're still you know, unless you happen to own a printing press, it's gonna be hard to distribute. Yeah, you're you're you're going to want some kind of publishing

help with it. So let's say, uh, let's let's say you're really interested in having somebody like Random House publish your work, and so you submit it and they're they're gaga over the whole thing. They love it, they love the idea. They want to print it. But you're going to have to license the copyright to them in order to do that, and you're going to sign a long agreement that allows them to be the publisher to do that, and so you're basically giving them access to or copyright

if you will. So at that point, um, making unauthorized copies affects the company too, and not just you as the author, right, And then we have to kind of address something that's there's a lot of confusion around this as well. The concept of fair use. Fair use definitely has its place, but unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which side of the argument you happen to be on at any given time, it's not firmly defined. In general, fair use allows a couple for a couple of different um

exceptions to the whole copyright issue. One is, if you are using material for educational purposes and you are commenting on it, or you are um, you know, using it to illustrate a point, you are allowed to use a certain amount of information without it being considered a violation of copyright. However, that certain amount is up for discussion.

There's no there's no clear definition. There's no like two paragraphs is the limit and over to paragraphs is copyright violation or is the utmost limit you can go to. There's nothing set in stone. It ends up being a case by case basis. Right, if you're going to use a portion of someone else's work in your own and the person who's copyright uh is in question, uh, you know, feels that is being infringed upon, they take you to court.

It is ultimately going to be up to the judge to decide, you know, how much is being used and for what purpose? If it it relies on a couple of things. It needs to be transformative. So if you've, for example, weird al Yankovic takes songs that are already um popular and will remake them into a parody. Often puts it in a different key, and rewrites new lyrics to it, and makes subtle changes to the song to make it his own. But it's essentially a song that

is recognized old people. Parody is protected. Parody is protected, but it is what he has done is transformed the original work and and put it under a parody. So

he's okay with that. Now, if you took an entire poet's poem and used it in your work and claimed it was your own, then you're probably gonna get in trouble, right Or if you if you end up writing a an essay, let's say that makes the exact same point as the essay that you are using to illustrate your point, there might be an argument there that that's just plagiarism and copyright violation, that you're not you're not using this in a new way of or or really using it

to educate or illustrate. You're just borrowing someone else's stuff, and uh, and using it as part of your own material. Um, but you can also make copies of things that you purchase intellectual property. Essentially, you can make copies of I P for archival purposes. Yes, Now that means that, let's say that you bought this really came about, especially back with during the whole vinyl album and cassette era, and

say that you would buy a vinyl album. Kids, if you don't know what that is, actually probably do because they're kind of coming back with the whole DJ stuff. But that in our our tech stuff audience is probably

into that anyway. Yeah, but but you might want to make a copy of that because this is physical medium, and media can sustain damage and wear and tear over time, and you still want to be able to listen to that content after that media has died out or perhaps perhaps even it gets to a point where the equipment you have that can play that media no longer works, right, So you want to be able to create an archival copy. Now,

this is a copy for your own personal use. It's something that you're keeping so that you can again maintain uh, the ability to access that material that the license that you have essentially purchased to that material for a while that in the United States that became really pretty much impossible to do with legally, right because companies were putting DRM on top of UH of their physical media like let's say c d s or DVDs, and in order to be able to create a copy, you had to

break the d r M, right, But breaking the DRM was illegal, So even though it wasn't illegal to make the copy, it was illegal to break the protection that prevents you from making a copy. So in effect, it became illegal for you to make a copy because there's no legal way to get around it. Yeah, now it's not going to come as any big shock to any of our listeners that the world of computer technology has completely changed, uh the need for copyright protection in the

eyes of people who own copyright. Now, I mean, you had a six page book, you know, in eighty two. The only way anybody was going to make a copy of that was my hand and that right then and there is going to be a deterrent to most people to make another copy of the book now. I mean, obviously the the printer is going to have the printing press and be able to make more copies of it, and you could do that Um, but it's not like everybody on the street is going to be able to

do that. Now that everyone has a computer and it's easy to make copies of let's say, for for the purposes of this particular part of the conversation, unprotected anything that's unprotected like electronic books, digital music files, digital video files. I mean, if there were no protection at all, Uh, it would be easy to you know, rip new copies of that and give them to everybody you knew, distribute them on the internet freely and amount of seconds. In fact,

that happens all the time. Sure, sure, So DRM is in is digital rights management is an attempt on the part of the copyright owners and the publishers of that content who have a stake in it too, now that they have a license to to produce and distribute the content. Um, it is an attempt for them to protect it and

to get people to actually fork over the money for it. Um. The thing is they have also pushed government in general and multiple countries to help them do that by lobbying intensely for very thorough and someone to just say, you know, draconian measures that help them protect their d r M and leave it in place. Which is what the which is what's often used in conjunction with the Digital Millennium

Copyright Act here in the United States. Yeah, d m c A. You've probably heard that term before, especially if you live in the United States. That's that's what I was talking about with the d m c A, where it made it a criminal act to try and either bypass DRM on a DRM product or to create software or some other tool that would allow you to bypass DRM. So if you created a tool that would break d r M and UH, and even if you had never done it yourself, like if you never created a file,

just creating that tool was illegal under d m c A. Yes. Now, of course, the entertainment industry in the United States is very very big and very very powerful. UM. The d m c A was signed into UH into law on enter by President Bill Clinton UM, and it did bring the United States into compliance with two different w I p O treatise UM, which UH basically is the w y p O Copyright Treaty and then w I p

O Performances and Phonograms Treaty. Now, everybody who's all the countries that are are on board with these treaties UM have an obligation to protect copyright from on things from other countries just as much as they would anything that

was copyrighted in their own country. So um, if somebody in Russia wanted to uh copy and distribute Madonna's latest album, um, and Russia has signed onto the w I p O treaty, they are at the government is legally obligated to protect it as though it was somebody a Russian artist who had also recorded and released an album in its own country. Right now, let's get even more complicated with this whole

digital media. So okay, so we've already established the idea that creating digital copies from physical media can be uh well, depending on the exceptions. Also because d m c A does have some exceptions that that tend to get in introduced every three years or so. But um, but creating digital copies of physical media can be difficult and in some cases illegal because you have to violate the DRM.

Another reason why this is a complicated issue is that it's hard to wrap your mind around stealing a digital five because really what you're doing is you're creating another instance of that file. Yeah, you're not taking anything from someone. For example, if I own an album that Chris wants, so we're gonna call it, um let's see the Ramones Greatest hits. Let's say I've got the Ramones Grace Hits on vinyl and Chris is thinking, you know, I'd really

like to listen to Blitz Creek Pop. And Jonathan's not looking. I'm gonna take that album and he takes the album out of my house. Well, I no longer can listen to the Ramones Grace Hits because my copy has been a student. But let's say that I have the album in digital file format on my computer and Chris says, you know, I want to listen to Blitz Creek Pop. I'm gonna copy that file off Jonathan's computer and put it on my computer. Well, I can still listen to

my copy of Blitz Creek Bop. As far as I can tell from my perspective, nothing bad has happened because everything I have is still where it should be. Ut, that's a case of theft. It's just not a case of theft that is analogous necessarily just stealing physical goods. And this, I think is where are a lot of the arguments center around this concept, the idea that if you're not if you're not really bereft of something, if if the object is not has not left your possession,

how can you call it stealing? Well, this is where we get to the concept that when you purchase i P, you're not really purchasing the i P. You're you're licensing it, right, Like if I buy a book from Chris, Like Chris has written a book and he's published the book, and I buy it from him, I know I don't own Chris's work, that that ownership does not transfer to me, that that intellectual property doesn't transfer to me, just my

access to it. That's a license to access that i P. And if you think of it in terms of licenses, then these questions start to get a little easier to understand. Now, the question we were specifically asked was about getting an the legal copy of something that you already own legally and where does that fall ethically? And I guess that really depends upon whom you ask. Yeah, yeah, I mean

speaking speaking as a recording artist myself. Um, you know, long time listeners will recall that I am I've been in several bands and have done recordings with with a few as well. Um, I sort of sympathized with the big name artists who have uh basically hollered about the about people stealing their music because you know, for them that's how they make their living. Um, so basically people

are taking away a potential source of revenue. Now it doesn't you know, you could argue, you could make the argument, Hey, I know these guys are on name of major label here, they're only getting a buck for every CD and I'm basically on stealing a dollar from their coffers of money that they're making touring. It's no big deal. But to them, you know, if suddenly thousands of people are doing that, then there's a possibility that they might have to go

get a day job. And I mean seriously, but there's also there's a getting to make that. To make it more complicated, of course, this in this particular situation, we're talking about someone who has purchased that that product legally, has converted it into digital media, which again is legal, yes, but then loses the digital copy and does not immediately have access to the physical copy. Is it wrong to download those files again for free? I would say that

here's the problem that I have with this. The problem is that by downloading those files for free, you are participating in piracy. From from your perspective as the consumer, it's not a huge deal, right, You're getting access to files that you originally had access to in the first place. So for you, it just seems like it's it's like nothing's really changed. But what you're doing is you're actually trafficking with someone who is distributing these files for free,

and that means that they have violated copyright. They don't have the right to distribute that content. They are doing something that's wrong, and you are a part of that. So I would say that ethically, on your end, it doesn't seem like a big deal, but in a bigger picture perspective, it's the wrong thing to do. I think legally it's more black and white. Well legally it's black

and white, but ethically and legally are two totally different concepts. Well, no, that's That's what I wanted to stress, is that there there is a clear division there. You know, legally, yes, there's really no question according to these these laws that have been set up in in so many countries and the treaties that they have made to protect them, Yes, that is technically theft. Um or at least technically piracy. But ethnically, you know, from the user standpoint, it's a

lot murk here. From the artist's standpoint or the author standpoint, it's like, hey, you know, you bought a copy of my book. I can't help it if you left it on the train. You know, that doesn't give you an excuse to go to the the library, you know, photocopy the entire thing and make yourself another copy for free. That's not that's not my fault, right. But from the user's point, you know, I've already paid my twelve right, that's a

that's a very good point. I'm glad you paid that way because the example I used when Chris and I were just kind of chatting about this casually before the podcast was I said, well what if what if you um uh see how did I words? Le'll say, you you buy a book, okay, and then the book gets damaged beyond repair, or you lose it or whatever. At some point you no longer have access to that book, but you purchased it. That does not give you the right to go out and steal another copy of that book.

But then you have the argument of hey, you're talking about physical media, here, by stealing a physical object, you have didn't eyed the the publisher or bookseller or whomever, the right to sell that. Whereas when you're talking about digital again, you're making a copy, you're not stealing a physical object. But it's again, if you go back to the license argument, as you did, because you were talking about going to the library and copying a book, that's

still not legal. And is it ethical or not? Well, it depends on upon whom you ask again, Like like I said, they are like Randy Cohen, who writes for the New York Times magazine. Randy Cohen writes about ethical issues, and he was specifically asked about a case where someone had bought a hardback copy of a novel and she wanted to be able to read an electronic copy of that novel, but there was no e book available for purchase.

So what she was wondering was is it wrong to download a pirated electronic copy of that book having already purchased the book through legal means, and there's no there's no legal recourse to get an electronic copy. Mr Cohen said that he thought ethically that was all right. Yeah, that blew my mind too. I I'm not so quick

to jump on that. Um. Here, here's the thing. If you went and you purchased a book, and you brought it home and scanned every single page and created a digital copy yourself, I have no problem with that because I think of that as fair use. You're doing that for archival purposes, or you're doing it you're your your space shifting the work correct like you're you're shifting it from a physical medium to a digital medium. UM, I

have no issue with any of that. What I have a problem with is the fact that by going to a source where they are distributing this, you have taken part of an illegal practice, and that means you're supporting an illegal practice. Now, now from your perspective, you're doing

it very ethically because you've already purchased that content. It's not like you are getting around purchasing the content again because again there's no legal recourse for you to get that e book ethically for you, I guess I don't have an issue with it. But again, big picture, you're supporting a larger piracy effort that violates the distribution portion of copyright. So while while I would say that, I would feel as on my own end that I would have.

You know, I don't have a big problem with doing this. If I thought about my actions beyond just the fact that this is benefiting me to this is supporting an entire illegal industry, then that's where the problems start coming in for me Ethically. It's it's it's a a tough question. Um, I can tell you. Let me be perfectly honest here. I'll just to lay it out on the table. There was a particular television series that came out in the UK. Yes, Um,

several years ago. He's trying not to smile because we just talked about this in a completely unrelated light the other day. So it's really funny. So this particular television series came out in the UK, and there was no legal way to get access to a US version of this UK television show. The only thing I could have done is I could have purchased the UK version of the show and then bought a UK or region free

DVD player so that I could watch the show. But other than that, there was no way for me to do it. The only thing that I could do if I wanted to watch the show was to download it illegally. Subsequently, the show became available in the United States and immediately went out and purchased a copy. Because I did download it illegally, I left that part out. I illegally downloaded a television show that was not legally available in the

United States. Uh. And I didn't feel badly about it because I was like, I would pay for this if there were a way for me to pay for it, and I will pay for it if there ever is a way, and I did. Doesn't justify my action. Still that I don't think my actions are really justifiable, because ultimately, the way I acted was that I said, I want access to this content, and I'm going to get it. But there is nothing in the universe that guarantees you access to any content. You do not have the right

to access content just because it exists. This is where Jonathan goes on a rant, because I mean, I am I have fallen guilt guilty of this in the example I used as a perfect example. By the way, in case you're wondering, the show was spaced so it was a different show. Yeah, but I do remember, dude, you don't need to tell them I've done it more than once. No, that's not the one you were talking about I think I was taked about Battle Royal, wasn't I? Yeah, okay,

Battle Royal, which I subsequently ended up deleting eventually. But that was another example early on. Uh No, Space was what I was thinking of this the UK show I was thinking. You meant a different show that we were talking about was someone had uploaded to YouTube. You mean the American pilot for the I T crowd And you want me to just keep on naming things and dig a hole even deeper. But you didn't download anything illegally,

know that one I just watched somebody uploaded Italy. So at any rate, Getting back to the Space discussion, as soon as it became available legally, I went out and purchased a copy, and I ended up deleting my um my, the copies I had digitally because it didn't need them anymore, like the DVD copy was superior to the digital format that I had. Um But yes, you don't. You are not entitled to content just because it exists. Let's say that a cool game comes out and it's more expensive

than you are able to justify in your budget. You have no right to that content. It's not like you know, just because it's more expensive than you think it's worth, that you should go out and steal it. That's wrong. That's that is, that is the very definition of wrong.

The way you do this, the way you go about this is that if you think content is too expensive for what it is worth, you do not buy the content, and if enough people do not buy the content, the content provider will have to change the way things are or the content provider goes out of business. You do not say, hey, that game is sixty dollars, but I think it's only worth ten dollars, so I'm gonna steal it for free. That does not work. That is the

wrong way to do it. That is stealing. I I feel compelled to point out that that I feel that yes, it is simply put, information does want to be free, and that was That's part of the whole thing about copyright protection is that, um, there is some provision for fair use, and there's also the expiration of copyright law. That's been the big um. The big thing about copyright law extensions that have come up, especially with the Sonny Bone Know extension a few years ago, was the Mickey

Mouse Protection extension. Is what some people derisively referred to that as well. Yes, because of course Disney UH is very serious about protecting characters such as Mickey Mouse. Makes perfect sense from a business perspective, from a creative perspective, for the people who would like to build upon things that have already come before, which is, by the way, the history of human development. UM, it's antithetical, it's it's

it's harmful to keep extending copyright. But for the people and the corporations, who, as we know in the United States are treated as people, UH, it makes perfect business sense to keep extending it as long as as possible in order to ensure that you've got that that exclusivity. And I assumed that probably in the next fifty two seventy five years there's going to be another attempt to lobby for from Disney or someone else who had UH characters that are still very viable in the marketplace that

have been around for a very long time. They're they're going to keep lobbying government to to UH extend that. But the thing is, it's it's designed to expire specifically for the purposes of building upon that and and UH and making changes to you can you could say things about pride and prejudice and zombies um, which is completely legal because um, you know, the person the work itself

is in the public domain at this point. And I should point out that the w I p O treaties have a provision for that things that are in the public domain or in the public domain, no matter where they are. So if it's something that, say in Britain isn't in the public domain, but or is in the public domain, but it wouldn't be in the United States, you know, in the country it's published and it's in public domain, then it then it counts. So it's um.

So that's sort of a thorny thing. And and you know, don't get the idea that we're uh completely on the side of of all protecting information. But the thing is, if it's still under copyright, uh, you know, it's still protected and you have to abide by the law. You're supposed to abide by the law. And that's you know, where the line is to go on to go on record. As far as my opinion goes with the whole copyright thing,

I think copyright law is really messed up. And I think that a lot of the motivations that come from the pirates quote are at least semi legitimate. Um that that a lot of the problems come out of the fact that that the UH copyright practices and particularly DRM practices are so over the top and ridiculous that it promotes an a a environment of piracy. So for example, if you video games are a great example, right, like you get video games that have really heavy DRM on it.

Sometimes that makes it difficult to play the game. Legitimately, yes, I think that's a big part of why Spoor ended up tanking and badly as it did, was because the initial complaints about the the fair play Wait now that's Apple's sorry, I can't remember the name of it. Anyway, the the DRM they had included it Electronic Arts UM was so you know, it actually hampered playing the game.

I had trouble playing it on my Mac because of the DRM, And as soon as they removed that sent me the download and it updated, it was fine to play after that. But you know, by that point, the reviews that come out, um, you know, it's still I look the other day, it's still something like two stars on Amazon, and most of the negative comments are over the DRM, which has been removed years ago. Chris I got a question for you. Okay, all right. Let's say

that you have purchased a game such as Spore. Okay, okay, uh, and the DRM has made the game virtually unplayable. Right, but you have the option of illegally downloading a version of that game that has the DRM broken, which would make the game perfectly playable on your system. Right, So you've already bought the game. I paid for it, You paid for it. Uh. Would you download the illegal copy? No?

I would not. All right? Now, do you think it's ethically wrong for someone to get the illegal copy knowing that they like, let's say, they don't even bother to take the Spore version out of their box. They're not going to give it away. The boxes just sitting there in the closet, So they're they're going to keep a copy if the if the Feds show up in No, I see, I bought a copy of this thing. It's in my closet, exactly. You still find do you still

find that ethically troubling? Yeah? I do find it ethically troubling. So this is one of those gray areas that's hard for me to It's hard for me. I tend to feel sympathy for the pirates because on the one hand, I think, hey, I've purchased something. They've promised me a particular experience, and I am I am not a I followed all the rules, I've done everything they've asked of me, and the experience is not what they said because they've put so much protection on this that I can't run it.

Another good example is let's say you get a game like the ones Ubisoft put out where the only way you could play it is if you could connect to their servers, and that was how they put on DRM. If you're not familiar with the story, what Ubisoft did was for a couple of the games they put out, you would have to have a persistent Internet connection to the Ubisoft servers to confirm that you had a legitimate

copy of the game. And if you lost Internet connection during any point of playing this game, and these were single person games that were not multiplayer games, you don't You aren't using the network for anything like that, You're just using it to verify the copy of the game. But if you lost the Internet connection, you would no longer be able to play the game until your Internet

connection was restored. For a single player game, now again, pirates were breaking the codes on this and then offering up the game for free, essentially saying that if you purchase this game and you want to play it, then you should go ahead and get this version of the game because you don't have to worry about your Internet connection. Um. I can kind of see their argument because the DRM has gone so far as to make the product unusable.

But at the same time, you are supporting this this pirate piracy environment, so it's really an honor system thing in a way. You're saying, hey, you know, I want to support this company, I want this this I've paid for this this content, I just want to have access to it now. It's a complicated issue, you know. That's

that one's not very easy. The same thing with like a lot of the music services that came out, where the DRM was tied to servers and then the servers were going offline, and the music service services were saying, hey, you know all those songs you bought from us, Yeah, you might want to burn those two CD like now, because we're gonna turn the servers off in a month and you won't be able to play those files anymore. Yes, yes,

more than one name, big name did that. Yeah, and in these cases, like you could argue, well, you've only purchased a license to listen to that music from so and so, But when you purchased the license, it was understood to be in perpetuity, right, there was no time limit on that, Like you can listen to this song until January seventeen, two thousand and eight. That that wasn't

in the agreement. Yeah. Now see the thing the thing about that this is if you've bought a copy of it and you find it's unplayable speaking of games, still um, and you've gone out and downloaded a pirate copy the company still even though you've purchased a copy legally. The thing that bothers me to other than the ethics standpoint,

is the company doesn't know what's going on. They have the company has no idea what that that you have encountered this trouble with the d r M, that you're upset about it, that you're downloading an illegal copy of it, and you know, I think it's important to one of the things is I'm not saying that piracy is good. I ethically still have a trouble pirating and copy of

that game, but you know it would be. It would have been good to have known that up for and not spend your money with them, because then more people spend money on it intending you know. Now, say you know that it's going on, your friends said, oh, this is a great game, but it's unplayable with this DRM. If you go out and buy a copy of this and then pirate the game, you paid for it and you're still playing it, and then you're still supporting the

company applying that DRM the game. What you're saying is that you are not letting the market correct itself because you are participating in this kind of charade. Everything is cool, you know, I can totally see that. Yeah, yeah, it is a weird thing. Um. Like I said before, if you want content and they have a certain asking price for it and you can't or won't meet that asking price, then you go without that content. If you want content and you're willing to pay what they're asking for it,

there's usually no problem till you encounter this DRM issue. Um. And if you encounter the DRM issue, then that's where things got gray for me. And it was a little it was still a little darker for you than it was for me. Um, But I mean here's another. One other example, or one other point I want to throw out is that part of the justification for piracy comes from some disingenuous statements that various content providers and organizations have made regarding how much money they lose as a

result of piracy. So they're not helping themselves, right that You've got the pirates on one side and these organizations on the other, and you have organizations saying, hey, we're losing you know, X billion dollar amount per year due to piracy. Well, the Government Accountability Office filed a report in t that's the United States Government Accountabilities Yes, the

US Government Accountability Office. The report was Intellectual Property Observations on Efforts to quantify the economic effects of counterfeit and pirated Goods. This one beyond just did total media. This was all sorts of counterfeit goods. Right. Well, in this case, they said that it was impractical, too impossible to figure out how much money was lost because you can't quantify factors like, uh, how much, Uh you know, how how

many of the people who stole something would have purchased it? Otherwise, Yeah, there's really no way to know unless you do a survey with them and we get down to piracy. People aren't again, right, honest. Yeah, So if you can't if you if there's no way of knowing how many people would have bought it if they hadn't stolen it, it's hard to say what the actual economic impact is. Now we know that there is an economic impact if nothing else.

There's an economic impact in the sense that studios and companies are pouring money into finding ways to prevent piracy. So there's an economic impact, right. It's not direct. It's not saying that, oh, we lost twelve bucks because you downloaded that album illegally. It's saying, hey, we lost x amount of money because that's how much we had to pour into trying to prevent people from downloading stuff illegally.

So it's a complicated issue. Um. Ultimately, I would say don't pirate stuff, like don't if it don't illegally download things. You know, it's you again, if you if you bought something in one medium and you converted to digital and then you lose the digital copy, you still have the physical medium even though it's not at hand. You wait until you get your hands on that physical medium again, because that then you're following the rules of fair use.

But just going out and getting something because you bought it once before. Is that's a slippery slope, And really it doesn't. It doesn't take much longer before you get to the point where you're saying, hey, you know, I bought books one through ten of the series and book eleven is out, and um, you know it's it's already out of print, and I would have bought it, so I'm just going to download it. That's you know again, that's it's leading you down a pathway that is more

difficult to justify. Yeah, and I don't just as a note that I thought of as sidebar, um, there's another reason why you might not want to be running around downloading a lot of torrents if you don't have to. Well, of course, torrenting is not in and of itself illegal. It is the method of sharing files. But if you are downloading illegal files, especially if you don't know who you're downloading them from, there's a possibility there's a security issue.

There's a possibility that you're going to download something very nasty because uh, people who like to start bought nets like to put malware on servers like that and disguise it as other files. Yeah, An unnamed friend of mine recently posted something on Facebook where this unnamed friend said, I've found a virus on my computer. It's something called a root kit? How bad is that? And did not like my answer of that is very very bad. That's

about as bad as it gets. Really, yeah, kind yeah, giving you back to our access to your computer, that's that's. I can't think of something that's worse than that. Well, I mean it's it's obviously the laws are different no matter where you go. I mean, they're they're all going to be similar in some ways in different than others. So I mean it's it's up to your local laws depending on on some of these questions about whether or

not it's it's ethical legal to do that. And you know, ethically this is an issue with which we're all going to have to come to grips. But um, you know, in general, I think Jonathan's right. If it's if there's a question of whether or not it could be illegal, then you you shouldn't do it. Yeah, uh yeah. And that might mean that, you know, you campaign to have laws changed, and that I'm fully in support of that.

I think I think that's the way to go. It's It's much better than going all Batman and saying I'm above the law, because that that's a losing game. It is this for everyone ultimately, because if you get caught, then you have to face these incredibly ridiculous finds that that organizations like the r I Double A and the MP Double A demand be placed on people who violate the copyright laws. But you also hurt everybody else in the sense that these companies continue to try and find

ways to prevent piracy that ultimately hurt honest consumers the most. Yeah. Yeah, but it sounds it sounds like entricks is you know, a legal consumer. He's already purchased the music in the first place, so he wants to do the right thing. Um, and I think most people do that. The producers want to produce stuff that people will buy, the people want to fork over their money for it. It's just that there has to be a level of trust between them

for the for the transaction to work out. Okay, and then d r M and copyright law, you know, just complicates that matter of trust. Agreed, Yes, yes, neither side is wholly without blame. So with that being said, please don't steal this. Actually this podcast is freely available, so go ahead and distribute it all you like and tell all your friends to listen to it. And if you have any comments or questions you can listen. Know on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is tech Stuff hs W,

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