Have your opinions about the trading of copyrighted material online changed over the years?

Jon Gordon May 1, 2012, 5:00 AM May 1, 2012

The United Kingdom High Court has ruled that U.K. Internet providers must block access to The Pirate Bay, a notorious, defiant and resilient file sharing site where users swap movies, television shows, and music.

Today’s Question: Have your opinions about the trading of copyrighted material online changed over the years?

About the blogger

Jon Gordon

jgordon@mpr.org • @jongordon • 1-651-290-1024

Jon Gordon was the director of digital news for MPR News.

Hiram

More and more, I am coming to the view that copyright holders asserting extremely broad claims on the internet are fighting a losing battle.

reggie

My opinion about “trading” copyrighted material has not changed: it is theft. It ultimately hurts all artists who hope to earn a living from their creative work. The fact that it is widely practiced does not make it legal or right. I wish the US would follow the UK lead and be more aggressive in disrupting the channels through which this illegal activity is practiced.

Hiram

There was a wonderful article in the New York Times the other day about a 93 year old guy who makes thousands of copies of pirated DVD’s and sends them to our service men and women in the middle east, a clear copyright violation. But how much damage did the guy really do? Were sales lost by his actions, at least to a degree that would make a dent in studio profits? And how much is it really worth to engage in a rearguard action to squeeze what remaining value there is in a dying product like the DVD? It’s a tough question to face, but maybe copyright holders should focus on the ways they can make money, not the ways that they lose money.

Emery

Until the law catches up with technology, digital history will have to be written in drips and drabs rather than the great gushes promised by the digital age.

Steve (insert vanity moniker here)

Intellectual property is absurdly over-protected now. Copyright is too long (must protect Mickey Mouse), and patents are awarded for the absurdly ordinary and widely known.

John

I still think it’s piracy and the owners deserve to be able to protect and benefit from their creative work. Those who favor free trading really have no understanding of the business aspects of being a creative artist. You may not want it to be a business, but for many or most, it is. If you cannot protect and sell your own works, you might as well flip burgers.

Mark in Freeborn

Yes. Hello, and welcome to this century! Until laws catch up with technology – which is like asking a turtle to catch up with a Titan V rocket (outdated analogy intended) – copyrighted material is going to be exploited in every way, shape, and form. We’ve only just begun to see how….

James

No change. It was theft. It still is theft.

And there is a bigger issue. Societies work when reasonable laws exist, they are mainly obeyed and those who break them face consequences.

The more laws we selectively ignore en masse, the weaker the legal system and society gets. Steal a song or movie today. Don’t pay back your mortgage tomorrow. Cheat on your taxes the next day, etc.. Eventually the situation is unmanagable and the US has become Italy or Greece, or whatever example you want to use for a country where not enough people follow the rules.

Steve the Cynic

Intellectual “property” is an innovation of the 18th century intended to solve a problem forseen with the emergence of democratic government: If there is no longer a king willing to support the arts and sciences with patronage so as to enhance his prestige, how will culturally and technologically valuable advancements be incentivized? Copyright, like all property rights, is a useful social construct, nothing more. It is not a sacred principle handed down from on high, and where copyright law is not serving society well, it should be changed.

Jim G

Let me count the ways I have listened to copyrighted material. Vinyl record discs, I remember the 78’s, 45’s, and LP’s. Then came to the eight tracks ( yes, The Turtles and Carol King ), cassette tapes, CDs, finally MP3 files. I have paid again and again for my favorites in multiple formats. Paying only once would have been nice.

Ron

Yes and no.

Though I believe copyright and IP laws are seriously flawed and need revision, if I really want to own it and can buy it, I do.

With streaming video available, my desire to own a personal copy of a movie or TV show is greatly diminished (few things I watch more than once, but that is just me).

As for music, I’ll admit that it helps that many of my favorite bands have allowed their fanbase to record live shows and trade them for years, even allowing some to plug right in to the soundboard (that’s just good marketing).

GregX

Prepare for the next approach to control “copyright” … no personal media storage. You never, ever possess a file – whether on a live electronic device (ipod, computer, etc) or off-device media ( CD, DVD, Cloud). You will ONLY possess the right – via an electronic key file or via registration of your identity/tool to consume that file ( movie, book, magazine, data, etc.) under certain conditions

– media quality = hi/low res,

– features – all functions + features, limited subset for example audio only but not concert vide footage OR Movie only – but not extended clips, out takes, commentary.

– time ( perpetual or some discreet time : 1 or more full plays, 1 or more hours, all usage up tile specified date.

Streaming will be the only access – if you lose signal – you lose access. So the next wave of technology is to provide access anywhere on the globe – regardless of where you are from – under one system, because we will want that material with us no matter where we go.

And… they will then know everything we download- purchase-like, when we do it, whom we do it with, where we do it, because everyone with a device will be “tracked” so that services can be delivered.

Are we the Borg yet? Or is that just a dream….

Erik D

It was and still is illegal, protecting and controlling it is another matter. This is wasted time and money by the UK gov, Pirate Bay and those who want to will get around this and and any SOPA, CISPA or whatever BS is thrown at protecting copyrights.

Jefferson

When music was readily available for free online I was like many other people and I freely downloaded many of the songs I enjoyed (although a large portion of the music I downloaded were songs I had previously purchased but my CD’s were stolen). Now I am able to look back and realize that I should be paying for the music (and other products) that I obtain online.

I think there are two big issues still associated with purchasing intellectual properly, first is that when I purchase that property I should have it available in whatever format I choose…I should be able to register my purchase of the property with the owner. That way if my disc, hard drive or other format of that property is ever damaged, broken or lost I can simply show I have already purchased the actual intellectual property and I should simply pay for cost of the format (such as the cost of the disc, distribution and/or overhead) for a new product.

The second big issue is having the intellectual property readily available online at a reasonable price, before companies like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora and iTunes appeared the pirating of music and movies was rampant and no one was paying for them…now that we have those businesses many people are very willing to pay for a subscription service to enjoy intellectual property. The problem is that the intellectual property owners are not very responsive at making their products available online at reasonable prices…they still want to charge $50 for a season on a DVD/Blu-ray and yet I could watch that same season for a $7.99 monthly fee by just waiting for it to be on Netflix (or a $10 monthly fee for HBO movies/series). They also want to charge the same fees for online products as the discs in stores, while the cost of the online product is far lower than having to produce a disc, distribute it and then pay for the overhead to allow that disc to sit in a store and also pay someone to be in the store to help you purchase that disc…the online purchase is simply the one time cost of a website or app then that product has no additional costs for an additional sale. The economics of intellectual property is changing, it’s time that the owners started to realize that and start getting their products online for purchase at reasonable prices.

One final issue with intellectual property is that software patents need to be reigned in…there should not be patents for very simple ideas like “one-click purchase” (which is an actual patent that Amazon.com currently holds) and software patents should have shorter life cycles…perhaps only 10 years (instead of the normal 18-20 years) so the major advances can be shared much sooner due to the industry changing so rapidly.