Thoughts about “illegal” downloading

Jerry Pournelle made an interesting comment on the 10/22/07 episode (118) of This Week in Tech (TWIT): The RIAA in their recent copyright infringement battles is acting like the authorities in Selma, AL Civil Rights Marches in the 1960s – acting in complete accord of the law, but at the same time stirring up public sentiment against them.  Most recently, the RIAA prevailed for $220,000 against a woman in Minnesota.  She was apparently using KaZaa to download and share music; the RIAA agents observed her sharing some 1700 songs, and ultimately convinced the jury that she should pay $9250 for each of 24 selected songs that she shared.  She claims she never used KaZaa, which doesn’t seem terribly credible given the evidence; assuming she actually was, she might not even have known that the default setup shares everything that is downloaded.  I think the jury award is outrageous, and I doubt the RIAA will ever collect even a small fraction of it.  It will, however, inspire the public to reconsider copyright, and that may not work out well for the publishers.
 
I’ve had customers using KaZaa, which I strongly advise against because so many of the downloads are polluted with viruses, not to mention likely copyright infringement.  Some of these people even thought they were getting music "legally" by buying the premium version of KaZaa.  These people are not criminals – they want to obtain and listen to music using their computers and digital media players.  If you don’t have an extensive music collection or a lot of time, this leaves a simple choice – pay for downloads (if they exists for pay), or use what other people share through a Peer-to-Peer software system (P2P).  Technology makes this possible, but it does run afoul of the civil law of copyright.  Many people disregard the copyright law, either because they don’t care, or because they don’t understand.  Does this make them criminals?  I don’t think so.
 
Should it be okay for a well-funded coalition of corporations (like the RIAA) to use the legal system to extract huge judgements from individuals for violating copyright law?  If the individuals are getting actual money through this violation, sure, but within reasonable limits.  The punishment should fit the violation. Should it be okay for this same group of corporations to force somewhat less huge settlements from people who don’t want to roll the dice with a jury?  I vehemently oppose that.  The RIAA and MPAA in particular want you to believe that they are losing billions of dollars, and that hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs because of media piracy.  They give you the big picture, which includes copying globally, in all kinds of forms, and over long periods of time.  Much of the losses are due to physical pirated copies by organized criminals of CDs and videos in foreign countries like China.  To counteract their theoretical losses, they employ firms that spy and entrap individuals, then use the legal system to force money from them, frequently using circumstantial evidence.  They have appointed themselves as private motorcycle cops on the public digital highway.  I don’t think that should be allowed; at the minimum it invades individual privacy.
 
Almost every discussion I’ve seen talks about "illegal" downloading.  For me, the word "illegal" seems too strong.  By downloading a copyrighted work (music, movie, TV clip, book, whatever) without permission, you are infringing on the legal right of the copyright holder.  That right gives them the option to simply grant permission to do the download, or to charge you for it, or to refuse it.  In many cases, there is no mechanism in place for you to satisfy the right of the copyright holder.  You still (as of today, anyway) cannot download any of The Beatles albums or songs.  If I want to download Abbey Road, I won’t find it in any "legal" site.  I won’t use Napster, Rhapsody, or one of the other DRM’d sites – any music I download must be playable on both my iPod and any PC I choose to use, which eliminates virtually all DRM systems for me.  I can, however, easily find and download it through BitTorrent, KaZaa, or similar.  And at that point, I will have crossed into "illegal" activity.
 
Downloading a copyrighted work without the copyright holders permission is not like stealing a CD, DVD, or book, at least in the material sense.  Even if the act were witnessed by police, they likely couldn’t arrest or ticket you.  It would be difficult for them to say for sure that you didn’t actually have "permission", since each digital copy of a work potentially has different rights attached to it.  Usually, no money changes hands, and the original copy of the work is still intact with the person who purchased it.  The only "loss" is theoretical – the publisher might have lost a sale – but that sale might not have ever occured in any case.  It’s really not much different from borrowing the work from the library, except that the library doesn’t have a virtually unlimited supply of copies of the work, and you never return it. 
 
It seems to me that what you are commiting is a moral or ethical violation.  I am no expert on either morality or ethics, but feel that I have a reasonable grasp of what is right and wrong.  On some level, I can understand that someone has been "harmed" if I download and enjoy their work repeatedly and over a long period of time, without ever buying the work and therefore rewarding them for the enjoyment I received.  Of course, many downloadable things are used once and set aside.  I’m a collector (even though I really can’t afford it) – I have hundreds of books, magazines, CDs, DVD’s, etc. cluttering my home, most of which have little or no resale value, and most of which I could have borrowed or rented.  Many were purchased used or were free to me, meaning that their publisher got no money from me.  I could theoretically pass each work on to thousands of people, and even get some back!  I beliieve that new CDs, DVDs and (hardcover, business and academic) books are generally overpriced, but they do have some value since I can use them repeatedly and over a long period of time.  However, I also beleive that I should be able to preserve and use those works in digital form, perhaps without keeping the original media.
 
In the publisher’s perfect world, you would pay each time you used a work that they held copyright on.  What a wonderful scam for them – the artist creates a work, gets paid once, or maybe gets paid a small fraction of each use payment received (if the artist had a good lawyer when the contract was written.), and the publisher continues to get paid for years.  How do I convince people to let me pimp them like that?  At least the artist only expends effort once for the work.  And the publisher, after some limited promotion, expends only small incremental effort for each end use, or even expends no effort.  Don’t get me wrong – publishers do a wonderful service to the world by funding the creation of art, and particularly in the case of studios actually pull together many of the resources needed to create the art.  Artists deserve to be paid for their efforts, and maybe even deserve to be enriched by it.  Apparently, only a very few artists actually do get enriched.  Corporations generally enrich only their stockholders and executives.
 
The public has shown willingness for pay-per-use works in limited situations.  Mostly, they pay to consume new works that are released through limited channels, and it is a function of discretionary income.  In today’s two-class society, most people don’t have much of that.  People will pay for physical recording or books, but again only if they have the money, and if its more convenient than borrowing a copy.  Most audio and video media is available through advertiser supported distribution like network and cable TV, radio and internet sites.  Somehow, even after a publisher has essentially given away their product through an advertiser supported medium, they want you to pay to consume it again, or to consume it if you missed the first offering.  If you dare to try to get around that, they want to sue you – even if they don’t make available a way to consume it again.
 
Publishers can mass produce art.  But here’s where it breaks down in today’s digital world.  Once the work is created, publishing a work in digital form has nearly no incremental cost.  Distributers and retailers are not essential, but do help for marketing, locating and providing a way to obtain the product.  Reasonably, the money provided should be covering the publisher’s investment plus some profit, since profit motivates the creation of other product.  In our capitalist system, when a large number of people buy something, the seller reaps the reward.  People will pay a reasonable price for a product, even if a "free" alternative is available, so long as they believe that it’s right.  Now almost everyone has the means to create a digital library with their computer.  Computers are fast, disk space is cheap and plentiful, and high speed internet connections make obtaining material trivial.  Once the material is in your library, you can consume it on your time, rather than on the schedule set by a corporation. There’s plenty of money to be made, just not the way it used to be made.  The digital world moves fast, and the sellers have not caught up with the buyers.
 
For example, I have come to believe that lossless digital music files are necessary for any music I listen to through decent headphones or my home stereo.  Anything less is like listening to a recording from the radio – the music is there, but with greatly reduced quality.  Even 320kbps MP3 files are not "CD quality" – close, but no cigar.  Sure, if all you listen with are earbuds through your iPod or whatever, or in your car, or on your PC speakers, then you won’t hear the difference.  And that’s unfortunate, because there is more there to be heard, and it does affect the overall experience.  However, there are nearly no lossless music downloads available commercially, just downloads with varying lossy encodings, and many with unreasonable "rights management" mechanisms.  The only way to get lossless music "legally" is to buy the CD and rip it to your computer.  Don’t even think about sharing the music, even though you may have a fair-use right to do so.  Lawyers are expensive.
 
I believe that the failure of publishers to lead with high-quality, reasonably priced digital goods has cost them dearly.  They’ve hoarded their rights like kings with so much gold, and are now discovering that those rights aren’t worth anything if nobody will pay for them.  After all, intellectual property is only a legal concept, and at least in theory the people ultimately control the law – I think corporations actually control the law, but that’s another rant.  The people wanted a product, and the publisher’s response has been too little, too late, for too much, all the while waving their intellectual property rights as protection for their inaction.  Meanwhile, the people figured out how to get what they wanted without employing a payment transfer system, effectively creating a barter economy.   I don’t think there is much "illegal" about that.

Favorite story from ‘The Onlion’ – God Agrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule

CBS Early Show

I joined with about a thousand other people to watch Harry Smith, Dave Price and the CBS Early Show crew, along with Hootie and the Blowfish, as they did a show this morning from Charleston’s White Point Garden at the Battery.  The Early Show is doing a “Summer in the City” tour, so brought the show and Hootie here for an event.  Our crowd was the best vibe ever, they said (at least until the next stop!)
I posted several photos of the event in the photo area (sorry, that broke).
The Girl Scouts were contacted by CBS to attend the show, as was the College.  We arrived just after 6:00 AM, and they had the whole area closed down.  It’s amazing the logistics that go into a broadcast like this, with several semi’s worth of equipment, staging and lights brought in.
The local CBS affiliate, WCSC-5 was doing their morning report live from the site, and their weatherman Bill Walsh recognized me from other events (I’ve been to the station and their tower for technical tours, and sat in on a nasty stormwatch one evening while Bill did his dance in the studio – never underestimate what these meteorologists do!)  The Early Show guys were milling about, occasionally chatting up the crowd, and frequently doing drop-in segments for various affiliates.  It’s easy to see what pros they are, how easy they were with the crowd, with the constant stream of segments, and with doing the show itself.
Right before 7:00 they told us how to follow the set directors, and then the music, the show, and the constant noise began.  Bethany didn’t feel well, so I brought her and a friend back home, and returned after 8:00 with breakfast for Laura.
Hootie and the Blowfish performed several songs in a sort of mini-concert.  The crowd passed around Early Show weatherman Dave Price in mosh pit fashion.  Hootie is a native Charleston band, so this was a home field crowd for them.  Darius Rucker performed despite having I.V. ports in his arm due to a recent staph infection, and left on a cane with a huge bodyguard in tow.
As we were leaving after the show, I stopped by the wireless sound control tent.  They let me hold a microphone for a picture.  As they handed it to me, they said, “By the way, you’re live to New York!”  From the picture, it’s clear that I could be on TV … if this were a weird parallel universe without community decency standards … if I could avoid squinting in bright light … if I could drop 80 pounds, whiten my teeth, color my hair …   Okay, it’s clear I couldn’t be on TV
(originally published 7/20/2007, 12:34.  Revised because photo area is gone.)

Time flies

It’s been nearly a year since I posted anything in the blog section of this space – hard for me to believe.  I have put up a couple photo albums since then, and I’ve also been playing with other sites like Facebook and MySpace.  Not to mention being a little busy with life as usual …
 
I just posted photos of Bethany’s SAIL class presentation – "Electric City", the culmination of a months-long project to learn about the architecture of Charleston.  Bethany built a scale model from scratch of the Heyward-Washington House, a historic home on Church Street in Charleston that George Washington stayed at briefly in 1791.  They learned about architecture, took a field trip to the sites (the class also did the Hibernian Hall, French Hugonot Church, Powder Magazine, Rainbow Row and an original pink colonial house near the river,) then designed and built the models to scale.  They also installed electric lighting inside each model!
 
I also posted pictures from Alex’s first Prom.  The 2007 School of the Arts Prom was held in late April at the SC Aquarium.  Alex was invited by Lynne, a slightly older theater major in his class.  In the process, we’ve actually witnessed Alex taking and making phone calls and having conversations!  "Social Interaction" has been a battle cry all year for Alex, and was actually one of his goals for the year.
 

New picture albums

I decided it was time to catch up to Peter Davitt, my good friend from Glen Ridge HS who just turned 45!  He’s been posting albums of photos for years on Snapfish.  I finally got some of our recent stuff posted here in the photo album section – check it out!

Lowcountry Live picture

As part of the big push to sell Girl Scout Cookies in the Charleston area, my daughter Bethany’s troop was invited to attend a broadcast of Lowcountry Live, a morning news and variety show on WCIV-TV, the local ABC affiliate.  I had a blast, watching half of the program in the studio and half from the control room, plus I got to see the master control room and talk with the operator about how they handle HDTV.  We took this picture after the show, which they do in the same studio as their newscasts (on the other side of the studio).

Waking up

Has this ever happened to you?
Laura woke up to the sound of the radio, and yelled for the kids to get up to get ready for their school buses.  Usually this is my thing in the morning – the alarm goes off at 6:30; I trot over to each room to wake the children, who ignore me and stay asleep;  I let the dog out, and then go back to bed until the next alarm at 6:45.  With that alarm, I push harder, and the kids still ignore me.  The drop-dead departure time for Bethany’s bus is 6:55 – any later and it roars by without stopping – so we usually need to drive her in, which she prefers anyway.  We have to be on the road by 7:00 to make Alex’s bus, which leaves from a store parking lot 10 minutes away at 7:10.  We’ve had to drive him the full 1/2 hour to school too many times, because he nearly always drags out actual movement and preparation until the last second.

Anyway, I got up, let the dog and cat out, and woke the kids, telling them that it was :39 and they needed to get up right away, leaving all of the lights on.  Then, I came back to my room, where I checked the time:  2:41 AM !  I quickly told the kids to go back to sleep, killed the lights, and went back to bed.

What happened?  Our other cat, Rebecca, has gotten into the initially cute habit of resting on top of the clock-radio.  She frequently hits the on and off buttons, although hadn’t done so early in the morning like this before.  Laura heard the music, but didn’t look at the time before waking us.

The crisis in the Episcopal Church

I’ve found few things as distressing in recent years as the crisis within the Episcopal Church (ECUSA).  In 2003, the general convention of ECUSA ratified the election by the membership of the Diocese of New Hampshire of a non-celibate homosexual as bishop of the diocese.  This flew in the face of what orthodox (conservative) church leaders believe the bible tells them – that homosexuality is a sin, and that sexual relations between a non-married couple are sinful, which therefore prevent Jean Robinson from being eligible to be a bishop (and many would say even makes him ineligible to be a communicant in the church).  A small number of the bishops and priests then formed a schismatic group called the American Anglican Council  Mission and Ministry Network (the Network or AAC for short), which claims to be in a desperate fight over the very soul of the Anglican Church in America.  They claim that the threat to unity is ECUSA itself, which it says is pursuing a revisionist approach to the tenets of Christian faith, and which it also says is abandoning the foundations of "Holy Scripture".

This fight is particularly difficult for those of us who live in the Diocese of South Carolina, headquartered right here in Charleston.  Our bishop, Edward Salmon, is a founding member of the Network.  Effectively, most every Episcopal Church has had to fall in line with the Network.  One of the loudest voices in the AAC is a local theologian, who is constantly denouncing any view not lifted straight from the bible.  My family actually fled our nearest church, St. James, when they stopped referring to their membership in the Episcopal Church, substituting the name of the head of the AAC instead of ECUSA Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, and speaking in ever more fundamentalist terms against homosexuality and so-called sin as defined by "Holy Scripture".

We are now very happy members of Grace Episcopal Church, one of only two churches in the Charleston area that actually admit that they are part of the Episcopal Church.  Our rector, Donald McPhail, has along with our vestry clung to the notion of the Via Media, a core notion of Anglican faith that there is more than one interpretation of faith.

What I find particulary laughable is the continuing AAC contention that the battle is not about homosexuality.  Yet, in nearly every newsletter from them (I pick them up from the various former Episcopal churches that I sing at regularly) they mention Bishop Robinson, ECUSA’s refusal to reverse the actions of the general convention (which I think can only be done by the next convention), and various opinions about homosexuality.  A recent issue had a lengthy article about conversions from gay to straight, a practice now denounced as harmful by the American Psychiatric Association!

The net effect for me and my wife has been a serious erosion in faith.  Religion appears to be an almost purely man-made creation, with little of actual authority to back it up.  As Bill Maher constantly jokes, we put a lot into our belief in an invisible man in the sky.  This vaunted "Holy Scripture", the Bible, whichever version that is, doesn’t seem to be much more than a committee driven creation of men over a few thousand years.  We end readings from it in church with "The Word of the Lord", or something similar – really?  I will be the first to admit that I am no Bible scholar; from what I’ve heard from some of the actual Bible scholars here at the College of Charleston, I’d probably be even more confused if I was.

There have always been multiple ways of understanding and practicing Christianity.  The Christian Bible (the New Testament) is a evolving collection of writings from the first few centuries of the church following Christ’s death and resurrection.  They are supposedly inspired by God, and may even contain some of the actual words of Christ, the only documented time God has walked among us and talked to us.  (I suppose God spoke to Moses, Adam and Abraham, although I’m not sure whether some of those (Adam) aren’t just an invention of some priest.)  It’s funny that Christ has nothing to say about homosexuality, although he certainly had lots to say about being judgemental and hewing to the "law" of established religion.  "Love one another as God loves us."  Oddly enough, many people don’t seem to think that applies to people who are homosexual.

For the record, I am not a homosexual.  I am, however, convinced that it is not a "choice", any more than I "choose" to be heterosexual.  I’ve had lots of (non-sexual) contact with gay people over the years, particularly in the artistic community.  I believe it is simply a part of how God made some people, and is wholely irrelevant to their faith and ability to bring their faith to others.  From what I can see, homosexuals are just another group of people who are different from the "majority", and are therefore discriminated against.  South Carolina has a particularly rich history in the practice of discrimination!  It’s somewhat disgusting to see a whole system of churches, sometimes right next to one another, separating black and white people.  In Charleston, there are many Episcopal Churches near African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches.  AME churches are effectively black Episcopalian churches.

Theoretically, much of the "law" of the Old Testament, the Jewish Bible, was reformed by Jesus.  Somehow, this didn’t reform the "law" against homosexuality, although it did allow shellfish.  It seems that if Jesus didn’t specifically say something, the "leaders" of the churches can pick and choose what we supposedly believe.  That, in turn, can be used to enforce "morality".

Personally, I think it’s all a load of crap.   You’ll notice I put this entry under the category "News and politics" rather than religion.  I don’t see much difference between the two.

I grew up as a Roman Catholic, although I was never won over by the church.  I always had a problem with the idea that our faith and values (the rules) were supposed to be rigidly defined by the hierarchy of the church, and yet massive numbers of people would discard those rules when it came to sexuality (birth control, abortion, sex outside of marriage, etc.).  Somehow these same people were "good" Catholics.  You could, for example, follow the law of the church and practice "natural family planning", aka use the "rythym method".  As MAD Magazine put it, Catholics are nice people, but are sometimes a bit off-beat!  In a world of exploding population and severely dimished resources, this seems like an irresponsible approach.  One day, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Clark DeLeon pointed out that people who choose their beliefs have a name: Protestant.  I found that my new wife, who had grown up Episcopalian and was arguably far more faithful that I, was excluded from communion in the Catholic Church.  Then I discovered that Episcopalians had a liberated view of the role of women, with female priests and bishops.  They even seemed to believe that the Bible was open to interpretation (imagine that!)  Then, I discovered that some of the best church musicians were Episcopalian.  I’ve been a "recovering Catholic" ever since as a member of the Episcopal Church.

I’ll probably take a lot of guff for all of the above.  You are free to believe what you wish.  I am sorry for you if that is not the same as what I believe.

Computer geek + social worker = cheerleader?

Bethany has become a cheerleader for the local pee-wee team (or whatever they call it).  She’s in the fourth grade.
 

Darknet – an interesting read re Intellectual Property rights

I’m nearly done reading Darknet – Hollywood’s War against the Digital Generation by J.D. Lasica.  It is a discussion of digital media and the attempts by media publishers, especially record and movie companies, to control how you use them.  I’ve found much of the information to be rather disturbing, mostly because the concept of fair use seems to be being dismantled by these publishers.  The publishers are working together with Congress and the courts to restrict how you are able to use CD’s, DVD’s, TV recordings, books, the Internet – anything that they deem as Intellectual Property that they own, and they are trying to force hardware and software companies (this means computers AND consumer electronics like TV and DVD) to build locked technology to obey rules and restrictions that they determine.  In many cases this amounts to no rights for you.  It seems that the end-goal of the publishers is to force pay-per-use of all media.

Did you know that the media companies have tried to kill nearly every media innovation because they couldn’t control it?  This includes FM radio, photocopiers, cassette recorders, VCRs, portable music players, digital video recorders, and now almost all forms of downloading.  Before they accepted HDTV, they got a “broadcast flag” requirement (which was recently struck down by the Supreme Court only because the court said the FCC didn’t have the power to require it).  This flag would have allowed them to say you can or cannot record a program, what quality recording you could make, and even how long you could keep the recording.  Now they are trying to force manufacturers to eliminate analog outputs on all devices, so that people cannot simply make an analog recording and digitize that.

Do you remember DIVX, the ill-fated scheme created by Circuit City and the studios to create special DVDs that you essentially rented?  The idea was that when you used one of these discs, the player would have to contact an authorization system to run a timer on your usage.  After a few days, you’d have to pay to use it again, or to use it “forever” on your player.  If you brought the disc to another DIVX player, you’d have to pay again.  The disc wouldn’t work on regular DVD players or in your computer.  Disney was one of the companies that thought this was a great idea, and they dragged their feet on releasing regular DVDs.  DIVX crashed and burned in less than a year, so if you paid for one of these discs and the right to use it forever, you are SOL now.  For people like me that jumped on the DVD bandwagon as soon as they came out, it was an infuriating technology.  Recently, they tried to market DVDs that self destruct after a couple days.  The problem is, now they’re trying to do the same things with the new technologies.

If you think it’s a good idea to backup discs because your kids destroy them, forget it.  The publishers want you to buy a new copy.  Since virtually every DVD and videotape is copy protected, it is a federal crime under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 to circumvent the copy protection and make a copy.  It is similarly a crime to copy any part of such a disc onto your computer.  No big deal, you say?  Many of the machines treat all video as copy protected – even things you create!

Why should you care?  The publishing industry is deep into development for replacements of CD, DVD, books, magazines, even newspapers.  It’s all bits to the publishers.  Since CD’s can be easily ripped, they are developing copy protected versions, which may not work on older players (in the electronics business, older = yesterday!)  Since DVD’s can be easily ripped, despite being a crime, they are developing newer versions that will have much stronger copy protection systems.  They’ll sell these to you as High Definition versions, and try to eliminate the older versions.  They’ll also try to eliminate any way of using these media that they can’t control.  Think about having to ask permission every time you use a paragraph from a book, even for private use.  Never happen, you say?  Think again.

You can read a mini version of this book online, at http://www.darknet.com/minibook/index.html.  I hope you find it as disturbing as I have!

 -JFS