These are some of the ways in which a malum prohibitum can have serious consequences. Bookstores are closed; Library and university administrators will stop subscribing if they find that journals are no longer consulted because everyone is using a sci-hub. These same administrators will not sign the author for a second book if they see attendance and circulation drop sharply in their libraries, reduce budgets, postpone expansion plans, etc. Publishers, if the work of a new humanities writer doesn`t sell well (but is liked by their target market on lib.gen and aaaarg.fail), won`t sign the author for a second book. Hackers will never tackle these issues – as I invited Eileen Joy last week, and I received no response except fueled by a few hacking rants from Kool-Aid. The highly organized members of the “warez” (pronounced, “carry”) group compete to be the first to illegally release a new film on the Internet, sometimes even before the film is released in theaters. Warez members do not seek monetary gain, but may be motivated by the desire for fame and honor among their peers. There is really no legal way to hack. So it doesn`t matter if you bought the entire collection of a show. Anyone who engages in piracy is an author. Online piracy remains a long-standing problem. Despite technological advancements, hackers are becoming smarter and elusive.
In turn, laws to prevent piracy will become even stricter. A popular hacking case today is through torrents. Along the same lines, here are some myths surrounding digital piracy: Of course, you`re happy to interpret the phrase for you. “Perfectly legal” is a conversational phrase meant to indicate that it is not illegal per se. Unlike bank robberies, which I hope we can agree on, are illegal. In doesn`t suggest any of the things it seems you worry about not having to worry about! Jim, is anyone arguing that licensed use of copyrighted material is wrong? The topic here is piracy (i.e. unlicensed and illegal use), not licensing. It`s an opportunity, this kind of request. Jack Valentiz has repeatedly assured us that “hacking” VCRs is akin to “leaving the Boston strangler alone with a woman.” Good comments, Kevin, thank you.
You`re right, if librarians themselves actively infringe copyright (or help students do so), they can violate not only the law itself, but also treaties. This, I think, is one of the reasons why you rarely hear librarians explicitly encourage this type of behavior. In my experience, when these questions are raised, the much more common response from my colleagues is either strategic silence or some sort of wink: “Well, obviously, what SciHub is doing is illegal, but boy, you must admire the girl`s moxia.” (And, of course, there are also many librarians – perhaps most of us – who actively discourage the use of piracy sites and actively try to educate library visitors on how to use copyrighted material responsibly.) Major media companies that invested heavily in music, film, television and software turned to the federal government in the late 1990s to strengthen copyright law. The Electronic Theft Prohibition Act of 1997 makes it illegal to distribute illegal copies of music CDs, films, DVDs and other copyrighted digital media, even if there is no financial gain involved. If so, why do we have growing content creators? This is because piracy cannot remove paid content from the image. Even if some people prefer not to pay anything, there are still many people who ensure the quality and reliability of the content. I am trying to follow you here. Your assertion that it is wrong for people to make a living from copyright, an activity that is completely legal because you consider it analogous to bank robbery, which is definitely not legal? What is the great advantage of “hacking”? So I downloaded a song from a file-sharing site instead of paying for it. The artist is a multimillionaire; She doesn`t need my hard-earned money.
I can listen to the song for free when it`s played on the radio, why shouldn`t I listen to it for free whenever I want? Or share it with my friends? An obvious answer might be that the law is simply wrong and should not treat copyright infringement that way. And one argument in support of that position would be one I often hear from those who advocate weakening copyright restrictions. The argument is: “If I infringe someone`s copyright, for example by making copies of their original work and distributing those copies to others, I am not violating their ability to exercise their rights as copyright holders – they can still do anything that copyright law allows them to do in relation to their work: copying, distributing, creating derivative works, etc.” But there is a very big problem with this argument. It is based on a misrepresentation of what copyright is. Being a copyright owner doesn`t mean you have the right to copy, redistribute, etc. – after all, we all have that right with respect to a work that is in the public domain, and you even have limited versions of those rights in relation to someone else`s copyrighted work. Being a copyright owner means having the exclusive right to do these things. In other words, infringing someone else`s copyright does not mean depriving them of the right to make copies, create derivatives, etc.; This means taking a right that belongs exclusively to them – the right to decide (within certain legal limits) who is allowed to do these things with their original work and how. Software piracy (the illegal copying of software) is a global problem – more than $11 billion is lost each year due to piracy. Because software is valuable and it`s easy to create an exact copy of a program from a single computer, software piracy is widespread. My mother would have said that no activity requiring a lawyer — let alone teams of lawyers — is completely legal.
I suspect she was right! I see that it is time to reiterate our long-standing policy of avoiding semantic arguments from non-lawyers about whether copyright infringement should be considered “theft.” There are important precedents of courts that view the presumption of intangible rights as “theft” and the oft-cited Dowling case is a very limited decision that concerns only NSPA and not the law in general. For more details and a significant number of precedents for classifying copyright infringement as theft, see this article: www.copyhype.com/2013/09/why-copyright-infringement-is-theft/ In the 1990s, new technology allowed people to create high-quality digital copies of copyrighted music on a computer and distribute them for free over the Internet. The era of digital piracy has begun. It is this view, I believe, that underlies the library`s general ambivalence towards Sci-Hub, LibGen, and other more or less organized piracy operations. When someone raises the objection that piracy is false, the response of many librarians – but not all, and usually not expressed in as many words – is essentially: “No, what is really wrong is restricting access to knowledge; Copyright piracy as a method of opening up access to knowledge is not “bad” – it is simply illegal. Both the suspension of competition law and the accumulation of rights raise serious questions about the full legality you claim. However, the real explosion of illegal music downloads began in 1999. A student came up with an effective method to search and download MP3 music files from the Internet. This was Napster`s peer-to-peer file sharing method. Great song, Rick, thank you. I think the views of many academics on the question “Is copyright piracy morally or legally reprehensible?” depends on whether the rights still belong to the original creator (in this case, the authors) or to a party to whom they were transferred (here the publisher).
Many would understand that authors can protect their own moral rights or make a living from their creations, but are less sympathetic when it comes to publishers who protect copyright, which many believe they received from “immoral” authors in the first place.
