[free-sklyarov] Neutralizing the Stealing Meme

[Martin Keegan]

On 12 Jan 2002, Will wrote:

> On Sat, 2002-01-12 at 01:53, Peter D. Junger wrote:
> 
> > Or, ``They sell you a CD and then say that you don't own its content.
> > They really are a bunch of crooks.''
> > 
> 	Exactly - as Martyn said earlier, the idea that they're stealing from
> us rather than the other way round:
> 
> 	"Look, you paid 20 Euros for that CD - what exactly did you pay for?
> The right to listen to it only when, where and in what form the Record
> Company says you can?

In the UK there's no defence of private non-commercial use. So the
rightholder has a point when he/she says we should be paying for such use.
De jure we should, but the law here is presuming that the distribution of
entitlements (in this case, whether the producer or the consumer is in
charge of private non-commerical use).

That doesn't settle the question of what the entitlements *ought* to be.

But even if the rightholder is currently entitled to say "no you can't
copy that CD to your computer and play it back as an MP3" (as is the case
in the UK), that does not mean the rightholder deserves to be compensated
financially for such use.

The question I *really* want the answer to is: has the market not already
factored unauthorised copying into the price you're selling the CD at?

> 	We're not saying that you should steal from the Artist - only that you
> should be able to listen to music you've lawfully paid for the way you
> want to listen to it"

"The way you want to listen to it" is going to become an ever more
important issue; the user wants complete flexibility as to what playback
device, format, time, location, etc, he/she uses. The rightholder wants to
charge for every playback.

This issue is even celebrated in popular culture; in "Men in Black", Tommy
Lee Jones' character observes he's going to have to buy the Beatles' White
Album *again* when it comes out in some new format based on advanced alien
technology.

Mk