In a series of articles here at Falkvinge on Infopolicy, I’ll be giving examples of talking back to the most disturbingly false bullshit repeated by pro-copyright-monopoly pundits. The reason for this is that I see tons of this kind of bullshit in discussion threads, and it stands unchallenged, which is dangerous. As I describe in Swarmwise, it is of immense importance for our long-term liberties that false assertions are countered immediately and in numbers whenever they appear.
Today, we’re going to discuss the assertion that “copying is stealing”, that amazingly still lives on. It should be dead and buried at least fifteen years ago, but isn’t. Here are three examples how to counter it. Adapt to your own language and use when discussions threads like this one on Reddit pop up.
Don’t be content with one person already having countered a false assertion, and count on people thinking logically. A false statement must be hammered with opposition for liberties to win; it’s not a logic game but a numbers game. It’s about looking like the winning team, as I describe in Swarmwise – that’s what shapes the reality and the future.
Today, we’ll deal with the “copying is stealing” nonsense. Don’t let it stand unchallenged at any time.
Here are three sample responses you can use. Copy, remix and adapt to your own language.
False statement: “Copying is stealing.”
Sample response 1: No. Absolutely not. If copying were stealing, we would have no need for copyright monopoly laws in the first place, as ordinary property laws would suffice. Those define stealing. But we have separate laws for the copyright monopoly, and stealing isn’t defined there. Therefore, obviously, it is not stealing. Neither legally, nor morally, nor economically, nor logically. However, it is an infringement of the copyright monopoly – but that’s something completely different. It is a violation of a governmentally-sanctioned private monopoly. You are trying to redefine words in a very dishonest way to frame the debate in a factually incorrect light.
Sample response 2: No. Absolutely not. Nobody is stealing anything. They are manufacturing their own copies using their own property. The difference is very important and if we’re supposed to have a constructive debate, you should call things for what they are. This is manufacturing without a license from legal monopolies, so-called “exclusive rights” (the copyright monopoly). Nobody is losing any object, which is what defines stealing. An object is copied. You are trying to redefine words in a very dishonest way to frame the debate in a factually incorrect light.
Sample response 3: No. Absolutely not. Manufacturing your own copy of something using your own property – your computer, storage, and network equipment – is not stealing logically, legally, morally, economically, or philosophically. The debate moved past this silly argument 15 years ago, and trying to bring it up again just makes you look like you’re talking of horseless carriages. If you really want confirmation of this simple fact, you should look in the nearest lawbook: in no book of laws on this entire planet are property laws (where stealing is defined) and copyright monopoly laws defined in the same section. Hint: only violations of property laws, the former, are defined as stealing.
Follow-up false statement: “But they are causing X to lose money, therefore it is stealing.”
Sample response: Whether they are losing money is debatable, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest. People are causing other people to lose money all the time and everywhere with every action. Stealing is narrowly defined as when you break property laws in order to deny somebody their property, and the copyright monopoly is not a property law, it is defined elsewhere in the books. There is no other legal, moral, or popular definition of stealing. Instead, you are using the loaded word “stealing” to say “what they are doing is wrong”. In doing so, you are not only lying and slandering as they are not stealing, you are also factually wrong with what you intended to say, as sharing culture and knowledge is a good deed to society and to your fellow human being.
Take these responses. Use them. More to come next Saturday for the foreseeable future.
I cause the ice cream shop to lose money every time I decide not to have some ice cream, or buy it from a different shop. I should go to prison for stealing from the ice cream shop.
God damn ice cream stealer….
And if there was an “association for Ice Cream makers”, they would demand you pay them royalties / get licenses every time you made your own home made ice cream.
And think of all the grandparents, baking cookies for their grandchildren. Aren’t they causing the bakeries to lose sales?? Or people making lunch boxes. Poor restaurants. Et.c.
Maybe it’s better to give some practical examples of “causing people to lose money” argument.
For instance cooking your own food is legal though restaurants may claim to “lose money”. That’s a practical example which (almost) no one would argue that the hobby home-cooking should be illegal. Hobby file sharing is as natural to youngsters as hobby cooking or baking or fixing your own bike is to the elder generations. Even though some restaurant or bakery or bike-repair-dude may get less paid by it being legal.
Yes, that will definitely be an entry of its own in this series.
I wrote an article (in Norwegian) about “Home cooking is killing restaurants”, where I speculated what might happen if the state awarded intellectual monopolies to food recipes the same way they now award intellectual monopolies to music recipes.
http://gnurkel.blogspot.no/2010/03/home-cooking-is-killing-restaurants.html
Really nice!
And it’s tasty 😀
Public water mains make the bottled water companies lose shitloads of money. Clearly, we must also outlaw public water mains.
Yes. That is another great example.
Either outlaw or put in place some royalty system. For each bottle of water from the tap, at least X cents to the “Association of bottelers”. Ass.Bot?
Further, to make sure you are not cheating and using the shower for water drinking infringement, of course they must install a camera and tap into your bathroom and monitor you when showering.
If you’ve got nothing to hide, that should be OK, right? ;o)
Water? Are you crazy?? That would affect Brawndo’s profits!
Well in my country, bottled water companies are regularly telling lies about public water, that’s it’s not good, unhealthy, etc. They are actively trying to undermine this “unfair” competition (in an unfair way, mind you).
So, this example might seem ridiculous at first (outlaw public water? Haha), but believe, If they *could* outlaw public water (by lobbying, crying that public water decrease their revenue, so they’ll have to lay off thousands of employees), they *would* do it without any hesitation.
And it would by *no different* than what records companies & others are constantly doing with copyrights!
When my previous employment was terminated, I lost my income. By the same logic, as applied by Copyright apologists, you could argue that my employer stole that money from me.
Home cooking -> restuarants losing money is a better analogy for Making your own music -> recording artists losing money
Downloading music you are taking something that someone else has created.
Sticking with the food analogy, a closer example would be exactly replicating a resturants dish.
I’m not really opposed to this as such but it involves more input from the taker (easier to click download than it is to make a souffle). I think resturants would dislike this more if the same number of people who downloaded music started replicating their recipies w/o their consent.
Yes maybe that is a better analogy.
What about home hairstyling? If that is legal, clearly professional hairstylers / barbers will lose sales. And home coffee brewing and baking cakes would cause bakeries /cafés to lose money. If I invite friends for a poker game or maybe even a tournament.. that would cause some local bar / casino to lose sales, especially if we drank beer at the same time.
There’s always more money to be made if you can manage to make excuses to restrict others freedom. But it is… quite fascist.
You’d also have to do some pretty nasty surveillance to check that people don’t do home cooking / hairstyling / baking. Almost as nasty as to spy on everyones communications, as we’ve seen these copyright guys try to.
Without your permission if I walk a mile in your shoes I’m a mile away and I have your shoes. That’s theft! If I make a copy of your shoes you still retain full use of your shoes.
“Intellectual property” is theft of real property, including other people’s bodies and brains. Simple as that. Calling it a mere monopoly is too kind.
If we look historically what monopolies have brought in terms of oppression and suffering, I would say it is usually a bit worse than just theft. The US was once built by people fleeing oppression which in many cases was due to monopolies of either religion or business. In the extreme case of monopoly of business that was in Soviet, millions of people were sent off to working camp prisons just for being suspected of having illegally competed with the monopoly.
You don’t send petty criminals such as thieves off to working camp prisons, do you? Well… usually we don’t in Sweden anyway…
Petty thievery is the total theft of a few things; monopoly is the partial theft of everything. Since enforced monopoly prevents people from using their property (including their bodies) in a certain way, the monopoly holder is exerting partial, illegitimate ownership over their property (in the case of bodily property, this theft is called slavery).
The problem with the monopoly term is that too many people think it is a good thing. There are plenty of people arguing for monopoly in everything from the postal service to education (they are wrong). It’s time to call a spade a spade. Pro-copyright people like to bandy the “theft” word around; we should retaliate by pointing out that they support the theft of property on a mass scale.
Rick, I’m surprised you make no reference to ‘intellectual property’ to get around the fact no property is stolen. Copyright has its origins in the UK crown licensing printers granting the right to copy so as to maintain control of the written word.
Patents relate to intellectual property to enable a return on intellectual investment in an invention and that unlike copyright is in most countries limited to 25yrs.
But the term ‘intellectual property’ is a creation of copyright extremists in an attempt to link 2 different legal strands, property rights and copyright.
Yes, and in some cases they also drag in trademarks and counterfeiting to increase the confusion, as in the case with ACTA. All three of them ( copyright, trademarks, patents ) are of course three different concepts legally.
If copyright only were property, then there would be no problems! You’d have the “right of first sale” – meaning you could sell your stuff once as long as it wasn’t previously published, but once you sold it you had no control over it. The one buying the copy could do whatever he wanted with it, including sharing it with anyone.
I think you have missed a couple of words in the first example, as it is now it says that copying isn’t stealing but copyright infringement is. Obviously, that isn’t true.
I am usually using the good old “If I steal something from someone, they lose it. If I copy a file, they don’t, so it is not stealing.”
Thanks – a couple of words appear to have been cut out in editing. Fixing.
I find it much better to refute this argument with this; “Intellectual property”, if indeed it is a property, is not like owning a fine piece of jewelry or owning a car; it’s like owning a piece of land. Copying intellectual property without the owners’ permission is just as much theft as walking on a cranky old mans lawn is!
Therefore, it is not theft, but it is a crime. In Sweden you are allowed to walk around on someones private land provided you do not invade on his or her privacy (e.g. don’t walk near a residence). This privilege also extends to taking anything produced by the land you walk on, provided you do no harm on the environment. E.g. you are not allowed to cut down a tree, but you may forage any berries, mushrooms or nuts you may find. While these are certainly the property of the owner, the damages are usually minimal to non-existant.
File sharing is like walking in someone’s private forest and picking mushrooms. It may be a crime, but a serious one? That’s just ridiculous.
Land is exculdable; I can build a fence around it to keep you out. Land is also rivalrous; if you walk across it then you interfere, at least in principle, with my ability to enjoy and use it. Mushrooms that you pick are mushrooms that I can’t pick.
“Intellectual property” is neither rivalrous nor excludable. Furthermore it doesn’t even exist! It refers only to conceptual idealisations of arrangements of existing property, or actions performed with existing property.
Exactly. Land is unique and exclusive and not possible to reproduce or manifacture.
Intellectual property is nowadays just a bad excuse to make money off of (other people’s) old work.
Content may also get artificial barriers as seen with DRM.
Indeed, mushrooms are of a finite supply at any given moment; given time and that the environment has not been damaged however, new mushrooms will sprout. Therefore mushrooms are a renewable resource. Wait three days and new mushrooms will be available for picking. It is not a problem. It is a problem however if it’s say, farmland, where much time is invested in order to grow crops.
If it’s just land that’s sitting there more or less unattended, though… Then yes, you do have the right to pass over it, and you do have the right to pick anything growing there – atleast where I live.
As for land being unique, and intellectual property is not; you can’t patent the same thing twice, atleast in theory. Neither may you get copyright on the same works twice. So intellectual property is unique as well. Therefore I feel pretty confident that intellectual property, if anything, is like land ownership. One can trespass but not steal a work.
Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that a huge industry has hijacked the IP laws and are abusing them as much as possible…
I should be clearer. I can certainly exclude you from my own copy of a work. What I cannot do is exclude you from all other copies of the work that may be out there. What I can do even less is exclude you from some platonic idealisation of the work, if indeed such a thing even existed.
Yes, they are not wholly the same. But I still assess that copying a file without permission, provided that file is published and not, say, someones’ private photo album or whatever, damages the copyright holder about as much as walking in a private non-fenced forest without permission.
Sample response 4 (Somewhat inspired by RMS): To say that copyright infringement is theft, is to treat the legal system as an authority on ethics, since theft is morally wrong. But laws about theft are not applicable to copyright infringement. The legal system rejects that idea. So it is to make an an appeal to authority – and misrepresenting what authority says. The whole idea that laws define what is right or wrong is a mistake. Laws are, at best, an attempt to achieve justice, to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down.
As an artist i want so much to see both sides of the coin, as im all up to open sourcing things, all for freedom, and every bit of me wants to agree. But i dont see how, yet, despite havent lost hope as yet. So, would someone selling copied cd’s be committing something illegal ?! Forget tax side of it, i mean as responsability to the original of the music IN the cd’s, as content ?!? Yes ?! No ?! Not that easy ?! And to what point can i have a word in my own work, if someone decides to modify it or use it for gain ?! Beause thats what i see as its ultimate question ?!
At the end of the day, id love to share everything, but we know its not that easy !
Markets are about efficient management of scarcity. Technology is about getting rid of scarcity.
So whenever a technological progress removes a scarcity, perhaps it is no longer relevant to have it in the market?
You are right. There is absolutely no technological reason to pay for copies per se anymore. But there are a certain number of people who are in positions which are dependent on the old way of doing things.. No so much manual & factory labor being made obsolete by machines and robotics but certain office labor being made obsolete by computers and the internet.
While I agree with the overall sentiment of the article, I’m not sure that giving short, glib, one-paragraph stock responses is really all that helpful.
I think that starting from the point of “x is false” will not lead you to any useful logical outcome; it is far better to start from “assume x is true”, and make logical deductions from the result of it being true. If you find something to be contradictory, and you’ve made no other assumptions, then you’ve proved that x is in fact false.
Working in your way seems to enable proponents of your point of view to become lax, and stop working as hard, since you’re already working from a “correct” point of view. It is also far easier to attack your position as it is not as logically sound, and the first thing that you do is shout to your opponents “This is my bias, please attack me on it.” Basically, I feel that your premise and conclusion are correct, but the bit in-between in this article needs some work.
The other problem is that these are effectively canned arguments. These work once, until someone comes up with a effective canned response. By encouraging people to think logically, you’ll be able to actually provide a reasonable retort and have a productive discussion with people, rather than hurling canned arguments at one another, which does not help either side see the other’s point of view, and does not advance any new thought on the subject.
Like I say, I actually agree with the sentiment — in my opinion, and under the definition of stealing that I subscribe to, copying is not stealing. But your argument here is shaky, and could potentially lead to an echo chamber effect amongst your supporters.
Talking about “lax”… What is more lax than assuming a “right” to profit off of (other peoples’) old labor?
They don’t care about IP!
They care about control. IP it’s only the bogeyman.
Well… without IP they do lose some of that control… They may still have surveillance and all the small stealthy ways to manipulate people, but no “legal rights” heavy artillery.
You absolutely need to give a counter to another argument. Some people don’t say it’s because they lose money, it’s because you get something for free that you should have paid for.
Copies are possible to produce at $0.00. You tell me why anyone should pay more than that…
Ummm… someone has or else everything will be created by hobbyists only, so that’s kinda stupid.
It’s not my argument anyway.
No one needs to pay for the copies. The copies of the old work are PR / portfolio / commercials for the new work.
People could pay as subscription / donations / investments to make it possible for the creator to keep making new originals.
What if I copy your term paper and turn it in as my own work before you can? By all the logic here I haven’t stolen anything from you, since you still have your paper.
I believe, however, that I have stolen from you. I’ve stolen your effort in creating the paper, and denied you the credit you deserve. How is this not theft?
No that is not theft, it is called cheating and can get you regulated from school, even if Rick allow you to copy his paper.
No that is not theft, it is called cheating and can get you regulated from school, even if Rick allow you to copy his paper.
Plagiarism is something even pirates reject. No pirate with half a brain proposes that should become legal.
If you physically stole my paper in order to copy it, then yes, you have committed theft. But concepts such as “effort” and “credit” are not ownable, and therefore not stealable.
Of course, fraud is committed, but against the school, not against me.
That is plagiarism and not something pirates encourage. Credit is due. Credit for old work is PR for new work, which is what may have any value to people who like what has previously been created by the same people.
This is completely different breed of being! By copying “The Wall” I do not strip Pink Floyd from credit – it is still their creation.
For your best information, I translated this article in French on my own blog: http://artimuses.be/2013/08/lecon-dargumentation-reponse-a-copier-cest-voler/
The text is available (also in WPress format) if you need to publish it here.
Thank you! I linked your translation below.
For your best information, I translated this article in French on my own blog: http://artimuses.be/2013/08/lecon-dargumentation-reponse-a-copier-cest-voler/
The text is available (also in WPress format) if needed to be published here.
Easy response to the “copying is stealing” crowd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
Sing it over and over again until it’s perfectly clear.
Ooops, seems as if Rick is utterly and completely wrong in regards of the above and below quoted text.
Rick:
“If copying were stealing, we would have no need for copyright monopoly laws in the first place, as ordinary property laws would suffice. Those define stealing. But we have separate laws for the copyright monopoly, and stealing isn’t defined there. Therefore, obviously, it is not stealing. Neither legally, nor morally, nor economically, nor logically.”
Devlin Hartline:
“This claim is easily refuted. For example, Section 2319 of the U.S. Code, which defines “Criminal infringement of a copyright,” is found in Chapter 113 of Title 18, which is entitled “Stolen Property.” Section 3931 of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code, which defines “Theft of unpublished dramas and musical compositions,” is found in Chapter 39 of Title 18, which is entitled “Theft and Related Offenses.” And Section 5/16-7 of the Illinois Compiled Statutes, which defines “Unlawful use of recorded sounds or images,” is found in Subdivision 5 of Article 16, which is entitled “General Theft.” It’s trivially easy to find many more examples just like these. Having read many posts by Falkvinge (as well as many law books), I don’t get the impression that he’s actually opened many law books himself.”
http://lawtheories.com/?p=523
Would Rick like to define “ordinary” as intended in Ricks expression “ordinary property laws” and give a few samples of these?
Sten: Unfortunately, it seems that in your eager to prove me wrong, you forgot how to read and apply logic. What you seek to disprove is not disproven by the quoted text.
Still, I admit that this argument was weaker than it could have been.
Rick, is there a link to a sample supporting your definition of “ordinary property laws ” ?
i mean those you claim “Those define stealing. ”
And you obviously do not feel that the text “Section 2319 of the U.S. Code, which defines “Criminal infringement of a copyright,” is found in Chapter 113 of Title 18, which is entitled “Stolen Property.”
Being a property law that define infringement of copyright as stealing?
I do believe your mistake is to believe that your translations from Swedish to English are precise enough.
@“But they are causing X to lose money”
How can you lose something you never had in the first place?
Rick, is there a link to a sample supporting your definition of “ordinary property laws ” ?
i mean those you claim “Those define stealing. ”
And you obviously do not feel that the text “Section 2319 of the U.S. Code, which defines “Criminal infringement of a copyright,” is found in Chapter 113 of Title 18, which is entitled “Stolen Property.”
Being a property law that define infringement of copyright as stealing?
I do believe your mistake is to believe that your translations from Swedish to English are precise enough.
Ups, Rick!
“When a monkey stuck a twig in an anthill and created the world first confectionery, was it just delusions of grandeur or just asocial psychopathy that caused him to beat up his cousin for repeating the exercise of feeding his family too?”
Furthermore, in “Billy Goats’ Gruff”, what happened to the Troll at the end?
Tis a Greater Game we play, at work, RESTing and testing.
The thing with saying copyright is stealing is to convey the message of unauthorized use/download to the public that do not wholly understand the complex mechanisms of copyright (related rights, intangibleness, licensing, the many rights holders in the music industry etc.). Of course it is acceptable to identify an album with the artist’s (and of course producers etc.) copyright. The normal population is not obligated to understand this difficult system. It is not wrong to state that by downloading a movie for free without authorization you are virtually putting a DVD box to your pocket without paying. The question in my opinion is way wider than the legal definition of stealing which does give a somewhat false image to the people that do not create themselves or do not understand the copyright system. But nevertheless intellectual property is property no matter what you say.
The issue of copying is massively different between traditional physical objects and the digitized products. To counterargue the “Copyright is stealing” with arguments such as “an object is just copied and nobody is losing any objects” is inadequate. (Nobody is losing objects but how could that even happen when copying digital property is the easiest thing in the world). The person acquiring an object or product that has been copied and shared is receiving unjust enrichment, since the person has not paid for an item that has been for sale. Thus the creator (and also many middlemen) suffer economic loss IF the person had the resources and will to acquire the object in the first place (this problematisation of economic loss has lot to do with how the compensations for damages are being measured and usually those numbers end up being ridiculous and over the top, but that’s another issue, although important). If a person does not have the money, he or she cannot acquire the item. If the item is not legally for sale in the region that is NO EXCUSE to download it for free and then demand for better services and business models from the corporations. It is an unbalanced mindset to have that the people would be authorized to blackmail the businesses by acquiring items without permission or without paying for them. The way to oppose a system or express a need for new business models is by restraining from buying such items! Not by copying and downloading without paying! These actions aim the resources towards protecting the businesses from infringers (including litigation!) and you must remember that the diminishing revenue streams make it difficult to research and develop new systems and business models.
”Manufacturing your own copy of something using your own property – your computer, storage, and network equipment – is not stealing logically, legally, morally, economically, or philosophically”. Well of course since you are ENTITLED TO CREATE YOUR OWN COPIES FOR YOUR OWN USE by law! Why would this have anything to do with sharing the same copies over the internet or otherwise for people to download? It is true thought that people have understood that lending items to other people is a normal thing to do. But the thing that is characteristic of lending is that the item will be given back to the lender. Some people might think that this lending construct is still basically the same but it has been shifted from the physical world to the virtual and the lending happens through internet. This would be ok if there weren’t so many unauthorized copies in the internet. The problem lies in the fact that the relevant piece of copying happens when a person with the adequate money, with the consideration and intent still downloads a copyright protected movie, album or whatever via torrent, p2p, dropbox etc., for free. I guarantee that just a handful of people think that copying for your own purposes (putting music or movies to your iPhone or MS Surface) is not ok.
Someone or some people have created a piece of art which is sold in an internet market place. One person downloads and pays for the item and then let’s other people to download the item from the computer. The people that downloaded the item without paying get to enjoy someone’s money requiring work and thus get unjust enjoyment and benefit. The original contract has been that this item shall be acquired by paying and usually the TOS prohibits sharing and the copyright laws back that up. I just can’t understand why would it be acceptable to let people get the work of art even though the creator has decided (and the lawmaker too) that this piece of art shall be acquired by one person and not to be copied in order to share it free to others.
In the ice cream case if someone decides not to buy an ice cream there is no expression of intent to acquire anything or any relation to any ice cream seller. Whereas when you download a piece of art for free you clearly neglect to understand the original contract and the laws and you are willing to acquire an item. You don’t simply decide not to buy something but instead you acquire it and get enjoyment out of it. The other example is that you buy the ice cream from another shop. Well, you said it yourself: you BUY it. But you shouldn’t buy the movie for example? And cooking your own food… How would you then make (=cook) your own Hollywood movie or a superbly produced album with an orchestra in the background? You’re identifying eating in a restaurant v. making your own food with buying a movie v. downloading a movie. When you download movies or music you don’t create anything, you simply acquire the exact same piece of art that has been sold. You can’t cook exactly the same food as in restaurants with the same ingredients.
Interesting. I would tackle it different. The “filesharing is theft”-argument often comes promptly and aggressive – facing that I really like to give feedback, which is just as promt and aggressive; maybe someone else here feels the same:
“If someone did theft, it’s the author, who’s work is shaped by works of other authors. He build upon their work and commercially exploited their work, without the authorization or paying them in return. File-sharing on the other hand is just non-commercial copying, which the majority of studies prove to be not harmful to business, but even conductive to business.” – but I have to admit, that it could me more smooth and simply and on-the-point put in words… well, but as you know it, that will grow by the time, so look at the core of this feedback 😉 …
[…] par Rick Falkvinge sur son site Falkvinge on Infopolicy. L'article original, en anglais, est : Talking back lessons : retorts to "Copying is stealing". La traduction étant par définition une trahison, je vous indique entre parenthèse certains mots […]
[…] the follow-up of the publication of Talking Back Lessons: Retorts To "Copying is Stealing" from Rick Falkvinge, I wrote a translation in French and also a short complementary article in […]
[…] lives on today. Just a couple of weeks ago, Swedish Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge had a post on his blog addressing what he called “the most disturbingly false bullshit repeated by […]