"Piracy" Should be Legal

For the purposes of this debate, the term "piracy" will refer to non-commercial and unauthorized redistribution of a copyrighted work. I may also refer to "piracy" as sharing, because that is what it is. Round 1: Main Arguments Round 2: Rebuttals Round 3: Responses/Closing Statements ~~~~~ From it's inception, copyright law was intended to be a limited and temporary monopoly over certain works to encourage the creation of more culture and creative works-- that by preventing other publishers from profiting off of a book's re-print without giving a penny to the author, more culture would arise. At this time, in the 1700s, copyright law didn't affect your ordinary citizen. People could copy a book work by word from hand as many times as they wished and not been in legal trouble, and a book could have been adapted into a play without asking the author permission, for example. Copyright law only affected those with the ability to effectively copy-- publishers. Today, copyright law affects not only publishers, but every single person with a computer. Restrictive copyright law is also is based on a number of shaky claims. The claim that creative works are an abstract existence akin to property. The claim that every shared copy is a "lost sale." The claim that sharing is stealing. The claim that without the restriction of sharing artists won't create more content. I hope you'll find that, by the end of this debate, the restriction of sharing comes down to protectionism, fear, an imbalance of interests, and hypotheticals for which anti-"piracy" laws are a non-sequitur. For my main argument, I would like to tackle these claims one by one. -- "Creative works are an abstract existence akin to property." Even in the 1700s it was seen as beneficial to have a healthy public domain-- making new copies and editions of old books was much a profitable practice, as it is today with Huckleberry Finn and Hamlet, history could be well-preserved, and new culture could arise from the old. Surely the state shouldn't have the right to take someone's property for the betterment of society without paying them a penny, should it? The U.S. constitution ensures that this won't happen to any individual's property-- yet the same document also ensures that copyright is to be granted for a limited amount of time. The constitution's framers didn't see copyright as "property," and the document disagrees with the idea of "intellectual property." Creative works are not property. --"Every shared copy is a lost sale." You'll often hear this argument against sharing media-- "For every song you share with a friend, the artist loses a sale." This is incorrect even on the surface; the assumption that everyone that gets a copy from a friend (or even someone they don't know) would certainly or most likely purchase it otherwise is shaky, to say the least. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that they would. According to the RIAA, an estimated 20 billion songs were illegally downloaded in 2005. That is a lot of music, and by their own logic, that is a lot of lost sales. For comparison, only 915.2 million songs were purchased in 2005. Despite these numbers, the change in revenue for the industry was only -3%. "Pirated" copies outdid purchased copies by 21 times, yet there was only a -3% change. Not only that, but if you were to factor in variables other than "piracy--" such as how less music was released 2005 than previous years, CD costs were higher than previous years, etc-- you see that sharing may not have been the culprit for this drop in revenue, or at least not have had such a primary role as we are led to believe. --"Sharing is stealing." When you make a copy of a book, the author doesn't have one less book, nor does anyone else. You have one more book when you copy, a copy that would serve your friend well. When you take a book from the author, they have one less book. This is obvious, and isn't (usually) what is argued as "stealing." In this case, the stealing is considered the stealing of profit; that when you share a book, it is robbing the artist of a pay-check. This is essentially a rehash of the "lost sale" argument, so see the previous excerpt for more information. --"If sharing isn't illegal, artists won't create culture." This is often phrased as "if the author can't make money, they won't make books," or a similar variant. Despite the fact that humans have shown time and time again the need to express themselves transcends the dependence on a paycheck for said expression (see: Wikipedia, DeviantArt, YouTube, countless indie bands, free/libre software projects), this argument also assumes that making a profit is impossible if you allow people to share your work. Several people have shown that it is possible to allow non-commercial redistribution and still make a profit-- Randall Munroe and Cory Doctorow are two off the top of my head. Perhaps it would be more difficult to make a living with the current popular business model, but does that mean you should change the law, or does that mean you should change your business model to take advantage of new technologies allowing sharing to be easier than it has ever been in history? Current copyright law also allows the copyright holder an unjust control over the viewer, reader, or listener of their work. Almost all anti-"piracy" arguments are completely irrelevant when it comes to media that is made free of charge. "Lost sales" doesn't made a single byte of sense when the artist isn't even selling the work. "Without profit, no culture" doesn't compute when the artist doesn't even try to profit from their work. "Stealing" doesn't make sense, because again, they aren't selling it. For these works, the only argument is that these works are the artist's property, and people shouldn't be able to copy and share someone else's property. The question remains, however: Why shouldn't they be able to copy and share the "property?" It literately cannot hurt the artist in this case, so what justification is there? Sharing should be illegal for these non-commercial arts because the author doesn't like sharing? In these cases, the difference between prison time, outrageous fines, and ruined lives is merely the author's opinion, mood, or even personal like or dislike of the "pirates" in question. This is such an unethical power that these artists can hold and wield-- and with no justification at all, other than the weak claim of "property." Don't think of this as purely an issue for artists. Think of the people that want to share and improve culture, and how copyright law affects them. We need to consider both sides if we are to achieve the equal balance that the United State's framers wanted for copyright, and today we are leaning much too far toward the copyright holders.