From: dan@cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Daniel Zabetakis)
Subject: Harmlessness of a.b.p.e (long, but read it anyway)
Organization: Columbia University, Dept. of Biological Sciences.
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 00:34:12 GMT


   Since I have been arguing about copyright in relation to a.b.p.e, I felt
I should explain more clearly and fully my point of view, and give others a
chance to see my whole argument and to respond to it.
   I believe that copyright must be anchored in the concept of harm, or it is
of no value to society. We believe that copying and distributing other's work
is bad. But when it is bad, it is so because of harm, and not because of some
idealized model of human behavior.
   This, of course, is not a legal argument. I do not pretend it is, and I do
not think it could be used in a defense of a lawsuit. However, noone obeys
all laws all the time. I feel that copyright law should be treated as every 
other law. If you feel that what you are doing does not harm anyone, then 
continue to do it. How much you are willing to do in the face of opposition
depends on how strongly you feel about your actions. If you seek to maximally
limit potential liability of your institution, then turn off your computers,
unplug them, and lock them in titanium vaults. You _may_ be safe then.

   So my argument in favour of a.b.p.e is basically that the group does not
harm publishers of pornography. My argument looks at 5 features of the images
posted, and tries to show how they contrast to cases where the harm is more
evident.
   You may not feel that all the argument are relevant. Indeed, many will feel
that my whole article is irrelevant. But I hope people will see more clearly
where I stand.

   To show harmlessness, I hope to show that the images posted to a.b.p.e 
are not really in competition with the works they originate in. The first
feature is completeness.
   How many of you xerox articles from professional journals, and fail to
send in the $2.00 required? How many of those with thier hands up would
refrain from copying a whole magazine even if you were motivated to? The 
concept of fair use allows you to make limited copies of works without
violating copyright. But I don't think there is a clear dilineation between
acceptable and otherwise.
   A.b.p.e doesn't compete with Playboy (for example) because noone ever
posts the whole magazine. Or even a whole pictorial. What you normally see is
1-5 good pictures from a particular magazine. The extent of copying these
images will go through probably excludes them from 'fair use', but where is the
harm in it? The editors of Playboy would certainly object if you said that 
those 5 images where the total worth of the 80 page magazine. I can see that
it would be harmful to post the entire contents of a magazine to the net.
(that very well might start happening in the not-too-distant future).

   The second feature is market coverage. I want to compare this with posting
commercial software to the net.
   The users of the net are very interested in pornography. This shows that
the demographics of porn users covers that of usenet users (predominately
young males). But the demographics of usenetters(computer nerds) doesn't
cover pornography. The percentage of users of pornography that have access to
usenet (even indirect) is small.
   Contrast this to computer software. If a piece of commercial software is
posted to the net, it could be a disaster for the producer. This is because
the demographics of computer users and usenet users are very closely matched.
Combined with the fact that the software market is smaller, this means a very
high percentage of sales could be lost due to an illegal posting. I don't
think this is true of pornography.

   The third feature is timelyness. Compare and contrast a.b.p.e to a generic
book, and to clarinet.
   Pornography by it's very nature is ephemeral. I has a special place in
the world of 'art' that hasn't been very clearly defined. Pictures, paintings,
and books are expected to last forever. War and Peace will never disappear.
But pornography does just that. Porn movies are cheaply made productions of
nearly identical plot and little variation in the action. There are only 
a limited number of ways to have sex, and only rarely is anything truely
novel discovered. So it is the continual turnover of pornographic images that
has the attraction.
   I think clarinet is the same way. Being news, timelyness is vital to an
understanding of harm to it. Clarinet is concerned with leaks, with people
ditributing clarinet feeds to unauthorizd sites. If it enforces a zero
tolerance policy, it is also concerned with people reposting individual
articles. But you can see that the harm fades rapidly with time. What possible
harm could there be in posting year-old clarinet articles?
   A.b.p.e is not harmful in that (to my knowledge) it doesn't generally
carry very recently published pictures. Exactly how much value is in last
month's Playboy?

   Fourth is the physical state of the copied work. I will contrast this 
to software (again).
   When you copy software, you get the real thing. Images posted to a.b.p.e
are lower quality repoductions in a very very different medium. So it should
be clear that network distribution of software is much more harmful than 
network distribution of these images. Perhaps when color printers become
more common, better, and cheaper then this will be a problem, but right now I
think it does much to alleviate any potential harm of a.b.p.e.

   Last is unorganization. Anybody still here?
   Although it couldn't probably be considered fair use, it doesn't seem to
me to be particularly harmful if a person scans an image, and distributes it
through usenet. The problem is that a.b.p.e has grow to very large size. But
the fact remains that there is no leader, and no organizer, and each article
is the whim of the individual poster.
    This, I think is what the alt net was supposed to be about. Of course, you
can get what you want from alt and leave the rest, but that's not the point.
The ideal of alt was an uncontrolled network. Totally uncontrolled. That means
that ideally the only reason not to carry an alt group is it's unpopularity.
Otherwise you make _no_ judgments about it. To drop a group because some 
special interest group feels it is used to break laws is not quite the right
way to think about it.

  So there it is. The ideas here could use some more work to tighten them up.
But I think you get the idea. Any comments?

DanZ

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