Is Filesharing Stealing?

I wrote a post for this blog back in 2007 in which I explained a litmus test for whether filesharing is stealing but I think it's important to explain now that my views have somewhat shifted since then. I explained my new view on the question in a comment on a GamePolitics.com post last year which today I think I ought to repost as it's own independent piece. I said:

"You can only consider file sharing "stealing" if you accept the premise that an idea, not a physical object but an idea, can be someone's property and that therefore copying someone else's idea is stealing someone else's idea. That's actually a fairly complex, developed and abstract philisophical position on ethics which not everyone agrees with.

When Moses brought the Seventh Commandment ("Thou Shalt Not Steal") down from Mount Sinai, the Statute of Anne (the first copyright legislation) was millenia in the future. Was the Statute of Anne really addressing the exact same thing that the commandment presented to the ancient Hebrews by Moses was addressing? If you think so, it should be supported by argument, not just assumed. Unless you think it self-evident. But many do not. I do not.

I think it is reasonable for the government to grant, in order to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, exclusive rights to control the mass redistribution of creative works to their creators for a limited time. And I think the copyright on StarCraft II is a legitimate one and therefore the law is justified and the people breaking it are guilty of copyright infringement. But not of theft. Nothing has been stolen. A limited exclusive right granted by the government for a limited time has been violated but nothing has been stolen.

I also think the perspective that the content industry has taken of the law is stupid and self-destructive. Culture always builds on the past and if you want lots of building going on, a healthy public domain and reasonable fair use protections are obviously necessary. In addition, they really ought to be changing their business models to fit the market instead of trying to use the hammer of government to play "whack-a-mole" with the freeloading moochers among their customers and fans, often missing and hitting the innocent by mistake. This is worse than violating abstract legal rights - it is simple naked evil, spun by the media into good. That's just horrible and despicable. No, they ought to be thinking about ways to get people involved, not to shut people out of their products. The capitalistic approach would be to charge for services that the pirates just can't duplicate, like the creator of Minecraft is doing. The looting approach is what they're taking so far, unleashing hoards of zombie lawyers to prey on the possibly innocent by inflicting punishment out of proportion to any offense and with no regard to any conception of justice but only a mere pretense of it which is assumed but never justified.

Let's get sane and 21st century and address sacred inalienable individual physical private property rights first. Then we can talk about abstract limited exclusive legal rights."
- Me (Yes, I just quoted myself)

The chief difference between this new position and my old position is the actual meaning of the word, "stealing." I am now convinced that "stealing" deals only with physical objects and you cannot "steal" an idea. You can illegally, fraudulently and/or unethically copy an idea, but since "stealing" is a physical act and since ideas are non-physical and since we don't have telepathic powers to literally reach into someone else's brain, you cannot literally steal an idea. It is a physical impossibility. All meaningful instances of the word "stealing" in relation to ideas are figures of speech, not literal.

Google Isn't Your Friend Sometimes

I can't tell you how many times I've done a Google search for how to do something related to computers, technology and/or programming and found only a series of forum posts in which various other people in the same situation as me have already asked the question I Googled and were told, "Google is your friend."

Now it is certainly true that alot of people have asked dumb questions onilne without searching adequately. But it shouldn't be too hard to understand the logical problems with just telling someone, "Google it" when your very comment of saying, "Google it" is often all they'll find if they do. When Google looks for the answer to people's questions, if "Google it" is the most often returned answer for a query, then "Google it" will seem to be the answer. But it's not the answer, it's a means of finding the answer!

Why don't I just Google it? I am!!

There should be a "How to Answer Questions The Smart Way" to match the one about asking questions.

More extreme rhetoric from both sides befouls the air

Daniel Castro on anti-piracy Internet DNS censorship says, "If you accept the fact that piracy is a problem, government needs to do something. You have to start from that premise. So if you accept that premise, the question is what's the most effective way of reducing infringement?"

That's a very dangerous and controversial premise. Castro is claiming that just because there is a problem, therefore the government should take whatever steps are necessary to solve that problem. Shouldn't the government leave at least some problems alone?

Are there no limits to what steps should be taken? Might not some steps be appropriate and some inappropriate, instead of all possible steps being appropriate, which would make the government's power over the citizens effectively unlimited?

Forcing people who want to pirate stuff to type in IP addresses may not be that bad of an idea in itself, but this premise is the bad idea and pretty much catches this guy with his philosophy-of-government pants down. Surely the government isn't here to solve all our problems of every kind.

It is a bit scary that the government might start censoring DNS results, because of the whole "slippery slope" thing. If it's an acceptable way to deal with this problem, what about when unpopular political, religious or philosophical ideas become the next "problem"? Are we going to censor them too?

On the other extreme end of the spectrum this week we have the Free Software Foundation coming out to warn people about the "Javascript Trap" which they claim "traps" people into running proprietary code on their computers. But it does not, in fact, do so. Richard Stallman may not like it, but it's not a trap and insisting that all JavaScript be free software is an example of the extreme radicalism which is one of the reasons why so few people listen to the FSF. They really need to get their priorities straightened out.

The proprietary code in question may not be "free software" in Richard Stallman's extremist sense of the words, but it is "open source" because there's nothing stopping you in principle from reading any and all JavaScript code that runs in your browser before you agree to run it. It is true that you can't legally copy large code segments from copyrighted JavaScripts verbatim into your own programs, but there's nothing wrong with that because it doesn't make you or your computer or the software that lives on your computer any less free. You could re-implement the same algorithms in your own code without breaking any law at all. (Because as far as I know, nothing in the JavaScripts in question is patented, only copyrighted)

Having what the Free Software Foundation demands - a truly Stallmanesque "free software" client interface for Google services and other popular webapps, would be nice I suppose but you can already look at the JavaScript - it's "open source" and since you aren't going to be modifying how somebody else's web site works, it just isn't necessary.

Instead of politely suggesting or requesting that Google provide a free software JavaScript interface, or starting a friendly petition, they put out propaganda about "the JavaScript Trap" suggesting that people who write or use proprietary JavaScript code are somehow dishonest or manipulative when in fact they just aren't. Even if the FSF is right, (which they aren't) why not use a little tact!? Is it too much to ask to ask nicely?