luckykaa

So, a magazine blatantly plagarises an article. The internet gets upset.

Paul Cornell accuses the internet of hypocrisy.

I can see his point.

That said, Paul Cornell does come across as a bit of a whiner. Yes - your graphic novel is available on bittorrent. Yes, you should get paid. Seriously though - deal with it. Were you surprised to see your comic on bittorrent?

The basic arguments for and against piracy have been thrashed out and nobody is giving ground. Personally I think a lot of the pirates are a little to self righteous. So are the copyright holders. The pirates insist that copyright is too long - I agree with this. There's no way this justifies copying something that was released a few days ago.

Some people are against copyright entirely. I accept this is a valid position. The thing is, without copyright, would Paul Cornell have produced that graphic novel in the fist place? "Ah," says the anti-copyrightist, "but people will produce without copyright". This is true. They will and they do. There's a huge selection of media available for free download. If you truly felt that strongly you would only support free media. So people pirate for the simple reason - they like to get stuff for free (or before it's released in this country). There's nothing inherently unethical in this opinion. The media cartels want to maximise their profits. The consumer wants to minimise his costs.

The main argument for copyright is practicality rather than morality. Before the Statute of Queen Anne in 1709, there was no copyright. People before that time were not inherently unethical. The title itself of that statute makes it clear that this is its purpose. "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned". Copyright is a simple mechanism to promote the creation of books (and more recently other media) by ensuring that the authors can receive an income from them. While the preamble does make it clear that the author deserves payment, that is an additional justification, rather than the entirety of it.

People will pirate. It's easy. It's unlikely that you'll get caught. More to the point, it doesn't feel bad, any more than making a mixtape. Most people simply don't consider there to be anything wrong with this sort of small scale piracy. If it wasn't for high profile advertising campaigns by the media companies, people wouldn't even consider the need to justify their actions. The sale is not "lost". it never happened in the first place. No balance sheet has ever had a column on it with "losses from piracy". Disagree? It doesn't matter if you do. I'm not the one you have to convince. It's the millions of people pirating your content you have to convince. Very few people would consider the moral and ethical impliciations of making a mixtape, or keeping something on video after they've watched it. The majority does not consider this unethical behaviour. Legality should follow morality.

So onto the magazine shamelessly lifting an article. Is this different? Yes. Why? Because everyone agrees that it's different. The magazine is profiting directly from the article. If you make money from me then I deserve a cut. Simple as that. It's about fairness. Humans have an innate sense of fairness. Most Apes do. Apes are social animals, and we've evolved an innate sense of game theory. If someone assists you then they're entitled to a share of the reward. There are good evolutionary reasons for this, and it's become part of what we consider makes us human. So does Paul Cornell deserve a cut from the profits from all those that torrented his graphic novel? I'm sure if he emails them they'll be happy to give him a copy of the file.

There is a moral side to copyright. There's also a legal side. Now we're in the internet age the two don't mesh quite so cleanly. Are people justified in torrenting Paul Cornell's graphic novel? No. Are they doing the same thing as Cook's Source? Of course not. They're legally considered the same though, and many activities especially fannish ones - fanfic, vidding, filking, even some fanzines potentially infringe the same laws.

Note: This LJ entry contains use of the term "piracy" to refer to copyright infringement. This is a convenient term whose usage predates copyright. Stealing is an emotive term that distracts from the issues.