The report “Piracy losing its stigma here” (April 24) again resurrected the issue of whether unauthorised file sharing is tantamount to stealing.
The hare of technological advancement has outpaced the tortoise of legal development. Dr Stuart Green, a Rutgers Law School professor, said copyright infringement is not really stealing at all.
To steal something, one must deprive the legal owner of whatever that thing is. If a person steals my car, then I am deprived of the use of my car. But if one downloads a song, he has made a copy, not stolen the song.
Perhaps the entertainment industry cannot be persuaded to change its stand, but equating file sharing with theft does not resonate with the public at large.
The industry always suggests that every stolen copy is a lost sale, but it should give up its dreams of controlling distribution in favour of collecting fair compensation. What we need is a mechanism that collects money from file sharers and divides it among artistes and copyright owners.
Last year, the European Union Court of Justice ruled that embedding content online is not an infringement of copyright, which implied that streaming sites may not be acting illegally. In 2005, the French Parliament voted to allow free sharing of music and movies on the Internet, and hence set up a conflict with the government and media companies.
Before that, a Dutch court ruled that file-trading developers were not liable for the copyright infringement that occurs when people use file-sharing application Kazaa.
A few years ago, bestselling author Paulo Coelho made a Russian translation of The Alchemist available without permission from his publisher. As a result, downloads of the book in Russia skyrocketed from 1,000 a year to more than a million. Mr Coelho said it also drove up sales. There are some positive effects to “copying”.
The reality is that technology has the edge on traditional media in attracting users, and traditional media companies are struggling to find their way in this new technological landscape. File-sharing networks expose the fundamental weakness behind our copyright laws.
