Online piracy poses little risk to business
Daniel Razzano | Daily Trojan
When 26-year-old computer programmer and political activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide last Friday, news of his death spread across the Internet with the same speed as the viral videos and the applications he had helped to produce.
At the time of his death, he faced unnecessarily harsh felony charges entailing a possible 35-year sentence and a $1 million fine. His crime? The theft of some scholarly articles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology JSTOR digital library with the intent to distribute the papers to the public. MIT announced yesterday that they were investigating its role in his death.
The issue of online piracy has incited passionate debate since the creation of the World Wide Web. Aside from the ethical issues of using another person’s property without their permission, U.S. Congressmen have recently argued that online piracy is severely detrimental to the American economy and is destructive to individual businesses.
Both of these claims are misleading.
Recent articles have indicated that online piracy has little to no effect on businesses, and that the restriction of free, public information sharing could actually work against the favor of the economy. Moreover, these restrictions stifle creativity, encourage censorship and are a disservice to the budding social entrepreneurs of the 21st century.
The emphasis of the U.S. government on prosecuting and restricting “information-sharers” such as Swartz is unnecessary and ultimately counterproductive. In the past year, Congressional bills such as the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act, known as SOPA and PIPA, have invoked uproar in the online community because of their intent to restrict and limit the flow of information flow on the Internet, essentially censoring online interactions.
Though neither bill passed, Congress continues to contend that online piracy costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, resulting in a loss of around 750,000 jobs.
If those figures sound too high to be true, it’s because they are. Julian Sanchez, a research fellow from the Cato Institute, investigated those claims last year and found they “[could not] be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” suggesting that the U.S. government might have just made them up. In fact, Sanchez argued that it was virtually impossible to measure the effects of online piracy on the economy, because of the variable nature of its economic effects. Any attempt to do so, Sanchez argues, is misleading and most likely exaggerated.
Instead, research suggests that music and entertainment businesses, which are most likely to be affected by online piracy, have done better in recent economic crises than similar businesses in other industries.
Despite this evidence, threats of legal action against illegal downloads continue to escalate. Most common are the pre-movie advertisements that ominously send the message that piracy is a social evil. “Would you steal a purse? Would you steal a car?” the advertisements ask viewers, implying that clicking a button to download a song or a movie is the legal equivalent of petty theft. It’s, of course, not as simple as that.
Unlike the theft of a car, the illegal downloading of a song does not necessarily imply tangible loss or harm to another. Equally compelling is the increasingly obvious truth that online piracy restrictions are difficult to enforce. Illegal downloading has become a norm for the Millennial Generation. We would all be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t downloaded something off the Internet without permission.
The openness and anonymity of the Internet has afforded the Millennial Generation enormous advantages, enabling individuals access to music, entertainment, information and community where they otherwise might be deprived.
The resources of the U.S. government could perhaps be better spent by enacting policies that will actually benefit the economy and potential business leaders. Losses caused by piracy are far outweighed by the benefits of a free, unrestricted flow of information. In the case of Swartz, the real loss is the incalculable tragedy of an inspirational and influential talent gone too soon.
As Swartz said, “It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.”
Tragically, it may indeed have been greed that led the U.S. government to its decisions.
Payal Mukerji is a junior majoring in business administration. Her column “Risky Business” runs Tuesdays.
It seems to me that the author is not suggesting that piracy is synonymous with productivity but rather that the harsh regulations for online piracy are ineffective, immoral, and impossible to implement. In this respect, she is correct. I find it ludicrous that this man faced a possible 35 year sentence for distributing knowledge while corrupt investment bankers and CEOs run amok. The truth of the matter is that US government is too afraid to prosecute big companies and overeager to attack visionaries like Swartz. Ms. Mukerji highlights this truth quite well.
According to the indictment, Swartz broke into a wiring closet and attempted to download a large part of huge commercial database. The owners of that database spent a lot of time and money building a system that’s pretty universally available for no money to students and faculty members – and their institutions pay for the system. Taking it upon himself to break in and download might be called “hacktivism” by those who support it – but at the end of the day it’s taking away all the effort and yes, money, that went into building a system that benefits everyone.. If he had spoken out, negotiated, collected a lot of people who thought the terms unfair and proposed a change – that’s protected activity and maybe even the right perspective. But this is vigilante-ism, not civil disobedience, and indefensible. Still – I would hope that the “possible 35 year sentence” is far beyond what any judge would actually impose – seems harsh to me, too.
Curious that the author disregards research from the US government that quantifies the significant impact of piracy, but swallows whole the unsubstantiated talking points from the Cato Institute, funded by Google to oppose the rights of the artists and other content creators.
Payal seems to believe that Millennials are incapable of telling right from wrong, and piracy from productivity. Perhaps she can’t, but she is clearly an outlier. Hers is a cynical point of view that completely misunderstands ethics, business, and the moral standards of her peers.
I am surprised that the author is seeking a career in business administration. If he runs a supermarket will he see it as a moral imperitive to give away food, or if he builds houses, is it a moral imperitive to give away shelter? All these things are needed – but commerce is the only way that has proven to work to match demand with supply, to incent people to work and work hard, and to attract capital. IP is no different. Sure it sounds great to “share” but what of the artist who spent years perfecting craft and much effort in creating a work. Doesn’t the artist have the right to say – hey, I’m entitled to decide what happens to my work! Over the past 300 years, the system that’s worked is to allow artists this right – and that encourages them to make the works in the first place. The meme that is often told that copying hurts no one is simply false – making a copy hurts the artist upon whom decency, and the law, confer the exclusive right to make copies. That’s not “greed” any more than your right to decide whether to work and for what price is “greed” rather than donating all your services and hoping that someone will take care of you.