Napster is About Freeloading, not Freedom by Michelle Malkin

Oh and oldie, but goodie.

Conservatives have been at the forefront of defending Microsoft's intellectual property rights, but are reluctant to criticize Napster for fear of seeming anti-technology and pro-government. Don't be intimidated by the cyber-mob. Napster is about freeloading, not freedom. Napster, for those of you who still own phonographs, is the popular software program that allows Internet users to trade free music files and trash copyright laws.

Everyone knows someone who has used it -- and it's not just members of the nose-ringed generation who are guilty. But instead of admitting that what they're doing is wrong, many Napster advocates can't help but make ridiculous rationalizations for what amounts to habitual high-tech theft.

Self-anointed "futurists" argue that Napster shouldn't be stopped because it would put a damper on innovation and creative liberty. Digital distribution is the wave of the future, they preach. MP3s (the file format used to digitize music) are here to stay, they crow.

Yes, the technology is cool. But the mere existence of MP3 technology doesn't legitimize the rampant illicit use of that technology.

Defenders ask why Napster should be liable for the copyright violations of its users. As one writer put it on a message board at CNET.com: "Automakers don't get sued when someone breaks the law while behind the wheel. VCR makers are not bothered when millions of people pirate videos. Why should Napster be held accountable for their users violating copyright laws?" Why? Because car manufacturers and VCR makers don't create a product whose primary use is intended to break the law. Napster's main purpose for existence, however, is to enable the mass circumvention of intellectual property rights and create a paradise for people in search of stolen goods.

Some goo-goo-eyed Napsterites couch the service as an enterprise in "sharing." The 20 million people who use Napster to pirate music are a "community," the argument goes. They are simply celebrating a common interest. Give me a break. Napster has as much communal spirit as a shoplifters' convention.

A new survey conducted by two scientists at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center shows that users of another Napster-like music-trading system called Gnutella are far more interested in hogging files than sharing them. Their study found that "upwards of 70 percent of Gnutella users share no files, and that 90 percent of the users answer no queries." It's a classic example of free riding.

Napster advocates say no one is hurt by the system. At the margin, this may be true. But in the aggregate, Napstering is not a victimless crime. There are musicians and songwriters and marketers and publicists and record companies getting ripped off tens of thousands of times a day thanks to the Web site.

Napster champions fall back on business-bashing when their other bogus arguments fall apart. They complain about high CD prices and turn up the class warfare rhetoric against "greedy" record companies that are "only out for a profit." Expecting to get compensated for your work isn't greedy. Feeling entitled to distribute and copy others' work without paying for it, is. And as the musicians who run the Stop Napster Web site note: "You don't get a license to steal just because you think the product is too expensive."

When they're not complaining about high CD prices, the Napsterites point to increased CD sales as a reason to keep the Web site alive. That has more to do with a good economy than with anything else. It's disingenuous at best to argue that Napster encourages users to buy music that the service makes available for free. Just listen to members of the Napster generation honest enough to admit why they use it:

"I haven't bought a CD in forever," 17-year-old Zack H. told the Chicago Tribune. "Because of Napster, I don't have to."

"Napster's the best thing ever created," a high school student named Alejandro told Newsweek magazine. "I don't have to spend any money."

Napster gurus can prattle on about promoting creativity and protecting the future from us Stone Agers. But behind this glitzy cyber-rhetoric is liberalism's moldy old belief in getting something for nothing.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=804

 

Whats with your anti-piracy drive? Cool it a bit... Napster is not here for "mass circumvention of intellectual property rights".. Its there to allow people to share, to communicate. If people misuse it, then how is Napster responsible?

Next, you'll come down against BitTorrent Tech. It is the most useful Tech the world has ever invented! It gives you complete freedom, to choose, to distribute information with very little infrastructure.

The Governments should stay out of all this. Regulating the internet means destroying Liberty! People demand Net Neutrality.

 

Michelle Malkin is a useless moron. There are like, 3 neocons in this forum who might worship anything she has to say.

And the OP probably belongs in the other IP thread, the one where Supper has avoided answering my direct question about the longevity of so-called IP rights.

 

Because he's right, Gauharjk. I'm also "anti-piracy," as well. I don't like assholes stealing people's work. Just because outside of a few have the character, apparently, to say it, to speak out against the hypocrisy in flagrant denial of the U.S. Constitution while proclaiming one is a "patriot" in support of that same Constitution, it doesn't make the idea go away. Here, as it must be hard for to read for many in our community:

Kinda like the glaring hypocrisy I see in so many other instances.

<<Sigh>>. Call me an old fart, at 48, I guess. I don't like what I'm seeing. Do nothing, ripoff other's work, and profit from the ripoff. Great.

 

It is not really about piracy. The issue is supression of Technology that has set men free. Yes, the govenrment should ensure authors get paid for their work, and are not robbed off. But if it comes to supressing technology and innovation, then it should not be supported.

P.S. I read your sig.

migration barriers diminish the productivity of human labor. - Ludwig Von Mises

We must secure our borders now. - Ron Paul Ron Paul supports legal migration of workers, semi-skilled and skilled people. I am sure Ludwig Von Mises also thought along those lines. Coz if you allow illegal immigrants into your country to take up your people's jobs, then it is akin to piracy.

Maybe... call it "Piracy of Jobs".

 

Technology: Sure. But the issue cannot be divorced from the obvious piracy involved in much of it. As you said, "what's with the anti-Piracy drive?" To which I would have to reply, "I don't dig pirating another's work." Some on this very thread do.

Sig: Actually, from my read of it, Mises just thought the whole notion of immigration barriers was off. Piqued by this, and by the desire for a theoretical discussion of "free-actors" in a laissez-faire system, I tried it on another thread, but curiously voices usually most pronounced on the matter stayed strangely silent, as the voices most strongly preaching fidelity to the text of the U.S. Constitution have remained silent, or, worse, when it comes to that Constitution's opposition to IP piracy. To quote from Mises.org:

http://mises.org/story/2639#immigration

 

Actually, most people do not agree in post 9/11 America with an open borders policy. Paul's position is not anti-immigration, it is pro-security and national defense, legitimate tasks for the federal government.

If you've listened to Paul speak on immigration, he's said many times that the welfare state is untenable, and if not for the economic stress already in the system, America would need and welcome migrant workers on a mass scale.

Of course, there is the issue of people who come illegally, and breaking the law should never be rewarded.

 

One cannot argue that the laissez-faire environment cures all, that government intervention can only screw things up, and at the same time argue that the federal government should restrict two economic actors - migrant worker and employer - from getting together, unimpededly so.

I would say this is why many people say that RP folks can be robotic - some of them are seemingly so enamored of the man that they refuse to countenance some of the logical disconnects involved in their publically promulgated stand, and RP's actual platform.

Quick search yields this:

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/davidpostman/2008/01/atlas_shuddered_a_libertarians_critique_of_ron_paul.html

Now, before leaping to the fact this came from the "nefarious Objectivist" camp, do what one here has stated elsewhere: read for content, not for where it comes from. I agree that this is a logical disconnect for RP as well.

Anyway, to this thread's topic, as with the intellectual piracy thread, I expect few will deal with the hypocrisy of proclaiming fidelity to the U.S. Constitution from one side of the mouth while trashing it out of the other side of one's mouth; will only move on to another thread to continue the circus. Congrats.

 

uhhhh, isn't Napster a paid service?

 

Yep, now. Supper mentioned "oldie, but goodie," and I think we're talking about the concepts embedded in the idea of IP piracy - as discussed as well on another thread.

 

The agenda falls apart for some people when you start talking about actually paying for music. Who would have known paying for music was the Achilles heel of free market rhetoric?

 

I know, crazy notion - paying someone for something of worth.

Sorry to bring in a personal example, but I was reminded of something from a few years back. In semi-rural America, I once taught Aikido and Japanese Swordsmanship, first time it had been seen in that neck of the woods. Couldn't have asked for a better bunch of people committed to learning something new, and I miss them all very much.

One (new) student, who worked at the local food-coop (an egregiously overpriced "organic" market, in the U.P. of Michigan), balked when he found there was actually a fee to train - that this Instructor wasn't just doing this as a "spiritual thing," but that, in part, the Dojo and its instruction represented part of his livelihood. I explained that, yes there was a fee. He first tried to justify it to himself by quietly saying, literally, "yeah, I guess you have to pay for stuff like rent." The notion that my work didn't merit paying for - that somehow he was entitled to train, gratis, and that the notion of an exchange for worth received, was not in his logical universe, was obvious. He left.

Now, only one person. But this mindset is on display in spades on this forum, from what I have seen the last few days. It doesn't speak well for tomorrow, in my opinion.

 

Because it's stealing. I thought we'd get some sane answers here since this is a webmaster forum and we deal with intellectual property. According to guerilla, it's not only moral to steal someones webpage and profit from it, but it's someones market duty to steal your website, out rank you on google(for the content you created) , and make money on it.

Oh, so you're okay with ad homs as long as you are the one doing it eh? What happened to the philosophy of the message and not the person? What happened about all that talk of you willing to take parenting advice from a child molester?

Hypocrit! BOW WOW.

Yeah, paying someone for their work is such a foreign concept to capitalism. Paying for things is like communism lol.

 

You are aligning yourself with Keith "Graucho" Olbermann, a good L.A. sportscaster who has risen to his level of incompetence?

I was amazed at how hard I had to work to get my teenage daughter to understand that we don't steal or "borrow" MP3s. She is very black and white on every moral issue up until this one and then it seemed foreign to her that we would take a stand that was foreign to what her peers thought was just "borrowing". Michelle was pretty clear thinking on this topic.

 

I don't get it. I'm no big Olbermann fan if that's what you're asking.

I've got a fundamental problem with Michelle's obsessive neoconservatism, and playing to the right vs. left "libtard" sentiment.

I'm not arguing for anyone to break the law. I argue that the law is not fair (in my mind). Michelle's defense of the law is only skin deep. I think that taxes are theft, taken under threat of imprisonment. That said, I pay my taxes.

Does watching NFL highlights or television programs on YouTube also compromise IP? And if so, shouldn't we be staying away from that content?

 

No reply for me. Thought so.

 

Precise example of what is consistently missed (and usually under the same breath as the use of buzzwords "coercion"): the original producers under such examples as the above have willingly entered into terms under which their "product" may be disseminated. This is why it's "cool" to watch an Metropolitan Opera production telecast live on T.V., but it isn't "cool" to sit in the nosebleed back row, with a great digital cam system, film and disseminate the opera at a buck a DVD. What is more coercive to a person's intention than to just rip his or her work off, mass copy it and hand it around or sell it at will, without his or her consent?

Why is this so difficult to understand?

 

Get used to it, Supper. He's having a bit of difficulty with that whole "Constitution today, Constitution tomorrow, Constitution forever" (unless it sucks that I can't take another's creation and profit off it at will. then, toss the Constitution out)" thing.

 

I look at it as defrauding a legit business.