Journal mcgrew's Journal: Fair use was squished (3/3/2002) 1
Reuters and the rest of the mainstream news media would like for you to believe that they are impartial and unbiased.
They're not. Nobody is. Not even me. (but you knew that, right?)
Reuters posted a "news" story (at least I don't call my opinion pieces "news" for God's sake, it's nooze, dammit!) quoting a movie industry flak as saying "Our content must be protected from unencrypted, illegal file sharing... We're in the process of raising a generation to think that stealing is okay." No where in the story was there any semblance of balance. No where in the story was there the tiniest hint that maybe this guy's opinion was the utter bullshit it is. Nowhere was the existence of an opposing opinion mentioned at all!
I don't believe the industry believes its own lies. The RIAA certainly must be aware of the organized boycott against its wares, but it deliberately avoids mention of said boycott when it says patently stupid things like "the current downturn in record buying is Napster's fault". Of course, sales soared during Napster and plummeted with Napster's demise and the onslaught of the boycott against mainstream CDs (Keep buying those Pietasters CDs), but reading Reuters or the RIAA's own (unlinked here) site you would think we were still in a good economy and that there was no boycott.
Millions of people will see the Reuters article with its disingenuous opinion presented as fact. Only dozens will see this piece. Ok, maybe thousands if you count people who will see it after it's archived, but that's still a tiny drop compared to Reuters' ocean.
The fact is that a generation is being raised to incorrectly believe that sound waves can be owned, that bits can be controlled, that capturing numbers that flow through your own computer in your own home is somehow "stealing".
The law in my state says if unordered merchandise is put in your mailbox, it's yours. As long as the supplier can produce no signed order form, you are not stealing- he is giving you a gift.
"But," the flak would likely retort, "the person who sent you those bits, those numbers, those sound waves, did not own those bits."
Why not? They bought many of them at Sam Goodie's or WalMart. Others were given to them. Nearly every single song or movie on Bearshare or Kazaa was bought and paid for by the first person to open its folder to the world.
Furthermore, the pieces that were not opened to the public by someone who bought a copy were put there by the original artist. Only the established (many talentless but still filthy rich) musicians don't want their tunes traded- because If I've never heard the song, there is absolutely NO way to sell me the CD. And for all but the elite few let past the RIAA gatekeepers, nobody gets on the radio.
No, stealing is stealing. If I steal your car, you have no car. If I steal your CD, you no longer have that CD. You may be able to play the CD's music, even at CD quality if you ripped it to wav, but you can't play the CD, or enjoy its cover art or liner notes. It's GONE, unlike swapped, "stolen" music.
It pretty much pisses me off when a thief and con artist like ANYBODY in the music or movie industries rails against the "theft" of something that was never stolen in the first place!
In the end, by calling file sharing "thift" these amoral people who would guard our nation's moral fabric are confusing young people about what is and what isn't theft, so in fact are themselves helping raise a generation of thieves who won't stop at taking the bits, but the plastic the bits are stored on as well.
Theft deprives someone of property. We should expect our news organizations to understand the meaning of a five letter single syllable word, but nobody ever accused any journalost of having an excess of neurons. 3/3/2002
A Hearty Applaud (Score:1)
Nice essay. I hate how the media turns a blind eyte to the other side of content sharing, and protrays it just like the movie and recording companys would like them to. The media is suppose to be protecting americans by exposing afults, not covering them up.