Computer Ethics, Spr 2016
Class 3
Week 3 Readings
By now you should have finished reading chapter 1 and the first three
sections of chapter 4.
Start reading Baase Chapter 2, on privacy.
Paper 1
As of next week (Feb 11), I will start assigning debate
topics and dates.
Over last weekend, Hacker News
featured a 2013
article about Aaron Swartz. In it he is quoted as saying
Stealing is wrong. But downloading isn’t
stealing. If I shoplift an album from my local record store, no one else
can buy it. But when I download a song, no one loses it and another person
gets it. There’s no ethical problem. The evidence that downloading hurts
sales is weak, but even if downloading did hurt sales, that doesn’t make
it unethical. Libraries, video rental places, and used book stores (none
of which pay the artist) hurt sales too. Is it unethical to use them?
Do you agree with the argument in the penultimate sentence, that libraries,
video stores and used-book stores all hurt sales also?
From http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2015/07/judge-hellerstein-denies-malibu-media.html:
From Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein's opinion (Southern District of New York in
Manhattan, in Malibu Media v. Doe):
[t]he fact that a copyrighted work was
illegally downloaded from a
certain IP address does not necessarily mean that the owner of that
IP address was the infringer. Indeed, the true infringer could just as
easily be a third party who had access to the internet connection,
such as a son or daughter, houseguest, neighbor, or customer of a
business offering internet connection.
He also cites another case:
“[T]he assumption that the person who pays for
Internet access at a given location is the same individual who allegedly
downloaded a single
sexually explicit film is tenuous, and one that has grown more so over
time.”
But perhaps most surprising is this part:
Malibu conspicuously fails to present any
evidence that John Doe either
uploaded, downloaded, or even possessed a complete copyrighted video
file.... Another
district court has noted that [i]ndividual BitTorrent file pieces are
worthless ... If it is the case
that a Doe Defendant logged onto the BitTorrent swarm,
downloaded and then uploaded a single piece to the IPP server, and
then logged off, all he has done is transmit an unusable fragment of
the copyrighted work. ... [T]he Court notes that Malibu's case is
weak if all it can prove is that the Doe Defendants transmitted only
part of all the BitT orrent pieces of the copyrighted work.
That would mean content owners have a significant burden, in terms of
evidence, before they can sue file-sharers!
Also see matthewsag.com. Dr Sag is on
the Law School faculty at Loyola. In particular:
Start
with RIAA defenses
RIAA-2
Server-based file-sharing
Fair Use; Sony
Criminal Infringement
Napster
Sampling
... (skip)
Laws
Cases
DMCA
Viacom v YouTube