Re: Copywrong

[tim@toad.com (Tim Maroney)]

Quoted-From: Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu>
>First of all, these bootleg recordings that have appeared were not
>"private".  They were sent out by Kate to record companies in the
>hopes of obtaining a record contract.  Presumably, if the record
>company wants to, it could play them for anyone it likes.  This, I
>suppose, is a bit different from a public distribution, but I'd hardly
>compare it to publishing someone's diary, or what have you.

The distribution goes against her explicitly stated wishes for the
work.  That in itself is enough to blow away this cretinous idea that
it is in line with the intent of the work that it be publically
distributed.  What's next -- are you going to claim that the various
query letters, articles, and stories I send to magazines for the
purpose of evaluation for publication are freely distributable?

The diary metaphor is not mine and I resent your attempts to pretend
otherwise.  Nonetheless, the difference is only one of magnitude,
not of quality.  We are still discussing invasion of privacy whether
the materials were originally distributed to a small select group
or were nenver meant to be distributed at all.

>Furthermore, you seem to have forgotten that it was I who originally
>pointed out that the moral quandry was not over a few dollars but over
>whether Kate would be hurt by distributing the material.

What is your point here?  In the message of ours to which I responded,
you claimed that taking a few dollars by illegally copying a publically
accessible tape was very definitely stealing from Bush, while bootlegging
materials she wanted kept private was not.  Now you are turning around
and claiming the opposite.

>Your claim about "reasonable systems of ethics" is pretty lame.  I
>guess you've never heard of Utilitarianism.  John Stuart Mills may not
>have been right abut everything, but he was a smarter cookie than you
>or me.  I think most philosophers would agree that Utilitarianism is
>at least "reasonable".

I expected IED to blast this specious argument, but he merely blasted
you and made vague gestures towards unspecified qualifiers in Mill's
work.  So once again it falls to me.  Mill *never* put short-term
considerations above long-terms considerations the way you claim he
did; quite the opposite.  Utilitarianism discusses the *total* effect
on human happiness.  Does it increase human happiness in the long term
to set an example of disrespecting a creator's right to control her
work?  Obviously not.  This can only lead to reduced motive to create
and to a widening of the unhappiness-causing gap between creator and
appreciator, and to general disrespect for the whole idea of rights.

It is no wonder to me that so many celebrities express contempt for
their fans and take great pains to remain apart from them.  The fact is
that fans have contempt for the creators as human beings.  It was a
grim but telling coincidence that put Marvick's criminal bootlegging in
the same week that a popular actress was gunned down by a "fan" in
California.  While clearly different in magnitude, the acts are
identical in quality.  A fanatical admirer acted in a way that treated
the creator as less than human, that is, as devoid of any human
interests which demand ethical respect.  Your idea, that having contempt
for the personal interests of someone one "admires" is in line with the
long-term happiness of the human race, is little short of idiotic.

You might want to devote a little time to pondering Mill's aphorism that
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied;
better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied".  Your views
are more similar to Bentham's Quantitative Hedonism, which Mill rejected;
but I feel that even Bentham would have rejected such a pathetically
oversimplified way of summing up the totality of pleasure in the world.
He was, after all, a devout defender of the notion of rights, despite
feeling that their basis was in fictions necessary to the overall
preservation of humanity.  Mill likewise defended the notion of rights,
on not dissimilar grounds, and in ON LIBERTY he made very explicit his
insistence that an individual's liberties must not infringe on other's
rights.  Respect of these rights is held as necessary to the welfare
of humanity.

If there is any serious philosopher who defended your amoral view of
Utilitarian ethics, I am not aware of him.  But it certainly was not
Mill who claimed that the happiness of a majority could take precedence
over the rights of a minority.  Perhaps you are confusing "Mills" with
Adolph Hitler.

>In fact, something of the sort that IED was considering has already
>been done legally.  There's a biography of Kate Bush that contains
>poetry that appeared in a school publication when Kate was in
>elementary school.  I'm sure Kate was none too pleased to see her
>youthful mistakes exposed for the whole world to see.  However, it was
>completely legal.  Was it morally wrong for the biography author to
>reprint these poems?

Why are you so sure?  I would certainly rather that someone publish the
rather foolish things I wrote in elementary school than the somewhat
less foolish things I wrote in high school.  The reason being that the
former reflects less on my adult self than the latter; it is as if we
were discussing a different person altogether.  In any case, I feel
that the publication was ethically unjustified if the biographer did
not seek and receive permission, the legal issues aside.  Respecting
the privacy of others is a profoundly Utilitarian ideal.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

"Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth: Now hear
  another: he has written all the old falshoods.
 And now hear the reason.  He conversed with Angels who are all religious, &
  conversed not with Devils who all hate religion..."
    - Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"