Archive of home recordings accidentally released to Napster

Joshuah Bearman alerted me to David Dixon's amazing audio archive website, which has links to audio files that people recorded at home and unwittingly sent to Napster.

This was right around the time that Napster was just beginning to penetrate into the average computer user's lives. At the same time, an audio utility program called MusicMatch Jukebox was also being widely used, since it was often pre-installed on off-the-shelf PC's. MMJ allowed you, among other things, to make recordings using the cheap microphone included with the PC, and save the file in mp3 format. If you didn't give the audio file a name, it assigned a default name "mic in track" followed by a number. Now if you were also running Napster, and you were careless enough to be sharing everything on your computer (which *many* were), then anyone also running Napster could just do a search for "mic in track" and find and download these personal recordings, usually without your knowledge.
I am that guy. I've amassed many, many hours of these recordings, which provide endless voyeuristic entertainment. Typical recordings were of people singing, rapping, or playing along with the radio (often badly), kids practicing their school book reports, audio love letters, kids being silly, and so forth. One of my finds was a 14-minute-long recording of a guy praying very fervently and emotionally, even lapsing into glossolalia. I've posted many of my favorites on my webpage, for free.

Audio Voyeurism

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

i don’t think anyone is concerned about the copyright infringement. many of the recordings are fine but many are obviously private in nature. the content makes this quite clear.

it is like if i let you copy my CD collection and at the bottom of my CD boxes you find Cd recordings of intimate phone convo’s with my lover. because of the content of the recordings it’s quite clear you have it by mistake. would it be right of you to copy them because I had permitted you? what about broadcasting them on your website; would that be ok?

sure, it’s a breach of artists’ copyrights by letting you copy my music but i’m not infringing on their privacy.
t.a. adjuster

@acipolone: Read about model releases. It’s not a cut-and-dried thing to say that you always have to “get permission from every single person in the picture before posting it publicly”. Specific uses of a photograph may dictate the need for certain kinds of liability waivers.

@Peter: Good break from the “fake analogies” w/ the bit about the “box of stuff” with the “free to take” sign being an analog to making a copy of a stream of bits. Scarcity hasn’t got anything on you!

(Maybe I do have the energy to argue about this today, after all…)

I don’t see why we even need analogies about this– it’s all really simple. People made recordings on their home computers, and they hold copyright to these recordings. Someone (the copyright holder, or someone else) made these available for others to download (purposefully or not). Making a work available for download doesn’t waive any of the copyright holder’s rights (whether we, as “copyfighters”, like that or not). Downloading or otherwise reproducing these recordings infringes on the copyright holder’s rights. There are some infringements that would be considered fair use, but I doubt that making recordings that feature this material as samples would be considered fair use.

We “copyfighters” can dislike how copyright law works right now, but we should be working to change the law, rather than breaking the law or just bitching about it. If you don’t think that copying bits amounts to the same thing as stealing a physical object, work to get the law changed. It pisses me off when someone conflates theft of a physical object with copying bits, but breaking the law as a form of “civil disobedience” isn’t going to get the law changed.

Starting businesses with “copy friendly” business models (and using tools like Creative Commons licenses for your work) is a good way to change the idea, in the minds of the public, that all “sharing” is “theft”. I’d love to see change to copyright law come in the form of an outraged public that becomes used to the freedoms granted by more liberal licenses. Perhaps the brainwashing that has come from the “copyright cartels” will eventually wear off.

I’m not optimistic, though. Getting copyright law in line with the “infringing” behaviors that technology enables is going to be such an immense pain in the ass. There are so many entrenched interests who would like things to stay the way they are. It might be easier to just lock everybody up. (Just wait ’til the molecular fabrication machines get here… *sigh*)

One other fun note: If I recall correctly, there were recordings featured on the site that Mark linked that included people performing their own versions of copyrighted works. That adds a fun additional wrinkle to this whole thing. I think that “Stark Effect” used some of these “homemade covers” in their tracks, adding even more wrinkles.
owza

David Dixon didn’t take anything, any recordings were effectively given to him…
starkeffect

So if a file is available through someone’s publicly shared directory, should I email them first to ask if it’s okay to download it?

What if I don’t have that person’s email, which is normally the case for p2p networks. Are then all their files off-limits? Am I not allowed to listen to what they’re making publicly available? Am I not allowed to share it likewise?
starkeffect

By the way, I’ve been doing this project for several years, and this is the FIRST time I’ve been challenged about its basis. I welcome the conversation.
Palilay

#39 Asks everyone to cool it with the fake analogies, then uses one in his next paragraph : Priceless.

#40 – the analogy to kids getting beaten up was a referrence to the callous abuse of the privacy of minors on the recordings – the track on stark’s website, “14″. You listen to that. You listen to that, and then tell me, with a straight face that a recording of this nature is not “Private” (death threats and all).

http://stark-effect.com/MIT/mic%20in%20track%20-%2014.mp3

It’s certainly not something stark should be sharing with the world for his own fame and profit (Click to donate!)..

That’s all I really have to say about this anymore, Stark obviously doesn’t care to answer any of his critics, so no point going on about it.
ed_g

‘Am I not allowed to listen to what they’re making publicly available? Am I not allowed to share it likewise?’

Legally, I sincerely doubt it. Morally, I’d say no, because they aren’t *intentionally* making it available. If you walk past a house with an open window is it OK to reach around inside and see what you can purloin?

Listening is one thing. There’s a huge leap between doing this on your own and sharing and publicising the audio without the unwitting originators’ consent. I refer you to my webcam analogy.

Also, many, if not most p2p clients have IM functions, and whenever I’ve seen people with their hard drives wide open I’ve told them about it. It’s like telling someone they’ve dropped their wallet, that their flies are undone or that they’ve got toothpaste all round their mouth. Basic human decency.
starkeffect

Suppose I asked the guilty parties involved in making 14 permission to publicize their audio. Do you think that they would have granted it?
Peter

42, 43:
Yes, I realized I was making another analogy. I just think it’s one _more_ apt (hence the words ‘more like’) than ones in which somebody is doing something where, say, someone left their window open means its an invitation to take anything you want in the room. This is a situation where they put their files, accidentally or not, in a ‘place’ that is DESIGNED TO BE SHARED, in which there’s a presumption of shariness. That’s not a subtle difference. An open window is a not a presumption of sharing everything beyond it. That’s why it’s a fake analogy. I wasn’t railing against _all_ analogies (it’s one of the ways we naturally assess whether a difficult subject is right or wrong, after all), mostly the ones where the key point is ignored.

The scarcity or not is not really the issue in the ‘invasion’ phase (and neither is it one in most of the analogies I was annoyed by), as it is in normal copyright infringement, so I left it out of my own analogy and just boiling it down to a person putting something in a situation of sharing that they might not want. Scarcity is an issue in the reproduction/distribution, certainly, so perhaps I should have made another one to handle those cases.

But I’ll not bother because it’d inevitably be picked apart more harshly just because I was the one who tried to point out the problems in earlier ones.
starkeffect

I really have no defense, other than that I think it is a good thing for people to be seen defenseless, to remind us all how defenseless we all are. I sincerely empathize with the creators of these mic in tracks, though I show it in an admittedly unusual way.

And besides, some of that stuff is really funny.
starkeffect

I did post a recording of an assault/criminal act. It’s called 14. I agonized about posting it for weeks, but felt it would be a public service for people to know that this is how some kids behave.
swezoid

Ed G is right. This is morally wrong.

Naivete IS a defence. Some people have unintentionally put themselves in a position where their privacy is vulnerable. As a fellow human you either help them by informing them of that vulnerability so that they can fix it. Or you exploit it and them. You made the wrong choice there and you need to fix it.
legionseagle

Both Boingboing and the creators of this archive seem to have difficulty with the concept of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, specifically Article 12:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

The formulators of the Universal Declaration didn’t include an “except when it’s just for the lulz” exception, so I don’t see why it’s legitimate for you to imply one.
Palilay

I’m fairly sure that in an Australian jurisdiction, making this material available without express written consent of those who recorded it would probably be in breach of the Federal Privacy Act. Good luck finding out who’s liable though.

And as for the “they were naive” defence – well then, perhaps if someone I knew found an open port on your computer system, it’d be just fine for them to post on bittorrent some of your private banking records he just happened to find lying around – after all you were naive.

yeah?
Joe in Australia

So if a file is available through someone’s publicly shared directory, should I email them first to ask if it’s okay to download it?

Let’s get the legal side of things out of the way first. I’m not a lawyer nor an expert on copyright law (which in any event differs between countries) but I think most jurisdictions would say that when you downloaded those files you were making a copy of a work subject to copyright.

Your defense seems to be that they had implicitly granted you permission by running that software. I think most courts would reject that defense: firstly, they’ve seen it used before by “hackers” accessing back doors (copyright law was once the principal way of punishing hackers); and secondly the circumstances make it clear that these files were not meant to be distributed. You yourself ask “Suppose I asked the guilty parties involved in making 14 permission to publicize their audio. Do you think that they would have granted it?” No, and that’s the point.

As I said earlier, I don’t think you’re likely to be prosecuted. It’s hard to see any financial harm that would lead to damages, even assuming that someone could prove your guilt. So I’m going to look at the moral side of things.

Let’s suppose that you discovered that the Windows 7 beta had a bug that let you download files from random computers. Would you be justified in doing so? I would say no. It’s an unjustified invasion of privacy. The only difference between the hypothetical case of the Windows 7 beta and the actual case at hand is that it’s a “feature” of the Napster software, not a bug. It’s not much of a difference: in neither case do the victims realise the consequences of their actions. In neither case did they intend to give you access to their files. You’re reveling in the way you have exposed their private lives to scrutiny. I find that distasteful.
Joe in Australia

Presumably, this archive contains some files which were intentionally shared. How is Starkeffect supposed to tell the difference between those and the ones which were accidentally shared?

He went looking for files which were unintentionally shared, and his website celebrates the fact that the files are “voyeuristic entertainment”. I guess he could have accidentally come across something meant to be shared, but would that possibility change the moral nature of his choice? I don’t think so.
starkeffect

It’s a public good that “14″ IS publicly available. A professor of nursing recently thanked me, privately, for making that track available, so she could inform her students about the kinds of girls who would likely be under their care, and the circumstances under which they became pregnant.
Sethum

I agree that telling someone their hard-drive is completely accessible is common decency, like informing them their fly is down. I also agree that using and taking advantage of unintentional sharing, even when it’s electronic sharing, is morally wrong to some degree.

However, as a practical matter, I don’t think anyone’s privacy is actually hurt here, since there doesn’t seem to be any way to identify the original owner. The situation is similar to how medical records can be shared without the subject’s consent so long as all the personally-identifying data is removed.

To me, this is no worse than a stand-up comedian telling jokes about strange things he’s seen other people do. Or wearing a hand-made sweater that you found at the salvation army. Or reading/sharing the (unattributed) love letter you found gather dust on the public printer.

I mean, there’s nothing wrong with http://www.overheardinnewyork.com is there?
J France

As someone who did put almost all his audio up for grabs on Napster, I couldn’t care less if someone grabbed my “privately made” audio.

How does one differentiate between someone like me who was happy to share the inanity and someone who didn’t want to?
Palilay

@sethum the difference is simple :

Overheard in New York is text. Unattributed, can never be identified without contextual information. Sure, a linguist might have a crack at it, but it is worse than a needle in a haystack.

The other example is quite different. First of all a lot of those recordings contain names. Secondly it’s audio – it is still somewhat like a needle in a haystack, may require a lot of resources, but its completely plausible that some of those voices will be identified in time – particularly now that more ears than ever will hear them. Humans have a natural capacity for identifying people via their voice timbre, particularly when their are people in some of the recordings naming names. Just because the “discoverer” can’t identify them, doesn’t mean a listener cannot.

And finally, I find it extremely distatesful that you try to defend the recording of the pregnant mother being verbally abused by saying a nursing professor privately thanked you. Why? Well, did you ever ask the pregnant mother whether she wanted to be made an example of?

Oh.. and “Dictionaraoke” is unintelligent, uncreative, unlistenable garbage. Just sayin……
starkeffect

Sounds like someone’s jealous! Just sayin…
Sethum

Peter’s analogy is much more apt, so I’ll stop making bad ones. A family photo album in a free rummage bin would be a stronger invasion of privacy, considering that photos are significantly easier to identify than a person’s voice. I really doubt that voices are so distinct that it’s owner could ever be identified unless the recording contained several pieces of personal information.

I mean, even the person who made the recording would have a hard identifying their own work if they forgot the words/content that they recorded because most people are unfamiliar with how their voice sounds on a recording.

Copyright is a whole different ball game. Yes, there is the irony of protecting the intellectual property of people who were probably illegally sharing hundreds or thousands of professional music. But moreover, some of these “private” recordings may have been shared without naivety, or placed in a shared folder that was understood to be freely accessible. Perhaps the creators left them in a public folder for convenience sake, merely expecting that no one would bother copying it because of its mundane nature. Very likely, at least some of “mic on track” files were placed in the shared folder with the intention of allowing someone in particular to download them. Now that their work is part of a collection they may rethink how they protected it, but it’s going to be up to the original artist to enforce the law.

I still think publicizing these files is morally shady. But just picture how happy all the BoingBoingers will be in the 2179 when they rediscover these tracks as little voyeuristic snapshots into the early 21st century, when privacy and copyright issues are completely moot.

* Note: I have not listened to most of the recordings, so I’m not making an actual value judgment, just a theoretical one…
Hugh “Nomad” Hancock

Is there potential emotional damage here? Yes. These recordings are trivially easily identifiable – they contain the person being recorded’s *voice*. And presumably content like names and so on, in the case of love letters, prayers, and so on. Sure, you can’t identify them, but you seriously believe there’s a zero chance of someone who can do happening across the site? Get real.

Not a cool site to host, not a cool site to link to. Invasion of privacy = bad.
Palilay

Stark not jealous at all, I’m an audio professional, and if I did what you did, I’d lose my job, and in my and most countries, probably end up in court too.

a) Broadcasting audio of minors without their parent’s (or anybody’s) consent. This is a serious no-no. If you found pictures of kiddies being beaten up or worse on bittorrent, would you share those too as “found objects”?

b) Taking said recordings to make a CD album, attributed to you. I’m all for Creative Commons, but no such license was issued in this case. No license was issued at all. CC does not mean “everything’s fair game”. It means creators can opt-in to protect their own IP and let others use their work as they wish it to be used.

Y cn cll m jls ll y wnt Strk, bt f wr y ‘d tlk t lwyr rght nw jst t b prprd whn smbdy ds ctlly s yr ss.
ed_g

@19 What’s the content? I’m not downloading it!

If you think whoever you’ve effectively illegally wiretapped for the purposes of entertainment wouldn’t have given their permission then you’re really feeding my fire, not yours.

You aren’t addressing any of my arguments either. How is this different from my webcam example?

@21. LEGIONSEAGLE – Box 5, ‘agree strongly’. BB, rightly, gets up in arms over infringements of privacy perpetrated by authorities and corporations. This is much, much more intrusive because the collected data is being so widely distributed. It looks like an unattractive double standard to me. Lulz indeed.

@25. SETHUM

‘Or wearing a hand-made sweater that you found at the salvation army.’

Voluntarily donated.

‘Or reading/sharing the (unattributed) love letter you found gather dust on the public printer.’

If you put it up in front of a potential audience of billions, I’d say that’s pretty unfair. And there’s the most enormous gulf between consuming material alone and disseminating it.
CVR

Has nobody mentioned the This American Life episode on this very phenominon (or did I overlook it?). I don’t really have a strong opinion on this, but I did enjoy Ira Glass’s show on found audio:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=14
starkeffect

Well, the content’s been available for several years, and there has only been one complaint so far, which I responded to appropriately.

Let’s not get too self-righteous here, shall we?
ed_g

@ 53, 58, spot on. I smell flimsy retroactive justification.

@ 59 The mods here ‘disemvowel’ comments which they perceive as unhelpful or abusive. Although it’s kind of strange that the comments at the end of 26 escaped, but the potentially useful advice in 29 got the slice’n'dice.
remmelt

@13 If someone’s pockets are hanging open does that entitle you to rifle about for their wallet?

If someone’s blog’s comments section is open, does that entitle you to make silly analogies?
SamSam

To put his in perspective, what this guy has done is actually exactly the same as what anybody who used Napster or a similar P2P sharing program has done, which I’m betting is > 80% of the commentators here.

He performed a search for a file name, and any computer that was sharing files gave him a way to download them.

When you last did a search for some Britney Spears album, found it, and downloaded it, did you write to the other computer and ask if they were really intending to share it? Might they not have forgotten that their p2p program was running? Did they accidentally include their entire iTunes library? Did you ever check?

Granted, this is a shade grayer, because we can make a slightly greater assumption that the person on the other end probably did not intend to share it, but were just trying to parse shades of intent here. The actual deed is no different that what anyone who has used p2p has done.
arkizzle

In before “this is theft” and “I thought BoingBoing was an advocate of privacy”..
Anonymous

http://www.foundphotos.net/

Same for p2p found photos
LeSinge

Arkizzle, in with what? ;)

I think this is awesome.
Anonymous

A slightly more prurient example goes through my head…

If you were walking down the street, and looked up to see that the neighbors had inadvertently left the blinds open while they were having sex — it would be morally questionable, but not illegal, for you to watch and get your voyeuristic jollies.

If you walked into their yard to watch from behind the hedges, you’re now a trespasser and a peeping tom (which falls under stalking laws in some jurisdictions) — and you’re pushing the limits of “but I was just watching — they left the blinds open!”

If you hook up your video camera to record the goings-on — you’re now into privacy issues, etc.

If you then post that video to the internet (EVEN IF YOU CAN’T IDENTIFY THEM) — you’re now into seriously illegal activity.

You cannot assume, just because you can see in, that they left the blinds open intentionally. You have to assume that this is a mistake and that it would be pretty morally bankrupt to videotape it and post it to YouTube.

Want another one? Say you find a handbag in a grocery cart in the parking lot. But she left it there! you claim. Is it now somehow okay to take her money (we’re running on the assumption that the owner of the handbag is indeed a woman…apologies if that’s not the case) use her credit cards, and scan all of her personal information and post it to the web?

No, it’s not. Just because you found it cannot be construed to implied permission. It’s a pretty safe assumption that it’s NOT implied permission, especially if you know damned well that you could never GET permission.

Even if it weren’t possibly illegal for you to post this stuff (and I’m guessing you’ll get sued eventually) — it’s pretty morally bankrupt.
ed_g

@ 31

Although you stated earlier that you ‘welcome the conversation’ you’re not ‘responding appropriately’ here.
There are plenty of complaints above which you haven’t responded to at all, including mine. Your refusal to engage with people who don’t think this is cool is making you look a trifle arrogant.

I thought you might take #30 that way. I don’t want to listen in because I’ve made my position clear and going back on that would be hypocritical. Additionally, this is a pretty simple issue and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time, especially my own, getting into arguments because I’m against this in principle but have in practice listened to some of the material.

@32

I think it’s a perfectly valid analogy. If you perceive a flaw in someone’s security, physical or otherwise, are you compelled to exploit it?
arkizzle

I haven’t the time to go trawling just now, but hopefully there’s great mashup potential!
Shannon

The beauty here is that this is actually one of the few “legal” uses of Napster! Of all the files on these people’s computers that they were “sharing”, these are quite likely the only files that they actually had the right to do so with.

To say nothing of how amusing it is that people on the whole couldn’t care less about violating the implicit requests/rights of a content producer by sharing content that they very clearly do not want shared, but then get up in arms when user generated content — where no content rights have been violated — gets “accidentally” shared by the owner. Accidentally shared while committing the act of “sharing” content for which they have no right to share. Seriously, it’s beautiful.
sally599

#37 Agree, its very much like Found magazine—nobody meant to lose a grocery list or love/hate letter and yet its published all the same.
swezoid

So now that you’ve slept then maybe you can consider some of the excellent arguments against your website above? Since you welcome the conversation (#17).

The only defence you’ve tried to give was, as far as I can tell, that accessing and later publishing something X that someone unintentionally made accessible is morally allowed _since_it_has_come_to_some_good_use_. That fails because not every action that leads to some good end is morally allowed. In this case, that good end was achieved by means of you intentionally exploiting the privacy and vulnerability of innocent others. Respecting those values in others trumphs the good ends gained.
Anonymous

Here’s a conversation between a Mic-In-Track creator and a Mic-In-Track listener:

http://web.archive.org/web/20011118115803/members.boardhost.com/The_ECC/msg/310.html

TxAxSxE : what the hell
person296 : hello
TxAxSxE : are you doing
person296 : downloading music. what seems to be the problem?
TxAxSxE : why are you getting this
person296 : it’s that a beasie boys song? (playing dumb)
TxAxSxE : its not music
person296 : what is it?
TxAxSxE : what
person296 : i thought i was dling a beastie boys song. your saying it’s not. it came up in tha napster search for Beastie boys
TxAxSxE : its not
person296 : what was it?
TxAxSxE : why are getting the other one (damn he saw through my open window)
person296 : i’m addicted to Mic In Track files…sorry
TxAxSxE : why
TxAxSxE : ok
person296 : because i never know what i’m going to find.
TxAxSxE : ok
person296 : why are you sharing them?
TxAxSxE : just
person296 : because you don’t know any better? (I wish he had seen that last comment but i was already on his Ignored User list)
Palilay

@shannon – I take your point about the irony here, but to say that no content rights have been violated is an absolute fallacy, because by legal definition, the original creators automatically retain the Copyright (or at the very least the moral right to determine the appropriate Copyright) to those recordings. More relevant given that @starkeffect is now using said recordings in his own project, with no attribution, no license, nothing. As I mentioned before, it not only is morally wrong from a privacy standpoint, and from a protection of minors’ privacy standpoint, but it opens him up to litigation. Not so beautiful from where I’m standing.
t.a. adjuster

I ran into these recordings a few years ago, listened to a few of them, and moved on. I didn’t find them particularly compelling, nor did I consider them to be an invasion of privacy. The “intellectual property”-related ramifications are interesting, but we’re right back to the “usual” discussions– pitting what copyright “should” do against what the law says it does. Forgive me for not having the energy for _that_ discussion today.

I am curious, though, what various commenters opinion of FOUND Magazine (http://www.foundmagazine.com) would be. These recordings don’t seem a whole lot different to me than the scraps of ephemera that make their way into FOUND. I think one could make the legitimate argument that FOUND is making infringing copies of copyrighted works. I don’t know that I’d go as far as citing the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but I think the copyright argument is the same re: FOUND and these recordings.
none295

Here’s a conversation between a Mic-In-Track creator and a Mic-In-Track listener:

http://web.archive.org/web/20011118115803/members.boardhost.com/The_ECC/msg/310.html

TxAxSxE : what the hell
person296 : hello
TxAxSxE : are you doing
person296 : downloading music. what seems to be the problem?
TxAxSxE : why are you getting this
person296 : it’s that a beasie boys song? (playing dumb)
TxAxSxE : its not music
person296 : what is it?
TxAxSxE : what
person296 : i thought i was dling a beastie boys song. your saying it’s not. it came up in tha napster search for Beastie boys
TxAxSxE : its not
person296 : what was it?
TxAxSxE : why are getting the other one (damn he saw through my open window)
person296 : i’m addicted to Mic In Track files…sorry
TxAxSxE : why
TxAxSxE : ok
person296 : because i never know what i’m going to find.
TxAxSxE : ok
person296 : why are you sharing them?
TxAxSxE : just
person296 : because you don’t know any better? (I wish he had seen that last comment but i was already on his Ignored User list)

here are more:http://noneinc.com/MIT/
BookGuy

I used to have a job that involved a lot of copyright issues and permissions, with occasional forays into “found” photos and issues of copyright and privacy. Never audio, though, so I don’t know what, if any, legal restrictions would apply here. That said, posting an audio recording of someone’s prayers without their knowledge or consent might be legal, but it might also make you a bad person.
Piedmont

This is fantastic.
Without digging through the whole thing, are there any hidden gems? Daniel Johnston-esque brilliance I suppose?
JoshuaZ

There is a serious privacy issue here but it isn’t as bad as it could be. There’s a major mitigating factor in that it is likely impossible for anyone to connect any of the recordings with specific people.
Doc

For those interested, a bunch more of these are available for free download on the Evolution Control Committee website. The ECC also released a lot of them on a CD a number of years ago called Default’s Greatest Hits.
eatshawn

jackpot! thank you.
acipolone

Would this discussion sort of fall in line with the idea that if you take a picture of Times Square (or other public place) you would need to get permission from every single person in the picture before posting it publicly?
starkeffect

I run the site. Thanks for the traffic.

Piedmont, some of my personal favorites are “Take Me In Your Arms of Whoops”, “Kiss”, and “As The Deer”.

I understand the concerns about privacy (and in fact I’ve taken down a file because I got a concerned email), but the people who made them *shared* them. Naivete is not a defense.
MadMolecule

“Naivete is not a defense.”

They don’t need a defense. You do.
BijouxBoy

Am I the only one who finds this distasteful?
Doc

(Oops, didn’t see that the linked site already links to the ECC . . . carry on!)
Peter

Let’s cool it with the fake analogies. Many of us rail when people say copyright infringement is equivalent to stealing. It’s just as silly to say this is just the same as somebody leaving their door open, and that meaning you have an invitation to take what you want. This was a program for sharing, in which you have to generally assume what people have posted as available, they intended. Otherwise you’re making the exact same error no matter what you downloaded. Yes, there’s a difference in degree, and it’s probable in many (but not necessarily all) of these cases, they shared something they might not have intended. But you can’t always check it.

To me, it’s more like if somebody left out a box of stuff and there was a sign beside the box saying ‘free to take’… and there’s something valuable, or particularly personal (a filled in “Baby’s First..” type memory book, for example), hidden in the box. Do you take it for your own interests, knowing that they may not have intended to give away something of valuable, real or sentimental?

I still think it’s not right to take them, or especially to make such things public, but it’s not the same as a lot of the things people are comparing it to. The decent thing to do is to let them know if possible, and if not, to leave it alone and hope others do the same.

The fact that almost everyone using the program is infringing on rights anyway is somewhat amusing though, but I think we’ve always held (and should probably continue to hold) a difference between infringing the rights of a person and that of a corporation, in terms of morality, even leaving aside the whole morality of copyright debate.
starkeffect

@43

I went to bed.

We’re not all in your time zone, dude.
starkeffect

And what’s with all the vowel-sloughing? Either say it or don’t. Jz.
mzed

Another US legal concept that has some bearing on this is the “expectation of privacy.”

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hooey

If I take a photo of a public place, and you’re in it, I don’t need permission to use that photo in my art. (Advertisement, different story.) However, if I take a picture of you through your window, I can’t. This is because you can expect privacy at home, but shouldn’t expect it walking through Time’s Square. Obviously, this is a slippery and contentious legal concept.

It makes me ask if these recordings have claim to privacy.

Copyright is a different question. Posting works in a public place does not un-copyright them. The author has to specifically put them in the public domain by saying “I grant this to the public domain.” In this case, the question is whether the use of these recordings is “Fair Use.”

http://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php

That’s another slippery legal issue, but it seems likely that it is. Copyright is about the marketplace, more than privacy. I don’t see the commercial value of these recordings being destroyed, and they are being used for noncommercial purposes.

Sorry for the long post.
Palilay

@stark – interesting explanation.

I have a hypothetical question for you – if you found a mic in track that contained a recording of an assault, or a criminal act, would you still post it?

And if not, why is that recording different or automatically considered private?
arkizzle

Peter @ 39

Well said.

Nobody here knows which of these file were intended to be shared and which not. And the things being equated are silly.

Palilay, what on Earth does “kiddies being beaten up or worse” have to do with this conversation?

There is unquestionably a tricky dichotomy, in granting privacy of files to people who were sharing others’ files. I’m not saying two wrongs make a right, but there is clearly some irony and ‘karma’ involved.

I’m not sure where I stand, but it isn’t as clear cut as some poeple are making it. I really enjoy found-photographs. BB has posted some before, and there are some great Flickr streams dedicated to them.

Do I think displaying found-photos is wrong? Not really, but I can understand the resons why someone might. Maybe there is room for leeway based on the content of the photo (or the recording).
Murphys Lawyer

“I understand the concerns about privacy (and in fact I’ve taken down a file because I got a concerned email), but the people who made them *shared* them. Naivete is not a defense.”

Yr sns f vrwhlmng sprrty rmnds m f th K Hm Scrtry nd th pnd scm sh’s gt plggng r ntnl D dtbs – h, th cmmn cly r s stpd, w knw s mch bttr.

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ed_g

@9

‘but the people who made them *shared* them.’

Unwittingly, by the look of it.

‘Naivete is not a defense.’

Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk! Like taking candy from a baby.

If someone’s pockets are hanging open does that entitle you to rifle about for their wallet?

I have no objection to this as a personal exercise. I used to routinely pick up and try to recover information from abandoned hard drives as a data recovery exercise, and perhaps more truthfully, out of curiosity, which stood me in good stead when my own machine died a few weeks ago.

But there’s a difference between catching sight of the hot girl over the road getting undressed and setting up a frickin’ webcam on her.
Joe in Australia

“the people who made them *shared* them. Naivete is not a defense

Sharing requires intent. If they were naive they had no intent; ergo they did not share them. What you have done is the moral equivalent of taking photographs through an open window. I can think of several arguments as to why you haven’t broken the law, but I still think it stinks.
dragonfrog

@ Ed G

It’s been a long time, but I don’t recall Napster having any IM capability.

I mean, I agree fundamentally that this project is probably legal but ethically sketchy. I just don’t think there was an easy way to check with the sharers of the files to see if they meant to share them…
nemryn

Presumably, this archive contains some files which were intentionally shared. How is Starkeffect supposed to tell the difference between those and the ones which were accidentally shared?