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.

@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.

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?

#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.

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.

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.

And besides, some of that stuff is really funny.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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

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……

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…

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

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.

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.

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

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

@ 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.

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

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.