Site allows P2Pers to reimburse content creators

Feeling guilt over P2P use? Piracy Payback wants to help [ArsTechnica]

If given the opportunity, would P2Pers voluntarily pay back the rights holders of illegally copied content downloaded on the Internet? That's the question an Australian man named Drew K asked himself earlier this year. The question was the genesis of a web site called Piracy Payback. Piracy Payback allows P2Pers who feel guilty about pirating copyrighted works to make a PayPal donation which the web site redirects to rights holding organizations to compensate them for the stolen content.

It's an innovative idea, but as Drew admits to ArsTechnica, it isn't inspiring many P2Pers to reimburse content creators. Piracy Payback holds back 12 percent of donations to pay for site overhead, and Drew tells Ars that the site isn't yet covering its own costs.

I'm not surprised.  If most P2P supporters think like "Big Nose" thinks, I wouldn't hold out much hope.  He posted a comment on my blog on September 23rd that contained this fundamental belief...

Regardless of what the laws say, P2P file sharing is NOT theft. It is entirely different than Somalian pirates boarding ships because: File sharing is about *sharing*, hence the name. It is not theft, as the owner of the material has not had anything taken from them. The copyright owners loose (sp.) only the royalties that they would have been paid if the product was purchased legally. However, in the vast majority of cases, people would not be purchasing any of this copyright protected data if it wasn't free..

So let me get this straight.  I sneak into a movie theater to watch a movie or a basketball arena to see the Cats play the Cards.  Or I jump the turnstile and ride the subway for free or I slip onto an airplane to ride from Cincinnati to London for free.  It's not stealing because there is no physical property taken so the police won't arrest and charge me. 

I don't think so.

Comments

[DM]

Michael,

That was actually a horrible analogy. If you did those things, you would not be charged with stealing, or theft, but the charge may be for trespassing or unlawful entry.

I think that “Big Nose” was pointing out how much of a divide exists between laws and how they are being interpreted in a digital age. The whole “piracy” argument is not based on “theft” but is based on “copyright infringement”. Legally speaking, there is a big difference between the two, and the non-physical nature of digital copying is the reason why.