[Solar-general] OT: Los problemas para las discograficas recién empiezan.

Vie Dic 21 16:26:00 CET 2007

Esto es OT porque no es sobre software, pero muchas veces se habló
(gracias a RMS) de la relación entre la moral y las leyes de
copyright, por eso me parece relevante, salio hoy en el New York
Times:

The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality
By DAVID POGUE

I've been doing a good deal of speaking recently. And in one
of my talks, I tell an anecdote about a lesson I learned
from my own readers.

It was early in 2005, and a little hackware program called
PyMusique was making the rounds of the Internet. PyMusique
was written for one reason only: to strip the copy
protection off of songs from the iTunes music store.

The program's existence had triggered an online controversy
about the pros, cons and implications of copy protection.
But to me, there wasn't much gray area. "To me, it's
obvious that PyMusique is designed to facilitate illegal
song-swapping online," I wrote. And therefore, it's wrong
to use it.

Readers fired back with an amazingly intelligent array of
counterexamples: situations where duplicating a CD or DVD
may be illegal, but isn't necessarily *wrong.* They led me
down a garden path of exceptions, proving that what seemed
so black-and-white to me is a spectrum of grays.

I was so impressed that I incorporated their examples into a
little demonstration in this particular talk. I tell the
audience: "I'm going to describe some scenarios to you.
Raise your hand if you think what I'm describing is wrong."

Then I lead them down the same garden path:

"I borrow a CD from the library. Who thinks that's wrong?"
(No hands go up.)

"I own a certain CD, but it got scratched. So I borrow the
same CD from the library and rip it to my computer." (A
couple of hands.)

"I have 2,000 vinyl records. So I borrow some of the same
albums on CD from the library and rip those."

"I buy a DVD. But I'm worried about its longevity; I have a
three-year-old. So I make a safety copy."

With each question, more hands go up; more people think what
I'm describing is wrong.

Then I try another tack:

"I record a movie off of HBO using my DVD burner. Who thinks
that's wrong?" (No hands go up. Of course not;
time-shifting is not only morally O.K., it's actually
legal.)

"I *meant* to record an HBO movie, but my recorder
malfunctioned. But my buddy recorded it. Can I copy his
DVD?" (A few hands.)

"I meant to record an HBO movie, but my recorder
malfunctioned and I don't have a buddy who recorded it. So
I rent the movie from Blockbuster and copy that." (More
hands.)

And so on.

The exercise is intended, of course, to illustrate how many
shades of wrongness there are, and how many different
opinions. Almost always, there's a lot of murmuring, raised
eyebrows and chuckling.

Recently, however, I spoke at a college. It was the first
time I'd ever addressed an audience of 100 percent young
people. And the demonstration bombed.

In an auditorium of 500, no matter how far my questions went
down that garden path, maybe two hands went up. I just
could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger
these kids' morality alarm. They listened to each example,
looking at me like I was nuts.

Finally, with mock exasperation, I said, "O.K., let's try
one that's a little less complicated: You want a movie or
an album. You don't want to pay for it. So you download
it."

There it was: the bald-faced, worst-case example, without
any nuance or mitigating factors whatsoever.

"Who thinks that might be wrong?"

Two hands out of 500.

Now, maybe there was some peer pressure involved; nobody
wants to look like a goody-goody.

Maybe all this is obvious to you, and maybe you could have
predicted it. But to see this vivid demonstration of the
generational divide, in person, blew me away.

I don't pretend to know what the solution to the
file-sharing issue is. (Although I'm increasingly convinced
that copy protection isn't it.)

I do know, though, that the TV, movie and record companies'
problems have only just begun. Right now, the customers who
can't even *see* why file sharing might be wrong are still
young. But 10, 20, 30 years from now, that crowd will be
*everybody*. What will happen then?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/technology/personaltech/20pogue-email.html?8cir&emc=cir

-- 
Sebastián Bassi (セバスティアン). Diplomado en Ciencia y Tecnología.
Curso Biologia molecular para programadores: http://tinyurl.com/2vv8w6
GPG Fingerprint: 9470 0980 620D ABFC BE63 A4A4 A3DE C97D 8422 D43D