As far as Im concerned, obtaining a digital copy of anything you own the hard copy of is completely ethical.

Most people consider it ethical to copy media you own yourself for personal use, eg ripping CDs to mp3s or making a copy for the car, ripping DVDs to a home media server etc.

If thats ethical, I dont think its actually relevant how you arrived at the copy, ie. whether you converted it yourself, or whether you downloaded it.

Media companies are always very eager to point out that you arent really buying the physical object with modern media, but the licence to use the data it holds. I would have no problem in following the spirit of that and using that data in as many ways and places as I require.

Im not sure of the practicality of a law that would allow such usage. However I believe that the UK law of making copies of owned media for personal use is more restrictive than many other countries, and would support relaxation of those laws, with some legal caveat that states that a digital version of physical digital media amounts to a copy, regardless of its source.


(Edited by Wobag 07/04/2010 19:43)

The source of the copy is key. Copying media you own from the original source presents no ethical problem. Downloading from another source may, as it's subsidizing piracy. People's mileage will of course vary, depending on their view of piracy.

Legally speaking, a change in the law to allow "format-shifting" (copying a CD or DVD) is badly needed. The current law against this is unenforced, and dead-letter law brings the law itself into disrepute, just as the equally farcical ban on recording TV shows did in the 1980s, before "timeshift recording" was legalised in 1989.

Just wondering what you mean with subsidizing piracy? Sure in the good old days you could buy bootleg CDs / DVDs where some of the money would indeed end up with criminal organisations that had the presses / equipment etc. Although more often than not these "criminal organisations" consist of 5 mates and a dog who bought a press and ran it from a garage and not the Russian Mafia. None the less it's still the worst type of piracy and money actually changes hands for pirated goods.

With broadband connections becoming omnipresent this market pretty much died as why pay for a copy if you can download your own? Once a copy of some pirate material leaves the "darknet" and enters the part of the internet that Google can see any direct way of making money of the act of piracy is pretty much gone.

Sure large torrent sites / newsgroup provider / other download services might profit from the fact that there is reasonable chunk of traffic coming their way with the potential ad revenue / service fees that come with it. But unless pirates have done some serious vertical integration in the supply chain they are no longer the ones making any money. Also the money is no longer generated from the actual sales of pirated material but by offering services to gain easy access to content be it legal or otherwise.

This is the big paradigm shift we have seen over the last couple of years which means that piracy no longer entails subsidizing a criminal organisation somewhere down the line.

(Edited by Chambler 08/04/2010 10:28)

Just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8608478.stm

And I'll raise you a...

blog.newsarama.com/2010/04/05/the-nyt-and-the-ethics-of-downloading/

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by Chambler
Just wondering what you mean with subsidizing piracy?

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Subsidize can be replaced with supporting, although if the copyright holder looses out financially, it probably won't make much difference to them.

The new Act looks typical rush-job Labour rubbish, although I don't have much faith in (whoever) gets in after the election to tidy the thing up.