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| Monday, 19th March, 2007 at 21:09 pm | |||
Bittorrent – How Immoral Is It? | |||
As I am downloading the latest episode of Battlestar Galactica (I told you I am a geek girl!), I am asking myself: How immoral is it to download bittorrents?
I am a Christian and I believe that stealing is wrong. Yet I use bittorrent! I keep meaning not to do it, then I fall for the temptation and end up doing it anyway. I have downloaded a number of music albums, blockbuster films, TV series and the rest. 
“Lead me not into temptation… ” >Bittorrent is such a temptation to a Christian techie! It is a very cool technology; it lets you get things for free that you would otherwise have to pay for, and there is virtually no chance of getting caught…. (How horrible that last bit sounded!)
But is it really stealing? In the legal sense of the word; where exactly is the crime being committed? I am in the UK, downloading an American film via a tracker at a bittorrent site in Sweden. The seeders are all over the world. Who is the criminal? Me, the seeders, the bittorrent site, or all of us? Or none?
Perhaps bittorrent or an equivalent technology will be perfectly legal in ten years time after a change in copyright laws. (There is plenty of talk about a potential fundamental change to copyright laws because of bittorrent usage) Where would such a change leave my actions today, 2007?
Are you a Christian or a person with a strong sense of personal morality? Do you know how to use bittorrent but refrain from doing so because of the shady legal situation? Or are you happily downloading without worrying about the legal/moral aspects?
(Wow, I am downloading ‘BSG’ at 420kb/s!)
Ought I stop using BT?
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I too am a Christian, and I too use Bittorrent, and battle with the morality/legality of it.
My own personal compromise is that I’ll usually download only things that I cannot buy, or already have, or just want to try out. That includes things like music that’s not available on CD (as far as I know), music I have on vinyl, or bands I want to try. If I like them I’ll by the CD or pay for the tracks.
The only video I’ve been inclined to download has been the repeats of The Goodies, an old BBC series not (yet) available on DVD. If they became available I’d buy them.
I do find it strange that the law says I can legally record a broadcast, as can you, but I cannot legally record it for you, or give you a recording I made. Where is the sense in that?
It’s perfectly legal for me to record a track broadcast on internet radio (or a program on Internet TV): even if they are breaching copyright in broadcasting it. So if a station broadcasts an episode of The Goodies, I can legally save it to an AVI file. But I cannot legally
copy of AVI file they broadcast. But it’s, in effect, the same file!
It’s legal for me to record a stream from an audio/video on demand service (such as the BBC’s Listen Again service). The significant difference between this and Bittorrent seems to be that these services broadcast the media & I re-record it, whereas Bittorrent copies the actual file (or rather reassembles bits of the file obtained from multiple sources). If someone reinvented Bittorrent so that it worked on a broadcast & re-record basis, it would probably legal under UK law.
Yes, the law will (eventually) change to accommodate new technologies, just as it accommodated the VCR, but by then the technology will have changed again. And we will remain in the same moral maze.
What a good comment, thanks Dave! I am still doing it… Would be good to hear more opinions. I can’t help but feeling that since it is a ‘grey’ area, I should stay away….
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