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Questions and Answers
Scour.com is a company that offers free software that searches other users’ hard drives, finds audio and video recordings, and other files, on those hard drives and delivers identical copies to the users who have ordered the search. Scour.com’s service makes no distinction between the exchange of authorized material and stolen copyrighted material. Although the action is popularly called "file-sharing," in fact, one user is allowing a limitless number of duplicate copies of the song or video contained in his hard drive to be copied. Because all of the content is in a digital format, literally millions of copies can be made and distributed without any degradation in the quality of the recordings. All the copies are free, with no compensation trading hands or going back to the rightful owners of the copyrights.
It is different from Napster in that Scour.com offers, among other things, video content, including bootleg full-length feature films.
These companies are facilitating the pirating of copyrighted material. They directly support a trade in stolen goods. These goods, in the form of music and films, are produced from the blood, sweat and tears of artists who should be compensated for their work. What these companies are doing is no different than if they provided people with a way to shoplift CDs and Videotapes from stores . It is not hard to see how serious the problem is for anyone hoping to earn a living from their creative work.
This is stealing. Period. Sharing is when one person lends a product to another, expecting its return. This is mass duplication and distribution of copyrighted material. There’s no sharing going on. The harm is that earnings for artists and studios are lost when people don’t pay anything to use the material. In addition, all of the employees who get hired to support that artists work could also be harmed – from sound engineers, to animators to anyone involved in the creative process – because lost revenue over the long-term could mean lost jobs.
The losses to legitimate copyright owners are enormous and permanent. But even if the damage were only a dollar, there is an important principle at stake here. If an artist or an owner of a copyright doesn’t want their product distributed in a certain way, it should not be distributed that way. Let’s ask ourselves when exactly stealing became acceptable as long as it takes place on the Internet?
In addition, Scour.com contributes to a growing culture that treats intellectual property as somehow less valuable than tangible property. One you pay for, one you don’t. More and more high school and college kids are learning this unfortunate lesson every day. It is a serious problem.
"File sharing" is a serious misnomer. If I share a piece of cake with you, we're each doing with a little less, because I have half a piece and you have half a piece. Under the Napster/Scour.com version of "sharing," I can give you and others two pieces, four pieces, eight pieces, sixteen pieces of cake, etc., and still have as much as I want. Accordingly, it's really more accurate to call Scour.com’s service file "squaring," because what's really happening is that they are exponentially increasing the number of files.
Scour.com built its business model around copyright theft. They are attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors by creating online bazaars for stolen copyrighted works. In addition, Scour.com is generating revenue by selling advertising on its site. Both sites provide mass duplication of copyrighted material. It isn’t reasonable to call any of this sharing.
Not in the least. The purchase of a VCR by a consumer did not virtually assure theft of copyrighted material. If you purchased a VCR, you could use it lawfully (time-shifting rentals, home movies) and never infringe on a copyright. However, when Scour.com is used as intended, copyright infringement is encouraged and virtually guaranteed. The function and intrinsic design of this newer technology is to foster infringement. The companies promote themselves by boasting of the availability of copyrighted material, not no-name garage bands or someone’s home movies.
From a purely utilitarian point of view, the technologies are different because VCRs were too slow and cumbersome and mass distribution of bootlegs too difficult to make piracy a threat to artists and the industry. However, with Scour.com, hundreds of millions of copies can be made and distributed as fast as available bandwidth allows.
If Scour.com (and others) were charging for access with a fair royalty/licensing fee to the copyright owners (like video stores; cable movie operators and satellite movie providers) then the comparison to the VCR would be relevant.
But there is more important distinction. Scour.com essentially argues that copyright law is no longer important. Just because someone can build a technology that defeats copyright protections and allows mass stealing, we as a society are not required to toss two hundred years of copyright law into the trash. To argue that artists and the industry must accept this technology is to argue that the right to own one’s creation is somehow less important that the right of Scour.com to operate by its own rules.
It is young artists and filmmakers who are harmed by an Internet site that denies them the profits of their creativity and labor. We don’t object to artists posting their films on the Net by their own choice. Many do. But when their property is mass distributed against their wishes, it is called stealing.
The industry’s reason for existence is to distribute artists’ creations. We’re all about distribution…but only in ways that are legal and that result in the owners being compensated.
There is no causative link between increased record sales and the fact that Napster has been in existence. Increased sales do not prove Napster is good for the industry overall. On the contrary, common sense suggests that sales would have gone up even more without Napster. More importantly, such utilitarian arguments have nothing to do with individual property rights that are being violated by the music piracy.
Whether or not it is easy is not really the point. It is simply wrong to facilitate the illegal duplication of copyrighted material.
Isn’t that like saying this watch is too expensive for us so let’s steal it? Scour.com does not promote competition. It promotes theft.
Intellectual property rights don’t evaporate just because someone invents an easy way to steal them. We believe the courts want to protect property rights in every sphere of life, including on the Internet, and thieves will be held accountable.
This isn't a case of fair competition. This is theft. The studios are aggressively pursuing e-commerce business models. The studios have embraced digital technology, commencing with DVD and under expansion to cable/satellite Video on Demand/Pay Per View services and eventually the Internet. But there has to be a sound business model. Exposing multimillion-dollar films to unrestricted copying and retransmission is not a sound business model. Some creators may not mind working for free. But it is not unreasonable to expect a return for the talent and capital expended in make entertainment programming.
How do you compete with people who are stealing your products and giving them away? We’re certainly open to new ideas and business models, but they must respect the intellectual property rights of artists. Unlike Scour.com, however, we’ve got concerns about safeguarding content through encryption and devising ways to fairly compensate the copyright owners. These solutions and business models are in development. But until they’re ready, we’ve got to be able to protect copyrights.