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Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, has taken steps to refute the notion of many in the music publishing industry that each digital copy has a certain value--upon which should be based damages if someone is found to have committed copyright infringement.
Sunde has built a machine from a Raspberry PI, called Kopismashin, designed to make copies of single tracks at the rate of 100 copies per second [and drops them to /dev/null].
"I want to show the absurdity on the process of putting a value to a copy.... [F]ollowing their rhetoric and mindset it will bankrupt them," says Sunde.
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What's a Digital Copy Worth? Not Much, Says Peter Sunde's New Machine
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TAPPING? You POLITICIANS! Don't you realize that the END of the "Wash
Cycle" is a TREASURED MOMENT for most people?!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday December 26 2015, @07:52PM
Not taking an absolutist position on copyright. But this stunt is stupid, deliberately misses the point and because most people intuitively know it (even if they can't reason out why) promoting this silliness only undermines the case against overly expansive copyright and invasive enforcement.
The damage isn't making copies. Once they finally gave up on DRM, even the RIAA goons have no problem with what this guy is doing if he bought the rights to the track he is making the copies of. You are allowed to make as many copies of a song as you need. You are allowed to copy it to all of your music players, make backup copies, etc. The damage, such as it is, consists in transferring a copy to someone who hasn't paid for a personal use license to the work. It isn't the act of copying they object to, it is unauthorized distribution.
It is true that unauthorized distribution may or may not inflict economic damage on the copyright holder and that the actual damages do vary. But since courts are ill equipped to calculate the exact damage, some sort of average does make sense. For example, if I buy [current poptart]'s latest hit and make a thousand copies I have not yet caused any damage. If I walk down the street and hand them out I have now deprived the copyright holder of the revenue from those who would have otherwise ended up buying a copy, thus I have inflicted some economic damage. If I did the same thing in a senior center, where essentially zero residents would have bought a copy, I have done much less but still non-zero damage. (Some might gift the copy and cause a loss of a sale.) If I got my hands on a pre-release copy and passed out copies to the artist's fan club I have caused maximal economic damage.
Some might argue that passing out copies on the street might also introduce new fans to the artist. While possible, passing out free copies as a promotional gimmick may be a economically valid tactic, it is something only the rights holder has the legal right to decide upon, so I can't claim credit for any accidental sales generated against the direct economic damage inflicted on the rights holder.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 26 2015, @09:46PM
Odds a good that if you did that, you compensated the artists through a private copying levy.
You are only causing economic harm if you distribute those unauthorized copies in order to promote your venue (raising the bar top commercial infringement, rather than private study). I suppose you could argue that some bystanders may try to sell the unauthorized copies: raising the bar to commercial infringement, rather than private study in that case as well.