Piracy and File Sharing

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From my searching, it seems to be the general consensus that Piracy is a mortal sin.

However, since there is no definite definition regarding it, I must raise a few questions:

1.) Some people would consider “File Sharing”, i.e. a person giving his legally owned movie to a friend for him to copy for himself, piracy. There are varying opinions on this matter, what would the Church say?

2.) Lets say I own a CD legally. Many CDs that are manufactured today are not very good quality. Lets say I, having given my money to the owner of the copyright, downloaded a higher quality version off the internet for my personal use. Would culpability be reduced here?

Let us discuss.
 
TBE said:
From my searching, it seems to be the general consensus that Piracy is a mortal sin.

However, since there is no definite definition regarding it, I must raise a few questions:

1.) Some people would consider “File Sharing”, i.e. a person giving his legally owned movie to a friend for him to copy for himself, piracy. There are varying opinions on this matter, what would the Church say?
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The Church would say piracy. If you view the beginning of your movie it says it’s for private use, must not be copied, and not shown for commercial viewing.
TBE said:
2.) Lets say I own a CD legally. Many CDs that are manufactured today are not very good quality. Lets say I, having given my money to the owner of the copyright, downloaded a higher quality version off the internet for my personal use. Would culpability be reduced here?
Click to expand...
I don’t get this #2. You buy a commerically produced CD and the quality is poor. There’s better version. Is not this the same as stealing a second CD or EP? Are you entitled to the second version? Sounds like bargaining to me – bargaining for a reduction in sin. I say culpable. You pay for both or you don’t get a right to the second download. Paying for the first CD does not bestow any other rights to more versions if they are for sale as well.

I’m amazed at how this question appears here with frequency. Have you been on YouTube and noticed, for example, how quickly SONY who owns the rights to certain artists will pull the upload?

Where were you when the record companies were tracking those who were downloading and sued the parties for recovery? Is this so important that you cannot do without a song or pay for a CD, EP or DVD – or pay for a legit download of a single track? It’s wrong, illlegal, immoral and it’s a sin to steal from an artist who is entitled to payment for his art, even if you bought that artist’s CD before.
 
I think there is a fundamental issue here that is not being addressed, which is especially apparent in #2.

The issue is that there is a poor distinction between physical property and intellectual property. Intellectual property has only really mattered in the last 20 years or so (essentially since the personal computer became readily available). Intellectual property is fundamentally different than physical property in that if you give someone physical property, you can no longer use it. As an example, if you sell someone your car, you no longer have that car. With intellectual property, on the other hand, you can sell it to someone, and still keep it yourself. As an example, if an artist sells a song on iTunes, he does not have one less copy of that song that he can sell. As another example, once a software program has been written, it costs nothing to make more copies of it to sell.

I’m not trying to say that file-sharing is OK because of this; I am simply pointing out the distinction between physical and intellectual property.

I think this is the point the TBE is getting at. If he has, by buying the CD, purchased the right to personally use the intellectual property (a copy of the song, in any format) contained on the CD, then he should be allowed to download a higher-quality version from the internet. (There is some audio quality loss that occurs when a CD is made, since the analog sound must be converted to a digital signal, and the bitrate is limited. It would be possible to have a better digital copy that was recorded directly and never put on a CD, or was digitized directly from vinyl). If, however, by buying the CD, he has only purchased the right to the physical CD property and not to the intellectual property, then it is illegal for him to download the digital copy (presuming that it would otherwise be illegal to do so).

I think that many laws are somewhat outdated since intellectual property is a relatively new idea, and are unclear about how to deal with intellectual property issues. When I rip songs off of a CD to put them on my iPod, I am technically creating another copy of that intellectual property. Someone could hypothetically listen to the CD while I listen to my iPod somewhere else. Yet this is widely accepted as legal. If I am correct, however, it is illegal to rip songs off of a CD and put them on a friend’s iPod.

As I understand it (please correct me if I’m wrong), the Catholic moral teaching is to respect the laws regarding intellectual property.
 
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