Tom, a Toronto father and IT professional, breaks the law about four times a day, which is why he’d rather his last name didn’t appear in this story: That’s the number of television shows he usually downloads each night – a free version of digital cable for his family.
A few years ago, his seven-year-old daughter saw the stern commercials that compared what her dad was doing to sneaking a DVD into your pocket at the music store.
When she came to him with questions, Tom didn’t sugarcoat. Instead, he offered a reality check. “It’s simple math,” he told her, a matter of family finances, and human nature: People won’t typically pay for something they can get for free.
The ethics, he says, are muddier. “It’s a tough question, I admit it.”
And a complex issue to explain to kids who are tempted by the Web’s free but questionable content offerings. (Iron Man 2, for instance, showed up online two days before it hit North American theatres).
Why is it illegal to copy a DVD you’ve already paid for, even for your own personal use? How do you explain to your child that downloading movies and copying software is wrong when the tech industry sells the equipment that allows you to do it? And if you can PVR a television show on your cable, why can’t you download that same show from the Internet?
What has changed since the days when their parents made mix tapes – other than the fact that the Internet makes it easier?
“This is an incredibly complex bucket of worms,” says Marcel Gagné, a technology writer and father in Waterloo, Ont. “The person who thinks you can just sit down with your kids and go, ‘Copyright violation bad, don’t do it,’ and leave it at that is extremely naive.”
At the same time, it’s a conversation that parents need to have with their kids as government and industry explore stricter, if not particularly effective, laws to catch and punish illegal downloaders. This week, the file-sharing service LimeWire was found liable for copyright infringement in the United States, a ruling declared “an extraordinary victory” by the music industry.
Media reports suggest that the producers of The Hurt Locker, which won the Best Picture Oscar this year, is close to filing lawsuits against tens of thousands of people who downloaded pirated copies of the film. Recent laws passed in Britain and France would disconnect, for up to a year, the Internet service of people who continue to download illegally after being warned to stop.
In Canada, downloading movies, video games and licensed software is illegal. However, rules concerning music are complicated by an exception in the Copyright Act that makes it legal to copy a recording for personal use. The government charges a levy on blank recording media as a way to compensate artists. The private copying section of the act was created before file-sharing exploded, and it doesn’t specifically outlaw downloading.
While the government is working on a new law expected to clarify the consequences for piracy, most chronic downloaders receive nothing more than a stern warning from their Internet provider to stop. (And usually, the industry reports, they heed the warning; illegal downloading in Canada reached an all-time low last year, according to a study by the Business Software Alliance.)
“Parents have to lead by example,” says Peter Beruk, compliance marketing director for the alliance. “The law is clear: If you want to use a product you simply have to pay for that product.”
