Legal or Ethical

[nemorathwald]

I did something wrong, and would like to apologize for it publicly, in addition to my private apology. But I'm not sure if the party involved wants me to name him. What I did was probably legal, but ethically questionable. When I translated an artist's song into Lojban and put it into the Lojban podcast, I didn't wait for him to return my e-mail in which I asked for his permission. I had mis-typed his e-mail address.

Seeing that it was credit-attributed, noncommercial, educational, fair use, and does not displace the consumer's need for the original-- it was, in fact, represented as a karaoke track and therefore intended to be used and sung to-- I went ahead and played the voice-over translation for my listeners with the karaoke track in the background.

I have long maintained that just because you have the right to do something doesn't mean it's the best choice. Which is more important? Demanding my rights? Or maintaining the relationships that make everything move forward? Rights are vitally important, but enforcing them just on principle for their own sake is a good way to be miserable and not a co-operative member of a society. Does it matter that my action was legal? Should I do it just because of that? Not really. It's not worth the cost to personal networking. It's not worth the possibility that artists will say "I'm just not going to provide my hard work for free download anymore."

The artist says he really would have preferred I asked him first. That is what matters, because people matter. This was the first artist from whom I did not get consent. Permission is nice, but agreement is better. The principle of Fair Use is a poor and weak excuse to lose a friendly collaborative relationship with a creative person. I ordinarily know better than to risk such relationships.

Comments

[sandra-snan.livejournal.com]

Yes. I am a raving, non-compromising anti-copyright zealot who'd say that any day of the week you'd be in the right doing what you did regardless of what the composer has to say about it -- but it feels much better with consent and I'd rather just not use something of an artist who did believe in copyright and who didn't want to cooperate with me. I don't really need the grief, the bad will, or the sour taste. That's why in practice I tend to behave as if I respected copyright. I still want to cooperate on a voluntary basis with most everyone.

(OTOH "subject rights" is another matter -- wanting to capitalize on a production monopoly like copyright maybe wrong in my book, wanting to avoid misrepresentation is something else; if the composer had some anti-lojban reasons I'd want to respect that. Like, I can't dig if someone has economic reasons to prevent people from downloading and listening to their music, but I can understand if someone doesn't want to unwillingly be used to represent a company or a political entity they disagree with. (My big problem is that I can't get these two opinions of mine to co-exist -- either you can control what you produce or you can't. I'm a horrible self-contradiction.))

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

It sounds like what makes the difference for you, in whether you can control what you produce, is the motive for controlling what you produce.

[sandra-snan.livejournal.com]

Yes. I guess it just comes down to what I consider acceptable as economic forces.

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