The War On Bullshit

Previously in this segment, I discussed how the RIAA fabricates a link between unauthorized music downloading and shrinking music industry profits. After some insightful discussion, I also differentiated the treatment of piracy in criminal and tort law. Today I turn to what might be called the Robin Hood argument.

Francois writes:

“And even if such a correlation [between music downloading and profit erosion] could be demonstrated, it still would not justify bullying and threatening teenagers… [I think] the current RIAA strategy of blackmailing teenage students is … mafia-like.” (Post-press note: Francois wasn’t happy with the way I presented this - see his comment below)

Dar Al Harb writes:

“I always feel for those bastards who lost a few million. Never mind who they hurt or how they hurt in thier endevour to make millions of dollars”

These quotes exemplify a common attitude, especially prevalent in western society, that the big bad corporation deserves a little payback and should not pick on poor, helpless teenagers, students, seniors, etc. I call this the Robin Hood argument: Robin Hood isn’t a bad guy because his victims are rich and his beneficiaries are poor.

This sort of reasoning is undesirable in the context of P2P file sharing for two broad reasons.

Reason 1: The Big Bad Corporations are owned by regular people.

When someone argues that the music industry is comprised of evil, faceless corporations, they forget who owns those corporations. The owners aren’t just old white megalomaniacs; these are public companies owned by a wide variety of people. It’s not even just people who own stocks, either. Do you invest in mutual funds? retirement savings plans? bonds? exchange traded funds? other derivatives? When the big music companies lose money, it’s not just the wealthy that lose money, its also the middle class and even the poor who have directly or indirectly invested in them.

Reason 2: Poverty does not justify theft of non-essential goods.

If a penniless parent with a family on the brink of starvation steals a loaf of bread, I think many of us will forgive him or her for taking the lesser of two evils. However, music is not food, it’s entertainment, and humans generally do not need entertainment to survive. I suspect that most property crime is committed by people of limited financial means. If a guy steals your car stereo, do you want him let off the hook just because he’s poor? As a society, we do not accept poverty as a defense for crimes or wrongs against others; therefore accepting poverty as a defense for piracy would set a dangerous precedent.

Being poor may be an excuse for stealing essential items like food, but it does not justify your nephew’s 80 000 track pirated music library.

Qualifier

Please take note, I am not saying that P2P file sharing is theft, or that the Music Industry hasn’t screwed over artists for years. I’m not saying that file sharing is unethical or causes the Music Industry’s “losses,” and I am not saying that the RIAA is justified in its absurd legal behavior. All I am saying is that if the Music Industry were being victimized by downloading, the fact that the downloaders are poor while the Music Industry is rich is not a defense. It is not to dilute strong defenses by combining them with weak defenses like the Robin Hood argument.

Several interesting points came up in the discussion of my last post, which addressed how the RIAA deceives the public regarding its imaginary losses due to music piracy.

Paul wrote:

“Saying that it’s not a loss if the person wouldn’t buy it if it weren’t available for free is like saying it’s not stealing for me to take a Ferrari without paying for it, because I wouldn’t buy it otherwise.”

On the one hand, I am in fact claiming that the RIAA does not experience a loss when someone downloads a song without paying, if that person would not have been willing to buy the song if it were not available for free. Furthermore, I agree with Paul that taking a Ferrari is stealing whether or not I would buy it otherwise. So haven’t I just contradicted my previous post? NO!

This discussion highlights the difference between tort law and criminal law, a distinction common to most developed nations. Loss is a topic under tort law; theft is a topic under criminal law. When you download a song through a P2P service, the RIAA can sue you (tort law) for losses they incurred due to your actions, while society can prosecute you (criminal law) for theft. These are distinct actions. If the RIAA sues you and wins, the RIAA gets the money. If society prosecutes you and wins, either you go to jail or society gets the money. Take a wild guess which route the RIAA is apt to take.

If the RIAA tries to sue you in tort for losses caused by your actions, they have to show that your actions in fact caused a loss. As I explained last time, the RIAA’s losses are imaginary, so they have no basis to sue you. To continue the analogy, if I break into my neighbor’s garage and steal his Ferrari, he loses the Ferrari, and can therefore sue me for his loss. If I download a song from the internet, the music industry cannot sue me because I have not caused a loss. The music industry didn’t lose the song, or income associated with it.

Whether or not downloading music constitutes theft in your country depends on how theft is defined in your criminal code, or equivalent. I’m not going to debate this, because 1) it depends on the country, and 2) the interpretation of law is best left to judges. However, I welcome a debate regarding whether downloading should be regarded as theft.

In conclusion, unauthorized music downloading may or may not be theft, depending on your country. However, unauthorized music downloading does not cause a loss to the music industry; therefore, the music industry has no legal basis on which to sue downloaders.

On to Part 3 –>

In my previous two posts, I established first that the grades assigned to students are subjective, if not entirely arbitrary; and second, that grades are pragmatically important because admissions, scholarships and jobs hinge on them. In summary, the system of grading is horribly screwed up, and we can’t just ignore it because careers, self-esteem and wheelbarrows of money depend on grades. This drew an interesting objection.

Jo writes: “So it is all bullshit. We know this. Give them what they want and move on to something better…”

I call this the “quityerbitchin” argument: yeah, you have a point, but unless you can tell us how to fix it, shut up already. With this I must agree, so let’s have at it then, shall we?

Two Alternatives to get the Bullshit out of Grading

If grades are subjective, but society pretends they’re objective, and this causes problems, we have two logical possibilities:

1. Embrace the Subjectivity of Evaluation

The first option is to simply accept that grading is subjective - to embrace the subjectivity of evaluation. While this may satisfy the social constructivists and interpretivists, it does cause some societal problems. If grades are just someone’s far-from-impartial opinion of a student, then basing job offers, admissions to schools and millions of dollars of scholarship money wholly or partially on grades smacks of incompetence and irresponsibility. Morality thus compels us to stop using grades as a primary selection criterion. However, it is presently unclear what could then serve as criteria on which to compare students.

While this option remains a possibility, it feels unsatisfying because one of the main functions of grading is to discriminate the good students from the bad.

2. Maximize Grade Objectivity

The other logical alternative is to try to make grades as objective as possible, with the understanding that a measure will always have some degree of error. This can be achieved by applying the same rigorous standard for instrument development that social scientists employ. Since a complete elucidation of the research surrounding the theory of measurement would occupy several volumes, I’ll stick to a few of the major points:

• The instructor must know what construct (e.g. knowledge of geography, or arithmetic proficiency) he or she is trying to measure. Said construct must be clearly and specifically defined.
• The constructs instructors are supposed to measure must be standardized nationally, or better, globally.
• Essays, projects, reports, papers, presentations, etc. must always be graded by several graders. Lack of agreement among graders indicates a problem with the assignment.
• “Objective” tests (multiple choice, etc.) must be pretested and validated. You have to test the test to make sure it measures what it’s supposed to measure and has no confusing questions.
• Students should be graded against a standard (not on a bell curve) and the standard must be a bona fide national, or preferably global, standard, designed by an objective process.
• The 1 to 100 grading scale must be replaced by a coarser scale (no larger than 1 to 5) wherein differences are meaningful enough to achieve reliable scoring.
• Due to the difficulty of creating good measures, schools should share tests that work.

Please note that I am not advocating an academic dystopia of endless public exams filled with countless multiple choice and fill-ins. I suspect that those sorts of tests are incapable of measuring most of the variables that grades should reflect. To me, this list screams out for problem-based learning and a revolution toward educational post-modernism, but that is a topic for another day.

And so dies the “quityerbitchin” argument.