Essay I am not a crook By Scott Hards	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
私はペテン師ではない 米国映画の最初に出てくる、著作物使用に関するFBIからの警告。 ソフトをコンピューターにインストールする際に何度も"I agree"ボタンを押させる使用承諾誓約書。 そうしなければならないほど、メーカーは一般市民を信用していないのだろうか。

Apologies to the late Richard Nixon for the title of this essay, but I'm getting really tired of being suspected of, and warned about, committing crimes I have no intention of committing. Why do so many companies these days insist on treating me like a criminal?

The problem centers around media companies in the digital age. Apparently convinced that everyone on the planet is a thief at heart, the leaders of almost all movie and software companies have decided to inconvenience and annoy their customers in countless ways. Where should I begin?

How many hours of my life are ultimately going to be wasted by having to sit through a 30-second FBI warning at the start of every movie I watch threatening me with prison and fines if I copy or otherwise distribute the film? How many hours of my life will be wasted by having to click "I agree" numerous times on idiotic software usage agreements every time I install a new piece of software on my computer? Or for that matter, painstakingly typing in huge serial numbers or software activation codes so that I can use it in the first place?

It's not so much the time wasted on these things that annoys me. It's the attitude of those selling the product toward their own customers. It creates an atmosphere that says, "We know you're dishonest." Can you imagine how you'd feel if, the next time you bought a kitchen knife, it contained a warning label that said, "Caution: You will face severe criminal penalties if you attack or kill someone with this product."

All of these warnings and systems are supposed to help protect the products against piracy, but that's another annoying part of all this: All the time of honest people that they're wasting is apparently doing little to actually stop piracy of digital media products. Street vendors in major cities in the U.S. and other countries routinely sell illegal movie DVDs in broad daylight, and most college students can tell you how to download copies of expensive software for free off the Internet.

Authorities know about many of the criminal organizations that create the vast majority of these illicit DVDs and other merchandise, yet it seems that their efforts are focused more on frightening and inconveniencing mostly law-abiding consumers than shutting down pirates. Why aren't they thanking me for buying their DVD rather than warning me not to copy it (especially considering that "fair use" laws in the U.S. and other countries give me the right to make personal, backup copies)?

The really ironic part of all this is that it's been shown how companies can boost the sales of their genuine products by making them easy to copy. Especially in the case of things like music, when friends start passing around copies of favorite songs to other people, it's been shown that new sales of music often follow as people discover new artists they like, etc. So is it too much to ask media companies to show me a little "innocent until proven guilty" the next time I purchase one of their products? On that, I'd be more than happy to click the little "I agree" button.

Shukan ST: June 29, 2007

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