Piracy vs. stealing

Piracy and stealing -- there's a difference, but at least one high school teacher doesn't understand this, BoingBoing reports.

And here is a letter that a P2P server architect wrote to the teacher late tonight and published on the pho mailing list:

Dear Mr. B. Deatheradge,
Ms. Crass,
Mr. Long, and
Mr. J. Deatherage,

It recently came to my attention that one of the reasons that you've failed the essay by Steve Geluso was that you disagreed with his opinion on the difference between music piracy and stealing.

I'm not really qualified to judge his essay. Further, I'm not even sure whether it is appropriate to fail an essay because of the disagreement with an author's viewpoint - being foreign-educated, I do not know what is the degree of the independent thinking that is deemed acceptable for the American high school students.

However, being a computer professional specializing in peer- to-peer networks, I know quite well the current state of affairs in this field, as far as the difference between piracy and stealing is concerned. And to make the long story short, the jury is still out
on this one.

I have personally participated in the numerous discussions on this subject, and have read even more of them. Believe me, it is not as clear-cut as one might think. This is a hotly debated topic in the professional circles, among people who deal with this subject every day. I cannot even start providing the samples of radically differing viewpoints in this letter; I'm sure that with a little bit of research you'll be able to find multiple examples of either on the Internet.

Please do not consider my letter to be an attempt to sway your opinion one way or another - on the contrary, what I'm trying to say that this discussion is far from over, and its outcome is far from being certain. For this very reason, from my professional standpoint I would regard "Is music piracy really stealing?" to be an excellent debate subject, where there are numerous valid arguments for either viewpoint. People much more mature and knowledgeable in that field
than a high school student Steve Geluso were able to very eloquently defend a position very similar to the one that he's taking in his essay, often using the examples and arguments very similar to his. (May I add that there is also plentiful statistical evidence that supports his viewpoint.)

As someone who is intimately familiar with this field, I see the position taken by Steve Geluso in his essay as reasonably valid, or at the very least, well within the opinion range of the reasonable individuals familiar with the problem. If anything, I would have given him extra marks for a non-trivial choice of the subject and for the skills required to research this subject from the side that is not
very well covered in the mainstream mass media.

Finally, I'd like to say that my decision to write this letter was not influenced in any way by Steve Geluso himself - please do not make his life any more difficult than it is because of it. I just wanted to make sure that you are aware of certain facts that are not very well known outside the professional circles. Please do not view this letter as just another piece of the "fan mail" that you might probably receive after this incident.

Best wishes -
Serguei Osokine.
P2P/server architect.
http://www.grouter.net/gnutella
http://www.ipuf.org/ipuf
http://www.p2pfund.com
11 Dec 2004.