"Normative" bullying - Part 1 - Basics

Definition of "bullying"

There is no formally-agreed definition for the term "bullying", and it is important not to define "bullying" too widely, for if the problem is over-diagnosed, it trivializes the problem and makes it appear that bullying is "normal", where the traditional line of thinking goes, "It's normal, therefore it's OK".  Thus, I am opting for one of the narrower definitions of bullying:

Taking advantage of a perceived imbalance of power to repeatedly hurt/intimidate others, using force, threat or coercion.

"Normative" bullying

In many cases of bullying, the bullies are violating social norms.  But in "normative" bullying, the bullies actually see themselves as enforcing social norms.  A group within society sets up norms (unwritten, socially-enforced rules) that mandate compliance with conventional/traditional ways of doing, being and thinking, and rejects those who fail to comply.  When these norms are typically based on, "Because we said so", rather than wider moral considerations, it results in suppression of individuality and creative, independent thinking, and, worse still, marginalisation of vulnerable/minority individuals or groups purely because they are considered to be different.  But when, say, a group of native whites ostracise a black person because of his or her skin colour, often, they don't see it as discrimination, they see it as punishing the black person for failing to comply with their rules, by analogy with how the police punish criminals for failing to comply with the laws of the land.

In those cases, the bullying does become "normal" as far as the given social groups are concerned, and so they argue, "It's normal, therefore it's OK".  What is then needed is for society as a whole to turn around on them and argue either, "Just because something is normal, it doesn't make it right", or, "It's not normal as far as we're concerned".  But in practice we often get a problem where it becomes "normal" because too many bystanders stand there saying "That's life" instead of being pro-active in trying to address the problem, particularly if the social group has a lot of power.

In my experience this argument can be remarkably persuasive.  For example, I, as a very moderate drinker, had experiences at university of being rejected by social groups because their rules were, you got drunk regularly and partied until 3-4am in your halls of residence, or you faced rejection for being different.  Many bystanders, and even some authorities, took the line, "Well, it's your fault for being different.  You know what the rules are, so if you don't keep to their rules, that's your problem.  Keep to the rules and you won't be rejected by the group.  The rules are the rules, and there isn't a problem with the rules, because if everybody obeyed them, there wouldn't be a problem."  It is the same sort of response as motorists get when they complain about being fined for speeding.  

In this case, using a simplistic "social norms"-based approach to tackling such bullying is unlikely to prove effective, because the bullies are actually the ones who are claiming to be enforcing social norms.  Moral considerations have to take precedence over the need to have rules and enforce them, otherwise we leave the door wide open for people with comparative power to perpetuate this kind of bullying.

Why all of this is important

The above form of bullying is a major factor behind most issues relating to discrimination (racism, ageism, sexism, homophobia etc- it crops up in every case of it).  For instance, a group of white people may consider it acceptable to ostracize a black person because the black person's skin colour and/or ethnic background makes him or her stand out somewhat from the rest of the group, arguing, "Well, it's his/her fault for not fitting in."  Groups may develop prejudices against those that they consider to be different in some way, and then accept those prejudices/stereotypes without question, with the idea being, once such behaviour becomes "normal", it must therefore be OK.

As a society, instead of targeting this type of bullying, we generally try to legislate for it, and focus anti-bullying/discrimination efforts primarily against activities that, in terms of harm caused to the recipient(s), are actually relatively minor.  We try to clamp down against use of language that can reinforce stereotypes, and make a big thing of high-profile "one person's words against another" cases, like in the infamous English Premier League row between John Terry and Rio Ferdinand where, as part of a foul-mouthed exchange of abuse between the two players, John Terry made an inappropriate one-off reference to Ferdinand's skin colour.  While Terry's behaviour was unacceptable, it was hardly likely to be as damaging as cases where black people are routinely marginalized by social groups because of their skin colour, and yet it got far more attention.  As a result, the general public become in danger of being branded racists for making one-off misjudgements when they lose self-control in an argument, while groups that continue to marginalize ethnic groups for being different continue to get away with it because they argue that their behaviour is enforcing social norms (whereas in the above case John Terry was clearly violating social norms) and take in bystanders by arguing that "that's life" and "rules are rules".

All of this creates a public dislike of "political correctness" and related policies, which in turn damages public support for efforts to make headway against this type of bullying.

Copyrights

Copyrights are a big and very controversial issue these days, especially as both copyrights, and technologies that facilitate free copying/sharing of commercial products, are widely abused nowadays.

Original purpose of copyrights, and their abuse

Copyrights were originally set up to encourage production and innovation by helping to ensure that content creators are rewarded for their work, thus giving them an incentive to continue producing.

However, there is a long-established trend towards powerful companies using copyrights as a way of stifling competition and attempting to maximise short-term profit margins, by charging money for uses of copyrighted products that were previously free, and reclassifying such free uses as "piracy", notable examples including making backups for personal use and the second-hand products market.  This is enforced using copy protection, where a convenient clause in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act forbids the circumvention of copy protection and thus always puts copyright holders, legally, in the right in these situations.  It may be immoral but many people are fond of dismissing moral-based perspectives with, "The law is the law."

This problem is fuelled by one of the key flaws in the modern-day version of free market capitalism: companies are typically required to deliver maximum profits to their shareholders over short time spans, resulting in "minimum service for maximum profit", instead of striving to offer a good service for customers, sacrificing short-term profits but most likely gaining profits in the long-term due to the larger loyal fan base.  It is no accident that among copy protection methods, Valve Software's Steam and Mojang's authemtication method for Minecraft on the PC are relatively popular with customers these days- Valve and Mojang are independent companies and so have more scope to compromise on short-term profits for the sake of improving the overall customer experience, and gaining more profits in the long-term.

Free sharing of copyrighted works

Free sharing gives consumers significant short-term benefits as it means that they get more for what they buy, and it can also stimulate people into buying more products due to the extra brand awareness and exposure that it generates.  Some people, of the sort who feel a duty to support their favourite content creators by buying their products, buy more, not less, as a result of indulging in copying and file-sharing, thus producing a win-win situation where they get more products, and content creators get more of their money.  Many are keen to downplay these benefits because they do not want to be seen as condoning/supporting illegal activities, but this leads to considerable bias when considering what forms of copying should and shouldn't be prohibited (we end up with circular reasoning along the lines, "X is illegal, therefore it's bad, and therefore it should be illegal").

However, free sharing, especially when it becomes excessive, presents a risk of the free rider problem developing, where people develop a mentality of, "Why buy anything when I can get it for free?".  When "free riding" becomes widespread, it erodes content creators' revenues and thus the incentive for them to continue producing, which negates the benefits to consumers of the free sharing.

Some forms of copyright infringement have much larger cons.  There are certain circumstances where the increased product/brand exposure and awareness can have a harmful effect, such as when unfinished or confidential products are leaked to the general public.  Copying for profit is usually harmful, where counterfeit goods are sold and money goes to the illicit sellers rather than the content creators, for people are far less likely to buy a product if they have already paid money for it to an illicit seller, than if they got it for free.

The "copying is theft" propaganda

There is a positive intention behind this- a lot of people don't realise that if they become "free riders", they effectively deprive content creators of money, just as they would do if they stole products from a shop, and so the "copying is theft" analogy helps to get that point across.

However, the "copying is theft" propaganda is often used as a "straw man" argument to try and push for tighter copyright restrictions, such as in the following exchange:

A.  I believe that infringing activity X probably doesn't erode sales and benefits customers, so an associated aspect of copyright laws probably needs to be relaxed.
B.  X is copyright infringement.  Copyright infringement is stealing.  Therefore X is stealing.  Stealing is always wrong.  Therefore X is always wrong.  Therefore X should be illegal.
C.  I believe that the second-hand products market should not be stifled.
B.  Second-hand products are like copyright infringement (since revenues go to the second-hand seller and not to the content creator).  Copyright infringement is stealing.  Therefore buying second-hand products is like stealing them from a shop.  Therefore the second-hand market must go.

As I have hopefully established, the real problems with free sharing of copyrighted products are somewhat different to those with, say, stealing them from a shop.  That doesn't meant that free sharing of copyrighted products is OK- sometimes it is beneficial to both consumers and content creators, but there are other cases where it can be more damaging to content creators than if the products were physically stolen.

As I touched upon earlier, many people refer to copyright infringement as "piracy".  I think the analogy with piracy out at sea works quite well regarding the organised, underground "for profit" forms of copying and unauthorised distribution of goods (which is the sort of thing that originally got called "piracy", dating back from well before the 20th century), but is rather excessive when applied to, say, someone copying a CD for a friend or playing two-player multiplayer using one copy of a PC game.

What to do about illegal file-sharing and copying?

Most authorities have traditionally taken the line of clamping down against "casual copying", such as people making copies of CDs for friends, or downloading copyrighted media from "above ground" websites, which has generally had the effect of driving the free sharing of copyrighted products underground.

Their argument is that, while it might make the underground problem worse, at least it stops a large percentage of the copyright infringement.  The problem is, while this method may address a large percentage of the legal problem, it probably doesn't help the moral problem.  Most of the people who indulge in "casual copying" probably do not buy significantly fewer products as a result of it, while some of the underground stuff that goes on, such as internet companies profiting from downloads of copyrighted material, and organised "pirate firms", almost certainly causes significant erosion of content creators' revenues.  And, as far as content creators who are struggling to find incentives to continue producing are concerned, it is the moral problem that matters- their revenues don't depend on what the law does and doesn't say, but rather on how many people are keen to support them by repeatedly buying their products.

The above makes me feel that perhaps we should be looking into ways of making the "free sharing" issue primarily legal and regulated, rather than illegal and underground, and educating consumers about the "free rider problem" (rather than spoon-feeding them with "copying is stealing" propaganda), and providing consumers with incentives to buy products.  Copy protection often detracts from this, because typically, official products force consumers to jump through hoops associated with the protection, while illicit versions tend to be stripped of the protection.  However, companies that offer online facilities associated with their products can adopt a policy of releasing products without any copy protection but requiring an online account to be created in order to purchase it via download and/or access online extras, so that it is easy for paying customers, and hard for non-paying customers, to get the online extras.  This is the line that Mojang has taken with the PC game Minecraft, for example.  Valve Software's Steam typically requires one-time online authentication upon installing a product, which is open to abuse, but its other features offer another strong example of how successful the "offering online extras to paying customers" approach can be.  Another option, most useful for products that don't have a significant online component, is  to bundle hard-to-copy extras with boxed copies of products.

Another issue, which I believe may detract more significantly from content creators' revenues than copyright infringement, is the way that publishers and distributors typically get a much larger slice of the "pie" than they do, a balance that needs to be tweaked in order to ensure that the creators get a large percentage of the money.  Some would be more inclined to buy products, rather than getting them freely off someone else, if they felt that most of their money was going to their favourite artists and not to whoever was publishing and distributing the work.  Digital distribution is helping this situation to a significant extent, as there are no issues with shipping and distribution costs, but the problem in the traditional retail sector needs to be addressed.