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Only 2 in 500 College Students Believe in IP
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "David Pogue of the New York Times has an interesting story about how fewer and fewer people believe that infringement is wrong. He mentions talks he gave back in 2005 where people were willing to believe that making backups of DVDs you own is wrong. Today, however, at his talks, he was only able to get two people out of a crowd of five hundred college students to say that downloading a movie or album is wrong. He goes on, like many before him, to bemoan the immorality of young people today, saying: 'I do know, though, that the TV, movie and record companies' problems have only just begun. Right now, the customers who can't even *see* why file sharing might be wrong are still young. But 10, 20, 30 years from now, that crowd will be *everybody*. What will happen then?'"
If *everyone* believes that something is not wrong..... doesn't that sorta necessarily make it so? I mean the end-result of that assumption being prevalent in the vast majority of people is the death of the record and movie industry. Movies and music won't go away. They will become controlled and disseminated by other means. Perhaps bands never do studio recordings of some tracks and charge a lot for live shows to make money. Perhaps the era of "big money" bands and movies is done with. Frankly, with computer technology, a skilled hobbiest can reproduce studio quality recordings if given good musicans. A skilled hobbiest can make compelling movies.... seemingly perhaps better than Hollywood studios. So what are we left with? Music and movies are better and cheaper and not controlled by monopoly conglomerates. uhm... Yay! SI
copyright, and patents too. last 5 years. no extensions. no exceptions. you get a 5 year monopoly on your creation or idea.
after that its fair game. public domain. and no. you cant gouge the hell out of us on price to make up for it. create more crap and get another 5 years for that instead.
the time of beyond lifelong copyright and patent protection needs to end. its sucking up way too much time and resources. and gains nothing for the world.
and we just dont want to listen to people whine anymore.
"What will happen then?"
Well, as more and more content is released under permissive licenses and that pool is getting larger everyday and is irrevocable short of making giving away your effort illegal... I guess we'll all turn into small contributers that others remix into great works. And in turn we'll remix others contributions into our own (maybe great) works. Kind of like a cottage industry on steroids. And we have the great tubes to thank by reducing the barrier to entry and more importantly providing a means to replicate information effortlessly and cheaply.
Shh.
Yeah, generally it seems to be a pretty common idea. The laws and morality in people's heads does not include corporations. They aren't people and people do not think of them as people. So, it seems as though information should always be free... but if you want to make a penny on it you can't unless you own the property rights. Seriously, rather than asking them about if they think downloading copyrighted material is acceptable, toss in a question about selling downloaded media and see the objections flow.
However, if anybody is going to make any money on the product it is the corporations and this is iron clad.
As for the comments about Shakespeare, it was all security by obscurity. Play houses would steal other people's work by sending somebody with a good memory to go and write down the play as performed. This is where most of our records actually come from with the exception of Romeo and Juliet which was butchered so badly that it was published in order to get it right. If you look at the current ethic that the money making ability of IP goes to the owner, then it would allow people to have access to the plays but prohibit somebody else performing it. The article description of it as "immoral" is uncalled for. It certainly isn't as legally allowed, but the prohibition against sharing is non-existent whereas the prohibition against making money off somebody else's work without the owner getting a fair share is iron clad.
They are moral. They just do not respect the rights of corporations to do anything but make money. In fact, one could easily make the argument that torrents often get ratios above 1 (up/down), because it is required for the torrent to continue and as a moral imperative. What would happen if everybody stopped seeding after they had the file? The torrent would collapse. So morally (and I've actually seen that word used in this context) one needs to seed a torrent. Also, seeding is seen as giving respect to the torrent. That this is a good show/movie/album so *MORE* people should have it.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Submitter here. I'd have written IP out as imaginary property in the headline, or maybe even just copyright (which is all the article actually discusses), but I didn't have enough room for either route.
That said, you are correct that Stallman disagrees on calling it IP, even if you choose to subvert it by expanding it as imaginary property. However, my belief is that you'll never get people to stop clumping them together so long as law schools, where there's certainly no shortage of pedantry, are more than willing to lump them together. Thus, subversion is not the better option, it is the only option for those who dislike the term.
For what it's worth, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights and patents all have various flaws. Trademarks allow far too little fair use and fair use is too hard to defend (unless you WANT to pay a law firm big money to establish what a "reasonable person" might believe). Trade secrets, well, the theory is fine, but they're essentially impossible to protect thanks to the internet. The laws give a false sense of security at best. If you don't believe me, find a geek who hasn't heard of 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0. I have that stupid thing memorized. Copyrights, well, they'll live longer than I do, you can apparently copyright facts that aren't "facts" because they concern a work of fiction, I've yet to see anyone punished for sending out flat-out wrong DMCA notices no matter what the "perjury" part says. Patents, well, if they defended actual innovation, they might be somewhat reasonable. Why are they not legally able to take the fact that something was independently reinvented (possibly multiple times) as evidence of obviousness? It's not like anyone reads patents until they're sued for infringing upon them. They're written in incomprehensible legal gibberish that's no longer even marginally useful to an actual inventor...
So yeah, basically, I don't believe (i.e. trust) in any of that crap. They do exist, of course, but shouldn't. Not without a rewrite, but this time they should get people to examine the laws for perverse incentive and enforceability. Otherwise we have laws, but they do us no good. That's completely unreasonable, even if it's not hard to see how we ended up that way.
But I think an 'Fair Use Bill of Rights' or something along those lines would be useful. But I don't think it's only part of the solution.
For instance, you say: Thats right, if BSD copy and pasted all of those GPLed drivers and stripped the license and labled it BSD I wouldn't be heartbroken at all.
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I think there are a few issues here.
1. True pirates aren't those sharing recorded TV shows and TV movies on fileservers. True pirates are those who sell the recordings for money, perhaps on eBay or somewhere else. They're taking money away from sales that very well could have been if the rights-holder were to do the same thing (assuming they're not).
2. There is the issue of whether to illegally download the show or movie you want to watch, or go out and buy the DVD. But the DVDs aren't exactly cheap. Plus, why buy something you may only watch a few times?
Instead of selling a movie for $10 to $20 in a store, they could sell a rental DVD for $1 to $2 which will expire on its own. They have those DVDs now, don't they? They stop working after a number of uses.
3. Most importantly, illegally downloading TV shows and movies proves how popular it is. If people truly loved it, they'll go out and buy the actual DVD itself. More importantly, the illegal downloads don't have full quality, do they?
[My above comments in no way, no how, support illegal activities. My above comments are just my opinion on the situation regardless of legality of said actions. Do not take my comments as any legal advice.]
This is completely normal - high school and college students (in general, there are always exceptions) have no appreciation whatsoever for property rights of any kind or the idea that money or products might be worth something. We're just fleshy entitlement machines at that stage. There's just no context for it until you're out on your own and hold down a 'real' job for a while and learn the basics of budgeting and the idea of fair worth.
When I was in high school and college we made mix tapes (yes we had CDs, but burning wasn't cheap or easy) and pirated software with no concern at all. Now that I make my own living off software I appreciate the value of paying for useful software which has value added over open source. I also buy CDs because I want to support the artists I listen to; of course the value proposition there is changing, but there's still the basic idea of buying a product.
Asking college students if piracy is wrong is like asking Buddhists about Catholic heresies. It's just not meaningful except as a curiousity.
I think this is a good movement. I do not believe that not paying the film company or the music producer is right. They should get paid. However I do wholeheartedly believe the RETAILER, together with the associated overhead expenses and the stupid restrictions that come with this method of distribution, should die.
Come up with a model where I can more or less directly pay to the studio/publisher after playing past the first quarter of the album or movie or reading past the first quarter of a book, and I will happily follow it. Yes I have my credit card ready -- to pay the creators only, and only for what I consume (not just download).
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
This "poll" was done by show of hands in a large lecture hall. As a college professor, let me tell you: unless you're a very good teacher, the number of students in a college class who'll raise their hands when asked *any* question, up to and including "do you have a pulse?" is 2. Doesn't matter how big the class is: if it's a 2 person class, both will raise their hands. In a 500-person class, it's still 2, 'cause 300 of them aren't paying attention, and 198 are chicken.
One supports the law that benefits oneself.
There are many people who advocate that their own taxes be raised in order to pay for a social program they believe to be for the greater good, whether it be public education, socialized medicine, intervention in the Balkans, the fight against AIDS in Africa, amelioration of global climate change and so forth. Many super-rich people ask quite explicitly to pay more taxes. Warren Buffet is a good example.
The two things aren't mutually exclusive. You could easily be in favor of higher taxes as a way to benefit yourself -- it's all about defining 'benefit.' It's difficult to quantify a "warm, fuzzy feeling," but it obviously has some value to some people. I don't think it's hard to believe at all that people who have so much money that they can't figure out ways to spend it themselves anymore, would want higher taxes: it's a way of deriving benefit (or at least alleviating guilt?) from their money.Plus, advocating taxes has another easy bonus: by advocating taxes, you can take a certain amount of credit for whatever gets done with them -- you can point at the fight against AIDS, climate change, etc., and say "I did that," at least in part -- but you get to do it with other people's money instead of just your own. It's a difference of scale. Even a rich person can only do so much, but by advocating taxes and public projects you have the possibility of being able to do a lot more.
Both "greed" and "altruism" can be driven by self-interest; it's all about what a person finds desirable and pleasurable to engage in or possess.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The OP is framing this discussion improperly. This shouldn't be a discussion about morality or ethics; this should be a discussion about what is and what will continue to happen.
The fact of the matter is that companies want the right to sell whatever product or service they like, without being compelled to package those products and services in any way by the government. In this particular case, they're lobbying government to correct the slight of omission against the industry—that is, they feel victimized as no one is really helping them stop so-called "illegal" downloads from occurring and it's law enforcement's duty to step in.
Well I personally believe that any business should have the right to sell whatever they want, packaged any way they want (a broad and untrue generalization if ever there was one, to be sure—certainly we don't want to go back to the early 20th Century robber barons, so there have to be some controls in place to deal with monopolies and such). And I don't support any action that would compel me, were I to start a business, to package my products or services in any particular way. What I sell and how I sell it is a problem for the free market to solve, not government. What companies further want, and will never have, is the right to sell whatever they want packaged any way they want free of restrictions from the customer. This, quite simply, will never happen in any business. At the end of the day, in a capitalist democratic republic, the people can and always will vote with their dollars, and I don't believe that's going to change any time soon, nor should it. We can argue ethics until we're blue in the face, but it won't change reality...specifically, if people don't want to pay for what you're selling and there's an easier, more convenient way to get it, then that's what's happening. Forget about asking Is it right? Is it fair? Instead, try: Is it moot?
Businesses ought to be smart enough to sell customers the products and services they want in the way the customers want them packaged...this isn't rocket science, it's just good business. Music companies used to sell us music, and if you had the tools, you could legally make as many reel-to-reel or cassette tape copies as you wanted, provided they were for your personal consumption (turns out that it's considered "personal consumption" if you take your music over to a friend's house and play it there). Practically, the music companies may not have liked the idea of the time-honored tradition of guys making their sweeties mix tapes from copyrighted CDs...but they were smart enough, after some initial friction I'm sure, to lay off and let things unfold naturally. Sure, they included toothless legalese and mostly kept up a facade of controlling things, but everyone—and I do mean everyone, including those in the biz—regarded such restrictions as quaint. So how did this work out for business? Why didn't the mix tape deep-six their profits? Because mix tapes signal emotional investment to the sweetie-in-question for one big reason: they take time and effort. Music companies that provided music to customers in a way that they found convenient and enjoyable could still generate a good buck.
This time, however, it's completely different (much like it was completely different all the other times, too: cassette deck, reel-to-reel, VCR, CD-R, etc). The fact of the matter is, music companies want to sell people rights nowadays, not music—the right to play this song on this device, the right to transfer this song from device 1 to device 2. But people don't want to pay for these rights...customers want to pay for music. Dealing with companies to buy a legal abstraction is too troublesome when all people want is music, same as they've always had. Since the companies aren't selling music, though, the only way to get it is to steal it. These companies are all too willing to dig into their war chests to pro
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
The trouble is that a lot of this stuff is just part of our culture. As a nerd particularly things come up as a kind of humour (overdone by shows like Family Guy IMHO) where people make obscure references to films, shows and music. That's not all there is to it of course but it's a part.
Films like Full Metal Jacket, or Lord of the Rings. I didn't go to see it in the cinema but I did download lotr. Reading the book just doesn't cut it in this sense (of course it's better, that's not what I'm saying). I'm sorry but I just can't reconcile cutting out the studios altogether and still being friends with my friends and part of society.
In a cultural sense the labels and studios really have us by the balls. They own our culture.
Somehow the whole discussion here takes the side of the consumer who would like to have something for free. Fine. However, did you ever though about where it comes from?
In central Europe we have a problem with MythTV because the electronic program guide is hard to come by. So, I though I could develop such a service. The cost side was quickly estimated. My time for the development, the time to maintain the service, the cost to collect the program information (some TV stations demand money for this information). A quick look showed that the market would be big enough to sustain a business case based on a moderate monthly fee for my service.
The results of a quick survey were disastrous: Many people easily agreed to pay 5-10 EUR per year because they could share the program information with four, five friends. In the end, I had to factor in the people just sharing the information from the service. Due to this, there was no market left, the business case collapsed.
No, I did not spend my time and my money to develop an electronic program guide for MythTV in central Europe.
Did you ever though at how many maybe useful things we do not have because your attitude as a consumer did not make it worthwhile?
"If the artists were getting fairly compensated then maybe I would have come around."
That sir, is a baldfaced lie. The tenor of your screed belies your verbiage. See the following:
"As far as I'm concerned: the artists can starve."
I just want my cookies and I want them free!
"I have a sneaking suspicion that people would continue making music anyway, because it's what they love."
They love eating and sleeping under roofs too, but you don't give a crap about that, only getting freebies. That love argument is only put forth by the uncreative in order to shaft the creative.
"Today a band can form, play some live gigs, press their own CD's, and still turn a profit."
As long as they do every damned thing on their own and don't decide to hire out any portion of the process thereby freeing themselves of drudgery and making more time available to create. Oh, and adding that cost to their product, thereby making it less free for you.
"A guy can dream eh?"
Of cookies, music and videos he doesn't have to pay for. I know you're lying because if you actually thought as you write, you would simply not access the talents of say Pink Floyd and rely exclusively on artists who press their own CDs. Instead, you sneak around and rip them off because you really do want their stuff, you just want it free.
No, Berne is insane already. We need much shorter, fixed terms of years with renewals (where the maximum possible term is still shorter than Berne). We need to narrow the scope of copyright (e.g. architectural copyright needs to go). We need strict formalities, including registration, publication, deposit, and notice. We need to broaden exceptions to copyright in order to bring it in line with the public norms that exist as to works, unless there's some case where the public norm is so odious that it cannot be left to stand (not that I'm aware of any such). We need to get rid of sections 104A and 106A.
There is, in fact, a whole laundry list of things to do. Shorter terms is just one of them, and IMO, not even the absolute most important of them.
But all those people who want anything less than life+50 -- such as the people who (for whatever reason) want to return to the original 14+14 term -- necessarily support withdrawal from Berne. So there really does seem to be some support for it.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
This is the same way Microsoft uses piracy to dominate, if everybody uses their software (legally or not) then they control the market and people don't look for real alternatives.
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