Pirate Yourself, Become a Best-Seller

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "It sounds like a dotcom-era business plan: 1) give it away, 2) ???, 3) make pots of money. Author Paulo 'Pirate' Coelho leapt out of obscurity and onto the best-seller list by giving away his books on the Net. The best-selling author of 'The Alchemist' will even help you pirate his books via his blog. His publishers were not pleased, but then his books went from selling 1,000 copies to 100,000 and then over a million. He gives special credit to pirate translators who are making his work accessible to a wider audience and convincing more people to read his book."

Comments

Re:How long have we been saying it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, we've stated that we believe it! Who are you to argue with what we've stated that we believe?

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

The core problem here is that you think "works" exist. They don't. Only copies exist. If the author doesn't want his work copied, he doesn't have to release it. I didn't ask him to, and damned if I'm going to let him filter all my communications just because he wants to censor me (and ANYONE interfering with my communications is censoring me, not just governments).

The secondary problem is that you subscribe to a Marxist labor theory of value (the idea that if someone works on something they "deserve" to be compensated - WRONG! Their choice to work, their work is worth only what the market will bear. If I spend years making a toothpick car, I've just wasted years, I'm not owed more because I work hard. The labor theory of value fallacy is at the heart of the failure of communism).

Re:Effective by design

[UbuntuDupe]

If copyright isn't essential for commercial production of such works, then the government shouldn't be wasting resources doing policing for it. It wasn't necessary for *this* work. It would exist with or without copyright. Copyright was, however, necessary for many other life-enriching works.

I also don't like the "wasting resources policing". Ideally, rights enforcement should be self-funding. Offenders should pay enforcement costs. To the extent that they don't, that's a criticism of the quality of rights enforcement, not the validity of the rights.

Except the fundamental distinction that a piece of physical property can only be used by a limited number of people at a time (whether an apple, piece of land, or house), whereas imaginary property can be used by the whole world at once, without any strain on the original "owner". It's senseless to try to make the latter behave like the former, when its limitless nature is a prime asset. The problem with that argument is that you can say, just the same, that the electromagnetic spectrum can be "used" by the entire world, limitlessly, at once. That is, everyone can simultaneously transmit along frequency X. No information will be transmitted, but hey, they're blasting waves, right?

I've seen this exact debate with IP opponents before, and the rest of the argument goes something like this:

"But that's not *really* using the spectrum because it doesn't transmit information, and information transmission is the relevant aspect of EM frequency use."
"So why isn't 'exclusive publishing' the relevant aspect of intellectual property use? My production of an intellectual work may very well be useless to me unless I can have exclusion rights for it. You may dislike the existence of these rights, but they meet the same 'scarcity' threshold you required of the EM spectrum."

Re:How long have we been saying it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why even try to reason with people who make those statements? They're out there in the great beyond, there's no reaching them. Probably the same type that wishes the government would put cameras in their house to protect them from terrorists.

Re:Effective by design

[UbuntuDupe]

The analogy with the spectrum is flawed. There are physical, measurable reasons why transmitting in the same frequency affects others ability to do the same. Nope. Others can *transmit* just fine. Those radio waves? Yep, they sure got blasted into the air. They may be superposed with others, but they absolutely got transmitted.

Airwaves are indeed a finite spectrum, by human standards. Copyrighted works don't have the same issues. Copying other people works can affect their bussiness model, but not their physical ability to publish and distribute. Nope, again, infinite people can send waves. Oh, yeah, I'm sure if you're one of those morons whose business model TOTALLY relies on other people being good perfect little obedient citizens and not exercising their natural right to use nature-given resources like the EM spectrum, then sure, you may not like people sending those waves. But that "dislike" ain't a basis for rights.

So why does "a desire to use the EM spectrum to transmit information" justify cordoning off rights in frequencies, while "a desire to exlusively publish an intellectual work" doesn't justify cordoning off rights in expression patterns? Arbitrary, arbitrary.

Good luck finding a scarcity distinction in IP that doesn't work against a property right you currently support. Hint: there is none.

Re:Effective by design

[UbuntuDupe]

That's not the point. The issue is that actual property does have characteristics that "intellectual property" doesn't. Oh, it is the point, I was showing how on an apples-to-apples comparison, they are equal. Both rights are intangible; both have physical ("real") referents.

. Actual property is limited, while copyright and patents are unlimited. Thus, all the constructs around property can't be applied to them. Well, for one thing, people who assert (totally valid and real!) physical property rights, assert them far beyond their limits. For example people who claim ownership of a cornfield kick out people who sleep in it, even though this doesn't limit their intended use for it. It's inconsistent to ground property rights in "inherent natural limits" while granting them far in excess of what nature imposes. Please see my other response on this issue, where I show how purported distinctions fall apart on closer examination.

This is not to say I agree with all of what IP proponents say -- I just think the issue is more complicated than the anti-IP side wants us to believe.

(Prediction: based on past threads, the mere fact that I am arguing against an anti-IP arguments means I *may* get one net upmod, while everyone else will get modded up regardless of their argument's merit.)

Re:You have it all backwards.

[UbuntuDupe]

I don't know if you're the original responder and intended to post AC or what, but regardless:

The point of a broadcast is to be heard, not merely to send EM waves into the stratosphere for fun.

Says who? Again, arbitrary, arbitrary. Why does the fact that some people like using the EM spectrum to transmit information, justify their right in it? What if some people do in fact like blasting radio waves, irrespective of information transmission (perhaps because of a religious belief)?

Many people using it at the same time to transmit information (hint: the whole POINT of a license) interfere with each other. Read up on Shannon's law

Yes, I'm familiar with that, genius. The fact that they interfere was the basis for my point about the original poster's in consistency.

The rivalrousness is inherent,

Yeah, rivalrousness is inherent in transmitting information through the EM spectrum. Just as it's inherent in the "exclusive legal right to publish intellectual work X". That was the point.

The notion of a right was created to address the inherent harm, the right wasn't created to CAUSE some harm to the property holder!

And you reveal the circularity of your argument!

you: I believe some property rights should exist. IP is not one of them, because there's no natural limit on copying an intellectual work.
me: So would you say EM spectrum rights are invalid because there's no natural limit on how many people can create radio waves?
you: No, the RELEVANT USE of the EM spectrum is to transmit information, and THAT is scarce.
me: And the RELEVANT USE of the idea-space is to create intellectual works over which you have some control against copying by others.
you: No, because that violates others' property rights.
me: *falls out of chair*

See also this post by the guy who made Gmail on what it means to own a right.

Hm, not sure why you linked to him, since:

-He supports "imaginary property".
-His whole post was just a semantic point that the label "stealing" should go to one kind of rights violation but not another.

So now you know why I don't believe in imaginary property.

No, I just know why you can't understand a simple point: you cannot consistently oppose IP but support spectrum rights on the grounds that there is scarcity in one and not the other.