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The Semantics of File Sharing
ethericalzen writes "The LA Times has published an opinion article about the legal semantics and analogies of file sharing. The article includes arguments from those who believe file sharing is theft and those who strongly disagree. As it points out, the common analogies to theft are often incomplete or inaccurate. The author states, "balancing the interests of content creators against the public's ... is a much more complicated task than erecting a legal barrier to five-fingered discounts." He recognizes that it is not a trivial concept, and that the clamoring from both camps about definitions and moral boundaries will dictate how businesses and users function in the future."
So in other words its just an article that is what Slashdot is like every time an *AA story gets posted? Some calling it theft and others saying its not?
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
The last resort of the desperate Internet argument.
Still, this will either a) finally put down on paper that file sharing is not theft, or b) put down on paper that the exchange of copyrighted information is, in fact, theft, and then everyone is in a world of poop. My old VHS recordings of Red Dwarf and The Muppets will suddenly become a complicated legal quagmire.
Now, quagmire is semantically defined as...
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
So the conversation goes something like this...
"Theft!"
"No, piracy!"
"No, NINJA!"
This is very much worth the read. It is surprisingly erudite for a newspaper and it is also pretty nuanced. The critical points are illuminated (theft as deprivation of a good or theft as an unjust enrichment), the debate is balanced and excellent sources are used. Well worth the click away from /..
Some things really just need to be explained in terms of themselves. Computer networks are not highway systems. They're not houses. They're not cars, or floor waxes, or dishwashing detergents. They do a totally unique thing, using technologies and paradigms that didn't even exist before computers were invented to make use of them.
OF COURSE analogies don't work.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
It is my opinion that factual clarity leads to intellectually honest debate and discussion about important issue, and that means clarifying fact from opinion, legal from morals, etc. Sometimes it may be necessary to put it down as semantics however, but I fele this is too often a cry used to exxtinguish debate/discussion, a promotion of intellectual dishonesty if you will;.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
It always amused me how the popular analogy from the other camp was "Oh, so if you want a car, it's okay to steal it is it?" So they can get all high and moral. But when you break it down and say "Okay, I'm going to make an exact duplicate of your car, never once depriving you of the usage of it. It will not inconvenience you in any way." The argument rather falls flat on it's face.
The whole "filesharing = theft" equation is almost entirely down to MPAA, RIAA and other organizations brainwashing people. Saying something a 1000 times doesn't make it true. If it did, downloading WOULD be theft by this point. But it's still copyright violation, which is why these groups, with their large political donations, have made copyright violation are far FAR harsher crime than theft ever was.
I break into your house and nick your Transformers DVD, at worst I'd probably go down for 30 days, unless I'm haibitual. Small fine probably. The charge will be breaking and entering, theft etc... I download Transformers from you instead, we BOTH face tens of thousands of dollars in fines, and many years in jail.
You're better off, from a jailtime perspective, heading into your local WalMart, nicking a few DVD's, then rape the cashier on the way out. You'll serve less time than if you get caught downloading the movie.
The semantic aren't really the issue here, as the powers that be want to have their cake AND eat it too. They want the association in the public eye to be IT'S THEFT! IT'S NO DIFFERENT THAN STEALING A CAR! But in the back rooms they know this is bullshit, and continue to push on with copyright violation punishments being exponentially increased.
What you or I call it is irrelevant.
"Downloading a movie off of the Internet is the same as taking a DVD off a store shelf without paying for it," adds the Motion Picture Assn. of America.
If this were true, the punishment would be the same.
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
Any time you find weasel words and bad analogies going unchecked, follow the money trail. This isn't about artist's rights. If anyone gave a crap about that there'd be an uproar about unfair record contracts and middle men getting all the money. Basically in this case you have:
1) Artists who hope to get rich by gaming the system (as a few artists certainly have).
2) Middle men going to extreme measures (like bankrupting or jailing people, draconian drm) to protect their "right" to collect most of the money.
3) Lots of people who are happy to take content without compensating anyone for it.
There are exceptions but the status quo is pretty bad. Still, the human race has bigger problems. Pollution. Overpopulation. War. Disease. Compared to that this is all petty bullshit and a waste of words. All these people just need to stop grubbing for every last dollar and accept that sometimes life isn't going to hand them what they're due, what they're worth, or what they've earnt. Other people will take you for all that you're worth if they can - it doesn't give you the right to adopt the same attitude.
In other words: Life ain't fair. Get over it. There are many more important things than the latest film or pop song. Stop penalizing everyone you can to protect your own money grubbing arse.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This article brings out the common observation that copies of files are, in theory, unlimited. If this is true, it means that the way music (and movies, and books, etcs.) are sold must change.
BUT this does not mean that music should be free--it means that today's "a la carte" method of selling music is obsolete.
A rough comparision would be to the cable industry. When you subscribe to cable, you are not forced to pay for each television show that you watch (think iTunes), you simply pay a flat rate and watch as much as you want. This is how recorded music must now be "sold." Selling music one file at a time does not reflect the "fluid" nature of digital media and is rightfully held in low regard by filesharers.
Looks more like, "Cue the trolling and stereotyping. Brought to us by our favorite, the ignorant anon. cowards. Stay tuned now for logic, followed by flamewar, Only on Slashdot!"
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I think what's really positive here (besides the very good article) is that these ideas have finally hit mainstream. There's at least acknowledgement of a debate, and I think that will really help to move things forward. About the only point that's missing is that the temporary (I use the term loosely) monopoly provided to creative works should be set so as to balance the production of work with the public interest. We've seen several lengthenings of copyright, but there was no discussion of whether or not these were a good deal for the public at large. Greg London's Bounty Hunters (http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters) gives a good picture of this side of the issue.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Seriously. The copies have value (otherwise, why would you spend the time to get them?). When you download something, the result is that more people have these valuble copies. For some kinds of things, this may even increase the value of copies that other people already have (anything that has network effects). So by downloading a copy of something, you create value. The only catch is, the copyright holder isn't able to take out their cut.
Copyright violation is not theft. Period, and end of story. There is no semantical issue here, its simply not true.
Now, that said it may ( or may not ) be a civil offense, and even may become a criminal offense if the IP industry gets it way, but its not by definition theft nor will it ever be.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Knee jerk reaction is that "Music sharing isn't wrong." However, consider if Microsoft was 'sharing' binary-only versions of Linux on P2P networks, many people would be rightfully angry; "Either respect the license, or stop distributing the material."
To this end, I'm in favor of making sure all Copyright violations are caught, but the punishment being fairly limited. So, if I download Britney Spears' CD without paying for it, then I have to buy it at $(list price * 1.5), for instance. In addition, terms for using and reusing materials should be clearly stated up front.
Then perhaps we can get to the point where the market says, "Look, $15 for your latest crappy pop-star and I can't share the music isn't worth it. I'll find a local artist on CDbaby.com instead." And, at the same time, we can enforce the GPL.
Do your part; respect the RIAA's music enough to leave it on the shelves and off your digital devices. The natural inclination to follow the money will allow the artists to do the rest.
How about sharing the contents of your bank account?
Let's face it folk. IP theft is theft. Just because it is easy to do or everyone does it does not make it right.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Yes, there are some who will make various intellectual arguments for why it should always be legal to rip the latest Disney movie for free. In the end, it's for the common good that we have created an artifical set of rules that allow creators to be compensated for their otherwise easily copied works. The guy on the street overwhelmingly agrees with this, just as he also agrees on an artificial speed limit for his car.
But there is room for serious dispute over where that artificial line is drawn, and how the rules get enforced. The problem isn't that copyright makes piracy (aka "sharing") illegal. It's that technological enforcement of copyright via "digital rights management" (DRM) just goes too far in restricting human nature. And such attempts to force universities or ISPs to police their students from committing piracy is draconian (plus so lame).
The hard problem isn't to decide whether or not to have copyright law. It's how do we let Disney be paid for every copy of a movie, while still allowing the common man to make a backup copy of his DVD library, or lend a movie to a friend, or use a clip in a remix?
Why do we need analogies? Why do we need to find similarities? It is a simple case of two parties, one of which is accusing the other as the source of their financial losses. It does not matter what do you call it. If one side can prove that their losses were because of the actions of another, that's it. Copyright violation is already a crime. If I make a VHS tape of the Seinfeld episode, they will have hard time proving that I incurred significant losses on NBC. If I made a torrent out of it and put it on the seeder it's another issue.
See? No need for bad or any analogies.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Analogies are always incomplete and inaccurate (the former necessarily implies the latter, anyhow); if they were complete and accurate, they would be equivalencies, not analogies.
What is important is whether the similarities in the things which are held up as analogous support the conclusion drawn from the analogy; IOW, whether and to what degree the similarities (or, conversely, the inaccuracy and incompleteness of the analogy) are relevant to the purpose of the analogy.
I have a word for "file sharing": I call it "speech". I have the Right (as in God-given, inalienable, fundamental, and/or natural -- take your pick) to repeat any speech that enters my realm of experience from any source.
Before the internet became popular, copyright did not very significantly encroach upon the territory of Free Speech. Now, no one can reasonably claim that copyright does not restrict Free Speech and education. Obviously, Free Speech is more important than copyright, just as Democracy is more important than monopoly privileges.
File sharing is Free Speech.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Sharing files without permission is.
/. summary isn't. Big surprise there...)
"File sharing" is just a technology that lets people share files.
When it is used to share files without authorization legal issues come up, with copyright violation being the top one.
But, if I share a Ubuntu ISO over a file sharing program, no laws anywhere are being broken.
Can we please be more specific? With specificity, it is hard to have an argument.
(The article is correct, the
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Every illegal download is a lost sale.
Their entitled to THOUSANDS OF TIMES THEIR ACTUAL LOSSES from every infringer they haul into court.
You can absolutely identify the infringing user and computer from nothing more than an IP address and a timestamp.
There is no other explanation for the overall decline in CD sales.
We're only doing this for the artists.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I had to put an end to comments on this article somehow, before it rehashes absolutely every argument that has appeared in every other article about filesharing and the RIAA.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Of course it's not. Theft is shoplifting the CD out of the store and getting a slap on the wrist for doing so. Copyright violation is a $220,000.00 fine from an ignorant, plus having to listen to the RIAA crow about their ONLY court win so far.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Go out and repeat the already plagiarized I Have A Dream speech, and the King estate will sue you for copyright infringement. All this despite the fact that it was read for free at a highly attended public gathering.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
That I am able to copy something from you without you being able to stop me is called EVOLUTION!
This article gives a surprisingly nuanced and fair overview of the issues at hand. We've been over these things a million times on Slashdot, of course. Still, it's encouraging to see the greater public getting their heads around what really is a complex issue.
The one point I don't think gets mentioned nearly enough is the potential value of free copying to society. We hear plenty about the supposed cost. But in a world with liberal sharing of creative works, those works will get into the hands of many more people, including people of limited means. People will be exposed to amazing works they might have otherwise missed. Works will have to compete for attention based more purely on their content, rather than on the marketing muscle behind them. New works will be created that are inspired by, and in some cases built from, the numerous creative sources made available through sharing.
Best of all, free copying creates a worldwide decentralized backup system for these works. Many works will be saved which might have been otherwise lost because they were copyrighted for far longer than they were profitable.
We are witnessing the beginning of a new era, where creativity spews forth from all corners and mixes in many unexpected ways. Much of it will be crap, but some of it will be mind-blowingly fantastic. An environment of sharing with few restrictions will make this possible, and it will preserve the best of what is produced for generations to come.
Person A buys some friendship bread from Company B then adds some ingredients and gives it to Person B who then adds some ingredients and gives it to Person C and the chain continues on and on.
/.
In case you can't connect the dots on your own
Person A legally purchased music then added bandwidth and computer time to pass along the music to others.
I wonder if that's the first bread analogy on
Then perhaps you'd like to purchase the rights for public demonstrations of the "happy birthday" song that you will inevitability sing when something increments their age count.
Yes the "Happy Birthday" song is copyrighted and still collecting fees to this day from radio stations, etc. It's set to expire in 2030 apparently (i'm sure copyright extensions will prevent that).
The real question that should be asked is, at what point does a piece of music become part of the public domain culture? What's next? A patent on Christmas?
For an awesome (legal download) documentary on piracy, copyright, etc I highly recommend Steal this film 2.
I like this quote:
Put this way, it seems obvious that the sharing of ideas (and intellectual property is essentially ideas, isn't it?) is free speech. So, the question is: Is free speech free as in beer, or free as in... my head hurts.
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear,.. ah crap..
The internet IS a peer to peer file sharing tool.
expandfairuse.org
Yes. Lots of people get that copying is not theft. But some miss it on downloading. There is no such thing as "illegal downloading". Or there shouldn't be-- I fear that the MAFIAA may yet succeed in temporarily outlawing and prosecuting downloading. It is the uploading of copyrighted material without permission that is illegal. Otherwise, anyone listening to radio, either old fashioned AM/FM or streaming via the Internet, could be a criminal, especially if they are recording the broadcast. Anyone could put up a web site that plays some copyrighted jingle, and thus make every visitor into a crook. And, no one can tell for sure whether some data is copyrighted if they can't examine it. How should anyone know without listening to it whether something labeled as a song by, say, Prince, is in fact what it says it is, or is some parody or karaoke performance or a free ringtone version or a fan's live recording of Prince in concert? Or is the real thing, a polished studio recording, but is totally legal to download because Prince gave it away or because its copyright has expired?
And note, an actual transfer has to occur, merely "making available" is not enough to be guilty of copyright infringement. But even uploading isn't always illegal. In the case of a P2P system like BitTorrent, I would say only the person who ripped a copyrighted work and seeded an encoding of same without permission is committing copyright infringement. The rest of the people who participate in the sharing of some copyrighted work are only uploading what they downloaded, even starting to upload before they've finished downloading because that's how BitTorrent works.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
have been giving away free content since inception. this is of course supported by advertising. the business model works just fine
business based on the distribution of books, dvds, cds, etc., meanwhile is based on the control of tangible media you need to manufacture, put on a truck, and ship to a store
what the internet did was force the radio/ tv economic model on the book/ dvd/ cd distributors
it's disruptive technology defined. and, unfortunately for entrenched business interests based on distribution of tangible media, completely irreversible and completely unstoppable
meanwhile, all of the moral arguments are complete bullshit. it's just a business earthquake, plain and simple. pointing to morality is merely crocodile tears on the part of some very powerful, but dying businesses
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You've got all this bits that need to go somewhere... so you get disk drives.
Sure they're cheap, but they are not green. They break, then you throw them out...
Wouldn't it be nice if *you* didn't have to store those bits? All those songs are "out there", somewhere. If you could legally and conveniently get them "on demand", you wouldn't have to be storing them yourself.
So, what's the fair price for "everything online"?
I dunno. I pay $40 a month for a bunch of crappy TV... (although I think I could do without it sometimes. Maybe when the kids move out...) It seems like a lot, but there is no DRM on it. It goes to all 5 TVs in the house, I can record it onto Disc, my computer, even old VHS, if I want... Everyone in the house can watch it. People kind of expect that you have a TV, and that it has lots of channels.
No one expects you to have lots of music.
Rhapsody charges $12.99/month for "unlimited"... of course it is not really "unlimited", you do have bandwidth limitations, right? Still, I don't subscribe... it is still "too much" (and it has DRM, etc.) I just can't see spending $150+ year when I have "free" radio, songs I already own, books to read, yard work to do, and oh, yeah, that crappy TV. I just don't have time enough to listen to justify the extra cost for "just music". (Besides, when I listen to Jonesy's Jukebox (radio), I get free music AND someone else does the work of selecting the playlist.)
Let's say you could get any song ever published for $X/month. If it could be downloaded to your player of choice, DRM free, what is the value of X?
Ok, Time for dinner, so enough of this ramble. I think that gives you the gist... I agree with the parent. We need a cheap "service" that offers everything unencumbered. There will always be leeches, but... so what?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Here's an analogy for you:
Supposing the leader of country, lets call him Hitler, made it such that all the german cultural productions couldn't be sold or broadcast unless they went through an organization of his. This organization diddled the originators out of what money they thought they were going to get. Furthermore the artists basically wanted to have their works heard by all the people, but the government decided when and what people could listen too, except for the wealthy who could pay to have their own copies of the large bodies of work.
The money raised by this organization was used to persecute a minority based on their choice of a religion that was a foundation of Christianity which is the dominant religion.
So if a person copied a piece of their culture so that they could listen to it when they wanted to should they be bankrupted for the rest of their lives?
Answer: Of course! They are a pirate, and that's how the law says we treat pirates. You want to obey the law right?
You might argue about how it depends on the use of the money. Well ok, I guess the people working for the RIAA need to open up their uses of the money so that we can judge if revenue from our culture is being spent appropriately or not.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
Simple: if it was theft they wouldn't need copyright law or DMCA to prosecute file sharing etc, they _could_ choose to use the various laws covering theft for that. Not saying they would but they could.
:).
Of course, if they convince enough people and the courts that it's theft, then legally speaking it'll be theft, BUT that hasn't happened yet, so meanwhile, the rest of us are going to keep saying its not theft
What's closer to theft is the Corporations convincing the government(s) to _retroactively_ take stuff out of the public domain and make it theirs.
When that was done we lost a lot of access/use of those stuff, stuff that we used to have the right to use freely.
What filesharing does is it makes the Corporations lose a lot of access to our money. But the last I checked, they didn't have an automatic right to our money.
OK you have two types of things property, it just is at the founding of the US that potentially included other people but it was something had. The right to own property and keep is is a basic fundamental right, it can be taken away via the courts or via eminent domain but otherwise it's yours to do what you please with.
Copyright created IP and is supposed to last for a limited time only to foster the creation of more creative works. We started going down the slippery slope when it got extended further and further. As people had control over things via copyright for longer and longer it looks more and more like property.
There needs to be a balance between the two competing forces some copyright holders have lots of money and have been buying congress critters for years (Disney and others) to keep expanding the scope of copyright. The people who have a lot of money as a whole but little on the average have a desire to be able to use things freely after copyright has expired. It would appear that the people in general ignore copyright it does little for them in there view. Striking a balance does not seem to hard music more than a few years old is past it's peak same for movies. Software is a bit of a special class as it's iterative so lets put that as maybe a few years without updates. To some extent go back to requiring registration of copyright but add a copy be sent to archive at the library of congress in it's most complete form (copy's of the original film or studio master as released, binary and source for software). Mix in the freedom to format shift copyright material. Allow the import of materials legally acquired in the source country. Ban any technical/contractual means restricting the application of users rights. After thats done you could look at making personal copyright infringement a minor criminal infraction like j walking or speeding nothing to go to court for and leave egregious forms like mass duplication of fake DVD's where they are. You might end up with a working system at this rate IP is the prohibition of our age it looked good on paper but not in application.
No sir I dont like it.
goes the familiar RIAA/MPAA-endorsed jingle...
And you know what? They're right. But neither would I attempt to steal the artist's living through creative accounting. I think the point they're trying to make is that they're far bigger jerks than you could ever hope to be, so don't mess with them.
Next time someone talks about filesharing as if it's stealing, remind them that you lose money on every download. You have to pay for the bandwidth, the equipment, and - by golly! - that all gets very expensive. By the time you're done, you just don't have anything left to pay the record companies... sorry!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I have a great idea. I'll start PAWAA (publishers and writers of america association) group, and we'll take down those dirty libraries. Who are they to allow people to read without buying their own copy of a book?
Copyright infringement is more like trespass than like theft.
In trespass, you're violating the property owner's legally conferred right to control use of his/her property.
Trespass law balances social good against property rights. For example, in the UK (if I understand right) you can't stop hikers from crossing your meadow. The analogy to hiking would be the activities that constitute fair use.
Trespass, like copyright violation, can be commercial or non-commercial. Commercial copyright infringement is like subletting your apartment without ever leasing it in the first place.
Where the analogy breaks down is that even just walking across someone's land is more intrusive than sharing a file. Another breakdown is that there's no common meatspace equivalent to inviting thousands of people to bypass a toll booth.
Obligatory car analogy in comic form.
> Congress can repeal copyright at any time.
This small point is where it all hinges. Copyright infringement is violating a government granted monopoly, and only that. So it IS illegal but only immoral in the sense that a moral person shouldn't violate the law except in exceptional circumstances, especially in a nation that remains mostly self governed. (Although Obama will certainly be planning some CHANGES in that department... and the next revolution comes ever closer.)
But copyright infringement can't be theft or even considered fundamentally immoral. It is just a government policy decision and is no more moral or immoral than tax policy or some obscure OSHA regulation could be. Because Congress could abolish the whole mess tommorrow on a bare majority vote with no worries about what the courts might say. And the new copyright free reality would be exactly as moral as what we live in now. Whereas if it were 'property' the idea that Congress could legislate a legitimate property right out of existence on a mere 51-49 vote would be cause for loading up the sporting goods.
> Oh, and the order that items appear in the Constitution is not any indication of priority.
And just picking nits.... but order within the Consitiuition isn't important at all, but the order of Amendments is VERY important. They are basically patches, and if you don't apply yer patches in the right order unexpected things can happen.
Of course one interesting side effect I suspect hasn't been pondered a lot would be what impact does the 1st Amendment have on the copyright clause? If you have this absolute right to print granted by the 1st and it runs into a government granted monopoly putting whole swaths of creative output out of print and UNPRINTABLE for a century and growing every time Mickey Mouse nears the public domain.... might make for an interesting case to watch the Supremes ponder.
Democrat delenda est
If you went into somebody's house while they were at work and copied all their CDs, would they be angry??
I think the answer is "only if you made a mess or broke the door lock".
If you left everything just as it was, most people would just shrug it off.
If they called the police and said "somebody was in here and I think they copied some CDs" I'm betting they'd just shrug as well.
Favourite quote FTA: "I like the MPAA's logic that downloading a movie is the same as stealing a DVD. That would mean that those folks who get caught should be punished the same way as you would punish someone who physically stole a DVD or CD. Submitted by: Mark"
At the moment the punishment for file-sharing is much greater than the theft of physical CDs. How is this possible?
No sig today...
Assuming that copyright infringement is wrong (which is not unanimously concluded here at /.,) who is it that commits the wrong?
A) The person making the "goods" available without permission?
B) The person who acquires said goods without IP holder's permission/going through the legal channels of acquiring said "goods?"
C) A&B?
I contend that "Intellectual Property" is emphatically not speech (or press) and that if the owner of the IP wants it to be considered as property then the IP should not get any first amendment protections.
alright so file sharing is not stealing or sharing, exactly. We've waded through the BS, now is there a solution? A way for the content producers to get paid and the consumers to have easy access?
It used to be that if you wanted to hear music you had to;
A. Learn to play or know someone who does
B. Wait for someone who was able to play to come by.
Since we live in a capitalist system the way to get them to come was to pay them. Been that way since forever really.
Up until about 1950 or so being a Musician was a respectable profession. You could make enough to live on. And you didn't have to go on tour, the speakeasy or night club paid you well enough.
Then along came Record Companies.
Now if you know a Musician, he or she is treated kind of like a Junkie without the fun of the Heroin. They have to have second "REAL" jobs. Artists are in the same boat. People had real paintings on their walls and you could make a real living at it. Oh and Actors too, don't forget them. And Stagehand, Ushers, ticket takers, bouncers, barkeeps, cigarette girls, hatcheck girls, etc etc etc....
Record Companies threw all these people out of work but thats ok, because they could hear music on phonographs and radios, watch TV and Movies in the theater and the productions values were much better but the plots kept going down hill. You get the picture. If not watch a movie called That Thing You Do! (1996) Pay attention and you will understand what I am getting at.
Fast Forward, but before the Computers and CDs, then DVDs. Most of the people who threw those people out of work back in the 50's realized in the 70's that they were next. Nobodies could make their own music and publish in on cassettes. DIRECTLY TO THE PUBLIC!!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning:_Parental_Advisory
Hello RIAA/MPAA
Well they claim that downloaders are putting people out of work, but how come the Chemical Brothers shows are always sellouts and the never get airplay? Celine Dion and Barbara Streisand tickets sell for $200 a pop. Bands don't make money from records anymore, they make if from shows. Like they used to. The ones I know (I'm from Seattle) like it that way. Give it some time, well do in the MPAA too. Seriously Hollywood blows chunks.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
This wouldn't sound so silly if copyright infringement was equivalent to stealing.
Note: Dell is still selling this model, so you might be charged with the crime of... Uhh... "Acquisition Without Payment of Something that is Legitimately and Legally For Sale". I'm not sure what the sentence for that is, but you will be depriving Dell of their potential income, and going by RIAA standards that is probably worth 20-to-life.
"It's not theft."
..."
So f*** what?! Everyone's so wrapped up in playing mind games they're missing the real consequences piracy causes, and I'm NOT just talking about a couple dollars. From the lost of trust and respect content creators have in a public they apparently can't turn their backs on (borrowed any towels from the Hilton?) to your reputation being mud when it comes to the corporate assets. You all sold yourself out, present and future, and for what? The right to be entertained.
"The music companies want you to believe you have harmed them out of their fair share."
And downloaders want people to believe they're helping any way they can. Everyone has an agenda.
"But what if tomorrow I invented a replicator just like you'd see on Star Trek.
Is this what slashdot's reduced to? Justifying something based upon something we don't even have? Yeah! We get one of those and everything will be OK.
"The argument doesn't hold up because bread is physical. It's a collection of atoms. You can't wave a magic wand and have an exact duplication of that bread. Data is more ethereal. It's easy to duplicate."
There's nothing ethereal about electricity. Or did you think the internet ran on pixie dust?
"I'm not against the *AA because I want free music, I'm against the *AA because they are trying to legislate against one of the basic things about computers and data. It's easy to duplicate and they don't want it to be without paying them money or fines or whatever."
Oh that's complete BS. The public has two choices when it comes to MPAA/RIAA/Valve (oh wait you thought piratebay only carried RIAA/MPAA stuff?). Pay them for what one uses, or leave it alone.* The nature of data is completely irrelevent. The "benefitting from..." isn't.
*Apparently "leaving it alone" is something people are incapable of due to the "nature of data". Sure glad I'm part of the same species you all are. Even when you all try to make yourself look good, you make it worse.
And you're entitled to that opinion, but by your reasoning...
Listening to your car stereo at 120dB in a residential neighborhood on a Sunday morning is free speech.
Yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater is free speech.
Threatening to kill your neighbor is free speech.
Standing across the street from an elementary school and exposing yourself is free speech.
Carrying a sign that says "F*** N***ers" in Harlem is also free speech.
Oh right, none of those things are actually protected as free speech. Just because you can say or display things doesn't make it a free speech issue. It's okay to quote minor excerpts of a book. However, there's a magic line where it becomes copyright violation. If you're sharing entire works, you're crossing that line.
Can someone please downmod this idiot for using tt for every single comment he posts.
However, if I give you a CD that's sharing if I expect it back or if I'm expecting another CD (swapping, really, but I'm sharing my stuff). If I'm expecting nothing back, that's a gift and if I'm expecting money back, that's either a sale (if I didn't make the copy or if I have a license to sell copies), or piracy (if I don't have a license and its a copy).
PS can the US please pay the estate of all the authors they stole from before they recognised copyrights? And the interest. Thank you .
The argument pierced with this explanation is the one "so it's OK if I take your car, then?".
The argument you're trying to show is still valid after this rebut is "so aren't you depriving the manufacturer of a sale". The rebut to THAT is, "only possibly, but possibly they would have to spend more selling than they'd get from the sale, so I COULD be saving them money. Can I get a cut?".
If file sharers were the kind of high end organised criminals the RIAA makes out I'd imagine RIAA employees would be fearing for their lives right now.
I think the fact they're still operating unscathed shows how harmless file sharers actually are.
What is more, look at this quote (and there are many more e.g. in this scholarly article on software patents demonstrating how well intellectual property -and the need to avert semantic obfuscation such as referring to infringement as "theft"- had already been understood centuries ago) by Thomas Jefferson from 1813:No doubt, adequate (unlike unlimited) copyright protection can cause some encouragement to produce new works (it is considerably more controversial whether a patent system has similar benefits for innovation though).
What the founders' constitution never called for was a surveillance society in which people are prosecuted on inaccurate, legally untenable comparisons to "stealing" to put outdated business models on eternal life support rather than pursuing the original objective full of well-reasoned restraint:
Mod parent: -1 Interesting, But Wrong
Keep your house. Don't let anyone in. Don't allow people to visit. Don't sell it and don't rent out rooms,
It's still worth something. It's your home.
Keep your idea to yourself. Don't let anyone know about it and don't let anyone find it.
It is now worthless.
WE the people you're trying to sell to make it worth something. Our existence or lack doesn't change the value of your house, mind.
Listening to your car stereo at 120dB in a residential neighborhood on a Sunday morning is free speech.
It is also annoying. So people will (barring other avenues of redress) beat the shit out of you and turn it off. So laws to give another avenue of redress is made to cut down on the beatings.
Yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater is free speech.
If there's a fire, it's a good idea to yell it out. If you cause a panic, that's bad and people could sue you for malicious actions.
Threatening to kill your neighbor is free speech.
Yup. Else why isn't Ballmer in Jail for "I'll fucking KILL Google"? If it's expected that you'll carry out that threat, rather than wait until the death has taken place, try to prevent it.
Standing across the street from an elementary school and exposing yourself is free speech.
How can having your bits out be speech?
Carrying a sign that says "F*** N***ers" in Harlem is also free speech.
Yup. See the 120dB example above however. Feel free to do this (and don't use "*"). They shouldn't have killed you, but that doesn't make you alive again. And note, they WILL be done for killing you, if caught.
See how much it is worth.
Nowt.
What if nobody WANTS to buy your game? How much is it worth?
Nowt.
In both cases, you've still paid out money to create the game. So it's only worth what SOMEONE ELSE OTHER THAN YOU will pay for.
So if the GP is the one making your game worth anything at all, why complain when he says "nah, nothing"?
Look up theft of service. It seems to me that that could apply to your movie theater analogy.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
If you pirate music or software, you can't make the argument (you could, but it is a stupid argument) that you haven't stolen anything because you copied bits and not a physical item like a CD. You have deprived the copyright owner of the money that is due to them for the production of the bits you stole. Don't go and say that the copyright holder isn't deprived anything because you wouldn't have bought the material in the first place. You copied the bits, therefore you wanted the bits. You just didn't want to pay for the bits.
Whether or not the way the music/movie/book industry works is fair is a red herring in this argument. The fact remains you took something that someone else wants to receive compensation for. Period. It's not the complicated.
Finally, Karl Sigfrid is making the inaccurate assumption that creativity and craft that is desirable by others is an unlimited resource. It a limited resource like any other. If creativity and craft were limitless, we'd all have talent and wouldn't need records, movies, or books. We could make our own entertainment.
The problem with the "theft" argument is that it misleads by not showing the true nature of "infringement". As a contemporary of mine pointed out, "oathbreaker" would be more accurate. It covers not only what is being used (goods, services, etc) but crosses national boundaries as well. Content creators regardless of size have offered their material in good faith under the understandings that society has forged with them. Oathbreakers as members of society have broken their side of the agreement and gained an unfair benefit over those who do play by the rules. Everyone ultimately suffers under such a state of affairs. Including those who engage in such behavior.
I tried to find my original message (posted on a different article), but I can't, so I'll just summarize:
- Imagine your boss tasked you to write a 100 page document, and after a week of work, you produce said document. The boss says, "Beautiful; great job" and you go home.
- You wait.
- And you wait some more, but no check arrives. You just gave away a week's worth of labor, and received no pay for that effort. That's called THEFT OF LABOR and is a violation of your basic rights.
----- Now imagine that your name is Stephen King, and the document you created was actually your latest short story. Your "boss" (aka the readers) copied the story off the internet, never paid for the story, and thus stole Stephen King's labor.
----- In another time (1700s/1800s) that would have been called slavery: Working for people, producing products, but not getting paid for it. It's a violation of the most basic human rights.
I don't consider downloading to be stealing property.
Instead I consider it to be theft of another man's labor.
I wouldn't want it done to me (creating documents w/o pay),
and I'm sure Mr. King, et al do not like it either.
In my opinion: If you download a product, and you either (a) enjoyed it or (b) stored it in your personal library, then you have committed a Human Rights violation. You've enslaved another person to entertainment you, and stolen their labor without just compensation. IMHO you should pay the writer some cash; give him what he deserves.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Yes, a replicator would disrupt current bussiness practices just like the Internet has disrupted the media distributing industry. Will that lead to anarchy? I don't know. We, as in our society, can simply adapt. How will "hardware" providers adapt to that is another question alltogether. If you can replicate (out of a bunch of almost free matter, I presume) a brand new Ferrari, how is anyone paying anything for a ferrari anymore? This would be probably be outlawed - out of pressure from the industry if nothing else. Curiously, IANAL, but I would defend that replicating something doesn't infringe on whatever patent was used to build it - since you don't have to *know* oe even *use* any of the methods described in the patent to replicate it. Weird.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
What i would like to see is a detailed study of how reducing the length of the debated copyrights to a realistic term. Something at least within the ballpark of patents. (yes copyrighted works probably should be longer because the intellectual value does have a longer shelf life.) But i have hard time taking a law seriously thats saying the legalese version of a kid saying "it's mine and i wanna keep it forever!" If material would be release into public domain after 30-40 years i'd be much more likely to respect this sort of law. As it is now stuff my grandparents read and listened to could quite possibly still be copyrighted after i'm dead. Thats just silly. Not even fucking stupid. Its beyond expletives. The current law is the equivalent of law saying anything you find on the sidewalk has to have been there for at least a century and half because it still belongs to the owners otherwise
Your analogy would be much improved if you were talking about yeast or bread dough.
Person A is a provider of live yeast. He has a big ball of dough and sells little bits of it to customers who can then incorporate it into their unyeasted bread dough to make it rise.
Person B comes along and instead of paying for a little bit of dough he just takes a tiny piece without paying.
Person A is not deprived of his yeast. The remaining yeast will replicate as it does normally and he can continue selling to his paying customers.
Person B has acquired goods which were being offered for sale at a price without paying. Is this stealing?
Person B if he is clever can use the bit of dough he now has to pass on yeasty goodness to his friends Person C, Person D and Person E.
Person C, Person D and Person E could have gone to Person A for yeast but this is free yeast and besides it's sharing not stealing. Person A isn't being deprived of his yeast.
I didn't steal their work. A new copy I make involves their effort not at all.
are now synonyms for plagarism?
There are a number of good articles by Cory Doctrow on intellectual property and digital information in general but basically he argues that we have to recognise the differences between knowledge and property or face 'an endless war between intractable positions of ownership, theft and fair dealing.'
First of all the RIAA does not go after the individual who downloads songs they go after the person who allows others to download songs. This is one fact that seems to be ignored, the sharer simply rebroadcasts the work for others to enjoy. It would be like someone rebroadcasting a pay-per-view boxing match or showing it at a bar that only paid the individual charge. There was an infringement (they rebroadcast or redistributed with out the express written consent), this is not stealing, this is breaking the terms and conditions when service was purchased (which may not be disclosed and therefore invalid). Second when Karl stated that the music is a limitless resource he was saying the physical work has a limitless supply because it can be copied nearly infinitely with no direct cost. If as you state that by coping a work you are using up creativity and craft then the work would diminish as it was copied, this obviously does not happen which is why it is infinite.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Well, since it is no longer a secret, and that means the owner of the previously-a-secret no longer HAS a secret, that could be theft.
Nobody has EVER said "code theft".
And identity theft only occurs when someone uses that identity information to retrieve goods or services that are charged to you. AND THAT is theft. You still have your identity but someone has pretended to be you and taken your money.
So 1 has never been said, one is definitely true and the other is considered theft only when used to commit fraud or theft.
0 out of three IS bad.
"I drink your milkshake!"
Nah, it's not about expanding the definition of friend. Though the music industry types like to play dumb in public (what's an MP3? Me dumb exec, me no understand!), I suspect they're smarter than that.
What's really going on is, at some point the record labels figured out that it's easier to control the distribution channels than it is to find, sign, and nurture good artists. Control of the distribution has the side effect of giving you the power to force artists into signing contracts that are more appropriate for the relationship between pimps and prostitutes. In effect, it's a monopsony.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
When your game is the only game in town, it doesn't matter if it's crooked.
So the reason they're having histrionics now over private non-commercial copyright infringement where they didn't in the era of home taping/mix tapes is that home taping didn't threaten their control over distribution. But the internet does. They know it, they're scared, and they're right to be scared.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Nice use of a useless word, but I think the RIAA should quit while they're still in the green and reinvent itself as a nationwide broadband ISP.
Like Bugs Bunny once said, if you can't beat 'em, lick 'em.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
My apologies, I've misread one of your lines:
Your original statement wasn't, "you can reconstruct the expression if you have all the facts." Accordingly, the logical negative I corrected should read "you can't reconstruct the expression if you don't learn the facts."
there is no "balance" between interests of authors and the public to be made.
The constitution is quite clear: the only thing that counts is the *progress of science and the useful arts*.
concessions to authors are a means towards that end. No more and no less.
There IS NO hard balance to be sought:
The sole intention of the constitution is to maximise public welfare. And public welfare alone.