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The Copyright Crusade a Lost Cause?
A. Smith writes "Ars Technica is exploring the relationship between property rights and copyright, arguing that copyright holders are making a mistake by stressing similarities between property rights and copyright. They compare P2P users to 18th-century squatters in North America: 'Like squatters of old, many ordinary users find copyright law bewildering and are frustrated by the arbitrary restrictions it imposes. Customers wanting to rip their DVD collections to their computers, download music they can play on any device, or incorporate copyrighted works into original creative works find that there is no straightforward, legal way to do these things.' They conclude by offering that more reasonable, understandable copyright restrictions would result in a user base friendlier to publisher interests."
It doesn't change the fact that you don't own the content. If you bought a book, you own the paper. If you bought a cd, you own the plastic. You don't have a right to distribute that content to 100s of thousands of people. The efforlessness of reproduction does not nullify the ownership of content.
Would that mean that unless my business is profitable, I don't have to pay property taxes on the warehouse, factory, or store?
Does that also mean that if I own an unoccupied residence I don't have to pay property taxes on that?
if they are arguing property is property no matter what, then it would seem to me it should be taxed as such.
Really? I have stapler on my desk that I don't pay property taxes on.
On this desk alone I also have a mouse, a telephone, a can of coke, a screwdriver, a keyboard, 2 monitors, a flashlight, a spindle of blank DVDs... all property, all completely exempt from 'property taxes'.
I'm curious what idiot convinced you that all real property is taxed.
> These 'customers' only 'find' this out if they start making money by doing this illegal activity.
Tell it to customers of 321 Studios.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
In Missouri you pay propertty tax on your car. In Illinois you don't.
./ journal, having a hard time topping the last one) I'd be living in a cardboard box starving to death if I had to pay tax on my copyrights.
Property tax is the most onerous of all taxes. You don't pay income tax unless you make money, you don't pay sales tax unless you have money to spend, but if you don't have money for property tax you can lose* your home.
Please don't advocate that I have to pay property tax on my imaginary property. None of it in any way brings in revinue, and one of the two works I've registered is on a software program for a computer that has been obsolete for a quarter century.
Considering all the gibberish I've spread all over the internet since 1997 (sorry guys, still no new
-mcgrew
*If you leave your door unlocked you'll loose your home.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
No. Nobody's twisting the issue.
If I buy content to consume (because that's what I'm buying, the packaging, including the disk, drive, whatever it's on is only a means to an end, nobody buys an optical disk to moon over...well, unless they're very VERY disturbed), I want to be able to consume it any damn way I please.
And NO, consumption does NOT mean "redistribution". I want to be able to make fair backups (which I won't be giving to people), or shift it off to a computer, digital video player, iPod, whatever.
Recorded media is NOT the same as a live show (as every live show is different, even if an identical set is performed). Thus there's no justification for what is, essentially, pay-per-play.
Additionally, we're not talking about public exhibition of the material either. We're talking about viewing in the privacy in the privacy of my own home, or on the street watching a screen small enough that it's only meant for me to view it anyhow.
I can, and DO, pay for the content I consume. I also comprehend the fact that the media on which this content comes is not indestructible. Thus, in addition to media shifting, I will make backups.
I refuse to be sold the same content, over and over again. And I refuse to be labeled a pirate or grouped in with pirates simply because I take care of my investment in my own entertainment.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And why should "artists" be given preferential treatment compared to "inventors"?? Patents have a term of 20 years. period. Not after death and not extendable. Why should "artists" enjoy revenue two and half times as long?
I'll tell you why. Because the world is run by looters. Patents cover things like machines, manufacturing processes and drugs. Everybody acknowledges that without these things people get sick or quality of basic life is diminished. So the looters use their majority to vote that in a short period of time they can take any practical invention they want for free.
Just take the time to look at how much better copyright protects the creators profit compared to the tons of loopholes present that can invalidate a patent.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Timothy Lee (the author of TFA) makes qutie a few errors. First, they claim "Critics of the practice [filesharing] analogize copyrights to property rights" -- this is flatly factually wrong. Critics of the filesharing note, correctly, that copyrights are a subset of property rights (not something merely analogous to property rights), and draw an analogy between violations of copyrights and violations of rights in tangible personal property. Mr. Lee has misidentified where the analogy is drawn.
Second, Lee counts the one argument for property rights as two different arguments, by falsely splitting it into the "scarcity argument" (which he claims doesn't apply to copyright) and the "reward" argument (which he claim does.) In fact, the scarcity argument (that property rights are beneficial because they promote a more efficient use of scarce resources) is simply an application of the reward argument (that people will be more motivated to create and preserve value when they are able to exclusively control all or some part of the value created and/or preserved by their action) to the case of management of existing resources. By falsely counting the general argument and its specific application as two independent arguments, Lee paints a picture of copyright being an area with a "weaker" argument for property rights, when in fact it has the exact same argument (at least, in terms of the basis of argument, which is what is at issue in this part of Lee's pience) for property rights.
Third, Lee miscategorizes the argument for property rights (and, therefore, for copyrights) as being about "necessity", when its not about "necessity" (which is conceptually binary -- something either is "needed" or not) but about utility (that, on balance, people are better off with property rights, even though some are denied access to that which they would otherwise have, than without property rights.) This mistake leads to him dismissing the need for copyright "for certain classes of creative work", because those forms would not completely disappear without copyright. This misses the point of the reward argument for property rights entirely, which isn't about necessity but net gain. (Note, I'm not arguing that, viewed through that lens, copyright, and particularly not especially the increasingly rigid system of copyright we have now, is justified, merely that you need to focus on the real basis of property rights argument to challenge it meaningfully.)
That being said, eventually Lee (after all the errors and unnecessary diversions) does get around to the rather simple observation that applies to all laws: that no law is effective (he narrowly applies this property rights, but it is far more generally applicable) unless the people subject to it generally accept it (either by accepting it as legitimate or at least by deciding its not worth the cost of violation), and attempting to more strictly enforce a rule that most people don't believe is right rarely produces that respect, even in the more minimal form. (It can, if the government is able to drive the combination of the cost and certainty of being caught out of compliance high enough, but that usually takes insane levels of enforcement that threaten the general perception of the legitimacy of the government, rather than just the particular law, if the prohibited act is widely accepted as something people should not be punished, or punished as harshly as is necessary to secure general compliance, for doing.)