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Fighting For Downloaders' Hearts and Minds
iateyourcookies writes "As opposed to enforcement which usually makes the headlines, The BBC is running an article called Inside A Downloader's Head which looks at the film and music industries' attempts to prevent copyright infringement. It details some of the campaigns, their rationale, controversy surrounding them and notes that 'there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect.' However, PR company for the industry Blue Rubicon attests that 'campaigns can change hearts and minds... If you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'"
So they admit they want to control our minds!
<Complete your profile by adding a signature!>
'fear campaigns can change hearts and minds... If you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'
"Blue Rubicon attests that 'if you do them right you can make a material impact on people's behaviour.'"
That will certainly make a material impact on Blue Rubicon's net profits. But change people's behavior? That's pretty unlikely. History is not on their side.
The article seems filled with examples of fuzzy logic. For example, it discusses how many "bad guys" force illegal immigrants/migrants to sell pirated DVDs on the street, thus showing an example of how innocent foreigners are harmed by the trade in illegal software/media. However... isn't this better than them being forced into being drug mules or prostitutes? Shouldn't they be trying to clarify that morality != legality rather than muddling the issue?
I suppose it's better than RIAA's tactics, but the claims of reducing piracy by 5% seem tenuous at best.
Signatures are the new names.
I didn't like the article. While it purports to examine the "other side" of the debate, it does not really seem to consider the possibility that that side might be correct.
...because downloading IS NOT wrong!
Circumcision is child abuse.
...but it seems to escape them that home taping did not kill the music industry! I guess they just think it means their campaign worked.
And of course I could also mention VHS (aka "The Boston Strangler").
I can't justify everything I've downloaded from the pirate bay, however, there are certain instances where I don't feel the least bit sorry:
* I purchased Spore and then downloaded the cracked version, which I installed on my computer, and then edited the system registry to give myself a the key. Sorry, if I purchased a piece of software, I deserve to get at least as good an experience as the pirates do, which means no rootkits.
* Several years ago, I purchased RPG Maker XP. I've gone through several computers since the purchase, and it no longer allows me to activate the software. I'd like to continue using the software that I legitimately paid for, and my only option is to download a cracked, pirated version.
* On many occasions, I've downloaded no-CD cracks for games I've purchased legitimately.
Did I violate the DMCA in these cases? Probably. Do I feel justified in doing so? Absolutely. I shouldn't be locked out of software that I purchase, and when I buy software legitimately, I shouldn't be punished for it with shitty DRM.
Some honest two-way dialog is what's needed, not preaching the old way.
unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect
As a first step I suggest they finish up with DRM, regional coding, overcharging and exploitation of artists. That will certainly leave the downloaders without arguments, and much enhance the effect of any campaign they are planning. I for one would pay more attention to any message if there was cheap, non-DRM'd, varied and easily available music and videos, and a big percentage of the money would go to the authors. Until then, the rationalization for downloading is so easy, it can be confounded with reasoning.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Ok this is coming from someone who actually does download a good half the movies he watches.
It *is* theft. The movie was produced to make money.. and it is quite fair for them to expect that people won't just take it and not pay.
No matter how you water it down, you took something that you didn't pay for. If you can live with that choice, then fine.
But don't go around making up reasons why you're doing the world a favour by saying 'fuck you' to 'the man'.. You're only lying to yourself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)
"Resistance" also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be "a counter friction" - that is, a resistance - "to stop the machine."
---
Now, the current length for copyright seems to be 50 years or more after the death of an author. Are you fucking kidding me? How the hell is that limited in any way? The person has been dead for 49 years and his/her work still isn't public domain? What is that crap?
The copyright should be date of publication + 20 years and I don't care if the author is a person or a corporation, nor do I care if the art in question is a song, a tune, a movie, a videogame, a tv show, a book, whatever.
If it was published or released before 1989 then it should be public domain, no exceptions.
In fact, the governments should have web servers so that its citizens can go download the now-public-domain things for free, in open or non-proprietary formats.
there are plenty, even among the young, who can be eloquent about why they believe illegal downloading is not wrong. These can include everything from what they see as the unacceptable "control freakery" of DRM and regional coding, to overcharging and exploitation of the very artists the music industry claims to protect.
"Principled opposition to copyright itself" is, of course, left out of their range of acceptable dissent.
AEIOU: open-source anonymous internet currency
Honestly, the reason the whole "piracy is stealing" but will never sink in is because piracy isn't really stealing and people know it.
You're absolutely right. All the politics and euphemisms aside, the difference between physical and digital goods is fundamental - one is rival, the other is not. It's really hard to hide that fact, since so much of computers and the Internet are designed to exploit it. So these campaigns to "change hearts and minds" end up trying to convince people that the sky is green.
Now you can argue all day long about how to deal with the differences in rivalry, and underproduction of public goods, tragedy of the commons, etc., and those are important debates to have; but in the end, you still have to face the fact that no matter how much you'd like, digital goods are fundamentally different than physical ones. Those "you wouldn't steal a car" ads don't face that fact, because as we all know, if you could download a car, you would.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Fellow pirates,
I implore you to continue your campaign on Slashdot to make me feel less guilty. I know that not paying someone for their work is wrong, but if Slashdot posts enough articles bashing the RIAA/MPAA/copyright law/whatever, it's easier for me to accept what I'm doing emotionally by visualizing someone else as the bad guy. Once on the forefront of relevant IT news, Slashdot is now a lame repository of mainstream pseudoscience links and pro-piracy articles to appease a dwindling readership. I am overjoyed.
Even though the open source community is about giving back as much as it is taking, I'm just going to take. I'm a human leech with self-serving beliefs and an inability to empathize with content creators who are trying to make a living.
I don't believe John Carmack should be paid for his work. I'm going to sit on my ass while he spends years coding the next advanced 3D engine from id Software. When their game comes out, I'm going to pirate it without giving a second thought about paying John Carmack for his work. I'm just so used to pirating things now that I take it for granted. If anyone mentions John Carmack to make me feel guilty, I'll look for Slashdot articles that bolster my viewpoint, such as this one, amusingly posted in the Your Rights Online section even though none of my rights are being violated.
According to that study, it's okay to not pay people for their work because there's some vague hope that they'll make up the difference in income through "concerts and speaking tours." Artists are now forced to take time out of doing what they want to do. John Carmack must stop programming in order to make money from programming. It's genius. The study does exactly what I need it to--make me feel less guilty when I pirate. We've managed to stretch the truth so far that we're actually telling ourselves that we're helping artists by not paying them for their work. Excellent job.
I look forward to Slashdot telling me everyday who the bad guys are. Even though Slashdot has sued websites in the past for copyright infringement, and they've pretended to care about plagiarism, we're supposed to go along with Slashdot's anti-copyright agenda. I'm okay with that hypocrisy because it serves me. It makes me feel less guilty when I pirate something. Remember, I'm not the bad guy--the RIAA/MPAA/whatever is. That makes it okay for me to not pay people for their work.
EULAs and copyright licenses are wrong, yet the GPL is good. Piracy isn't theft, yet GPL violations are referred to as "stolen GPL code." I accept all of these double-standards because it serves me. I pretend not to notice when someone points out that the GPL relies on copyright law, and if I want to get rid of copyright, my beloved open source code will no longer be protected by the GPL. I don't care, because I'm too busy concerning myself with what I want for free, not about the consequences. I want to get rid of copyrights because I've been told that copyrights are the bad guy, and they are an obstacle to my rampant piracy.
Fellow pirates, let us continue our selfish leeching. Let us paint others as the bad guys to absolve us of our emotional guilt. Our goal is to convince people that piracy is something the good guys are doing in a fight with the evil corporations. Making money is wrong, even though Slashdot displays ads, and it cost me money to buy the computer I'm using to pirate stuff.
Yours truly,
A fellow Slashbot
The core of what is wrong is the abuse, exploitation and extension of copyright law. Region coding is not justifiable as a means to do anything but control multiple prices in multiple markets. Content protection systems (aka DVD-CSS) are not justifiable as it does not prevent copying and only serves to control how and what players are used to access the media that, once purchased, the media companies no longer have any right or entitlement to. And the very idea of DRM is not only a problem in the sense that it grants no rights to the user and that they literally have to "ask permission to access" each and every time the user wants to access it, but it also runs the risk of becoming theft on the part of the DRM controller as when they shut down, they deny all access to the content that was legally paid for by the consumer. (They selleth, and then they taketh away!) And the extension of copyright terms to durations that can only be useful to immortal corporate "persons"? That is more unreasonable than words can express.
And before anyone can say "but that does not give you the right to steal" I have to say "so fucking what?!" Look. Fighting against "wrongness" in any way available is how the USA gained its independence. Some colonials wanted to stay connected to the crown of England and didn't want any part of it. Sounds like the "no right to steal" crowd.
And forgetting all this morality stuff, let's be plain about it. The amount of copyright infringement is negligible and most infringers are also people who buy things when they can and when it is good enough. These media jerks should let it quietly go on because they are still raking in tons of money and are still getting their laws passed. They don't need the enemies they are breeding and they don't need the growing fight they are getting. The more fight they give, the more doom they bring upon themselves. Wait and see... they will be wishing for "the good ole days" when they have everything nearly the way they wanted.
It seems the BBC has forgotten about the last time it forgot that sharing is not a crime! : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4758636.stm
'First though, an apology. File sharing is not theft. It has never been theft. Anyone who says it is theft is wrong and has unthinkingly absorbed too many Recording Industry Association of America press releases. We know that script line was wrong. It was a mistake. We're very, very sorry.'
Not sorry enough to remember...
Until they start living up to their end of the copyright agreement, I don't give a fucking rat's ass what they have to say. That means putting copyrighted works into the public domain while they're still relevant, valuable, AND profitable. For most entertainment items, that would mean about 5 years or less.
They're also not helping themselves with the bullshit clips on DVDs claiming that downloading is stealing.
Word to the media distributors: when you play fair, I'll play fair. Until then, go sodomize yourselves with a retractable baton. And make sure to use a good quality one so it doesn't break during use.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
For a more sophisticated response which has nothing to do with how control-freaky DRM is, or how much artists do or don't deserve:
http://www.piratpartiet.se/wiki/Why_We_Are_Right
As long as the basic premise fails to shift from the idea that information is property, we will keep running into an ideological wall.
I like the commercials which say "you wouldn't steal a car!"
Actually if i could make a FREE copy of a car, without damaging/effecting/stealing the original owner's car and the COPY worked just as good (if not better than the original) I'd totally do it. The same goes for ANY consumer product really: if I could just download a free copy of all my groceries from the internet without paying for them I'd be on board.
I think the government/industry will never be able to get this problem solved as long as they treat it as theft, because unlike theft the original item and the original item owner are left OK. Its not a victmless crime, its a corporate victim crime.
But I can't imagine any sort of logic, propaganda or ethical scheme which can successfully argue with Lendrick here.
And I don't believe anybody has ever tried to counter his simple points.
You know what burns me most about the DRM stuff? That it gives the **AA the right to wast millions of person hours every day. I'm not going to steal their film; why should I be forced to sit through the legal warnings? The people who are going to steal it won't pay attention when they're ripping it.
The way I see it, if an average lifetime is 75 years, then that's 39.4 million minutes. Assuming that any DVDs that are sold are watched at least twice, then any movie that sells 20 million copies has wasted an entire human life with these stupid warnings.
Maybe it wouldn't annoy me so much if the warnings actually did anything, but it's so clear they do not. It's just a huge freaking waste.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Linux is not ready for downloaders' hearts and minds...
Oh... wait!
Sorry! I was just getting used to it
Stop the presses! A PR Firm promotes the value of running a PR campaign!
Why, are you suggesting that knowledge is catholic?
My personal thoughts are the best way to counter piracy is to make people like you. I can only really give examples from my experience, as I don't really know other people's piracy habits.
I am an avid gamer of all systems, although I rarely game on my PC anymore, as it's typically too much of a hassle with configurations and DRM. The DRM decreases my chance of buying a PC game, (especially if there's a good console version) and makes me more likely to pirate. As an example, I bought a copy of Spore. My bought copy of Spore thought I was pirating it. After screwing around for a bit, I decided to say screw it, and downloaded a pirated copy from the Pirate Bay. As a result, were I actually interested in the Sims 3, I feel I'd be much more likely to pirate it, now that EA's ticked me off.
I have around 200+ console + handheld games, none of them pirated. Several of my systems (DS + PSP in particular) have very active "homebrew" communities, that make it very easy to acquire "backups". Despite the ease of which I know I could get handheld games for free, I choose to buy them, because I derive a great deal of value in having the original box + manual + disc/card to display, and because I actually like the companies.
Pirating a game from, say, Nintendo to me would feel like kicking Mario in the groin. Nintendo (and others) have brought me such good times, that they seem almost like a friend. The few times I've even considered pirating DS games, I've felt very uneasy, the thought of it feels just wrong, to me. The RIAA, on the other hand, does not invoke such warm, fuzzy feelings to just about anyone. Perhaps if they stopped suing so many people, and installing rootkits on people's computers, they might have some more goodwill left.
Those are just my thoughts. I know plenty of people don't derive the same satisfaction from having a big collection of legit games/music/whatever, but I really think that if the RIAA stopped suing people and instead built up a strong relationship with its customers like many gaming companies, and Apple, they might see similar loyalty and less piracy.
Also, suing little kids is stupid on a logical level. I pirated plenty of software when I was around 12 or so because I had no money. Ten years later, I have plenty of disposable income, and provide the entertainment industries with many thousands of dollars in revenue a year.
Not really. Information only wants to be cheap enough, and that includes transaction costs.
I don't watch that many films, but when I do, my requirements are as follows: I don't want to decide early on what I want to watch (ideally, I want to make up my mind at dinner, and watch it after the coffee), I don't want to spend more time on getting what I want then the time spent deciding what to see (i.e. buh-bye shop), and I want to be able to have at least two alternatives for the evening, in case I get bored with my first choice.
So, in my heart and mind the situation looks like this:
(a) I can download legally: There is little choice in services, they have various requirements for software (meaning it is limited to OS and browser I don't use), they have ridiculously little choice, half of that without language support I require and the price for what is available is also kind of high (a movie download cost about $20-ish last I bothered to check).
(b) I can downloading illegally: I can choose OS and player as I see fit, the availability of content is unsurpassed, even rare films, which will never make it legally here, or have been out of commercial circulation for decades are available; and there is usually someone helpful who has provided subtitles in my language, and in the language of the significant other, for even the weirdest movie and language. besides, it is really fast.
So, again, why should I bother with the "legal" downloads? Why should I put up with crappy customer service? Just because someone bribed some politico types and bought themselves a monopoly? It isn't like the "legal" provider cannot do for me for the same $20 what any private tracker does for free. If they would, I'd be happy to subscribe. I'd be even happier to watch for $5, or (less happy probably) for a fixed monthly subscription of sorts.
It is so simple to win my heart and mind, that I am at a huge loss as to why it is still unwon. The problem isn't it is hard. The problem is no one wants to win me. Well, if you suck, I'll damn right go where they treat me better.
I recently purchased a Season on disc. Got it home and found that I couldn't run it on my computer. I was pissed.
Prior to this I leaned toward being against downloading. Now I just don't care what downloaders get.
Where is my return in damages?
The article itself is pretty unbiased one way or the other.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's all political.
I was going to post a large list of things that piss me off about the industry but hell we all know what they are. Every policy is driven by greed. I won't pay anyone for that. So yeah if they gave me a reason to want to buy from them then I would gladly do so.
I will say that when I'm visiting Asia I buy music ALL THE TIME (admittedly from select labels) because the price is reasonable, the quality of mainstream music is better, you can get the music very easily and in many ways. I also buy movies there because of the same reason. I like that I can pick up a legit english version of a movie on VCD at the same time that the movie comes out.
Meh it's the same ole western greed system that's in place in about every industry. In Asia I can buy a killer mobile phone, pick whatever carrier I want, use prepaid or some sort of plan, not be forced into a multi-year contract just to get a decent phone or rate, have far better access to internet and other features, and get far, far, far more functionality out of the phone. Because the opposite is true here in the states, I don't even bother having a mobile.
My $0.02. Cheap!
PM
1) Stop forcing people to watch through "piracy is a crime and teh FBI will jail you for 10 years if you bring your camera phone into a movie theater" for 5 minutes before every movie. Doing that just makes the TPB version a superior product to your version. It's basic capitalism - don't cripple your own product. It's that simple.
I'm tempted to say "finally someone expresses it in a way even the average slashdot reader can understand." I know, I know. They won't.
I wonder when John Carmack's next concert tour is...
Nothing is stolen, because nothing is taken -- a copy is made. The musician can still sell his music to others, unlike the handbag owner.
I don't see how it makes him pre-adolescent anyway. He didn't say copyright infringement was acceptable, he said it wasn't theft.
Interesting analysis. One problem with it is that much of the "payment" demanded for digital goods is not actually directly linked to the labor used to produce it. A lot of the resistance to paying for music would go away, if the people paying were confident that a) the money was going to the people who created the music, and b) it was a "fair" payment for that music. Most people don't mind if Paul McCartney makes a billion dollars, but much of the music industry is designed to siphon money away from the artists and distribute it to parasites.
In the past, people couldn't do anything about that, it was buy an LP/CD or nothing. Now consumers have choices, and they'd rather go to a lot of trouble to download for free, than pay $.99 for a song where $.01 goes to the actual artists.
"You wouldn't steal a purse. You wouldn't steal a TV."
That's right. Those things are for sale. If I ever want one, I can buy it.
"You wouldn't steal a movie." Is that a Blu-ray? You're right; I wouldn't steal one or even take one for free, because there isn't a way to play it.
Would I pirate a HD movie? Well, they're not for sale yet. If downloads are the only thing on the market (i.e. sales are not currently offered) then why not? It';s not like its impacting anyone's market.
You want to win hearts and minds? Start selling a product. It's not a movie (i.e. a thing I can watch) until it's DRM-free.
Sell movies, and I'll buy them. And hope you enter the market in time, before my media server's disks are full. The clock is ticking: do you accept money, or do you turn customers away?
Your example is childish and disingenuous because you are ignoring the labor that went into a product.
Incorrect. Illegal copying doesn't deprive anyone of their labor (or cause them to labor against their will) any more than it deprives them of the work being copied.
Only a finite amount of labor went into that product, and the labor has already been performed by the time anyone has a chance to make a copy. Whether you buy a copy legally, download a copy illegally, or don't obtain a copy at all, the amount of labor doesn't change -- the artist does exactly the same amount of work, no matter how many copies are eventually made or how many of those copies are legal.
Another way to look at it is that the artist gains no benefit when people choose not to download his works. His life isn't any richer or easier when his work is seen by 10 paying customers than when it's seen by 10 paying customers and 500 pirates. The pirates cause him no extra effort and take nothing away from him.
This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development.
When you've posted a completely boneheaded argument, pretending to be a psychologist only makes you look worse. Please, keep it up!
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
even copyrighted tv-shows don't (same video was taken down on youtube lol).
why i pirate:
*it makes me a pirate and pirates are cool (i wouldn't be half as happy about smoking weed if it was legal)
*I don't feel sorry for the "victims" (record label execs, big rockstars loosing a few cents)
*It's easier, enter credit card details vs click link
*i don't have the money for an 20gb music collection (if it wasn't 20gb then most of the artists wouldn't of had me go see them)
*too many good artists are ruined by money when they make it big (i still pay for small bands stuff, but im probably doing a favour as you can't right lyrics about having a hard life if your fucking loaded!)
*copyright law is broken (0 is closer to what it should be 14-25 than life+50)
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
You are mistaken, of course. You are merely trying to pretend that your misrepresentation of the situation is somehow more enlightened. You know this. Your rebuttal is childish and disingenuous because you are calling names and deliberately misrepresenting the key elements of the situation.
The poster is quite capable of understanding events in a purely abstract form. Better than you (if we are to take your comments at face-value...though in giving you the benefit of the doubt we shall not do so).
The poster is not ignoring the labor that went into producing digital content. But what you are ignoring, and what the poster is not ignoring, is that once the good exists it is abundant (can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost to both the producer and the recipient). While it is still true that labor was involved, this abundance changes the moral and economic landscape, and your attempt at arguing otherwise is completely empty.
Honestly, where you lack solid arguments you resort to insult. That is a technique appropriate to pre-adolescents.
Theft has a precise legal definition. It is a crime. Copyright infringement also has a precise legal definition, and it is also illegal. But the two are not the same thing. If you don't believe me, ask the American supreme court, who ruled that they are not the same thing.
When you say "something was indeed stolen" you are clearly speaking allegorically. If something was "indeed stolen" in a concrete sense, then the rightful owner would be lacking something he previously had, which (in this case) he clearly does not. This is not a matter of abstract vs concrete understanding, but of simple semantics. The word "theft" has a definition, the act of copyright infringement does not fit that definition, and that's it. The act of copyright infringement, while illegal and (in your opinion) morally wrong, is merely analogous to stealing, at best.
So why are you so insistent that it is identical to theft, when it clearly is not theft? My best guess is because people, in general, already agree that theft is morally wrong (and economically harmful), whereas there is much heated debate over whether copyright infringement is morally wrong (or economically harmful). If you cannot directly demonstrate the moral wrongness and economical harm of copyright infringement, you will find it much easier to insist that it is identical to something else which is clearly and obviously morally wrong and economically harmful. And, in your specific case, your inability to demonstrate this (false) identity in a clear and unambiguous way drives you to just accuse the person of being dim-witted and immature for not already agreeing with you. Don't be surprised with intelligent people find your arguments unconvincing.
To quote you: "piracy of easily copyable items like digital media only involves not paying for the labor that went into producing the good"
Yes. Agreed. Copyright infringement involves failing to pay for the labor that went into producing the good. However, this failing to pay for labor is not what makes theft theft. It may be what makes copyright infringement illegal, and it may even be what makes it morally wrong (provided you can produce a convincing case), but it does not make copyright infringement theft. Theft is still precicely defined as requiring the deprivation of the rightful owner of access to something that is his, which in this case is not happening.
Are you honestly unable to understand this simple and obvious difference between the two cases? Your vocabulary usage suggests that you are intelligent enough to understand that words have definitions, and that when something doesn't match that definition then the word doesn't apply. I know it is unfitting for me to presume to know for sure what you do and do not understand, but this concept is so simple, and you seem reasonably intelligent, so my inference is that y
Keep trying. Your flaw is that if taken to the extreme of all digital media being pirated, the creators would indeed be deprived of the fruits of their labor. Even if only a fraction of the output is pirated, the business model of selling digital goods is subverted. It is specious to insist that nothing is lost simply because a material item did not change hands.
Another way to look at it is that the artist gains no benefit when people choose not to download his works. His life isn't any richer or easier when his work is seen by 10 paying customers than when it's seen by 10 paying customers and 500 pirates. The pirates cause him no extra effort and take nothing away from him.
You are destroying the notion of selling digital goods. That "no extra effort" is caused is not the point. The point is that the artist was not compensated for a digital good that changed hands. Copying a digital good causes the transfer of information. Music, video, games, etc. are digital information that required a great deal of labor to create. Copying it without compensation or in violation of the artist's chosen license does indeed transfer a good from the artist to the thief. The thief previously did not possess it, now he does. That it is an easy to make copy does not justify the theft.
Keep denying it. You are stuck in the past. In this century, digital goods are a valid commercial entity.
Interesting that this gets modded down to zero, and the many, many specious rationalizations of theft get modded up to 4 or 5 "Interesting" or "Insightful."
Slashdot is jumping the shark.
The reasoning is pre-adolescent. Follow the link.
He didn't say copyright infringement was acceptable, he said it wasn't theft.
This requires explanation. If it isn't theft, why isn't it acceptable?
Well, economically speaking, payment for 'real' goods is not directly linked to the labour used to produce it either. It's all about demand and supply.
A lot of the resistance to paying for music would go away, if the people paying were confident that a) the money was going to the people who created the music, and b) it was a "fair" payment for that music.
Are you proposing that in general commerce people should not be required to pay if these touchy-feely criteria are not met? Can your employer also invoke them and decide not to pay you for your labor? After all, while you worked at your job, no physical good was exchanged, so you didn't lose anything, right?
Or you can do what I do. Keep a relatively large library of movies available for me to watch. Completely legal, good selection of things I like, and it's easy to switch my choice with little thought.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
If it isn't theft, why isn't it acceptable?
Because not all that is unacceptable is theft, stupid.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
And how do you get new movies, or movies that are unavailable in your area? Movies you're only likely to watch once? It seems that GP is not discussing getting movies in general, but comparing online "offerings".
I'd say he's got a point, even if he's being somewhat blunt.
(I'm no psychologist, but the GGP seems to be making an argument based on abstract reasoning, which is at least adolescent thinking.)
He didn't say copyright infringement was acceptable, he said it wasn't theft.
This requires explanation. If it isn't theft, why isn't it acceptable?
Lots of things that aren't theft aren't acceptable -- murder, polluting rivers, stealing handbags, flirting with my best friend's girlfriend and talking in class being examples.
(And incidentally, thinking only in black-or-white allowed/denied terms could be considered immature.)
Copyright law exists to encourage artists to create works by enabling them to profit from sales of copies of those works, performances etc. Infringing copyright denies the artist the compensation they request for the works/performances.
(When you get to the bottom of it, copyright infringement is unacceptable because society has decided that artists should be able to earn a living from their art, and excessive piracy would stop that. Obviously, this is something that's much more likely to change than society's attitudes to murder, theft or pollution.)
haha, I was thinking of the same thing...
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome
It seems crazy, but what happens when something like this is powerful enough to create anything from a small piece of electronics to even a car. I'm not sure what the ratio of car cost is between manufacture/raw materials and design.
I could see the same problem occur in anything where the main (or, in the case of music, only) cost of production is in the design and marketing.
Keep trying. Your flaw is that if taken to the extreme of all digital media being pirated, the creators would indeed be deprived of the fruits of their labor.
How silly. You might as well claim you're being deprived of the fruits of your labor when you mow your neighbor's lawn (without asking him first) and then he refuses to pay you.
They're only entitled to "fruits of their labor" when someone has agreed to pay for that labor beforehand. If I decide to spend my time making a movie, the only thing I'm entitled to afterward is a copy of that movie. My choice to perform labor doesn't obligate anyone else to pay me for it. Such an obligation can only come from a mutual agreement between me and the person who's paying.
Even if only a fraction of the output is pirated, the business model of selling digital goods is subverted.
So what? No one is required to make another person's business model work, especially such a foolish model as "work for free now, sell copies later", and especially when propping up that model requires ceding one's own right to communicate.
It is specious to insist that nothing is lost simply because a material item did not change hands.
No, it's just a straightforward application of the meaning of "lost". You can't lose something you never had. You can't lose money that belongs to someone else. You can, however, fail to convince someone to give you their money.
Music, video, games, etc. are digital information that required a great deal of labor to create.
Indeed they are. That's why it's so foolish to do all that labor for free and then pray that you can recoup your production costs by selling copies, especially when you know anyone can cut you out of the loop by making their own copies at home. The creation is the valuable part, not the copying.
Copying it without compensation or in violation of the artist's chosen license does indeed transfer a good from the artist to the thief.
More directly, it transfers a good from the uploader (who is almost certainly not the artist) to the downloader.
But "transfer" is not theft. When I tell you that the acceleration due to gravity on Earth is 9.8 m/s/s, I've transferred information to you, but I haven't lost anything. If you pass that information on to someone else without my permission, I still haven't lost anything.
Theft absolutely requires a loss. That's what makes theft a bad thing in the first place: not the fact that the thief gets something for free, but the fact that the rightful owner no longer has it. If you could wave a magic wand and make a copy of someone's car, few people would object to that (since it doesn't make them any poorer), and you'd have a hard time convincing anyone to call it an act of theft.
Most people have a better understanding of what theft is, and why theft is wrong, than you seem to. The best possible outcome of your line of argument is that you convince a few people that there are two kinds of "theft": the kind that's bad and the kind that isn't. Is that really what you want?
Keep denying it. You are stuck in the past. In this century, digital goods are a valid commercial entity.
I'm not the one who's stuck in the past. Copyright is an artifact of a relatively brief era when copying on a massive scale was practical for a few wealthy entities (who could afford printing presses, CD manufacturing plants, etc.) but not for the masses. Copyright is enforceable when you only need to keep an eye on factory owners who see copying as a business venture. But that era is gone: copying is now practical on a massive scale for anyone, the most dangerous copying (to the antiquated business model) is casual and noncommercial, and copyright is no longer enforceable without utterly decimating free speech and technical innovation.
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I must admit this is one of the more cool headed yet vigorous defenses of piracy I have yet seen. Excellent try. You are however, mistaken. Also, there was no name calling.
The poster is not ignoring the labor that went into producing digital content. But what you are ignoring, and what the poster is not ignoring, is that once the good exists it is abundant (can be reproduced infinitely at zero cost to both the producer and the recipient). While it is still true that labor was involved, this abundance changes the moral and economic landscape, and your attempt at arguing otherwise is completely empty.
The moral and economic landscape are not changed in the least. By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation. That the good required a expenditures of labor and resources somehow vanishes from the equation. This negates the viability of business models that depend on the sales of digital goods. Producers of such must, by your reasoning, not only accept that anyone can make free copies of their goods, but that it is morally acceptable to do so. You don't explain why this is, you merely assert it. Repeating the "abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost" argument doesn't make it true, even if you heard it from the wise old professor in Econ 101.
Honestly, where you lack solid arguments you resort to insult. That is a technique appropriate to pre-adolescents.
What insult? Did you follow the link? Piaget's stages of cognitive development are very well established criteria. But you already knew that, right? Right?
Theft has a precise legal definition. It is a crime. Copyright infringement also has a precise legal definition, and it is also illegal. But the two are not the same thing. If you don't believe me, ask the American supreme court, who ruled that they are not the same thing.
A link here would be useful. However, distinguishing between a crime that is theft and a crime that is not theft seems tangential.
When you say "something was indeed stolen" you are clearly speaking allegorically. If something was "indeed stolen" in a concrete sense, then the rightful owner would be lacking something he previously had, which (in this case) he clearly does not. This is not a matter of abstract vs concrete understanding, but of simple semantics. The word "theft" has a definition, the act of copyright infringement does not fit that definition, and that's it. The act of copyright infringement, while illegal and (in your opinion) morally wrong, is merely analogous to stealing, at best.
Here you really stumble over yourself. It is not really clear what you mean. You weakly attempt to dismiss the Piaget reference but don't really get anywhere. I don't think you know who Piaget was or what he wrote about. It would be worth your while to find out. At best you simply insist on the argument that infringement is not theft but then concede that they are analogous. Look, you are wrong. You are behind the times. This is the 21st century. Here it is perfectly reasonable to sell digital goods. That they are abundant and easily copyable is irrelevant. This isn't the 1950s. Post-war economics had their day, and that day is gone. Get up to speed with the rest of us.
Society did not decide that artists should be able to earn a living, society decided that they wanted a lot of new works made. The incentive given (temporary monopoly rights) allows some artists to earn a living as a side effect. But now a small minority have twisted the situation with propaganda to make people think that artists earning a living by controlling other people's private communication was the original goal. They should only get to do so if it's really best for society as a whole, and the evidence for that is very weak. If it turns out that artificial monopolies are not the best solution then they'll just have to make money by providing services or making rivalrous goods like everyone else.
Can your employer also invoke them and decide not to pay you for your labor? After all, while you worked at your job, no physical good was exchanged, so you didn't lose anything, right?
I work at my job because my employer has agreed to pay me for the work I do. If my employer decides not to pay, he will have broken that agreement. He will have used fraud to get labor out of me that I otherwise wouldn't have done: I will have been robbed of that time.
A better analogy to copyright infringement would be if you simply showed up uninvited at a job site, started working, and then demanded to be paid for your labor. The employer would have no obligation to pay you, because he never requested your labor or agreed to pay you: you would've voluntarily given away your time, even though you were hoping to get paid for it anyway.
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What insult? Did you follow the link? Piaget's stages of cognitive development are very well established criteria. But you already knew that, right? Right?
Insults disguised as armchair psychology are still insults. But you already knew that, right?
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And you're ignoring that nearly all labor was already paid for and thus the laborers are deprived of nothing. The only exception are some recording artists who everyone knows are being screwed not by pirates but by the record companies. Also, your comprehension of the abstract concepts of labor, money, and markets are lacking, so you might want to be careful before acting like you go much beyond the pre-adolescent stage yourself. You are assuming a strict relationship between labor, payment for that labor, sales of the resulting good, and usage of the resulting good which is naive and simplistic when obviously the situation is more complicated than that. And by refraining from thinking about any of these things before posting that insulting drivel, this puts you solidly in the pretentious douche category.
The enemies of Democracy are
Let's say I walk up to you, slap you across the face, and call you a fucking retard. Is that theft?
If it isn't theft, why isn't it acceptable?
Sell an item for $20, pay the original creator 5 cents. despite all the while reproduction and distribution costs are a few dimes. send the artist to world tours to earn the money, overstress them and they will start using drugs to relax.
then preach how beautiful a system this is.
is there any difference between this, and some feudal lord preaching what a beautiful system feudal system was, back in middle ages ?
Read radical news here
First, downloading isn't illegal. Uploading is.
Second, you wouldn't steal a purse or a DVD, but if you had the power to duplicate that purse or DVD at will without impacting the original, you'd do it.
Third, it's not stealing. Is the movie industry all of a sudden, selling movie downloads in blu-ray quality? They aren't? Then what product am I stealing?
It's a license? I already own the film on DVD and in some cases, VHS. So I already have a license.
It's both? nope, sorry not gonna work. The FTC is seeing the glimmer of truth underneath all that industry bullshit. Does the industry really need laws to protect it when it's seeing record profits? Downloaders must not be making all that much of an impact on their revenues. It is of course, a red herring to claim that every download is lost revenue. It's not. nine times out of ten, the downloader wouldn't ever purchase something he downloaded. Lest we forget the whole reason that piracy exists is because a lot of people don't find your products to be worth the price your asking. Maybe a little market research would help. Maybe acknowledging there's a market would help.
They're using their grammar skills there.
It isn't a better analogy. If your employer doesn't pay you, you have legal recourse. If you violate copyright, the copyright owner has legal recourse. The "showing up uninvited" analogy to placing digital goods for sale, while a popular one, is ridiculous. A store is a store, a product is a product. Likewise, the "abundant good with zero cost of copying" is equally specious. There is no great divide in abundance or copyability between online digital goods and more traditional items. Photocopiers and tape or wire recorders have been around for half a century. Photography for a century and a half. The printing press for centuries. All have been used for piracy, it is hardly a new phenomenon.
Do you photocopy textbooks to avoid paying for them? Did your parents pirate music on cassettes? If the answer is yes, that still doesn't make it legal, moral, or otherwise acceptable. In today's market, digital goods exist. They are as legitimate as any other.
Armchair psychology? Wow.
The "showing up uninvited" analogy to placing digital goods for sale, while a popular one, is ridiculous. A store is a store, a product is a product.
We were talking about labor, remember? Or are you abandoning that argument now that it isn't working?
An artist who records a song that no one asked for is in the same position as any other non-employee who does work that no one asked for. Neither of them are entitled to any payment for that labor, because they voluntarily gave it away. If they want to get paid, they can find a buyer and negotiate a price for their labor, like every other employee.
There is no great divide in abundance or copyability between online digital goods and more traditional items. Photocopiers and tape or wire recorders have been around for half a century. Photography for a century and a half. The printing press for centuries. All have been used for piracy, it is hardly a new phenomenon.
You're right, there's no great divide between online digital goods and traditional media. Online piracy is cheaper and easier, but fundamentally not much different from piracy that involves printing presses or tape recorders.
The great divide is between information and scarce products. Information can be detached from the medium it's recorded in: I can copy a file without taking the disk it's saved on. Making a copy requires essentially no resources beyond the cost of the medium, and doesn't interfere with anyone else's ability to make or use their own copies.
The divide between a song and a CD is the same as the divide between a song and a tape, or an LP, or a wax cylinder. Stealing a wax cylinder is wrong, because the rightful owner no longer has that cylinder. But recording a copy of the song onto your own wax cylinder is fine, because you're using your own time and materials, you're not depriving the owner of anything.
Do you photocopy textbooks to avoid paying for them? Did your parents pirate music on cassettes? If the answer is yes, that still doesn't make it legal, moral, or otherwise acceptable.
You're right, technically: it is moral and otherwise acceptable (though not legal), but not because of my actions or my parents' actions. What makes it moral is the fact that copying textbooks and copying cassettes doesn't deprive anyone of anything - the same thing that makes P2P file sharing moral.
In today's market, digital goods exist. They are as legitimate as any other.
You keep saying this as if the assertion that digital sales are "legitimate" makes copying immoral or unethical. It doesn't. It's "legitimate" to try to sell copies of files, but no one has any moral obligation to buy copies from you rather than getting them for free elsewhere.
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So, your arguments are fine and logical but let's be practical.
I like to watch movies. Movies are very expensive to produce. Paying the producer of the movie to watch it is one way to pay for the production of movies. You're arguing that this business model is fundamentally broken. Do you have an alternative?
You are destroying the notion of selling digital goods. That "no extra effort" is caused is not the point. The point is that the artist was not compensated for a digital good that changed hands. Copying a digital good causes the transfer of information. Music, video, games, etc. are digital information that required a great deal of labor to create. Copying it without compensation or in violation of the artist's chosen license does indeed transfer a good from the artist to the thief. The thief previously did not possess it, now he does. That it is an easy to make copy does not justify the theft.
"No extra effort" is exactly the point. Since the supply of the "good" is infinite, the intrinsic value of the "good" is zero. The only thing with actual value is the time, effort, and talent used to create the good: you organized all of those 0's and 1's into a form that is useful or aesthetically pleasing or whatever. But those 0's and 1's have no actual value. The pattern they are in has no actual value. Only the work exerted actually has value, and that's what you should get compensated for.
Holy crap, I should've read your response before writing mine, because you just made my point way more eloquently than I did. Bravo.
wow.
I honestly have never seen such cogent and logical reasoning on this topic. I know I'm being sycophantic, but this is (in clear language) exactly the philosophy I was digging around for and hadn't arrived at yet.
Carry on.
I'd happily pay you Tuesday for a biopsy today!
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Information wants to be free. Don't be Jewish with the knowledge.
Why, are you suggesting that knowledge is catholic?
Knowledge is Shamanistic.
Something I once read, attributed to an Inuit shaman, compared shamanism and religion (Judaeo-Christian religion).
It says that in religion, theres a doorway and you are worshiping someone standing on the other side of that doorway.
In shamanism, theres a doorway and someone is standing in the doorway; you are shoving your way past them.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
How about people who like the work of artists they support pay a "micro-subscription" to those artists -- something as small as a buck a month, maybe more if they're a big fan. Those who want stuff for free won't pay a dime, and nothing short of police-state enforcement will stop them; there's no use in denying this. But those who realize "hey, I like what this person does and want to support him or her" will contribute. Maybe those who do pay for subscriptions could get perks like direct downloads of new material, or even tickets to live shows.
Sound familiar? It's the public television / public radio model, and it usually works quite well for them. If there were an easy way to support the music, movies, and television I like in this manner, I'd be all over it.
Its all gooey in there and knee deep in bong water.
The moral and economic landscape are not changed in the least. By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation.
Correct.
That the good required a expenditures of labor and resources somehow vanishes from the equation.
Incorrect. The expenditure of labor and resources should be proportionally paid for once.
This negates the viability of business models that depend on the sales of digital goods.
Correct.
Producers of such must, by your reasoning, not only accept that anyone can make free copies of their goods, but that it is morally acceptable to do so.
Also correct.
You don't explain why this is, you merely assert it. Repeating the "abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost" argument doesn't make it true, even if you heard it from the wise old professor in Econ 101.
You don't explain why it is morally unacceptable to do so, you merely assert it as well. Repeating the "each digital copy of a work has intrinsic value" argument also doesn't make it true.
And regardless of how accepted Piaget's stages of cognitive development are in psychology, it is still an insult to categorically state that anybody with ideas of morality that differ from your own are somehow stuck in the concrete operational stage and lack the ability to think abstractly. (At least, that is what I assume from your calling everybody "children".) On the contrary, I would say that your inability to conceive of moral systems or beliefs that differ from your own would place you quite firmly in the concrete stage.
Not to mention the fact that Piaget's stages are covered in any decent Psych 100 class, since you were so keen to make the "Econ 101 professor" quip.
First off, I totally disagree with your interpretation of Piaget's concrete operational stage. The very page you linked describes it as "The child develops an ability to think abstractly and to make rational judgements(sic) about concrete or observable phenomena, which in the past he needed to manipulate physically to understand." Phenomena does not necessarily mean physical objects; it also means observable actions -- such as the act of copying data from one place to another. Somebody stuck in the concrete operational stage would, in fact, see each copy of the data as a distinct "object" with intrinsic value, whereas somebody who has progressed to the abstract operational stage can see that the data is simply a particular binary pattern, and that it is the act of creating the pattern, rather than the pattern itself, that truly holds the value.
I concede that this is basically the academic way of saying "I know you are, but what am I?"
Since piracy of easily copyable items like digital media only involves not paying for the labor that went into producing the good
I should also point out that if we are actually paying for the labor that went into producing a digital good, rather than the good itself, then there should be a point at which the costs of the labor involved have been entirely recouped, and all further copies of the media should be totally free. This, of course, is not the case.
When girls will cut holes in the back pocket of a pair of perfectly good jeans to make them look like they have been stolen, and the alarm removed, this will be a hard sell...
Basically, the entertainment industry have made the criminal the hero, or rather the anti-hero. And now they expect the kids to follow the law, after being feed rebellion and might makes right for as long as they can remember the content of something?
Hurray for mixed messages...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Paying the producer of the movie to watch it is one way to pay for the production of movies. You're arguing that this business model is fundamentally broken. Do you have an alternative?
The alternative is paying the producer of the movie to produce it in the first place. Once he's been paid and the movie has been released, it doesn't matter who distributes copies or how. He performed a service (made a movie) and was paid a price that he found acceptable, and if he wants to get paid again in the future, he can perform the service again (make another movie).
That's the overview. There are many ways to implement the details, but they all boil down to the basic question of how to collect the money and deliver it to the producer. Free markets are very effective at bringing buyers and sellers together (even without help from the government: see prostitution, drugs, etc.), so I think it would be fair to leave the explanation there, and let the market figure out the most effective way to make it happen.
But I'll go a step further and explain my personal favorite implementation idea: a social-type web site where fans can discover artists, learn about upcoming projects and give feedback, and contribute to the projects they want to see finished. Each project would have an estimated completion time and an asking price, fans would be able to contribute to any project as much or as little as they want, and the artist wouldn't be expected to work on the project until his asking price had been met. Users would be able to look at each artist's past work and community ratings to decide who to support; completed works would be made available as free downloads, possibly using an escrow system to guarantee the transaction. The site could support itself by taking a percentage of each project's asking price.
This might not be the most effective way to connect buyers and sellers - we won't really know until a sufficient number of artists abandon the copyright-based model to support competing pay-for-production systems. And we shouldn't expect it to fund exactly the same set of works we see today: perhaps we'll find out it's just too hard to raise $400 million to make the next Transformers movie if you have to do it $20 at a time. On the other hand, any model like this will work even if copyright is abolished, and abolishing copyright will allow new classes of works to be produced that aren't produced commercially today.
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While I'm playing devil's advocate to a degree, I do download something occasionally, and I find the download "services" to be much more convenient and user-friendly than every other "legal" alternative I have used, at least for films. So I hope the "legal" services approach similar level of user-friendliness some day.
Besides, "legal" by itself isn't much of a virtue. "Illegal" downloads have so far been more a force for good than evil. If file sharers hadn't created the economic incentives that hit the music copyright owners repeatedly and drove the message "adapt or die" home, we wouldn't have seen the Apple music store.
The people on the other side aren't pure evil either. But for things to work out, both sides have to approach each other, and I don't see the "legal" side making a lot of moves in that direction.
A link here would be useful. However, distinguishing between a crime that is theft and a crime that is not theft seems tangential.
Uh, how so? Why don't we just label all copyright infringement murder? And you can't argue against me because, after all, distinguishing between a crime that is murder and a crime that is not murder seems tangential.
You are saying that you like to watch movies that are very expensive to produce. That means big blockbusters. AFAIK, you can still go to theaters to see the latest blockbusters. They still produce more and more expensive crappy movies which make more and more money.
I don't think "piracy" is hurting big blockbusters.
Wolverine, for instance, was on bittorrent before being released in theater. That movie still grossed 85M$ in the opening week, in the US alone, for a cost of 150M$. In fact, worldwide, it grossed 160M$ on its opening weekend.
I don't think the business model of someone investing money to produce some form of entertainment is broken, but they have to sell an experience (going to the theater), rather than a license to consume once a string of bits.
They could make more money by selling it on DVD (by DVD I don't mean an ugly plastic disk in a plastic case, but a nice object that people liking the movie would be happy to buy), and selling downloads (If downloads were available for, say, 1$, most people wouldn't even bother to torrent it).
So, the borken business model is "selling copies of something than can be copied for zero cost by every individual". It was a good model when producing a copy was a real service. Technology changes have made it is unsustainable. So be it.
> By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation
In the context of you sentence, "taken from" means "to remove from a place". Nothing was removed.
The word compensation is equally inappropriate, as it means, in your sentence "reparation for a loss" (I don't think you were going for the "payment for a service" definition)
Once again you are weaseling your way out of the discussion.
The point is that making a copy without the producer involvment did not take anything from him. There can't be compensation [reparation for a loss] as there is no loss, nor compensation [payment for a service], as there were no service either.
To be fair, would that be a bad thing?
Studio produced films tend to be dominated by big budget, special effect laden titles which people go to see because of a huge amount of advertising and because the title releases are staggered at the cinema so that there is a good chance that of the films available in a given week there might only be one or two films you would even consider watching (maybe a choice between genre more than film title). I often (not always) come out of those films feeling a little underwhelmed.
A payment before production method of producing films may give smaller budget more story driven films a better chance of
a) getting produced
b) being shown to a wider audience.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
I'm totally with siddesu. To keep that large library you have had to do all the shopping etc. The technology exists to distribute content, BBC iplayer is an example, why not have something like that with pay per view, at a reasonable price. It's the business model that is wrong.
Of course, keeping a large library of movies just on the offchance that you decide to watch them would be prohibitively expensive - if you paid $20 each for them.
One of those is not like the others.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
By that lagic any who is self employed or sets up their own business isn't entitled to payment.
Lets say I open a shop. Nobody asked me to. So anybody can walk in and steal things off the shelves?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The problem with any approaches that try to indoctrinate into people that copying is bad is that Intellectual Property is not a natural law. Think for a moment about the fact that if you tell somebody as joke which you heard on TV you are breaking somebody's copyright - how natural is it to not tell or even write down something your read or heard from others?
The truth is that we are by nature highly social animals. The sharing of and building upon the ideas of others is ingrained in our genes: it's what makes a community our of a bunch of individuals. A society's identity pretty much boils down to shared beliefs, behaviors and ideas - all things which we get from some and pass on to others.
Now bring into this picture things Copyright and Patents: these mean that you cannot freely shared ideas and build upon the ideas of others to make new ideas - in the extreme you're supposed to track who owns each and every idea you've ever heard of and read about and pay them every time your tell that idea to others.
Now consider that trying to justify things like Copyright quickly slides into vague and ill defined concepts like "encouraging" others to create.
Reducing the IP argument to the most basic concepts and it boils down to: we must track and pay for ideas in order to encourage people to have and share ideas.
This is as anti-intuitive as it gets.
At the end of the day, it's much more easy to make arguments which are anti-IP than pro-IP, especially since nowadays the most visible face of IP are rich artists (as soon as I read the article I came up with a counter advert in which people would be told that they must not whistle songs without paying the artists since they would be taking food away from the mouths of starving artists all the while showing images of wealthy artists enjoying their expensive cars, huge mansions and glamorous vacations in the Cote D'Azur)
Only a finite amount of labor went into your house, and that labor has already been performed.
So get your bags packed, it's mine now. And clean the bathroom before you leave.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Someone paid Henry Ford[1] to build a car factory beforeheand?
[1] substitute entrepreneur of your choice here
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Get real, the concept of free speech was that you could critice the king|pope|president without the government shutting you up.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The decision making process would be terrible.
Even deciding what to make would be almost impossible:
I say lets make something with Moties!
You vote for KSR's Mars trilogy
- another one agrees, but thinks we should do Red first and see how it goes
-- no, you'd lose the narrative continuity
- what if we did them all as one movie
-- no wai!!!
someone else wants a remake of War of the Worlds[1] but in Latin
Ah, but I put in ten dollars to your five so I get two votes...
That's before we start meddling in the details (And it will happen. Who pays the piper calls the tune and all that):
I want a character named after my late father.
The parsecs bit is silly!
Stuff your father, what about my dog?
Using a sheild as a surfboard is teh ghey!
No, it's comic relief!
It is because vverything to do with Elves is teh ghey, dwarfs rule
It's dwarve's, dumbass!
But it isn't in the book, you asshat!!!!one!!!
[Link to angry flower] 'suxor
In fact, it'd end up like the worst open source projects.
[1] you can never have too many
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because in the UK there is no damages for civil tort and you must show harm. If you copy for what would be in the US "fair use" purposes (and we have a "turning copy" which is a copy for your significant other and completely legal), then there can be no proof that this is a lost sale.
Net proven loss £0.00p.
If you go to court asking for that, you'll be done for wasting the court's time.
Hence there was no need to make format shifting illegal in the UK because there was no loss and no harm.
Until Jan2001.
However, they didn't then bring in the fair use clauses.
An oversight on Cliff Richard's part, I'm sure...
The thing is, you are throwing all 'content providers' into the same 'useless, evil' box. There is thus bugger-all incentive to them to change their ways.
I provide almost everything that people like yourself are asking for. No DRM, free format-shifting between versions we have available, free demos, decent fast customer service, yada yada.
The fact remains, people like me who try to provide all those things that people brag about getting with pirated copies, still get pirated heavily.
In short, we see zero benefit from trying to 'compete' with pirated copies.
If people are serious about trying to mvoe companies towards providing a better legal service, they need to heavily support those legal services that give the customers what they want, and heavily criticise people who continue to pirate when hassle-free reasonable legal versions are openly and easily available.
I don't see that happening one tiny bit. Every news story about piracy or intellectual property here gets tagged with 'greed' automatically. If that's the attitude of slashdotters to content creators, how do they ever expect to have their demands listened to?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
RIAA/MPAA didn't care THIS much. Why? Generational loss. Make a tape, pass it to a friend. OK. One friend. He makes a copy of that tape, and passes it to friend. That copy of the copy is 3dB worse (noise) than the first. See where I'm going? After a few copies, the tape is nothing but noise. Not so with a digital copy. The first copy is exactly the same as the millionth copy which is exactly the same as the original.
Which leads to your joke "infringement". No way you can tell it as good, no way your friend will even tell it the same as you told him. It's not only not an exact copy, it's not even a good copy. No one is going to pay for your copy of a joke. But, that millionth-generation of Britney Spears CD... hm. For some reason, people would, but not if they can download (steal it and not get caught) it for free.
Only a finite amount of labor went into that product, and the labor has already been performed by the time anyone has a chance to make a copy. Whether you buy a copy legally, download a copy illegally, or don't obtain a copy at all, the amount of labor doesn't change -- the artist does exactly the same amount of work, no matter how man
Incorrect. Illegal copying doesn't deprive anyone of their labor (or cause them to labor against their will) any more than it deprives them of the work being copied.
So you are saying that if I hire a baby sitter and then refuse to pay, it is OK.
The baby sitter already did the job and there is no difference in extra labour, whether I pay or not.
have you ever run a business?
because if you had, you would realise that you only produce products in the hope that people BUY them.
the money to make a movie does not float down from the skies. Its an investment, made in the likely hope of a return.
If everyone behaved like you, who is going to be stupid enough to invest even fifty thousand dollars into making a movie that nobody will pay for?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
To be fair, would that be a bad thing?
Studio produced films tend to be dominated by big budget, special effect laden titles which people go to see because of a huge amount of advertising and because the title releases are staggered at the cinema so that there is a good chance that of the films available in a given week there might only be one or two films you would even consider watching (maybe a choice between genre more than film title). I often (not always) come out of those films feeling a little underwhelmed.
A payment before production method of producing films may give smaller budget more story driven films a better chance of a) getting produced b) being shown to a wider audience.
People are willing to pay the new special effect laden Transformers movie more than they want to watch the lower budget story driven films. Hence the question of which movie should make the most money is entirely democratic. People are entitled to watch movies you find shallow and pointless. Not everyone is as pretentious as you.
Most people working on a movie are paid before the movie is released. Very few people are paid after production. In fact, its the financial backers, the ones who risk their money, who are paid after production.
Even the smaller budget films require financial backing from someone, even if it is only buying cameras and spending a few nights in the woods like on the Blair Witch project.
I wasn't saying people can't put their money into big budget films if thats what they want to see, although rereading my my comment I didn't explictly state that
My point was more one of breaking the monopoly of a relatively small group of people who can effectively decide what we are going to see by way of massive advertising budgets and controlling what film get released when and where.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
So, you're in the inconvenient situation to not have a VoD provider that can deliver the movie as stream (to your TV - or STB). This is actually the best option, provided that the VoD provider has a big archive and also new movies.
Fortunately for me, I have a great IPTV provider with fair pricing. Unfortunately for me, I am based in France (Europe), and the choice of (US) series is rather limited and mostly seasons behind what you can download. Supply of movies, at the other end, is OK.
The moral and economic landscape are not changed in the least. By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation.
Correct.
That the good required a expenditures of labor and resources somehow vanishes from the equation.
Incorrect. The expenditure of labor and resources should be proportionally paid for once.
It's all well and good to say you believe that a person should be paid once for their labour. On the face of it, it seems a very reasonable position to take. But you don't suggest how it should be done. A great many people had a long hard think about it, and copyrights were established centuries ago for this kind of situation. The only difference is that back then, it was books which could be printed by anyone with a printing press, but good stories were hard to come by. The only difference now is the cost of reproduction is now approximately zero, but still below the value of the good in question, and so, the question is basically the same, and so is the answer incidentally. The zero cost of reproduction is the strawman here.
Music, video, games, etc. are digital information that required a great deal of labor to create.
Indeed they are. That's why it's so foolish to do all that labor for free and then pray that you can recoup your production costs by selling copies, especially when you know anyone can cut you out of the loop by making their own copies at home. The creation is the valuable part, not the copying.
Thats' why you typically grant a license to use the software and do not sell it (unless you have developed the software only for this customer). However music os not software - and the last time I looked on a CD there was no license attached. Note: Not all digital "goods" are equal.
The problem with all of these campaigns is that they take the stance that "not licit" implies "immoral" - which, unfortunately for them, is a non-sequitur. Plenty of law is simply there to keep society, or markets, or whatever, ticking along within reasonable bounds. Sometimes law becomes outdated or irrelevant. Sometimes it's simply just bad. In the case of copyright it's undoubtedly a technical mechanism, and as used by Big Media it is being applied in ways for which it was never conceived. That wouldn't be a problem if society as a whole were prepared and able to enter into a meaningful debate about the topic; in such a case I'd be prepared not only to argue my corner but also, even, to find myself in the minority and abide by the consensus. Sadly here simply is no meaningful such debate taking place - just corporate interests desperately trying to screw every last penny out of increasingly broken business models, and far too many uncritical politicians either unable or unwilling to stand back and actually think constructively and independently. As a result all I get is "messages" being shoved down my throat to the effect that copyright infringement is "theft" (umm - no, I'm quite clear on what constitutes theft, thanks, and no amount of Orwellian double-speak is going to alter that) and "wrong" (no, not remotely - copyright is a technical mechanism conceived for a technical purpose, and it's far from clear that it's currently serving that purpose), And not only am I not therefore prepared to have my "heart and mind" won over to their cause, but also I see it as my duty to make sure that I do my best to ensure that my kids learn to think critically for themselves and recognise weasel words and downright propaganda for what it is (a duty of any responsible parent). If we could only could get a few politicians doing the same thing I'd be a seriously happy man.
(Oh - I'm SO glad that "they" have decided that the "You wouldn't steal a..." campaign has had its day. Sadly, that won't stop me having it shoved down my throat every time I load one of several of the DVDs that I already own. Unimpressed? That's hardly the word.
Actually, they were partly right. I *wouldn't* steal a DVD. But download a film that I missed on TV the previous evening and failed to - quite legally - record? In a heartbeat. And burn it to DVD to watch again later? Sure. Would I also buy it, if I enjoyed it? Quite probably, in fact. So you see - in this as in many things, between black and white there are endless shades of grey. And no corporate interests are going to gain anything other than my scorn by trying to pretend otherwise - let alone by spurious, fallacious and insulting appeals to some non-existent moral high-ground.)
Someone paid Henry Ford[1] to build a car factory beforeheand?
The cars that came out of Henry Ford's factory belonged to Ford because they were made from materials that he owned.
If you make a physical product, then you own it, and that means you're entitled to either (1) keep it or (2) trade it to someone else on mutually agreeable terms. Physical property works that way because it can only be in one place at a time: someone has to own it, and it's up to them whether they want to transfer ownership. Information doesn't: the concept of ownership is meaningless when applied to something that can be everywhere at once, where no use can conflict with any other use, where you can't truly trade it because you still have it afterward.
Get real, the concept of free speech was that you could critice the king|pope|president without the government shutting you up.
That's a very narrow view of freedom of speech, and (thankfully) not one the courts have generally endorsed. You don't need profanity to criticize the President, for example, but it's protected by the First Amendment.
Freedom of speech covers the expressions you use as well as the ideas you express. Some people treat it as only the freedom to put forth controversial opinions, but I believe free speech means the freedom to speak even on trivial topics, and even when you're merely repeating what you heard somewhere else.
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Only a finite amount of labor went into your house, and that labor has already been performed.
Yup, that's why I don't have to pay the builders every time I open the door. They were paid when they built it, and they've long since moved on to new projects.
So get your bags packed, it's mine now.
That would deprive me of the use of my house. You haven't been paying attention, have you?
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By that lagic any who is self employed or sets up their own business isn't entitled to payment.
If you decide to become a self-employed street performer who plays guitar on the sidewalk, or a self-employed landscaper who mows people's lawns without asking if they want it, you aren't entitled to any payment for that. That's labor, which is what I was talking about, but you seem to want to talk about goods instead.
If you open a shop selling T-shirts, no one is obligated to give you money just for being there. But you are entitled to keep your T-shirts until you decide to trade them (i.e. until someone pays you for them). If they don't like your prices, they can get an identical looking T-shirt from someone else.
If you open a web site selling MP3s, no one is obligated to buy them from you. You're entitled to keep your MP3s, but if people don't like your prices, they can get identical MP3s from someone else. Don't worry, you'll still have your copies!
Lets say I open a shop. Nobody asked me to. So anybody can walk in and steal things off the shelves?
Now do you see why this objection makes no sense? You're entitled to keep your property until someone persuades you to trade it. What you aren't entitled to do is stop people from getting identical things from another source.
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There's lots of independent artists offering their music online for a reasonable price. Same thing with video games, and source code. Some of these people quit their day job and put their own time and money into creating these works. Then I hear some "Stick it to the man: information wants to be free!" guy pirating this stuff. The reality is that most of these people aren't venerable, they just want stuff for free.
So you are saying that if I hire a baby sitter and then refuse to pay, it is OK.
Nope. When you hire the baby sitter, you enter into a contract: you promise to pay for her labor. If you refuse to pay afterward, you will have broken the contract and defrauded her out of her time.
The baby sitter already did the job and there is no difference in extra labour, whether I pay or not.
There is a difference in extra labor based on whether you commit fraud or not. If you had been honest and said up front that you weren't going to pay, she could've spent her time doing something else.
Artists who rely on copyright, on the other hand, do not have any sort of contract with their audience. If they don't sell any copies and they end up giving their labor away for nothing, they have no one else to blame: it was their own idea to do the work in the first place.
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Ford wasn't selling the factory.
Are you a complete and utter piece of shit moron in real life, or do you just play one on slashdot?
have you ever run a business?
because if you had, you would realise that you only produce products in the hope that people BUY them.
Yes, of course they hope people will buy them. And I hope it won't rain tomorrow. If it does, who should I sue? If it's my responsibility to make a movie producer's hopes come true, whose responsibility is it to make mine come true?
the money to make a movie does not float down from the skies. Its an investment, made in the likely hope of a return.
But where does that return come from? The pockets of people who want to see the movie.
If everyone behaved like you, who is going to be stupid enough to invest even fifty thousand dollars into making a movie that nobody will pay for?
The same people who ultimately pay for movies now: the people who want to see them. $10 apiece from five thousand people is still $50,000 whether you collect it before production or at the box office.
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You make it sound like a bad thing if no movies are produced. If your scenario comes to pass, who fucking cares? What kind of idiot makes an argument like that to begin with? In your world the automobile would have been banned solely to keep the buggy whip manufacturers in business.
Show people the true horrors caused by illegal downloading. Like Britney Spears having to fly on a Gulfstream III, when she wanted a Gulfstream IV.
By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation.
If a reproduction is made and kept by the person making the reproduction, nothing has been taken from the holder of the original (which may itself be a copy). Therefore, the lack of compensation is completely irrelevant, for there is nothing to compensate for.
Economically speaking, the only value is in making the object available for reproduction. This may indeed be charged for, and it often is. There are many ways one can pay for the access needed to make a copy. Some sites charge for downloads. Bittorrent charges by requiring one to offer his copy up for copying by others. Many people choose not to charge for this service, and that's alright too.
My company released a game called Squibs Arcade for the iPhone. It's very polished, received great reviews and the humour (how it takes the piss out of AAA games) is very /.
We put it out at the cheapest possible price on the app store.
3 days after release it was already hacked and available on pirate sites. 59p and its pirated...
I guess pirating can be good if it raises awareness so enough people do go out there and pay for it, but we haven't hit that mark by a long way!
Nope, I'm not having a whinge, I'm merely pointing out that for all the quite sensible comments above about DRM, price and quality which I agree with, even from a game developer / studio point of view, there's ALWAYS going to be someone who wants it for free rather than pay just 59p.
http://www.squibsarcade.com/
Of course, keeping a large library of movies just on the offchance that you decide to watch them would be prohibitively expensive - if you paid $20 each for them.
That's why I pay $5 per movie.
What worries me is that in the shop where I buy movies for $5, music CDs still cost $20.
... uses the word 'pirate' in a sentence, replace it with 'amateur librarian'. You now know how pirates think, if only subconsciously.
We can spend the next few decades trying to recreate the scarcity of information. Seriously, we can. There is no magical reason why copyright laws have to get more liberal, or that the rent seeking industries of the world will start producing things that people are willing to pay for, or that the government will 'get' file sharing as the baby boomers are replaced by people that have been trading information since the mid 90's.
This won't put humpty dumpty back together. Everyone has their own printing press/itunes store/app store, and has had one since end of the last century. The incredible utility of having computers that can run whatever software a user wants will not be dulled. A business model based on scarcity that used to exist *will* fail. As in the flunky working for $big_media_conglomerate that says 'hai guise wii can prevent people from steeling are stuff bi suing people and passing laws to make p2p moar eleegal' is wasting everyone's time and money.
There is no scarcity of information. This is the point of the Internet. Build a business around the artificial creation of scarcity at your job's peril.
I'm obligated to post this video in response to the video FTA: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x570xy_the-it-crowds02e03-downloading-is-s_fun
interactive hologram, or it didn't happen.
Interesting anecdote, though in a way it supports my supposition of its being catholic (the non-capitalized adjective).
It would not be all that hard to get away with murder (people do so all the time), but thank god most people never do so. Just because it isn't easily enforcable doesn't mean it is okay to do it. Yes, it an extreme analogy, but at the very least I think a better explanation of your argument is warrented
People release their works under copyright with the understanding that you can obtain a copy through means the artists approves, but you cannot distribute copies. The artist is not expecting that you will pay them, but that you will not get a copy without paying them. Your analogies make sense if the artist gave you a CD, then asked for money. The artist has a right to demand how his product can be distributed. If you don't like it you just don't buy his product. Sure, copying a CD deprives no one of anything. Someone breaking into your house but stealing nothing and damaging nothing deprives you of nothing, but I expect you would argue there is a violation of principle somewhere.
I agree with the principle that artistic works made available to the public (whether free or for sale) should become part of public domain due to their value as an influential work from which new material can be made, but I also agree with the idea of copyright (the limited kind). Yes, artistic works can be made in the absence of copyright, but I see no reason why you need to have things NOW as opposed to seven years from now. I don't think it is a stretch to assume more works would be created with limited copyright than with none; as for movies amateur works are well behind professional ones so that is one area where copyright is sure to have a major benefit to quality. While waiting for those seven years to be up there are plenty of movies and songs and video games made before 2002 that you can enjoy. Copyright is broken as is with the effective indefinite term, but that just means it needs to be fixed, not abolished altoghether. The only reason I have problems with DRM, unskippable ads and songs restricted to one format on one device is that there is little reason to believe they will be legally available in a more palatable form due to the indefinite copyright terms.
My webcomic
All their "campaigning" will fall to the floor like the useless words they are. It will continue, ad infinitum, and there's nothing they can do about it, muwhahahaha!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
My cable provider used to have a video on demand service. Movie were cheap -- few dollars-- and put on my monthly bill, streaming began within 10 seconds of ordering the movie and could be restarted anytime for 24 hours. I watched (and paid for) all the twenty movies that I cared for over a couple of month. Then what? The service was rarely updated with new movies because the provider could not secure distribution rights and new movie where usually direct-to-dvd-sale-bin kind of crap that I would not even have watched for free.
My plea to those idiots is the following:
You are arguments are compelling (you must win a lot of debates).
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I'm going to sound like an **AA shill here (which bothers me).
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You are dancing around the real issue, which in my mind blows up your arguments.
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The real issue is that when a copyright holder offers a work to anyone for profit (no matter how desirable/undesirable the work is), they have a right to whatever earnings they can generate for that work during their copyright period.
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Any person who wishes to benefit from the copyright must either pay the price that the copyright holder asks, negotiate a better price, or simply not use it.
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This is black and white, and quite simple to grasp.
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If the work is valuable to you, then you should be compelled (by economics, nothing else) to pay the fair value for the work. This value is what the market will bear for the work (meaning that the price set by the seller is fair enough that you are willing to part with your money for the use of their work).
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If the work is not valuable to you, then there is no need for you to compensate the copyright holder, but you must understand that you are not entitled to benefit from the work, and you are certainly not entitled to use that work until it becomes public domain.
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The fact that it is easy to make digital copies, and redistribute them easily on the Internet has nothing to do with it. Just because you can click copy, paste, or hit the download/upload button, does not mean that you are entitled to the work. The fact that these works can be stored digitally, and manipulated easily, doesn't excuse anyone from the obligation to follow the law.
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"...copyright is no longer enforceable without utterly decimating free speech and technical innovation"
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I wonder how it got this way... Could it be that people are so self-centered that they are willing to blow the arguments so far away from the issue to get what they want? (By people I mean the corporate assholes lobbying and deceiving, to get their way, and the freeloaders that are doing the same.)
Halfassed propaganda campaigns can only go so far
The RIAA "well" is "beyond poisoned".
How to "win hearts and minds" as an artist? Behave properly. It's that simple. I suppose the RIAA interferes with 'their' artists' behavior in this manner
I don't want to name names because I don't want to get involved in a 'shameless plug' situation, but:
Step 1. Cousin tells me about a certain music artist that she figured I'd like.
Step 2. I check out a couple of the guy's music videos on YouTube, this stuff seems good enough to bother pirating. So I BitTorrent one of his albums
Step 3. Listen to whole album a few times, like it.
Step 4. Buy his new album [FWIW, the album does 'pass' at RIAARadar]
Step 5. (He) Profit!(s)
This artist has demonstrated that he's cool with this mode of behavior - tone album (the one I downloaded) has a song discussing the "new music industry business model" [is funny], and he goes right out and puts MP3 versions of some of his back catalogue up on the website.
Note: Not referring to Weird Al here. :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I must admit this is one of the more cool headed yet vigorous defenses of piracy I have yet seen.
Actually, I didn't make a defense of piracy (sic), nor of copyright infringement. While I am obviously biased in that direction, my post focused on discrediting your prior post. If you read it again this will become obvious.
Also, there was no name calling.
You said, "This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development." Granted, this isn't directly name calling, I read it as "you are a big baby," which is clearly (and needlessly) insulting.
The moral and economic landscape are not changed in the least.
Obviously, I disagree. Though the difference between us is that I gave specific examples of difference to support my case, and I shall enumerate them in greater detail presently.
By your reasoning, anything that is abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost can be taken from its producer without compensation
I was using the word "abundant", in this context, to mean "anything that can be reproduced at zero cost." However, I never directly postulated that this attribute made it morally acceptable to take it from the producer without compensation. That wasn't a thesis that I was trying to support. All I was claiming is that this attribute of abundance cast the moral status of this taking in a different light, and that there was now room for debate.
That the good required a expenditures of labor and resources somehow vanishes from the equation
Nope, I do not believe this, nor did I claim this. Nice straw man fallacy.
This negates the viability of business models that depend on the sales of digital goods.
Yes, such a belief would negate such a business model. I will add that if a business model does not function well in a given economic and social environment, then it should not be practiced. Producers should find a different business model. There is no god-given right to one's business model of preference. The laws of supply and demand are a harsh mistress. (Though, to qualify, I am not at this point stating that this particular business model should, in fact, be rejected at this particular time. I may or may not believe this, but I am not postulating or defending that at this point. I am merely pointing out that it is "just" a business model, and as such doesn't enjoy some kind of privileged, protect status over any other failed business model. That is all I am claiming).
You don't explain why this is, you merely assert it.
I do not, and did not, assert it. Maybe I failed to make myself clear in my original post. In that case you have my apologies. But the fact remains that you misread me, so what you are now discrediting is not something I claimed, and hence not me.
What insult?
This one: "This, by the way, firmly places you in a clinically pre-adolescent stage of cognitive development." Telling an adult that his level of reasoning is sub-adult, and only at the maturity level of a child, is insulting. You were not merely stating an objective fact, though you tried to dress your insult up as such. I will add that you have included the following additional insults in your new post: "You are behind the times. This is the 21st century." If you wish to "win the hearts and minds" of downloaders (which I am not, but that is irrelevant) you should really lose the bad attitude.
A link here would be useful.
Copyright Law, and definition of copyright infringement, from the us code: http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html
Also, the referenced court case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985)
distinguishing between a crime that is theft and a crime that is not theft seems tangential
Hardly! This was the primary thesis of my entire post!
It's something to chew on, but come on! It's a PR FIRM pushing its agenda about how PR firms can help failing industries. They're just vultures looking to pick at the bones, and I don't feel this article is anything more than that.
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OK, as long as we're being practical, I'll point out that the movie business does not have a piracy problem, at least not in the sense that the music industry does.
Ticket sales are strong. I read recently (please someone feel free to correct me if this is incorrect) that the only times movie ticket sales have been better is at times when the economy overall was doing better.
The reason why Hollywood is financially viable in a way that the music industry is not is that there's no way to pirate "seeing it on the big screen".
OK, maybe we can't say that studios are seeing a "loss" in the area of DVD sales due to piracy, but I'm not inclined to care. The movie industry was profitable before the era of home video, if DVD sales were to drop to zero, then maybe they'll stop producing DVDs entirely (unlikely), but the movie industry is still just fine.
After all, if studios don't go broke after movies like "Waterworld", then I think we can say they're safe as a church, financially speaking.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
The old system has too much overhead. It's just like a really old installation of Windows XP, over time the registry gets bloated, you have excess drivers, old files, corrupt files and they're all taking up system resources making the whole thing less usable. I think this is good analogy, the system they're trying to defend has too much overhead. The corrupt executives have way too much compensation for doing very little, there is way too much creative accounting going on, way too much bribery and of course then they need to spend a lot of money to keep that business going, in the end the legitimate artists suffer as well the consumer. They want a solution that will allow them to maintain their bloated business model and retain their highly excessive compensations, but that is not going to happen.
There are already plenty of alternatives to big music, recently I found this gem where you get to set your own price for what you believe the music is worth, and they give you the music in drm free formats such as mp3, flac, ogg as well as uncompressed wav... and this is at a fraction of the cost of big labels.
In any and every industry: when the small upstart who doesn't have access to mass distribution channels can afford to give you the same product for less, you got a major problem with your business model.
"Repeating the "abundant and can be reproduced at zero cost" argument doesn't make it true, even if you heard it from the wise old professor in Econ 101. "
1)Uh, my understanding of Econ 101 was that in an idealized market, the price of a good should approach the _marginal_ cost of production, i.e. the cost to make "just one more" once you're already geared up to produce stuff.
The marginal cost of production of anything that can be digitally copied approaches zero, depending on how you do your accounting I guess.
Look, you know that ad that says "You wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal a handbag" etc? Well, if we actually take that by a more accurate analogy, imagine you had a star trek style replicator. You see me driving my shiny new Jag. You "scan" my Jag with your replicator, and make one for yourself. I don't think that anybody would seriously argue that you've just stolen my car.
"This negates the viability of business models that depend on the sales of digital goods."
Yep, absolutely. If your business model is no longer viable, that's your problem, not mine. I think it's actually pretty outrageous that copyright holders think that they ought to be able to restrict the freedoms of individual citizens in order to protect their business model.
Also, there _are_ examples where someone is able to sell a good or service that is available for free or nearly for free. Think bottled water.
"Producers of such must, by your reasoning, not only accept that anyone can make free copies of their goods, but that it is morally acceptable to do so. You don't explain why this is, you merely assert it."
This feels a lot like shifting the burden of proof to me.
Copyright, as many have pointed out, is not a "natural right" in the same class as freedom of speech or freedom of religion or freedom of assembly.
If copyright holders want to assert that they have the right to restrict what I can do with my computer, then I believe the burden of proof is on copyright holders to explain why they should be able to restrict my freedoms in such a manner.
And I'm looking for a better explanation than "this is how we make a profit".
Look, here's my problem with copyright. When it was first introduced, it was more like an industrial regulation. It was (not in the letter of the law, but in actual application) a restriction on what publishers could do, to prevent publishers from printing your book, selling it, and paying you nothing. It was the "cost of doing business" that you had to accept if you wanted to "get into the book publishing business".
However, what's changed now from the era in which copyright laws were written, is that now the means of reproduction is in the hands of individual citizens, not just those who own a printing press. A law that used to only actually restrict the actions of people who voluntarily enter a particular business now restricts the actions of everyday citizens.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Idiot.
I'd like to see the RIAA promote a day without songs. For one 24-hour period, rescind every media outlet the right to broadcast their songs. Stations could either shut down for the day (maybe do some needed maintenance) or find something else to broadcast.
It would be a interesting litmus test on just how badly the public needs their product.
If they'd do it on the 3rd of November, they could call it Anthony Fremont Day.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but economics 101 is that something has "value" if it has utility and scarcity. Nobody pays money for air, (ok, oxygen bars, but not really...) because there's generally no scarcity.
So in a world of digital flawless reproductions, what are we to do about the fact that there isn't that level of scarcity previously assumed? I don't think that attempting to enshrine artificial legal restrictions in law and international treaty to pretend we still have scarcity of "goods that can be digitally reproduced" is the solution.
I mean, we're at least on paper, still supposed to be a quasi-democracy. Copyright law isn't a "human right", it's more like a matter of government policy, more like a government's policy on trade or taxation or international relations than it is like fundamental freedoms like speech or association. At least in theory, government policy should reflect the views of the citizenry. So at least theoretically, if a majority of the people think a given policy should be X instead of Y, then government should change that policy or regulation.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Because once you release your content that can be represented as a computer file, it is bound to show up somewhere on the Internet for free sooner or later. To avoid having to waste your effort, put a pricetag on your work, collect that amount collectively from people wanting it, then follow through and make it available for downloading.
The problem with this model is that people are afraid of getting 'ripped off' and not getting anything for what they paid for.
The solution for that would be an escrow-based version of PayPal that all parties could trust and use:
1) Content creator creates something, puts a pricetag on it and posts it with the escrow service and lets people know it is there.
2) People pay the escrow service for the item until it is 'paid in full'. The escrow service
pays the content producer the full price they set for their item minus a small reasonable handling fee for the escrow service for providing this service.
3) Escrow service releases the content to the masses who paid for it via a one-use-only download URL. Everybody is happy (including the 'freehounds' who got it from somebody who paid then re-uploaded their purchase somewhere else on the internet) -- everybody involved got what they wanted: money or the item being sold.
Unless you buy stuff 'on credit' or pay your utilities 'after the fact', you 'prepay' for all other goods and services you use (like prepay gasoline for your car). Why should 'Interlectual Property' be treated any differently? Time, effort, and money was expended to create it just like an ear of corn, or a washing machine.
The alternative is business as usual -- the same high-stakes cat and mouse game between the 'freehounds' and the content producers wanting to be paid for their content. This is a situation no one can win in the long run....
Any person who wishes to benefit from the copyright must either pay the price that the copyright holder asks, negotiate a better price, or simply not use it.
.
This is black and white, and quite simple to grasp.
Yes, that's what the law says. But in this case, the law is unjust. There is no legitimate reason for my speech rights to be subject to the copyright holder's whims.
The fact that it is easy to make digital copies, and redistribute them easily on the Internet has nothing to do with it. Just because you can click copy, paste, or hit the download/upload button, does not mean that you are entitled to the work.
That's true: I'm not entitled to have a copy of the work just because it's easy to share. I'm entitled to have a copy of the work because someone else who has a copy is willing to share it with me. He's entitled to tell me about his copy, I'm entitled to listen and write down what he's saying.
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People release their works under copyright with the understanding that you can obtain a copy through means the artists approves, but you cannot distribute copies. The artist is not expecting that you will pay them, but that you will not get a copy without paying them.
Anyone who releases their works with the "understanding" that other people can't distribute copies must've been living under a rock for the past few decades. Surely they know that anything they release will be copied, and that there's nothing they can do about it. They might wish that weren't the case, but they're releasing their works in the real world, not a fantasy world where unauthorized copying doesn't exist.
The artist has a right to demand how his product can be distributed. If you don't like it you just don't buy his product.
No, the artist does not have the right to demand how a third party may distribute his work. If Bob wants to tell me something, and I want to listen and write it down, why on Earth would Alice have the right to shut him up?
Sure, copying a CD deprives no one of anything. Someone breaking into your house but stealing nothing and damaging nothing deprives you of nothing, but I expect you would argue there is a violation of principle somewhere.
Yes, that's the difference between physical property (including land) and information. I only have so much room in my house, which means a trespasser is depriving me to some extent of the use of my house: I might not want to use it right now, but the trespasser doesn't know that, and my ability to do so is infringed nonetheless.
Information doesn't work that way. Someone who copies my work has absolutely no impact on my ability to do anything with it, not even in theory: what they do with their copy can't possibly affect what I do with my copy. The very concept of ownership is meaningless when applied to something that can be everywhere at once like that.
Yes, artistic works can be made in the absence of copyright, but I see no reason why you need to have things NOW as opposed to seven years from now.
But you do see a reason why you need to have things seven years from now as opposed to 25 years or 100 years, huh? Seven is the magic number because... why?
It seems to me that if seven is better than 100, then zero is even better still. Why should you have to wait at all?
I don't think it is a stretch to assume more works would be created with limited copyright than with none;
Perhaps, but the number of works created isn't the only measure of the policy. We also have to consider whether those works are the kind people want (rather than shovelware made as a speculative investment), how free people are to access and build on those works, and how free people are in general (in terms of speech rights and technical innovation).
On the other hand, I don't think your assumption is a safe one. Copyright doesn't just encourage the creation of some works, it also forbids the creation (or at least distribution) of other works. In terms of the sheer number of works, I suspect things like mashups and fan sequels would outnumber the works that were no longer made.
as for movies amateur works are well behind professional ones so that is one area where copyright is sure to have a major benefit to quality.
No, you're confusing "amateur works" with "works produced without copyright". Works produced without copyright can still be professional works, if the people involved are getting paid to produce them.
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I'd agree with your point that vocal proponents of the status quo change on slashdot could be harsher towards people who pirate from companies doing the "right" thing. I'll remember that.
However, whatever harsh words I have for pirating, these pale with what comes to mind when I see the current state of the world in which copyright and related rights and punishments for violating those get extended beyond any reasonable measure is squarely with the industry.
And, if any kind of, well, reconciliation is to happen, both sides should take a step back.
Too bad I have already posted, and I can't mod you up though, your argument should have gotten more eyeballs.
They do not want the downloaders hearts and minds, they simply want their money.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
After all, while you worked at your job, no physical good was exchanged, so you didn't lose anything, right?
I will be paid for the work I did last week, but I won't be paid for it a second time nor will I be paid for the work I already got paid for a year ago.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
There is no analogy for copyright infringement.
If I download something for free nobody misses out on anything, it's what we could call a victimless crime (although it is actually not a crime at all).
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Do you photocopy textbooks to avoid paying for them?
Yes, doesn't everyone?
Most libraries provide the equipment to do so.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
A great many people had a long hard think about it, and copyrights were established centuries ago for this kind of situation. The only difference is that back then, it was books which could be printed by anyone with a printing press, but good stories were hard to come by.
My first thought was to request the source of this representation of history. My second was to wonder why you think they are better able to run our lives after their deaths than we are today. However accurate your depiction of the history of copyright, if you cannot argue the same points today then you either lack the understanding they had and are unqualified to argue their points or the points are not valid any more (if they ever were).
The only difference now is the cost of reproduction is now approximately zero, but still below the value of the good in question, and so, the question is basically the same, and so is the answer incidentally. The zero cost of reproduction is the strawman here.
You have neglected to explain what the question and answer were, I could guess but you'd only accuse me of building a 'strawman'. Incidentally, your use of the term seems incorrect.. to build a strawman is to misrepresent someone's argument for the purpose of making it seem like you have broken their real argument. Perhaps you meant a 'red herring'?
1) There's no such thing as illegal downloading. It's the uploading a copy that's illegal.
2) The article is pretty well written, but they really don't explore neutraliztion well enough. They list a "neutralization" theory; but really don't explore it well; the point of view is pretty valid that some movie or record company gets the money from your sale, and not those who actually worked on the movie or song (see: Hollywood accounting.)