There's no GPL. So there's no open-source. Now, could you please consider that?
- not true at all, people don't write open source code just because there is GPL.
BSD, Apache, and tons of other licenses exist, but actually all of them do use copyright NOW, because that's what everybody is doing. Without copyright nobody prevents people from building free software, what cannot be done is EULAs and Licenses WITHOUT CONTRACTS cannot be expected to mean anything in terms of government protections, that's the difference, and it does not follow at all that any of the code wouldn't be there, in fact I do absolutely think that copyright PREVENTS code from getting into public domain, because without any copyrights and patents the code would still exist, but any of the code that was ever created could be immediately used by anybody who got their hands on it and there wouldn't be GPL, but it wouldn't need to exist!
None of the Unix legal battles would exist. We would have much more code in public domain right now without copyrights and without licenses, so much code that was lost in so many products and projects would be in public space, probably hundreds if not thousands of times more projects would be in public domain.
You're arguing for banning of government and the ending of all law.
- then you didn't understand what I wrote.
I am completely for restoring of the law - the most important law, the law that constraints the government, the law, without which there are no protections against government power, there are no freedoms, there are no rights - the Constitution is the law that prevents government from abusing your rights.
You don't understand it? Well, it's time for me to go to bed, I can't do more here.
Rights are your protections against government force, not against other fellow individual citizens or even businesses. There you have contracts and you have private security.
With government you have rights - as in protections FROM government force. Communism is quite different, but I am not going to bother, as your comment was not a serious attempt at a discourse.
Consumer Reports which informs you who the original author of each product is and who you SHOULD pay for it.
- you assume people will ever pay for your material, what if you are wrong? What if Louis C.K. was wrong and he wasn't as good as he thought and people would just go in majority to torrents?
It means this: it's not a viable business model.
Same thing happens to other businesses all the time. Majority of new restaurants close within 6 months of opening. So they failed, they sunk investments and time into it.
During the Internet bubble all sorts of people lost all sorts of money on all sorts of weird 'business' schemes, so what? It's a private problem, private capital and private risk.
The reward may be huge for those who make it, thus Louis C.K.'s million and counting.
But we cannot as a society assume to pick up the tab for every failing business, we don't need businesses that are failing to be around (and that's why bank bail outs were wrong, and all other bailouts, and it's a bigger question than copyrights and patents, it's the function of the government).
But even then, what if the person who ripps of the author provides a better product in some other way? Its cheaper, its got better paper, I don't know. But what do you do? If you're stuck between buying it for $5 from the evil corporation, or $15 from the author, which do you take?
- AFAIC the consumer must do what is best for CONSUMER, not for the author.
If the consumer decided that this book (based on Internet reviews for example) is worth the time and he was willing to try it out and paid less amount of money (say got it for FREE, just like Louis C.K.'s experiment had - he was competing against his own show on torrent, and you can hardly beat a 0 price, can you? Well, unless you provide the free book and a blow job I guess), then the consumer could decide to SUBSIDISE THE BUSINESS MODEL because he VOLUNTEERED to do so.
Do you not see that it is the MARKET that sets the tone at the end of the day. Failing businesses must fail, and those who are not failing are not failing not because of government intervention (we KNOW what government intervention leads to eventually - complete and utter collapse and disaster), but the succeeding businesses succeed because they actually provide the customer with the best value and the customer is a willing participant in the transaction.
And no, you are absolutely not guaranteed an income from your effort. Majority of businesses fail, they weren't 'bailed out'. So what? They restructured, got back to work, tried again. It's not like I came up with this, it's how the world actually works.
Well actually who is going to stop a publisher from doing it right now? You think copyright laws can stop a publisher from doing that same trick? You are mistaken. You give your book to a publisher, they can just as well do that same thing, and you won't be able to do anything about it in current system, after all, publisher is likely bigger than you and has more lawyers.
It's your word against publisher's word that you were the one who wrote it.
OTOH if you submit your manuscript to the government copyright office, then there is a record that you were first.
However this means little with good lawyers, anything can be construed against you, and publisher may have much deeper ties to government structure than you do, and if past performances are any indication of future, then the US copyright office officials may just be found doing coke off the toaster ovens and fucking publisher employees.
The point is that if it is useful to have some form of a RECORD that you were first to submit a manuscript (for example), then a private firm can occupy that niche just as much, and at least in the private sector there is possibility to have competition, which doesn't exist in government, so if there was demand for such a service, you could choose one.
Of-course today, with the way we do business, you could encrypt your book, sign it with a key, post it on an open forum like slashdot and the dates on your comment would then prove your precedence.
OTOH, what is the point for a publisher to do what you just suggested? Why would authors work with a publisher with such a track record, and when the word got out that the publisher did this (even once), it could not be hidden from the public record again, just look at the ridiculous attacks against Ron Paul based on old newsletters that James B. Powell wrote. And that's a guy who wants to end the most racist policies that US government has - War on Drugs, War on various brown people and Muslims all around the world.
-- A publisher wants to keep a good name.
Authors want to work with publishers that have a good name.
Consumers also have the easiest way to do research about whatever product they want to buy ever with the Internet and search engines, etc.
And the very last point - if you provide a good product, people will buy from you even if others buy through channels that you do not control, again as Louis C.K. has shown - people download his books for free from torrents, etc., yet he had enough revenue that he donated a quarter of it already to various charities.
You come to my house to rob me, I must do what I can to stop you, this includes having home security of one kind or another. For some people it may mean paying a private security company, to others it may mean having a gun handy and to me maybe it means both.
Now, if you thought for a second, you would have realised that what you set up as a hypothetical is in reality a completely normal situation - people get robbed, even at gun point all the time. There are certainly LAWS on the books that say - robbery is a criminal offence, but so what?
What does that do to protect you against a robbery? A 911 call is just a phone number, it can as well be a private security call from your phone or home security communicator, whatever. Some security communicators are better than others, and they all go to private security firms anyway.
The difference from what I am saying and what you keep misunderstanding (and you have an agenda, you wouldn't be leaving over half of the comments in this thread and other threads I have on this topic) is that when government gets itself all powers - from legislative, to judicial, it takes over your rights completely by these branches of government eventually coordinating the attack upon your liberties, and that is what happened in US (and many other countries).
As to your last points there - AFAIC the government in USA creates much more destruction that eventually causes much more insecurity for people, because it grows and destroys liberty and thus destroys businesses and the economy, and it is a racist system, that leads the War on Drugs and all other various wars, like wars on Muslims or just 'brown people' around the world, and this is what makes the country much less secure.
War on drugs creates much more crime than it ever stops, it creates criminals out of non-violent drug users. It creates opportunity for drug gang violence and other types of violence.
Wars with other countries create hatred for Americans and create terrorism.
Timothy McVeigh was a product of US government system, everything, from his involvement in the military to the incident that drove him to the Oklahoma bombing (Waco Siege, with FBI agents destroying a compound of individuals, thus taking away all of their rights - property, liberty, pursuit of happiness, freedom and lives. No just cause but just because it's government and it must ensure its dominance).
911 was an attack on USA that was brewing in the minds of people who saw US invasion of holly lands as an offending act of foreign occupants. This is US foreign policy in action. So government - from domestic to foreign policy is NOT making you safe in any way.
And it's not going to be there to protect you against some home invasion either.
keep your opinions about the validity of the patent system out of this... But when you argue against SOPA from the standpoint that piracy is OK
1. I never framed the question that way. My point is always that it is wrong for any business to have government subsidies directed at it, and I see it as a societal problem of not understanding what government is for in the first place. It's not about 'piracy being OK', I don't give two hoots. It's about government giving subsidies to businesses NOT being OK.
2. You can keep your comment to yourself if you are going to ask me to keep my comments to myself.
I believe that you are leaving about 60% of the responses on this topic, interesting.
Government is not there to protect you against your neighbour, that's not even possible. If you want that kind of protection you will have to hire private security anyway, if you don't, cops can collect your corpse later on and start an investigation, but that has nothing to do with protecting you, it has to do with protecting the power of government to maintain a police force that can put pepper spray into your face when you start protesting against government corruption as an example.
As to 'rich being protected' only - with demand comes more competition, and today enough middle class houses have security intercoms with connection to some form of private security force. Besides, there are other ways people protect their property - good doors and locks is one of those things.
If you think that people should not have to PAY for protection against other people, then what do you call taxes that go towards cops anyway (because you are under the false assumption that you are getting government protection against other individuals, but cops are supposed to be paid with taxes).
Again, with enough demand there is enough supply and where there is a buck to be made, there is competition (as long as government stays out from creating monopolies in that market.)
Your problem is you think that the society must somehow protect you and your business model against itself for some reason.
You think that you are special, that you are producing something of value that is greater than value of any other business that does not enjoy copyright or patent like protection, like any small store or a mechanic shop or a woodshop etc.etc. You think you are entitled to the government ensuring your business model.
You think anybody should give a shit about the content that you might have produced and should care about your license or any other type of nonsense that you want.
Well, I have news for you - nobody gives a shit. The most important part is that people that matter don't give a shit - the productive part of the population on this planet, the Chinese don't give a shit. Nobody else does, but people who actually produce something do not, and if you cannot incite them in any way actually to pay you for your content through your distribution channel, then you are fucked, because you can't stop them from violating whatever you think your copyright is supposed to protect anyway.
The stupid thing of-course is that this really is what is hurting countries that do have strong copyright policing by the government, this hurts those societies, not those who don't give a shit.
You are not special. Whatever content you make is not special. Nobody gives a shit about you. Once the economy that exists around you implodes due to too much government regulations and other neat things, like taxes and laws and destruction of competition, etc., nobody will be there protecting your copyrights anyway and you'll end up in a poor society that also won't care about your copyrights.
Copyrights and patents are part of the problem that lead to the economic disaster, and at the end, the economic disaster will flush all those nonsensical ideas away and there won't be patents and copyrights and wage laws, and labour laws and any special protections to unions or business models, banks, whatever.
You're basically saying that no business should enjoy police protection
- no, I am saying that police protection of individuals and businesses is not government's business, it's a private matter. Today there are plenty of ways to ensure private security, and many if not all businesses do it already. Many people have private security in their homes, and it's a direct link to a command centre of some sort and it monitors their house, etc., and if something happens private security can be dispatched.
Of-course they can call cops, etc., but that's the way system is set up (broken) now, but it doesn't need to be, and it doesn't mean at all that businesses and people cannot have protection, etc.
My point is again - people have set up a trial type government in USA, different from UK or France or Spain or Russia or China, etc., based on the fact that people wanted to get away from those types of dictatorial/feudal/royalty based systems, and since we know that government power is the most important type of power because of legitimacy and supremacy over individuals, we want to set the law above government power (Constitution), that would prevent government from violating individual rights - what we really want is the kind of government that can protect people from the evil that the governments have ALWAYS BEEN inherently. There are no good governments, there are no non-corrupt governments, there are no governments that do not overstep boundaries and do not take away people's rights, property, freedom, liberty, all that stuff. If you want that, you have to set up a government that can protect individuals against the government becoming one that will take away all your freedoms, it's about government protecting people from what governments have always been.
Protecting people from governments is the most important function of government under the Constitution.
Property rights - again, you don't understand the concept of rights. A right is your right not to be abused BY GOVERNMENT. It has nothing to do with other PRIVATE individuals and businesses.
Rights only matter in that they are protecting the individual against the legitimacy of government power.
- oh, people can build in all sorts of justifications into their mental models as to why their intellectual dishonesty is OK, but it does not mean it's a tenable position and not a contradictory one.
SOPA and PIPA are just copyright law taken to extreme on the Internet, but the principle is BASED on copyright law itself, and who is to say what is the correct extent that the copyright can be taken to, after all, it's very long now and it's getting longer, so saying that it's a slippery slope" doesn't work, because it is exactly what is happening in reality. Copyright is constantly being extended in a way that really means it is forever (for all people who are alive today, and that is all that matters).
SOPA and PIPA are just somebody else's limits to which they are comfortable taking the law to, so you don't agree with it, but you agree with the principle - then YOU ARE ON THE SAME SIDE. You differ in the degree of where it must stop, but that's the only difference?
It reminds me of a joke, I think Churchill asked a lady he knew if she would sleep with him for 1,000,000 pounds and she said, -Yes. Then he asked her if she would sleep with him for 5 pounds, and she said: -What kind of a woman do you think I am?
His response was: -Lady, we already have established what kind of a woman you are, now we are just arguing over price.
All governments are automatically evil, not even the entities, but the space that they occupy in society gives them legitimacy in overpowering individuals, and AFAIC individual liberty is paramount, of-course individual liberty does not include harming other individuals, but this function of protecting individuals against other individuals must not be power given to government.
Protection of individuals against other individuals is a private matter (and it's de facto true today anyway).
Government has legitimacy, it has the law and power on its side, but we give it power so that it can protect us, but not from other individuals.
The point of government that is set democratically is to prevent itself - government - from taking away individual liberties. If you don't understand it yet, think about royalty or dictators or systems that the former USSR was. Citizens needed protection FROM government there. That's what the point of US Constitution was - to have government that would be denied power to abuse individual rights and denied power to take over power that would allow it to deny individual.
Of-course the system is broken, because there was not enough understanding that the primary evil that the government is supposed to protect individuals is government (and the/. replies to my comments display that the misunderstanding is still very strong and unfortunately embedded into the people's thinking).
The theory needs to be revamped, the government needs to be reset, the laws must be abolished and Constitution needs a thorough review, but the government MUST follow the Constitution, and it does not do that today.
Obama passed NDAA, he killed US citizens and he is imprisoning people without trial or access to lawyers. When Romney was asked in the last debate if he would sign NDAA and do the same, he said - absolutely. Wars are started without declaration and nobody bothers with the Congress and the law - Constitution is abolished.
This is the consequence of government that has taken over all sorts of powers and can no longer be stopped with just lawsuits, nothing can be done now, it has gone too far.
The reason for this is again - misunderstanding of what government's role is and ignorance of the people of why they even have government and why they even put up with it and take it for granted (just because you were brought up a 'law abiding citizen' should not automatically mean that you give up your power to critical thinking and it shouldn't mean that you give up your freedoms so easily to an entity YOU DID NOT SET UP).
As to who should be looking after private property, and what are property rights - as I said, government is there to protect you from itself ( from government) and if that is no longer happening, then you won't have property rights.
US citizens lost property rights to many different sorts of laws, for example EPA passes laws, but also things like "Civil Rights Act" or "Disabilities", whatever - any type of entitlement and obligations law that is passed reduces your rights to private property. Same with property taxes, by the way.
Who is supposed to protect your private property? There are plenty of companies specialising in private security, people have security systems installed in their homes as an example.
Saying that something is "just stupid" is easy. Actually using that object sitting on top of your shoulders for more than just hat wearing and food intake is not.
Actually, every business gets government protection in various forms.
- you are missing my point. My point is that no business should be able to claim any protection from government, and when it happens it is wrong.
I can't, for example, go and steal my competitors product and sell it as my own.
- what's called 'property rights'. Tangible property, but you would be actually surprised with my stance on it - I am against government police being used for this as well, I am pretty much against government meddling in these affairs, it's a private matter. Do you understand my position? Theft is a private matter, not a matter for public protectionism.
Government is supposed to be there to protect your liberties and freedoms, but this does not mean to protect your liberties and freedoms against other non-government civilians.
My position is that government is inherently evil, but it must exist to occupy the space where otherwise the evil would exist that didn't have public legitimacy on its side.
The point of government is to exist to occupy space of where the inherent evil lives and to protect the individuals from the inherent evil that occupies that space. Now, whether it is realistic to expect some entity to occupy space of evil and not turn evil itself... (and my argument goes further, but I am not going there in this discussion), but basically government exists to protect people FROM ITSELF.
It is the government force that we are all vulnerable to. Other individuals and companies - that's a private matter.
Now governments failed people completely, including the court system, the Supreme Court in USA as well, so this just shows how inherent the evil is and how it permeates into whatever entity that is occupying that space.
But the Constitution is law above government, and government broke that law long ago and it continues to brake it every day. Government protecting people from government does not mean that government must protect people from other people.
I think this is very important and this is where the theory of government and understanding of government is so completely flawed.
The system that exists to supposedly protect people from crime should not be the same and must not be conspiring with the system that exists to occupy the space of evil government power.
Once you mix together the system of government, which is supposed to provide you with freedoms from itself, and you mix it with system that may be set up to provide you with security from other individuals, you end up with a government system that has the tools and the will to destroy your liberties.
The separation of power (legislative, judicial, executive) in government is not done correctly and that's where the fault in current government theory shows itself.
Thus your presumption that government must protect you from EITHER copyright violations OR theft is wrong, because NONE of those things are supposed to be done by government force.
You cannot take SOPA and PIPA seriously without first admitting being hypocrites and starting with yourselves ( I don't mean the OP here, it's a general statement, just look at the reply comments to the suggestion of abolishing copyrights and patents to fix the real underlying problem).
Slashdot Mirror
and more on that here
too much of the same stuff has been written, so I just link to it now
There's no GPL. So there's no open-source. Now, could you please consider that?
- not true at all, people don't write open source code just because there is GPL.
BSD, Apache, and tons of other licenses exist, but actually all of them do use copyright NOW, because that's what everybody is doing. Without copyright nobody prevents people from building free software, what cannot be done is EULAs and Licenses WITHOUT CONTRACTS cannot be expected to mean anything in terms of government protections, that's the difference, and it does not follow at all that any of the code wouldn't be there, in fact I do absolutely think that copyright PREVENTS code from getting into public domain, because without any copyrights and patents the code would still exist, but any of the code that was ever created could be immediately used by anybody who got their hands on it and there wouldn't be GPL, but it wouldn't need to exist!
None of the Unix legal battles would exist. We would have much more code in public domain right now without copyrights and without licenses, so much code that was lost in so many products and projects would be in public space, probably hundreds if not thousands of times more projects would be in public domain.
You're arguing for banning of government and the ending of all law.
- then you didn't understand what I wrote.
I am completely for restoring of the law - the most important law, the law that constraints the government, the law, without which there are no protections against government power, there are no freedoms, there are no rights - the Constitution is the law that prevents government from abusing your rights.
You don't understand it? Well, it's time for me to go to bed, I can't do more here.
RIGHTS are not what you think they are.
Rights are your protections against government force, not against other fellow individual citizens or even businesses. There you have contracts and you have private security.
With government you have rights - as in protections FROM government force. Communism is quite different, but I am not going to bother, as your comment was not a serious attempt at a discourse.
Consumer Reports which informs you who the original author of each product is and who you SHOULD pay for it.
- you assume people will ever pay for your material, what if you are wrong? What if Louis C.K. was wrong and he wasn't as good as he thought and people would just go in majority to torrents?
It means this: it's not a viable business model.
Same thing happens to other businesses all the time. Majority of new restaurants close within 6 months of opening. So they failed, they sunk investments and time into it.
During the Internet bubble all sorts of people lost all sorts of money on all sorts of weird 'business' schemes, so what? It's a private problem, private capital and private risk.
The reward may be huge for those who make it, thus Louis C.K.'s million and counting.
But we cannot as a society assume to pick up the tab for every failing business, we don't need businesses that are failing to be around (and that's why bank bail outs were wrong, and all other bailouts, and it's a bigger question than copyrights and patents, it's the function of the government).
But even then, what if the person who ripps of the author provides a better product in some other way? Its cheaper, its got better paper, I don't know. But what do you do? If you're stuck between buying it for $5 from the evil corporation, or $15 from the author, which do you take?
- AFAIC the consumer must do what is best for CONSUMER, not for the author.
If the consumer decided that this book (based on Internet reviews for example) is worth the time and he was willing to try it out and paid less amount of money (say got it for FREE, just like Louis C.K.'s experiment had - he was competing against his own show on torrent, and you can hardly beat a 0 price, can you? Well, unless you provide the free book and a blow job I guess), then the consumer could decide to SUBSIDISE THE BUSINESS MODEL because he VOLUNTEERED to do so.
Do you not see that it is the MARKET that sets the tone at the end of the day. Failing businesses must fail, and those who are not failing are not failing not because of government intervention (we KNOW what government intervention leads to eventually - complete and utter collapse and disaster), but the succeeding businesses succeed because they actually provide the customer with the best value and the customer is a willing participant in the transaction.
And no, you are absolutely not guaranteed an income from your effort. Majority of businesses fail, they weren't 'bailed out'. So what? They restructured, got back to work, tried again. It's not like I came up with this, it's how the world actually works.
Also as to the open source - GPL is just as much a violation based on the copyright as the copyright itself.
If there were no copyrights in the first place, GPL would not exist even. There is OpenBSD, and once again - nobody owes anybody to support their business model through government force. And I also have a comment concerning that situation (relying on the supposed benefits of the government force and the consequences of it, while really getting the shaft with the actual and not the 'intended' consequences).
and here is what I think about people reconciling there incongruent views on copyright and SOPA, and it's not flattering.
A guy in this thread made a similar point, I have a comment there, it's same exact thing that I replied with already, so thus the link.
Well actually who is going to stop a publisher from doing it right now? You think copyright laws can stop a publisher from doing that same trick? You are mistaken. You give your book to a publisher, they can just as well do that same thing, and you won't be able to do anything about it in current system, after all, publisher is likely bigger than you and has more lawyers.
It's your word against publisher's word that you were the one who wrote it.
OTOH if you submit your manuscript to the government copyright office, then there is a record that you were first.
However this means little with good lawyers, anything can be construed against you, and publisher may have much deeper ties to government structure than you do, and if past performances are any indication of future, then the US copyright office officials may just be found doing coke off the toaster ovens and fucking publisher employees.
The point is that if it is useful to have some form of a RECORD that you were first to submit a manuscript (for example), then a private firm can occupy that niche just as much, and at least in the private sector there is possibility to have competition, which doesn't exist in government, so if there was demand for such a service, you could choose one.
Of-course today, with the way we do business, you could encrypt your book, sign it with a key, post it on an open forum like slashdot and the dates on your comment would then prove your precedence.
OTOH, what is the point for a publisher to do what you just suggested? Why would authors work with a publisher with such a track record, and when the word got out that the publisher did this (even once), it could not be hidden from the public record again, just look at the ridiculous attacks against Ron Paul based on old newsletters that James B. Powell wrote. And that's a guy who wants to end the most racist policies that US government has - War on Drugs, War on various brown people and Muslims all around the world.
--
A publisher wants to keep a good name.
Authors want to work with publishers that have a good name.
Consumers want to buy books from actual authors (as the Louis C.K. experiment has shown)
Consumers also have the easiest way to do research about whatever product they want to buy ever with the Internet and search engines, etc.
And the very last point - if you provide a good product, people will buy from you even if others buy through channels that you do not control, again as Louis C.K. has shown - people download his books for free from torrents, etc., yet he had enough revenue that he donated a quarter of it already to various charities.
Stop with the government based protectionism, the consequences of it are too awful to want to keep the insignificant benefits.
You come to my house to rob me, I must do what I can to stop you, this includes having home security of one kind or another. For some people it may mean paying a private security company, to others it may mean having a gun handy and to me maybe it means both.
Now, if you thought for a second, you would have realised that what you set up as a hypothetical is in reality a completely normal situation - people get robbed, even at gun point all the time. There are certainly LAWS on the books that say - robbery is a criminal offence, but so what?
What does that do to protect you against a robbery? A 911 call is just a phone number, it can as well be a private security call from your phone or home security communicator, whatever. Some security communicators are better than others, and they all go to private security firms anyway.
The difference from what I am saying and what you keep misunderstanding (and you have an agenda, you wouldn't be leaving over half of the comments in this thread and other threads I have on this topic) is that when government gets itself all powers - from legislative, to judicial, it takes over your rights completely by these branches of government eventually coordinating the attack upon your liberties, and that is what happened in US (and many other countries).
As to your last points there - AFAIC the government in USA creates much more destruction that eventually causes much more insecurity for people, because it grows and destroys liberty and thus destroys businesses and the economy, and it is a racist system, that leads the War on Drugs and all other various wars, like wars on Muslims or just 'brown people' around the world, and this is what makes the country much less secure.
War on drugs creates much more crime than it ever stops, it creates criminals out of non-violent drug users. It creates opportunity for drug gang violence and other types of violence.
Wars with other countries create hatred for Americans and create terrorism.
Timothy McVeigh was a product of US government system, everything, from his involvement in the military to the incident that drove him to the Oklahoma bombing (Waco Siege, with FBI agents destroying a compound of individuals, thus taking away all of their rights - property, liberty, pursuit of happiness, freedom and lives. No just cause but just because it's government and it must ensure its dominance).
911 was an attack on USA that was brewing in the minds of people who saw US invasion of holly lands as an offending act of foreign occupants. This is US foreign policy in action. So government - from domestic to foreign policy is NOT making you safe in any way.
And it's not going to be there to protect you against some home invasion either.
keep your opinions about the validity of the patent system out of this ... But when you argue against SOPA from the standpoint that piracy is OK
1. I never framed the question that way. My point is always that it is wrong for any business to have government subsidies directed at it, and I see it as a societal problem of not understanding what government is for in the first place. It's not about 'piracy being OK', I don't give two hoots. It's about government giving subsidies to businesses NOT being OK.
2. You can keep your comment to yourself if you are going to ask me to keep my comments to myself.
Again, I already wrote too many comments on this topic, so I'll just redirect you to where I answered this same question (if you care to read.)
There must be no government standing in the way of anybody doing so, correct. Of-course your name is on the book, and with today's distribution channels over the Internet it's not difficult to set up your own distribution channels if you already went through all of the work needed to create your product.
I have replied to a comment exactly like yours, so the same answer applies to you as well.
I believe that you are leaving about 60% of the responses on this topic, interesting.
Government is not there to protect you against your neighbour, that's not even possible. If you want that kind of protection you will have to hire private security anyway, if you don't, cops can collect your corpse later on and start an investigation, but that has nothing to do with protecting you, it has to do with protecting the power of government to maintain a police force that can put pepper spray into your face when you start protesting against government corruption as an example.
As to 'rich being protected' only - with demand comes more competition, and today enough middle class houses have security intercoms with connection to some form of private security force. Besides, there are other ways people protect their property - good doors and locks is one of those things.
If you think that people should not have to PAY for protection against other people, then what do you call taxes that go towards cops anyway (because you are under the false assumption that you are getting government protection against other individuals, but cops are supposed to be paid with taxes).
Again, with enough demand there is enough supply and where there is a buck to be made, there is competition (as long as government stays out from creating monopolies in that market.)
But I have replied to too many of your comments.
Your problem is you think that the society must somehow protect you and your business model against itself for some reason.
You think that you are special, that you are producing something of value that is greater than value of any other business that does not enjoy copyright or patent like protection, like any small store or a mechanic shop or a woodshop etc.etc. You think you are entitled to the government ensuring your business model.
You think anybody should give a shit about the content that you might have produced and should care about your license or any other type of nonsense that you want.
Well, I have news for you - nobody gives a shit. The most important part is that people that matter don't give a shit - the productive part of the population on this planet, the Chinese don't give a shit. Nobody else does, but people who actually produce something do not, and if you cannot incite them in any way actually to pay you for your content through your distribution channel, then you are fucked, because you can't stop them from violating whatever you think your copyright is supposed to protect anyway.
The stupid thing of-course is that this really is what is hurting countries that do have strong copyright policing by the government, this hurts those societies, not those who don't give a shit.
You are not special.
Whatever content you make is not special.
Nobody gives a shit about you.
Once the economy that exists around you implodes due to too much government regulations and other neat things, like taxes and laws and destruction of competition, etc., nobody will be there protecting your copyrights anyway and you'll end up in a poor society that also won't care about your copyrights.
Copyrights and patents are part of the problem that lead to the economic disaster, and at the end, the economic disaster will flush all those nonsensical ideas away and there won't be patents and copyrights and wage laws, and labour laws and any special protections to unions or business models, banks, whatever.
If a restaurant owner could serve his meals over the Internet to a global audience, you might have had a point.
You're basically saying that no business should enjoy police protection
- no, I am saying that police protection of individuals and businesses is not government's business, it's a private matter. Today there are plenty of ways to ensure private security, and many if not all businesses do it already. Many people have private security in their homes, and it's a direct link to a command centre of some sort and it monitors their house, etc., and if something happens private security can be dispatched.
Of-course they can call cops, etc., but that's the way system is set up (broken) now, but it doesn't need to be, and it doesn't mean at all that businesses and people cannot have protection, etc.
My point is again - people have set up a trial type government in USA, different from UK or France or Spain or Russia or China, etc., based on the fact that people wanted to get away from those types of dictatorial/feudal/royalty based systems, and since we know that government power is the most important type of power because of legitimacy and supremacy over individuals, we want to set the law above government power (Constitution), that would prevent government from violating individual rights - what we really want is the kind of government that can protect people from the evil that the governments have ALWAYS BEEN inherently. There are no good governments, there are no non-corrupt governments, there are no governments that do not overstep boundaries and do not take away people's rights, property, freedom, liberty, all that stuff. If you want that, you have to set up a government that can protect individuals against the government becoming one that will take away all your freedoms, it's about government protecting people from what governments have always been.
Protecting people from governments is the most important function of government under the Constitution.
Property rights - again, you don't understand the concept of rights. A right is your right not to be abused BY GOVERNMENT. It has nothing to do with other PRIVATE individuals and businesses.
Rights only matter in that they are protecting the individual against the legitimacy of government power.
Of course you can be pro-Copyright and Anti-SOPA.
- oh, people can build in all sorts of justifications into their mental models as to why their intellectual dishonesty is OK, but it does not mean it's a tenable position and not a contradictory one.
SOPA and PIPA are just copyright law taken to extreme on the Internet, but the principle is BASED on copyright law itself, and who is to say what is the correct extent that the copyright can be taken to, after all, it's very long now and it's getting longer, so saying that it's a slippery slope" doesn't work, because it is exactly what is happening in reality. Copyright is constantly being extended in a way that really means it is forever (for all people who are alive today, and that is all that matters).
SOPA and PIPA are just somebody else's limits to which they are comfortable taking the law to, so you don't agree with it, but you agree with the principle - then YOU ARE ON THE SAME SIDE. You differ in the degree of where it must stop, but that's the only difference?
It reminds me of a joke, I think Churchill asked a lady he knew if she would sleep with him for 1,000,000 pounds and she said, -Yes. Then he asked her if she would sleep with him for 5 pounds, and she said: -What kind of a woman do you think I am?
His response was: -Lady, we already have established what kind of a woman you are, now we are just arguing over price.
All governments are automatically evil, not even the entities, but the space that they occupy in society gives them legitimacy in overpowering individuals, and AFAIC individual liberty is paramount, of-course individual liberty does not include harming other individuals, but this function of protecting individuals against other individuals must not be power given to government.
Protection of individuals against other individuals is a private matter (and it's de facto true today anyway).
Government has legitimacy, it has the law and power on its side, but we give it power so that it can protect us, but not from other individuals.
The point of government that is set democratically is to prevent itself - government - from taking away individual liberties. If you don't understand it yet, think about royalty or dictators or systems that the former USSR was. Citizens needed protection FROM government there. That's what the point of US Constitution was - to have government that would be denied power to abuse individual rights and denied power to take over power that would allow it to deny individual.
Of-course the system is broken, because there was not enough understanding that the primary evil that the government is supposed to protect individuals is government (and the /. replies to my comments display that the misunderstanding is still very strong and unfortunately embedded into the people's thinking).
The theory needs to be revamped, the government needs to be reset, the laws must be abolished and Constitution needs a thorough review, but the government MUST follow the Constitution, and it does not do that today.
Obama passed NDAA, he killed US citizens and he is imprisoning people without trial or access to lawyers. When Romney was asked in the last debate if he would sign NDAA and do the same, he said - absolutely. Wars are started without declaration and nobody bothers with the Congress and the law - Constitution is abolished.
This is the consequence of government that has taken over all sorts of powers and can no longer be stopped with just lawsuits, nothing can be done now, it has gone too far.
The reason for this is again - misunderstanding of what government's role is and ignorance of the people of why they even have government and why they even put up with it and take it for granted (just because you were brought up a 'law abiding citizen' should not automatically mean that you give up your power to critical thinking and it shouldn't mean that you give up your freedoms so easily to an entity YOU DID NOT SET UP).
As to who should be looking after private property, and what are property rights - as I said, government is there to protect you from itself ( from government) and if that is no longer happening, then you won't have property rights.
US citizens lost property rights to many different sorts of laws, for example EPA passes laws, but also things like "Civil Rights Act" or "Disabilities", whatever - any type of entitlement and obligations law that is passed reduces your rights to private property. Same with property taxes, by the way.
Who is supposed to protect your private property? There are plenty of companies specialising in private security, people have security systems installed in their homes as an example.
Saying that something is "just stupid" is easy. Actually using that object sitting on top of your shoulders for more than just hat wearing and food intake is not.
Well, one other person here that doesn't fall into the "copyright violation = lost sale" trap.
So do you agree with these comments and the reasoning behind them?
Actually, every business gets government protection in various forms.
- you are missing my point. My point is that no business should be able to claim any protection from government, and when it happens it is wrong.
I can't, for example, go and steal my competitors product and sell it as my own.
- what's called 'property rights'. Tangible property, but you would be actually surprised with my stance on it - I am against government police being used for this as well, I am pretty much against government meddling in these affairs, it's a private matter. Do you understand my position? Theft is a private matter, not a matter for public protectionism.
Government is supposed to be there to protect your liberties and freedoms, but this does not mean to protect your liberties and freedoms against other non-government civilians.
My position is that government is inherently evil, but it must exist to occupy the space where otherwise the evil would exist that didn't have public legitimacy on its side.
The point of government is to exist to occupy space of where the inherent evil lives and to protect the individuals from the inherent evil that occupies that space. Now, whether it is realistic to expect some entity to occupy space of evil and not turn evil itself ... (and my argument goes further, but I am not going there in this discussion), but basically government exists to protect people FROM ITSELF.
It is the government force that we are all vulnerable to. Other individuals and companies - that's a private matter.
Now governments failed people completely, including the court system, the Supreme Court in USA as well, so this just shows how inherent the evil is and how it permeates into whatever entity that is occupying that space.
But the Constitution is law above government, and government broke that law long ago and it continues to brake it every day. Government protecting people from government does not mean that government must protect people from other people.
I think this is very important and this is where the theory of government and understanding of government is so completely flawed.
The system that exists to supposedly protect people from crime should not be the same and must not be conspiring with the system that exists to occupy the space of evil government power.
Once you mix together the system of government, which is supposed to provide you with freedoms from itself, and you mix it with system that may be set up to provide you with security from other individuals, you end up with a government system that has the tools and the will to destroy your liberties.
The separation of power (legislative, judicial, executive) in government is not done correctly and that's where the fault in current government theory shows itself.
Thus your presumption that government must protect you from EITHER copyright violations OR theft is wrong, because NONE of those things are supposed to be done by government force.
Agreed.
Now I am not sure if I replied to you without a good reason, the comment threads on /. are not exactly user friendly.
If your comment was to mine, then my previous comment stays, if not, sorry.
hypocrite.
You cannot take SOPA and PIPA seriously without first admitting being hypocrites and starting with yourselves ( I don't mean the OP here, it's a general statement, just look at the reply comments to the suggestion of abolishing copyrights and patents to fix the real underlying problem).