Oh yes. If there's ONE FUCKING THING WE NEED, it's another community so afraid of offending anyone, we walk around mincing words and generally acting like complete pussies.
I'm not OP, but I have to comment about childrens' development. My own little cousins have all learnt to read, write and perform arithmetics exceedingly early, and giving them access to a computer had them googling games and things like that in minutes.
However, convincing them that a laptop is valuable, and that bashing it on the floor several times to see what it was made of was bad? That took a lot longer than few minutes (weeks) , and during this time, they couldn't use the laptop unsupervised...
Seriously, just a generation ago, it was simply no big deal for a 5 year old to spend a short amount of time alone. By 10 or 11, they could spend the night alone, and by 12 or 13, they were babysitting other kids for the weekend. I don't know what kind of mass genetic disease has spread through the populations
The mass genetic disease is called the news... People have now read (and watched) cases where things that were vanishingly unlikely to happen to kids playing in the neighborhood, or alone at home, happened to them... Should it be illegal to leave your five year old alone for a SHORT time? No. Is it a smart move on the parent's part? NO. The fact is that it's unlikely that anything untoward would happen to the child, but if something did, one wouldn't want to be the parent who had that happen to them...
I think someone's imagination was captured by the "Home Alone" movies... The fact is that children that young lack the emotional as well as intellectual capacity to stay alone and stay safe. If you don't have the foresight or imagination to conceive of things that could befall even an exceptionally intelligent, responsible five year old, you're not ready to have kids.
there are much more efficient way to get rid of an overpopulation of deer than having two guys with a thousand dollars worth of gear get drunk, drive for hours to where the deer are, then shine a spotlight in their face so they can kill one deer, then take it back to their friends in town, pay a fortune to have a taxidermist mount it and act like they're big game hunters.
Very true... But few ways that are more profitable for the area than that... We don't have to like it to agree to that.
Proof? That is a bold statement. If you can prove this, then that would be simply amazing.
Yes remove the context from my words, to make them sound absurd. Thank you. I simply meant that we persist through time. Who we re from moment to moment is the same person, albeit changed through experience.
Would you?
You 'lost' the possibility of future gain (as you said), but you in your current self were not actually harmed.
Still with the insistence that these are somehow two separate people. Sad. I have an inkling that if the situation (or something like it) were to happen to you, you wouldn't maintain this view.
I don't want my future self tomorrow morning to be sleep deprived, because I've harmed myself by staying up late arguing with someone who is willfully ignoring the truth. It must be amusing to have someone earnestly explain basic concepts over and over without apparent success.
If this is a troll, well played sir/madam, but the only way to win I guess is not to play.
This kind of "honor system" works when people realize that they get screwed when they don't support the artists. If there's no money to be made, then artists won't produce anything.
From here, I gather that they should get paid via some kind of honour system?? But if pirates won't honour their wishes now, in the face of copyright law, how in the hell would they pay the artists without copyright? Please I want to know how law-breakers would suddenly stop what they are doing as soon as it becomes legal...
That page is simply hilarious. It shows both complete unawareness of how creative works are made, and a horrible sense of entitlement, that because people desire something, they should have it as long as it can be digitally copied.
Also, the creator is actually 'harming' them by 'depriving' them of the possibility of future gain (free entertainment) by not letting them merely download their works.
A sense of entitlement that you apparently share. Also here you finally widen your definition of the word harm. Good for you. You also apply my logic ass backwards, as expected. They are not deprived, because the artist is not obliged to give it to them or allow them access. Can you get that through you entitled head? If the artist wants to give it, it is the artists prerogative. If the artist wants to exchange for it, it is the artists prerogative to name the price. It is the consumers prerogative to accept the price, or reject it.
No need to repeat yourself, just tell me how that logically translates to harm even though they're left completely unaffected (unaffected doesn't mean that they are worse off than before).
Please read my post about the high school student and the scholarship. It's just below my last reply. I hope that's logical enough for you.
Which is what is being debated. I don't believe that people are inherently entitled to these future gains unless one of the following conditions is met:
A) Someone has directly asked them to perform a job for them while promising a certain amount of money for completing the job, and the artist completes the job. B) Someone has actually stolen something that they already had.
Indeed, in your world, creators of art are not entitled to anything (except maybe attribution), only you and the consumers are. What a horrible world that would be.
Pirates don't even interact with the author in the least. They merely copy their content, and the author is likely completely unaware that a specific person just copied their work. They remain completely unaffected, unknowingly to them.
Please consider my analogy about the student and the scholarship, but imagine the scholarship board and the parent doing this without the student's knowledge. In my view, it's still harm. Yours?
The process of deciding who is harmed should be based on logic, not feelings. 'Loss' of future gain is not harm.
But you have used no logic in formulating that opinion. You do not want to acknowledge that harm has more than the narrow definition you insist on sticking to, and you refuse to acknowledge that as we move through time, we are the same. We exist in the future. Our future selves are not strangers, but us. If someone wrongfully deprives me of a benefit I was to receive, they have not wronged a stranger, they have wronged me.
Let me try an analogy. Let's say you were a high school student, and were lined up for a cushy full ride scholarship to some fancy university. Now, you haven't received it yet, but you were almost certain to; you had all the requirements, and nobody else came close. Then say a parent of a fellow student knew some members of that scholarship board, and bad-mouthed you. As a result you didn't get that scholarship, and your future prospects became shittier as a result. I'd say I was harmed. Would you?
In this example, the victim didn't lose anything they already had, so by your definition, they're not harmed. What do you have to say?
How does loss of future gain, something they never actually had, translate to harm?
I have repeated myself many times, explaining how this translates to harm. I will not do so again. If you cannot understand, I guess you never will.
How is it logical to create artificial scarcity for the sole purpose of keeping the current system on life support?
Because as you have admitted in other posts, you, and other people who think as you do, have no good system to replace this.
How does piracy not save someone from non-existent harm but competition and consumer reviews do?
It does not save them from any harm because if they pirated something and enjoyed it, they were not in danger of being harmed, but it wrongfully harms the creator. Please reread my post.
Piracy saves consumers from possible harm as well. The consumers, for instance, don't have to waste their money on goods that are themselves in an infinite supply and can instead spend it on more important things such as food and shelter. They don't have to worry about the product breaking, as they didn't pay for it in the first place.
Looks like this saves consumers from 'harm' just like reviews sometimes save them from 'harm', only this applies all the time with piracy. Too bad in both cases, the artist must 'suffer', even though they've lost nothing, huh?
As I repeated earlier, it harms the creator. It is not the benefit the consumer receives that is the issue, but the lack of benefit the creator of the work receives.
If the consumers are unwilling to give value to the creator, they should NOT receive value from the creator of the work. That is the simplest way I can put it. As I have previously mentioned, just because something is easy to do, does not make it right.
If consumers want digital media for free, they should consume digital media that is freely given from the creators/artists who do so (Corey Doctorow, etc), and not pirate it from those that want to sell their works.
Nearly every comparison is 'ridiculous'. Of course mine are going to be 'ridiculous' to you. You've yet to explain how they are, though.
Really? What about this:
I was specifically talking about ethical and legal problems, not mathematics, where something is objectively valid, or is not.
this:
Exactly, they were LEFT UNCHANGED. They did not get any benefits they would have gotten from sale of the work (i.e, revenue, and prestige from increased sales numbers). It's exactly this that is the problem.
and this:
Let me be clear: causing someone to lose a future gain IS harming them. Consensus on this is clear with legal precedent in other contexts, as a poster mentioned further up this thread.
What are these if not my arguments, and explanations on why yours are ridiculous? Well?
There you go making invalid "comparisons".
Actually, I wasn't making a comparison, just making a point that some people (not you) don't understand and often get wrong.
You change the parameters of my statement to make a hilariously wrong comparison.
That wasn't a comparison, and my other ones had valid points, extreme or not.
So you were making a point, a point you implicitly concede was invalid? How extraordinary. And yet you think I'm somehow getting something wrong?
Don't just say "it's extreme," actually explain how your logic of "it hurts potential sales" doesn't apply to competition or people who inform others of legitimately bad products. I would love to know that.
Thank you for asking a question, that I may answer you. A creator/artist tries to get people to buy a work and read/watch/play it, the exchange is the value of their work for a sum of money the creator/artist has decided on. Consumers have to decide, in the market choosing works, which ones are subjectively worth the money the artist is asking for, and which ones are not.
Now this is where my argument is. If a consumer purchases a work, and finds it is not subjectively worth their money, they are hurt, while the artist has gained at their expense. They have lost money, while not gaining equivalent value. However, if a consumer downloads/copies a work and reads/watches/plays it without paying for it AND gets value from it, the artist is hurt. They have lost a potential sale, because the pirate has enjoyed their work without giving them the return they asked for.
To prevent the former case, there are things such as consumer protections, product reviews and word of mouth, which compete against advertising from the artist or middleman selling the work. These are tools that consumers use to prevent themselves from being "hurt" by paying money for artistic works they do not enjoy, or find worth their money.
To prevent the latter case, copyright exists. This safeguards the creator/artist's livelihood, allowing the public to enjoy their works after paying them the price they have decided.
Deciding who is harmed is a balance between protecting both parties. Although creators lose sales to bad reviews, if the reviews are legitimate, they are preventing harm to the consumers who would otherwise buy it and be harmed. If the reviews are maliciously false, the creator has recourse in certain situations to take action against inaccurate or false information about them.
Finally, competition between artists/creators benefits the consumers by encouraging better pricing and products, while it helps the artists/creators by encouraging innovation and preventing stagnation. However competition is regulated, and malicious monopolistic practices are punished in most countries. If an artist fails because their work is of poor standard, they have hurt themselves and do not deserve to remain in the market.
Is that sufficient explanation? Would you require me to explain any particular point better?
The majority sharing the same opinion says nothing about the correctness of something. Facts do. If the entire population believed that the sum of two and two was equal to five, that would not make it more likely to be correct.
There you go making invalid "comparisons". I was specifically talking about ethical and legal problems, not mathematics, where something is objectively valid, or is not. This is what I am talking about when I say you bring in crazy extremes to make a rebuttal. You change the parameters of my statement to make a hilariously wrong comparison.
There's this saying about a pot and a kettle, google it...
Not much I can do about it.
Yes you can do something about it. You can see understand my position, and see it is correct. But you won't. You seem to think that you have this TRUTH,these facts, and that mysteriously, I'm willfully disagreeing with you. You are wrong, I can understand what you are saying, you just cannot see the flaws in your arguments.
But, fine, I won't mention any of those examples because you didn't say "all."
Thanks, I guess to prevent you from ridiculous comparisons, I have to preempt them.
You seem to be doing the very thing you're accusing me of.
That was the point.
Ummm, yeah totally!
It's difficult to make new arguments when the arguments your opponent is making is the same as the one they made before.
There's this saying about a pot and a kettle, google it...
What I said isn't an attitude, it's fact.
No, my points were fact!
This is the core of our disagreement, and it seems to me that you have your very own set of facts, and I have mine. I am saying I am correct, and you are maintaining that you are. I see no point in further discussion with you because you will not be convinced of my correctness.
As if saying you're correct will make you correct.
Again, the pot and kettle should come out and do a little skit for you.
Extreme? Maybe. An acceptable comparison? Yes. You certainly haven't told me why they're not acceptable or why your line of logic doesn't apply in those cases.
Because your "comparisons" are absurd, and ignore basic reality. In a previous comment, you stated that it doesn't matter what the majority think, only what is correct. In matters of this sort, ethics and law, there is often no objective test except maybe time and hindsight. What is correct, for most (remember this word) meanings of correct, is what the majority thinks and often the consideration of the most good for the most people. Please do not bore me with mentions of slavery, monopoly, etc, in your "comparisons", I said MOST.
To finish off, I'd have to conclude that I can see this discussion going nowhere.
That attitude isn't going to get you anywhere. You're wrong. My arguments are irrefutable, yours are instantly wrong.
This is amusing. You seem to be doing the very thing you're accusing me of. What I said isn't an attitude, it's fact. And you haven't been making any new arguments for several posts now, just refuting mine with hilarious extremes, then repeating "logic" and your thesis "zero harm is being done here" as if that would make your argument correct.
You seem to be willfully misunderstanding my points, or is it that you can't understand?
So, if you tell someone else who was going to buy a product not to buy it, you harm the artist because they would have had more money if you hadn't done that? Should that be illegal?
Should we make competition illegal, too? Maybe we should just have one giant monopoly for every item. Otherwise, legitimate businesses may be 'hurt' by competitors.
Losing future gain is not harm, as you remain unchanged.
I don't think I could ever convince you of the error of your ways, but thanks for making me argue and elucidate my points. I believe I've already addressed this "problem" you see in my argument in another thread, replying to one of your comments. Please read it, before proposing such ridiculous rebuttals. If something is not bought AND not used/played/viewed, then this reduces the artist's gains, but this is fair and legal, its how the market works. If they (pirates) haven't bought it and still have acquired it and used it, then they are wrongfully harming the artist.
There is a very good reason why I attempt to refrain from calling the other person stubborn or closed-minded during an argument. If you do so, you have to ask yourself: "Have I changed my mind either? Am I being just as stubborn as them?"
No one here has changed their beliefs. If anything, you've just reflected your statement upon yourself.
I am calling you stubborn because you don't seem to want to comprehend my points, instead misconstruing them into ridiculous extremes. I don't think I have any more to gain by debating this with you, but I will say I am correct because I am. If you cannot see my logic, that's not my problem, I think I've explained myself sufficiently and exhaustively.
Potential sales numbers are also affected by people who are allowed to tell others not to buy a product. If you wish to 'protect' artists, then perhaps you should protect them from freedom of speech.
Actually, if you convince people not to buy a product, and the information you used to convince them was false, you are liable for damages. Look it up. Free speech is not the freedom to spread malicious lies, the old example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre. You keep using strawman arguments, tsk tsk.
Scarcity of artists, not scarcity of digital media. Like it or not, there is a difference.
What you're saying is that because it is easy to copy, it's right? So you would support the idea that because it's easy for powerful people to impose tyranny on the masses, they are right to do so? This is not a strawman, because as I see it, that's the principle you seem to be implying in that statement,
Perhaps they do. But, my point is not to argue against buying digital media, my point is to state that pirates do not actually harm the artist. The current system attempts to criminalize people who have logically done no harm to anyone (for reasons stated above).
Yes, I read comprehend your points perfectly clearly. They're just incorrect, and I'm trying to explain to you how they're incorrect. It is you who don't seem to acknowledge mine. There you go again parroting the word "logic" like some magic talisman. Sad.
I'm sure they do, but it is impossible to steal something that doesn't exist.
Nowhere did I say they were stealing. Copyright infringement by downloading media isn't stealing, and NOWHERE have I said this. I just said that it harms the creators of the works downloaded.
They have not "lost" something they have, they have lost the possibility of gaining from a legitimate buyer of their work because someone has decided that they'd just download it without paying.
Think about it. If they have lost absolutely nothing that they had before, how were they harmed? They were left unchanged.
Exactly, they were LEFT UNCHANGED. They did not get any benefits they would have gotten from sale of the work (i.e, revenue, and prestige from increased sales numbers). It's exactly this that is the problem. The pirate is changed by experiencing the work, but they are unchanged because they have no benefit from the pirate's downloading. That is the harm that so many people are trying to explain to you, but you seem determinedly contrarian. Is it so hard to understand this concept?
Wow. So, if an artist finds it unfavorable that some people are deciding not to buy their product, we should force everyone to buy their product because otherwise they won't make as much money and will be harmed? I'd say just about every artist in existence wants other people to buy their products.
That's a ridiculous strawman argument, and you should be ashamed of yourself for using it. The artist has to convince people that their work is worth paying money for, that the value they give consumers of their work is worth money. If people decide it is not, and do not buy it, that's fine, that's the way things work. But if someone enjoys the work, but does not pay what the artist has proposed, that's wrong, and they ARE hurting the artist.
Your stubborn refusal to acknowledge the wider definition of the word "harm", and your ignorance of the subtler points of my argument are disappointing.
Multiple times you have already declared yourself the victor, stating that it is irrefutable that harm is being done, like now.
It IS irrefutable, what's up for debate is HOW MUCH harm is being done. I don't see the answer to that question being determined any time soon, not unless we developed telepathy and time travel, to see intentions and possible outcomes. I don't think I'm the victor. To win would be to convince you of your errors. But I think you're a loser, because you stubbornly refuse to see other people's points, and stick to your narrow world-view.
True, no harm was done to them either, but it's true that if they want to see future releases, they should play the game.
Let me be clear: causing someone to lose a future gain IS harming them. Consensus on this is clear with legal precedent in other contexts, as a poster mentioned further up this thread. You playing definitions games, and repeating "logical" and "true" every few sentences isn't going magically change the definition of the word, and the understanding people have of situations and contexts surrounding the concept.
I think Daniel Moynihan said it best: "You;re entitled to your own opinions, but you;re not entitled to your own facts."
Human beings strive for and anticipate better futures for themselves, whether it's long term goals, such as financial security, or even just planning to get the shotgun seat before a road trip. When you are likely or sure to have a favourable outcome, and someone changes the circumstances such that you have a less favourable outcome, or even makes a favourable result impossible, they HAVE harmed you, and in several cases, if they did this illegally, you can sue them.
I see, you're stubbornly sticking to a very narow definition of harm in order to back up your point, but you contradict yourself. You continually repeat that:
In order for it to harm someone, they must actually lose money, time, resources, or property that they already had.
This apparently is your definition of harm when talking about developers and how piracy does not (in your view) harm them. Thus they have to lose something they already had to be harmed, not a future gain, but a present asset. And yet in a previous post you said:
Pirates are only hurting themselves if they wish to see more content produced by the author and fail to pay them.
Obviously, you definition of harm changes when discussing your precious pirates. Here you acknowledge that the loss of a future gain is actually harm done. You're a troll and a hypocrite, and reading some of your other posts, it seems, not too bright...
But since each individual is doing zero harm in the first place, that equates to zero harm in the end (to others).
Zero harm? They're distorting data on the popularity of the game, because they didn't buy it, meaning less sales numbers when publishers decide which games get sequels, and which games get scrapped. If a good, non-DRMed popular game is heavily pirated, and has lower actual sales than an inferior game with DRM, obviously the latter would be getting a sequel, while the former would be binned. Also,
The system which forces artists (and others) to introduce artificial scarcity
But there is scarcity present, the vision and ideas of the artist(s). People are obviously downloading and enjoying the work of such artists because they lack the originality/talent/work ethic/time to produce such works. If the pirates don't actually enjoy the games, etc they download, why the hell are they doing it? And as they enjoy said works, hasn't/haven't the artist(s) created value for them, and don't they deserve something in return? The current system attempts to do this.
If they respected the copyright previously, they'll think "Hmm, I wonder if this one is any good".
However, if they played a pirated copy, they'll think "I just looooved the last one, definitely going to get this one too".
Now, in one case, they didn't buy two games. Nothing was pirated, so no money was lost, right? In the other case, they pirated one game and bought the other. One pirated, one sale. How much money was lost?
You're forgetting the third (and IMHO, most common case). The person with poor impulse control and financial planning pirated the first game, enjoyed it and got the full intangible benefits the developers intended their customers to get (entertainment, stress relief, etc), then upon hearing that the next game in the series has come out, pirates that next release too! The bottom line of this scenario is: a gamer who has experienced and enjoyed both games without benefiting the developers materially in any way by paying, nor immaterially by adding to the statistics of sales numbers, which convinvce publishers which titles should have sequels, and which should get canned. I hate DRM as much as the next slashdotter, but but the high piracy rates on non-DRM games show that most pirates are just lazy assholes who either can't afford, or couldn't bother to buy the stuff they pirate.
If you've ever read anything on tvtropes, you'll realize that that's the standard way of starting an anecdote or personal example, such as "in this troper's experience", "this toper saw/believes/felt" and "this troper read in a fanfic somewhere...".
Chrome already has a "click to flash" setting, you just have to go to the preferences window and enable it... Both Chrome's setting and the safari addon look heaps classier than the flashblock addon in firefox... Although I'll always love firefox and flashblock, looks and speed matter, and the more addons safari gets, the closer it gets to becoming my primary browser...
So everyone goes to those 3 schools. They must be huge to turn out so many famous scientists and professors.
I suspect a comprehension fail in your post. Either you're subliterate (judging from your spelling mistakes, etc) or just determined to be right. Those are just the three largest and most well known tertiary institutions in the south pacific. Nowhere did I say they "turn out so many famous scientists and professors". That aside, I fail to see the point of this thread now, your replies to my posts have no content, only dismissive insults that reveal more about your limited world-view than anything else.
Umm no, sorry. While they're in no way close to a Harvard or an Oxford, they're better than most diploma mills that give phds to AGW deniers (sorry, I couldn't use skeptic next to those words, it would disgust me too much).
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yes. If there's ONE FUCKING THING WE NEED, it's another community so afraid of offending anyone, we walk around mincing words and generally acting like complete pussies.
Yes anonymous coward, you're SOOO brave!! /sarcasm
When it finds a cure for yours...
I'm not OP, but I have to comment about childrens' development. My own little cousins have all learnt to read, write and perform arithmetics exceedingly early, and giving them access to a computer had them googling games and things like that in minutes.
However, convincing them that a laptop is valuable, and that bashing it on the floor several times to see what it was made of was bad? That took a lot longer than few minutes (weeks) , and during this time, they couldn't use the laptop unsupervised...
Seriously, just a generation ago, it was simply no big deal for a 5 year old to spend a short amount of time alone. By 10 or 11, they could spend the night alone, and by 12 or 13, they were babysitting other kids for the weekend. I don't know what kind of mass genetic disease has spread through the populations
The mass genetic disease is called the news... People have now read (and watched) cases where things that were vanishingly unlikely to happen to kids playing in the neighborhood, or alone at home, happened to them... Should it be illegal to leave your five year old alone for a SHORT time? No. Is it a smart move on the parent's part? NO. The fact is that it's unlikely that anything untoward would happen to the child, but if something did, one wouldn't want to be the parent who had that happen to them...
I think someone's imagination was captured by the "Home Alone" movies... The fact is that children that young lack the emotional as well as intellectual capacity to stay alone and stay safe. If you don't have the foresight or imagination to conceive of things that could befall even an exceptionally intelligent, responsible five year old, you're not ready to have kids.
there are much more efficient way to get rid of an overpopulation of deer than having two guys with a thousand dollars worth of gear get drunk, drive for hours to where the deer are, then shine a spotlight in their face so they can kill one deer, then take it back to their friends in town, pay a fortune to have a taxidermist mount it and act like they're big game hunters.
Very true... But few ways that are more profitable for the area than that... We don't have to like it to agree to that.
We exist in the future.
Proof? That is a bold statement. If you can prove this, then that would be simply amazing.
Yes remove the context from my words, to make them sound absurd. Thank you. I simply meant that we persist through time. Who we re from moment to moment is the same person, albeit changed through experience.
Would you?
You 'lost' the possibility of future gain (as you said), but you in your current self were not actually harmed.
Still with the insistence that these are somehow two separate people. Sad. I have an inkling that if the situation (or something like it) were to happen to you, you wouldn't maintain this view.
I don't want my future self tomorrow morning to be sleep deprived, because I've harmed myself by staying up late arguing with someone who is willfully ignoring the truth.
It must be amusing to have someone earnestly explain basic concepts over and over without apparent success.
If this is a troll, well played sir/madam, but the only way to win I guess is not to play.
Yet, it's still illogical to blame pirates and create artificial scarcity. Also:
http://thevenusproject.com/ [thevenusproject.com]
http://memwiki.pirate-party.us/But_How_Will_the_Artists_Get_Paid%3F [pirate-party.us]
This is what I read:
This kind of "honor system" works when people realize that they get screwed when they don't support the artists. If there's no money to be made, then artists won't produce anything.
From here, I gather that they should get paid via some kind of honour system?? But if pirates won't honour their wishes now, in the face of copyright law, how in the hell would they pay the artists without copyright? Please I want to know how law-breakers would suddenly stop what they are doing as soon as it becomes legal...
That page is simply hilarious. It shows both complete unawareness of how creative works are made, and a horrible sense of entitlement, that because people desire something, they should have it as long as it can be digitally copied.
Also, the creator is actually 'harming' them by 'depriving' them of the possibility of future gain (free entertainment) by not letting them merely download their works.
A sense of entitlement that you apparently share. Also here you finally widen your definition of the word harm. Good for you. You also apply my logic ass backwards, as expected. They are not deprived, because the artist is not obliged to give it to them or allow them access. Can you get that through you entitled head? If the artist wants to give it, it is the artists prerogative. If the artist wants to exchange for it, it is the artists prerogative to name the price. It is the consumers prerogative to accept the price, or reject it.
No need to repeat yourself, just tell me how that logically translates to harm even though they're left completely unaffected (unaffected doesn't mean that they are worse off than before).
Please read my post about the high school student and the scholarship. It's just below my last reply. I hope that's logical enough for you.
Which is what is being debated. I don't believe that people are inherently entitled to these future gains unless one of the following conditions is met:
A) Someone has directly asked them to perform a job for them while promising a certain amount of money for completing the job, and the artist completes the job.
B) Someone has actually stolen something that they already had.
Indeed, in your world, creators of art are not entitled to anything (except maybe attribution), only you and the consumers are. What a horrible world that would be.
Pirates don't even interact with the author in the least. They merely copy their content, and the author is likely completely unaware that a specific person just copied their work. They remain completely unaffected, unknowingly to them.
Please consider my analogy about the student and the scholarship, but imagine the scholarship board and the parent doing this without the student's knowledge. In my view, it's still harm. Yours?
The process of deciding who is harmed should be based on logic, not feelings. 'Loss' of future gain is not harm.
But you have used no logic in formulating that opinion. You do not want to acknowledge that harm has more than the narrow definition you insist on sticking to, and you refuse to acknowledge that as we move through time, we are the same. We exist in the future. Our future selves are not strangers, but us. If someone wrongfully deprives me of a benefit I was to receive, they have not wronged a stranger, they have wronged me.
Let me try an analogy. Let's say you were a high school student, and were lined up for a cushy full ride scholarship to some fancy university. Now, you haven't received it yet, but you were almost certain to; you had all the requirements, and nobody else came close. Then say a parent of a fellow student knew some members of that scholarship board, and bad-mouthed you. As a result you didn't get that scholarship, and your future prospects became shittier as a result. I'd say I was harmed. Would you?
In this example, the victim didn't lose anything they already had, so by your definition, they're not harmed. What do you have to say?
How does loss of future gain, something they never actually had, translate to harm?
I have repeated myself many times, explaining how this translates to harm. I will not do so again. If you cannot understand, I guess you never will.
How is it logical to create artificial scarcity for the sole purpose of keeping the current system on life support?
Because as you have admitted in other posts, you, and other people who think as you do, have no good system to replace this.
How does piracy not save someone from non-existent harm but competition and consumer reviews do?
It does not save them from any harm because if they pirated something and enjoyed it, they were not in danger of being harmed, but it wrongfully harms the creator. Please reread my post.
Piracy saves consumers from possible harm as well. The consumers, for instance, don't have to waste their money on goods that are themselves in an infinite supply and can instead spend it on more important things such as food and shelter. They don't have to worry about the product breaking, as they didn't pay for it in the first place.
Looks like this saves consumers from 'harm' just like reviews sometimes save them from 'harm', only this applies all the time with piracy. Too bad in both cases, the artist must 'suffer', even though they've lost nothing, huh?
As I repeated earlier, it harms the creator. It is not the benefit the consumer receives that is the issue, but the lack of benefit the creator of the work receives.
If the consumers are unwilling to give value to the creator, they should NOT receive value from the creator of the work. That is the simplest way I can put it. As I have previously mentioned, just because something is easy to do, does not make it right.
If consumers want digital media for free, they should consume digital media that is freely given from the creators/artists who do so (Corey Doctorow, etc), and not pirate it from those that want to sell their works.
Nearly every comparison is 'ridiculous'. Of course mine are going to be 'ridiculous' to you. You've yet to explain how they are, though.
Really? What about this:
I was specifically talking about ethical and legal problems, not mathematics, where something is objectively valid, or is not.
this:
Exactly, they were LEFT UNCHANGED. They did not get any benefits they would have gotten from sale of the work (i.e, revenue, and prestige from increased sales numbers). It's exactly this that is the problem.
and this:
Let me be clear: causing someone to lose a future gain IS harming them. Consensus on this is clear with legal precedent in other contexts, as a poster mentioned further up this thread.
What are these if not my arguments, and explanations on why yours are ridiculous? Well?
There you go making invalid "comparisons".
Actually, I wasn't making a comparison, just making a point that some people (not you) don't understand and often get wrong.
You change the parameters of my statement to make a hilariously wrong comparison.
That wasn't a comparison, and my other ones had valid points, extreme or not.
So you were making a point, a point you implicitly concede was invalid? How extraordinary. And yet you think I'm somehow getting something wrong?
Don't just say "it's extreme," actually explain how your logic of "it hurts potential sales" doesn't apply to competition or people who inform others of legitimately bad products. I would love to know that.
Thank you for asking a question, that I may answer you. A creator/artist tries to get people to buy a work and read/watch/play it, the exchange is the value of their work for a sum of money the creator/artist has decided on. Consumers have to decide, in the market choosing works, which ones are subjectively worth the money the artist is asking for, and which ones are not.
Now this is where my argument is. If a consumer purchases a work, and finds it is not subjectively worth their money, they are hurt, while the artist has gained at their expense. They have lost money, while not gaining equivalent value. However, if a consumer downloads/copies a work and reads/watches/plays it without paying for it AND gets value from it, the artist is hurt. They have lost a potential sale, because the pirate has enjoyed their work without giving them the return they asked for.
To prevent the former case, there are things such as consumer protections, product reviews and word of mouth, which compete against advertising from the artist or middleman selling the work. These are tools that consumers use to prevent themselves from being "hurt" by paying money for artistic works they do not enjoy, or find worth their money.
To prevent the latter case, copyright exists. This safeguards the creator/artist's livelihood, allowing the public to enjoy their works after paying them the price they have decided.
Deciding who is harmed is a balance between protecting both parties. Although creators lose sales to bad reviews, if the reviews are legitimate, they are preventing harm to the consumers who would otherwise buy it and be harmed. If the reviews are maliciously false, the creator has recourse in certain situations to take action against inaccurate or false information about them.
Finally, competition between artists/creators benefits the consumers by encouraging better pricing and products, while it helps the artists/creators by encouraging innovation and preventing stagnation. However competition is regulated, and malicious monopolistic practices are punished in most countries. If an artist fails because their work is of poor standard, they have hurt themselves and do not deserve to remain in the market.
Is that sufficient explanation? Would you require me to explain any particular point better?
The majority sharing the same opinion says nothing about the correctness of something. Facts do. If the entire population believed that the sum of two and two was equal to five, that would not make it more likely to be correct.
There you go making invalid "comparisons". I was specifically talking about ethical and legal problems, not mathematics, where something is objectively valid, or is not. This is what I am talking about when I say you bring in crazy extremes to make a rebuttal. You change the parameters of my statement to make a hilariously wrong comparison.
There's this saying about a pot and a kettle, google it...
Not much I can do about it.
Yes you can do something about it. You can see understand my position, and see it is correct. But you won't. You seem to think that you have this TRUTH,these facts, and that mysteriously, I'm willfully disagreeing with you. You are wrong, I can understand what you are saying, you just cannot see the flaws in your arguments.
But, fine, I won't mention any of those examples because you didn't say "all."
Thanks, I guess to prevent you from ridiculous comparisons, I have to preempt them.
You seem to be doing the very thing you're accusing me of.
That was the point.
Ummm, yeah totally!
It's difficult to make new arguments when the arguments your opponent is making is the same as the one they made before.
There's this saying about a pot and a kettle, google it...
What I said isn't an attitude, it's fact.
No, my points were fact!
This is the core of our disagreement, and it seems to me that you have your very own set of facts, and I have mine. I am saying I am correct, and you are maintaining that you are. I see no point in further discussion with you because you will not be convinced of my correctness.
As if saying you're correct will make you correct.
Again, the pot and kettle should come out and do a little skit for you.
Extreme? Maybe. An acceptable comparison? Yes. You certainly haven't told me why they're not acceptable or why your line of logic doesn't apply in those cases.
Because your "comparisons" are absurd, and ignore basic reality. In a previous comment, you stated that it doesn't matter what the majority think, only what is correct. In matters of this sort, ethics and law, there is often no objective test except maybe time and hindsight. What is correct, for most (remember this word) meanings of correct, is what the majority thinks and often the consideration of the most good for the most people. Please do not bore me with mentions of slavery, monopoly, etc, in your "comparisons", I said MOST.
To finish off, I'd have to conclude that I can see this discussion going nowhere.
That attitude isn't going to get you anywhere. You're wrong. My arguments are irrefutable, yours are instantly wrong.
This is amusing. You seem to be doing the very thing you're accusing me of. What I said isn't an attitude, it's fact. And you haven't been making any new arguments for several posts now, just refuting mine with hilarious extremes, then repeating "logic" and your thesis "zero harm is being done here" as if that would make your argument correct.
You seem to be willfully misunderstanding my points, or is it that you can't understand?
So, if you tell someone else who was going to buy a product not to buy it, you harm the artist because they would have had more money if you hadn't done that? Should that be illegal?
Should we make competition illegal, too? Maybe we should just have one giant monopoly for every item. Otherwise, legitimate businesses may be 'hurt' by competitors.
Losing future gain is not harm, as you remain unchanged.
I don't think I could ever convince you of the error of your ways, but thanks for making me argue and elucidate my points. I believe I've already addressed this "problem" you see in my argument in another thread, replying to one of your comments. Please read it, before proposing such ridiculous rebuttals. If something is not bought AND not used/played/viewed, then this reduces the artist's gains, but this is fair and legal, its how the market works. If they (pirates) haven't bought it and still have acquired it and used it, then they are wrongfully harming the artist.
There is a very good reason why I attempt to refrain from calling the other person stubborn or closed-minded during an argument. If you do so, you have to ask yourself: "Have I changed my mind either? Am I being just as stubborn as them?"
No one here has changed their beliefs. If anything, you've just reflected your statement upon yourself.
I am calling you stubborn because you don't seem to want to comprehend my points, instead misconstruing them into ridiculous extremes. I don't think I have any more to gain by debating this with you, but I will say I am correct because I am. If you cannot see my logic, that's not my problem, I think I've explained myself sufficiently and exhaustively.
Potential sales numbers are also affected by people who are allowed to tell others not to buy a product. If you wish to 'protect' artists, then perhaps you should protect them from freedom of speech.
Actually, if you convince people not to buy a product, and the information you used to convince them was false, you are liable for damages. Look it up. Free speech is not the freedom to spread malicious lies, the old example is yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre. You keep using strawman arguments, tsk tsk.
Scarcity of artists, not scarcity of digital media. Like it or not, there is a difference.
What you're saying is that because it is easy to copy, it's right? So you would support the idea that because it's easy for powerful people to impose tyranny on the masses, they are right to do so? This is not a strawman, because as I see it, that's the principle you seem to be implying in that statement,
Perhaps they do. But, my point is not to argue against buying digital media, my point is to state that pirates do not actually harm the artist. The current system attempts to criminalize people who have logically done no harm to anyone (for reasons stated above).
Yes, I read comprehend your points perfectly clearly. They're just incorrect, and I'm trying to explain to you how they're incorrect. It is you who don't seem to acknowledge mine. There you go again parroting the word "logic" like some magic talisman. Sad.
I'm sure they do, but it is impossible to steal something that doesn't exist.
Nowhere did I say they were stealing. Copyright infringement by downloading media isn't stealing, and NOWHERE have I said this. I just said that it harms the creators of the works downloaded.
They have not "lost" something they have, they have lost the possibility of gaining from a legitimate buyer of their work because someone has decided that they'd just download it without paying.
Think about it. If they have lost absolutely nothing that they had before, how were they harmed? They were left unchanged.
Exactly, they were LEFT UNCHANGED. They did not get any benefits they would have gotten from sale of the work (i.e, revenue, and prestige from increased sales numbers). It's exactly this that is the problem. The pirate is changed by experiencing the work, but they are unchanged because they have no benefit from the pirate's downloading. That is the harm that so many people are trying to explain to you, but you seem determinedly contrarian. Is it so hard to understand this concept?
Wow. So, if an artist finds it unfavorable that some people are deciding not to buy their product, we should force everyone to buy their product because otherwise they won't make as much money and will be harmed? I'd say just about every artist in existence wants other people to buy their products.
That's a ridiculous strawman argument, and you should be ashamed of yourself for using it. The artist has to convince people that their work is worth paying money for, that the value they give consumers of their work is worth money. If people decide it is not, and do not buy it, that's fine, that's the way things work. But if someone enjoys the work, but does not pay what the artist has proposed, that's wrong, and they ARE hurting the artist.
Your stubborn refusal to acknowledge the wider definition of the word "harm", and your ignorance of the subtler points of my argument are disappointing.
Multiple times you have already declared yourself the victor, stating that it is irrefutable that harm is being done, like now.
It IS irrefutable, what's up for debate is HOW MUCH harm is being done. I don't see the answer to that question being determined any time soon, not unless we developed telepathy and time travel, to see intentions and possible outcomes. I don't think I'm the victor. To win would be to convince you of your errors. But I think you're a loser, because you stubbornly refuse to see other people's points, and stick to your narrow world-view.
True, no harm was done to them either, but it's true that if they want to see future releases, they should play the game.
Let me be clear: causing someone to lose a future gain IS harming them. Consensus on this is clear with legal precedent in other contexts, as a poster mentioned further up this thread. You playing definitions games, and repeating "logical" and "true" every few sentences isn't going magically change the definition of the word, and the understanding people have of situations and contexts surrounding the concept.
I think Daniel Moynihan said it best: "You;re entitled to your own opinions, but you;re not entitled to your own facts."
Human beings strive for and anticipate better futures for themselves, whether it's long term goals, such as financial security, or even just planning to get the shotgun seat before a road trip. When you are likely or sure to have a favourable outcome, and someone changes the circumstances such that you have a less favourable outcome, or even makes a favourable result impossible, they HAVE harmed you, and in several cases, if they did this illegally, you can sue them.
I see, you're stubbornly sticking to a very narow definition of harm in order to back up your point, but you contradict yourself. You continually repeat that :
In order for it to harm someone, they must actually lose money, time, resources, or property that they already had.
This apparently is your definition of harm when talking about developers and how piracy does not (in your view) harm them. Thus they have to lose something they already had to be harmed, not a future gain, but a present asset. And yet in a previous post you said:
Pirates are only hurting themselves if they wish to see more content produced by the author and fail to pay them.
Obviously, you definition of harm changes when discussing your precious pirates. Here you acknowledge that the loss of a future gain is actually harm done. You're a troll and a hypocrite, and reading some of your other posts, it seems, not too bright...
But since each individual is doing zero harm in the first place, that equates to zero harm in the end (to others).
Zero harm? They're distorting data on the popularity of the game, because they didn't buy it, meaning less sales numbers when publishers decide which games get sequels, and which games get scrapped. If a good, non-DRMed popular game is heavily pirated, and has lower actual sales than an inferior game with DRM, obviously the latter would be getting a sequel, while the former would be binned. Also,
The system which forces artists (and others) to introduce artificial scarcity
But there is scarcity present, the vision and ideas of the artist(s). People are obviously downloading and enjoying the work of such artists because they lack the originality/talent/work ethic/time to produce such works. If the pirates don't actually enjoy the games, etc they download, why the hell are they doing it? And as they enjoy said works, hasn't/haven't the artist(s) created value for them, and don't they deserve something in return? The current system attempts to do this.
If they respected the copyright previously, they'll think "Hmm, I wonder if this one is any good".
However, if they played a pirated copy, they'll think "I just looooved the last one, definitely going to get this one too".
Now, in one case, they didn't buy two games. Nothing was pirated, so no money was lost, right? In the other case, they pirated one game and bought the other. One pirated, one sale. How much money was lost?
You're forgetting the third (and IMHO, most common case). The person with poor impulse control and financial planning pirated the first game, enjoyed it and got the full intangible benefits the developers intended their customers to get (entertainment, stress relief, etc), then upon hearing that the next game in the series has come out, pirates that next release too!
The bottom line of this scenario is: a gamer who has experienced and enjoyed both games without benefiting the developers materially in any way by paying, nor immaterially by adding to the statistics of sales numbers, which convinvce publishers which titles should have sequels, and which should get canned.
I hate DRM as much as the next slashdotter, but but the high piracy rates on non-DRM games show that most pirates are just lazy assholes who either can't afford, or couldn't bother to buy the stuff they pirate.
If you've ever read anything on tvtropes, you'll realize that that's the standard way of starting an anecdote or personal example, such as "in this troper's experience", "this toper saw/believes/felt" and "this troper read in a fanfic somewhere...".
Chrome already has a "click to flash" setting, you just have to go to the preferences window and enable it... Both Chrome's setting and the safari addon look heaps classier than the flashblock addon in firefox... Although I'll always love firefox and flashblock, looks and speed matter, and the more addons safari gets, the closer it gets to becoming my primary browser...
So everyone goes to those 3 schools. They must be huge to turn out so many famous scientists and professors.
I suspect a comprehension fail in your post. Either you're subliterate (judging from your spelling mistakes, etc) or just determined to be right. Those are just the three largest and most well known tertiary institutions in the south pacific. Nowhere did I say they "turn out so many famous scientists and professors". That aside, I fail to see the point of this thread now, your replies to my posts have no content, only dismissive insults that reveal more about your limited world-view than anything else.
Umm no, sorry. While they're in no way close to a Harvard or an Oxford, they're better than most diploma mills that give phds to AGW deniers (sorry, I couldn't use skeptic next to those words, it would disgust me too much).