Well, no... it's not linear. And it's also inevitably very subjective, because it amounts to how much the copyright holder really values whatever measure of exclusivity that they have lost by the infringement (even though the amount of exclusivity lost may not be very much for a single infringement, it might still have great value to the copyright holder).
Still, though, infringing on copyright still weakens the very premise of copyright, which affects all copyright holders everywhere. If copyright is good for society, then it follows that infringing on copyright is bad for that same society. A reasonable argument exists that if the monetary settlements that could be awarded to a copyright holder for winning a copyright infringement case were not substantial, then even many copyright holders themselves might not actively try to press charges against infringers. It would be a largely self-destructive choice, but even worse, it would only serve to reduce the merits of copyright for everybody. So from a certain perspective, the large awards really do make a lot of sense.
How were they hurt? Their exclusivity on choosing who else was allowed to copy the work was compromised... this exclusivity is something that they were supposed to be promised (indeed, "copyright" literally means "right to copy") in exchange for an incentive to publish the work in the first place, where they otherwise might have wanted to simply keep it to themselves, or share it only with a very restricted audience, so that they would not have to worry about somebody copying it without their permission.
Now obviously, not every creator really needs such an incentive to publish their works... but there are clearly many that do (if that were not the case, a majority of material that creators release for free would tend to be immediately released into the public domain, but this is not what happens... such creators choose to retain the control that comes with having a copyright).
As I said above, however, the actual damage to the copyright holder when their exclusivity is compromised by unauthorized copying is a matter of considerable subjective debate. That there appears to be no objective standard by which to measure that damage does not mean that it has no real value, especially since it is, in fact, clearly valued greatly by copyright holders
I never suggested that compromising the exclusivity was ever an all-or-nothing deal... the compromise is permanent, but the overall damage to it by any single unauthorized copy does not completely negate any remaining merit of it unless those unauthorized copies were actually distributed to every person on the planet (at which point the exclusivity is truly worthless). In practice, since the entire world population is rarely involved, the value of the exclusivity merely asymptotically approaches zero the more people actually copy the work without authorization.
However, the overall actual damage to exclusivity caused by any single unauthorized copy, even the first such one, is actually negligible. But a significant problem comes when you take that otherwise negligible damage and multiply it by the distribution scale offered by today's communication infrastructure, and you can end up with something quite sizable.
Copyright is actually much less about getting paid, regardless of what many people seem to believe, and more about exclusivity on who else has the right to copy a work... it just so happens to be the case that the exclusivity is rather easily monetizable for content that happens to be in demand. Copyright, after all, can still apply just as strongly to things that the creator chose to make freely distributable.
I don't think you should be charged hundreds of thousands of dollars over a $2 piece of music
You appear to be under the impression that damages awarded are in some way supposed to be about the price of each copy. They are not. It is about how the unauthorized copying compromises the copyright holder's exclusivity to copy the work. And in particular, since exclusivity by definition means that nobody else is doing it, that compromise is effectively permanent The damage to this exclusivity actually affects all copyright holders, not merely the one whose copyright is infringed upon, since by violating a copyright, the incentives that the exclusivity that it offers to creators of works to utilize it in the future is weakened (since copyright is failing to do its job effectively, which is to offer its holders exclusivity on the right to decide who else may copy the work). How much value this exclusivity actually has can be an argument of considerable subjectivity, but that does not mean its value should necessarily be very little, nor should the price of any individual copy of the work be a factor in that.
When something rather big hits a rocky planet, such as Earth, or Mars, it ejects quite a bit of rock up into the air. If the impact was hard enough, some of that rock can even be hurtled clear out of orbit.
I've heard it suggested that even Olympus Mons, with its enormous size, could have ejected immeasurable amounts of Martian rock material into outer space itself when it was still an active volcano as well.
It's chemical composition suggests a Martian origin. It's possible it came from somewhere else, but not terribly likely.
Especially if the front page says "if these bills pass, blackout pages like this could become permanent".
The problem with such claims is that to most people, they are going to sound needlessly exaggerated and melodramatic.
People have become quite jaded about predictions of that sort since Y2K, which in most people's view was a non-event, reflecting on how much hype there had been before, and how absolutely nothing catastrophically bad actually happened (of course, the fact that there had been so many people working diligently during the last 2 decades or so of the 20th century trying to individually address the problem for each company is likely what ended up mitigating that problem to no small degree is a point of interest that very few people take seriously, simply because it's not what they heard from the media).
It's teaching by example. "If this kind of bill gets passed, this is what will happen to the whole internet"
First of all... no, it won't. People will still be able to watch their cat videos on Youtube, and connect with their friends via Facebook, or tweet what they are doing right now on Twitter. Secondly, such a statement invariably comes off as sounding so penultimately melodramatic that there's no real way that most people are going to take it seriously.
Anyways... I don't have any evidence for the position I described above... I presented what I did above as my own personal beliefs of what I fear is all to liable to happen.
People are lazy... and they take for granted that which they have until they *REALLY* no longer have it. Going dark for just 24 hours isn't going to cut it.
And owing to the fact that this blackout is entirely artificial, and not actually a direct consequence of the passing of the bill, I perceive that it is liable to simply make people annoyed with Wikipedia, and others that are going dark as part of this protest.
And does it not sound sort of ironic to be protesting the restriction of free speech and the free flow of information by actually deliberately limiting the free flow of network information by going dark for 24 hours? You mention that it is teaching by example.... is this not teaching, by example, that it is actually okay and justified to stop the flow of otherwise free information anytime you really want to, because (supposedly) your own motives are good? How is that not becoming the very thing that one is proposing to fight against?
If you become your own enemy, then you cannot possibly win the war.
Well, I can't be the only person who realizes that this sort of behavior could be perceived by many as some attempted form of blackmail. Going dark isn't going to make people suddenly care more about this bill... it's just liable to annoy them, and cause them to think that the companies are being a bunch of crybabies that aren't getting their own way.
Most people do not understand, and do not wish to understand any of the underlying problems with this bill, if for no other reason than because they simply can't see how it will directly affect them. All these companies going dark before the matter is liable to be perceived as is just so much melodrama, and not part of any real consequence of the bill.
I'd like to hope I'm wrong... but I really don't think I am. It is human nature to take things for granted until they are suddenly gone and you have little to no hope of ever getting them back. I'm not trying to say that this is a good thing... not remotely. But it's not something that this endeavor is going to change.
I never said that a majority voters voted conservative... I said that a majority of voters were stupid enough to allow the conservatives to get a majority government. There is a difference.
Yes... everyone would get the message if Google joined the fray.
Unfortunately, the message that everyone would get is that Google and the others are just being a bunch of whiney tech companies who are trying to blackmail the senate into getting their own way by blocking people who have nothing to do with this from getting their jobs done. I agree with the incentives that are driving this, but doing the wrong thing for the right reason is still a wrong thing... and just because one can't think of anything else that is likely to work shouldn't be an excuse to take that road.
But how many of these inconvenienced people are actually going to even *WANT* to know about the issues that Wikipedia et al are trying to take a stand over? All I fear this blackout is liable to look like is that a few important players are throwing an immature temper tantrum over something that might further they own agenda, but doesn't matter at all to the average person, because they simply don't perceive their own ignorance on how this bill will affect them. Some might take the opportunity to find out more about the bill and why it is bad, but going dark isn't generally going to incite people to want to educate themselves... it's far more likely to simply piss people off.
The problem with this is that without the exclusivity associated with patents and copyrights, you create disincentives for people to widely publish the things that they create, unless they were already willing to completely sacrifice the exclusivity that relative obscurity offers them in the first place. While I realize there may be no lack of people who are willing to do this, it's still *SUBSTANTIALLY* lower than the number of people that utilize copyright to retain their exclusivity on the right to decide who else may make a copy. This has nothing to do with anybody's economy... because copyright is really about exclusivity, not monetization. It merely happens to be the case that the exclusivity is often monetizable because it can be utilized to create an artificial shortage of the work. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the side effect is still that the work does actually get published in the first place.
Finally, it is also worth noting that even among works that are released for free, a staggering majority of them are still explicitly released under some form of copyright, which in the end, still prohibits any unauthorized copying (even if you can apparently copy and redistribute copies of the work freely, there are some caveats, such as the copyright notice must remain in place, or credit must be given, or what have you... such provisions merely grant permission to copy to the people who agree to those terms). Truly unlimited permission for absolutely anybody to copy a work, and not having any terms on such provisions at all, is actually a choice by the creator to effectively relinquish their copyright, and is just the same as public domain. While without copyright, some creators might still release their works directly into public domain, the number of such works would be certain to be dramatically lower than the number of works released today. If a variety of such works can enrich a culture, then it must follow that creating disincentives for people to widely publish works is harmful to that same culture. I understand and can sympathize with the reasons for what you are proposing, but the real ramifications of it would still not stand well to be positive.
I don't know if you realized this or not, but the voice of Canadians doesn't seem to matter one iota with regards to Copyright these days... a majority of voters were stupid enough to allow the Conservative government to get a majority position in parliament, and now the Conservatives can now do whatever the heck they damn well want, even in the face of otherwise unanimous opposition from all other party members. Since the Conservatives are in the USA's hip pocket, take a wild guess which way this is going to go? They don't even really need to worry about issues surrounding reelection, because so few Canadian voters even understand these issues or perceive them as actually important, that the Conservatives will still have plenty of supporters next election.
I understand the incentives for this sort of action, but bear in mind that this sort of "going dark" is the result of a conscious decision by participants such as Wikipedia, and not a direct ramification of the actual passing of this bill. It's a peaceful protest that will probably inconvenience a lot of people, and might even gather significant publicity, but I fear is likely to only be interpreted as an attempt to manipulate the Senate to further a particular agenda, rather than awaken anyone to the real problems with the bill, simply because so few people really understand the principles that make the bill a bad idea from the outset.
"Going dark" is much more likely to be viewed as akin to throwing a temper tantrum because one is not getting their way than it is any sort of sincere attempt to awaken anybody to the problems that this bill actually presents.... because I really can't see that it will.
It's only lower power if you don't utilize the backlight, and thereby also lose color.
The color display suffers from just as much contrast problems in sunlight as regular LCD monitors do.
There are other more promising (IMO) color displays on the horizon that offer high refresh rates, full color, and utilize a passive display that draws *NO* power whenever it is showing a static image.
People aren't going to give up their native languages, either.
It's not like it will just happen all of a sudden... although I think it's going to take much more than a hundred years. Probably more like a thousand. Although I would not dare predict which languages they will be speaking. About 2000 years ago, it looked like the entire civilized world was going to one day be speaking Latin.
It's called "copyright"... literally speaking, "the right to copy". More specifically, the exclusive right to decide who else may copy the work. Of course, I never said that any and all copying was prohibited.... only copying that is accompanied by any intent to utilize that copy for purposes that would exceed those of fair use. How this intent is objectively measured is entirely based upon how the copy actually *does* get utilized, to the extent that the person who made the copy was a collaborator of that use (for example, if you make personal use copies/backups of your CD's that are stored in your car, and your car gets broken into and your CD collection inside stolen, you would not generally considered party to that sort of distribution, and so that would be be construed to have been your intent when you made the copy). Similarly, it is not intentional distribution itself that is illegal... not even for commercial benefit, as I can legally purchase copyrighted works from a store (which are authorized copies), and give them to a friend as a gift, thereby clearly distributing copies of the works myself, but without any authorization whatsoever.
While I agree that you generally have to actually do some sort of distribution before any ability exists to objectively conclude that you have infringed on copyright, it is, in fact, the copying itself that is illegal... but *ONLY* in conjunction with an intent to distribute said copy. For an (admittedly contrived) example of how distribution would not have to occur, a recently set up pirate shop might have prepared many unauthorized copies for distribution, and if some actual hard evidence should surface that this was their intent, even before they actually manage to distribute any such copies, they could be prosecuted for copyright infringement on the basis of such evidence (as long as it was sufficiently incriminating... such as a recording of a phone conversation or something). Obviously, if the distribution has not yet occurred, the penalties could potentially (but not necessarily) be considerably lower than if distribution had already occurred, sort of like how conspiracy to commit a murder, for example, is against the law, but can have a much lower penalty than actually murdering that person. To that end, actual distribution of unauthorized copies is generally considered to be a crime as well, and if practiced by a person other than the one who made those copies, the person who does so can be held accountable for it entirely separately from any person who voluntarily supplied him with such copies.
If one is really compelled to tie copyright infringement with distribution, I suppose, then that one could reasonably argue that it is intent to distribute any unauthorized copies, and not the copying itself that is illegal, but this is still entirely different from simply shortening it to the actual distribution of any copies being illegal (not the least reason for this being that not all copies of a work are actually unauthorized, and thus perfectly legal for anybody to distribute, whether or not they have received any authorization to do so).
Although IANAL, I have had occasion to become highly acquainted with many of the intricacies of copyright law myself, and the above is, to the best of my experience and knowledge, correct in all of North America (although there are some differences between Canadian and American copyright law, it is my own understanding that they are largely superfluous to the above points).
No... copyright is about the right to copy. Not to distribute. It is merely a point in fact that copying without authorization is not illegal unless it is accompanied by some intent that does not involve keeping the copy for oneself. If any and all copying were illegal, it would be against the law to read a copyrighteed book in the first place, since one is, in a matter of speaking, creating what could loosely be described as a facsimile copy of what one reads inside of their brain. If it were entirely about the right to distribute, book stores would need a copyright holder's permission to distribute the books that they legitmately buy for resale.
Obviously, distribution is what must happen before one can conclusively say that a crime has been committed, but if copying is done with intent to distribute, then it is still that copying itself which is an infringement. The fact that the law cannot determine intent until it actually happens is only relevant to the extent that we have to wait until the intent is carried out before any prosecution can actually commence. But this is not remotely the same thing as simply outlawing distribution.
Somebody from my ISP has told me, in so many words, that they have absolutely no intention of making IPv6 available to consumers until [!!!!] they run out of IPv4 addresses... which the fellow I spoke to insisted was still years away, and offered absolutely no timeline given for any actual switch. To top it all off, he said that they would not even be doing any sort of gradual transition when it does happen... that the switchover would be essentially instantaneous for everybody, and would be transparent for anybody using a currently patched version of their OS.
I hate my ISP... but there's only 3 to choose from where I live, and the other two each have problems of their own that I would be utterly unable to live with.
The "tax" that you pay in Canada on blank media is to partially compensate artists for your right to copy content for personal use... it does not entitle you to share copies of copyrighted content with other people without permission.
It is currently a rather significant loophole in this concept that appears to permit people to download personal use copies of copyrighted content that was being distributed without permission in the first place. A judge actually interpreted the law in this context in a widely publicized case shortly after the turn of this century. Such content is still technically infringing, however... and that decision could ultimately still be overturned in future rulings by any amendments made to copyright law which explicitly prohibit the personal use exemption to copyright infringement to apply to content that is already infringing.
Slashdot Mirror
Or X = infinity.
So what you're saying is that they ironically contribute to the continued existence of the human gene-pool by not actually contributing to it at all?
Are you sure that evolution is really supposed to work like that? It sounds rather... counter-intuitive.
Well, no... it's not linear. And it's also inevitably very subjective, because it amounts to how much the copyright holder really values whatever measure of exclusivity that they have lost by the infringement (even though the amount of exclusivity lost may not be very much for a single infringement, it might still have great value to the copyright holder).
Still, though, infringing on copyright still weakens the very premise of copyright, which affects all copyright holders everywhere. If copyright is good for society, then it follows that infringing on copyright is bad for that same society. A reasonable argument exists that if the monetary settlements that could be awarded to a copyright holder for winning a copyright infringement case were not substantial, then even many copyright holders themselves might not actively try to press charges against infringers. It would be a largely self-destructive choice, but even worse, it would only serve to reduce the merits of copyright for everybody. So from a certain perspective, the large awards really do make a lot of sense.
How were they hurt? Their exclusivity on choosing who else was allowed to copy the work was compromised... this exclusivity is something that they were supposed to be promised (indeed, "copyright" literally means "right to copy") in exchange for an incentive to publish the work in the first place, where they otherwise might have wanted to simply keep it to themselves, or share it only with a very restricted audience, so that they would not have to worry about somebody copying it without their permission.
Now obviously, not every creator really needs such an incentive to publish their works... but there are clearly many that do (if that were not the case, a majority of material that creators release for free would tend to be immediately released into the public domain, but this is not what happens... such creators choose to retain the control that comes with having a copyright).
As I said above, however, the actual damage to the copyright holder when their exclusivity is compromised by unauthorized copying is a matter of considerable subjective debate. That there appears to be no objective standard by which to measure that damage does not mean that it has no real value, especially since it is, in fact, clearly valued greatly by copyright holders
I never suggested that compromising the exclusivity was ever an all-or-nothing deal... the compromise is permanent, but the overall damage to it by any single unauthorized copy does not completely negate any remaining merit of it unless those unauthorized copies were actually distributed to every person on the planet (at which point the exclusivity is truly worthless). In practice, since the entire world population is rarely involved, the value of the exclusivity merely asymptotically approaches zero the more people actually copy the work without authorization.
However, the overall actual damage to exclusivity caused by any single unauthorized copy, even the first such one, is actually negligible. But a significant problem comes when you take that otherwise negligible damage and multiply it by the distribution scale offered by today's communication infrastructure, and you can end up with something quite sizable.
You appear to be under the impression that damages awarded are in some way supposed to be about the price of each copy. They are not. It is about how the unauthorized copying compromises the copyright holder's exclusivity to copy the work. And in particular, since exclusivity by definition means that nobody else is doing it, that compromise is effectively permanent The damage to this exclusivity actually affects all copyright holders, not merely the one whose copyright is infringed upon, since by violating a copyright, the incentives that the exclusivity that it offers to creators of works to utilize it in the future is weakened (since copyright is failing to do its job effectively, which is to offer its holders exclusivity on the right to decide who else may copy the work). How much value this exclusivity actually has can be an argument of considerable subjectivity, but that does not mean its value should necessarily be very little, nor should the price of any individual copy of the work be a factor in that.
When something rather big hits a rocky planet, such as Earth, or Mars, it ejects quite a bit of rock up into the air. If the impact was hard enough, some of that rock can even be hurtled clear out of orbit.
I've heard it suggested that even Olympus Mons, with its enormous size, could have ejected immeasurable amounts of Martian rock material into outer space itself when it was still an active volcano as well.
It's chemical composition suggests a Martian origin. It's possible it came from somewhere else, but not terribly likely.
The problem with such claims is that to most people, they are going to sound needlessly exaggerated and melodramatic.
People have become quite jaded about predictions of that sort since Y2K, which in most people's view was a non-event, reflecting on how much hype there had been before, and how absolutely nothing catastrophically bad actually happened (of course, the fact that there had been so many people working diligently during the last 2 decades or so of the 20th century trying to individually address the problem for each company is likely what ended up mitigating that problem to no small degree is a point of interest that very few people take seriously, simply because it's not what they heard from the media).
First of all... no, it won't. People will still be able to watch their cat videos on Youtube, and connect with their friends via Facebook, or tweet what they are doing right now on Twitter. Secondly, such a statement invariably comes off as sounding so penultimately melodramatic that there's no real way that most people are going to take it seriously.
Anyways... I don't have any evidence for the position I described above... I presented what I did above as my own personal beliefs of what I fear is all to liable to happen.
People are lazy... and they take for granted that which they have until they *REALLY* no longer have it. Going dark for just 24 hours isn't going to cut it. And owing to the fact that this blackout is entirely artificial, and not actually a direct consequence of the passing of the bill, I perceive that it is liable to simply make people annoyed with Wikipedia, and others that are going dark as part of this protest.
And does it not sound sort of ironic to be protesting the restriction of free speech and the free flow of information by actually deliberately limiting the free flow of network information by going dark for 24 hours? You mention that it is teaching by example.... is this not teaching, by example, that it is actually okay and justified to stop the flow of otherwise free information anytime you really want to, because (supposedly) your own motives are good? How is that not becoming the very thing that one is proposing to fight against?
If you become your own enemy, then you cannot possibly win the war.
Well, I can't be the only person who realizes that this sort of behavior could be perceived by many as some attempted form of blackmail. Going dark isn't going to make people suddenly care more about this bill... it's just liable to annoy them, and cause them to think that the companies are being a bunch of crybabies that aren't getting their own way.
Most people do not understand, and do not wish to understand any of the underlying problems with this bill, if for no other reason than because they simply can't see how it will directly affect them. All these companies going dark before the matter is liable to be perceived as is just so much melodrama, and not part of any real consequence of the bill.
I'd like to hope I'm wrong... but I really don't think I am. It is human nature to take things for granted until they are suddenly gone and you have little to no hope of ever getting them back. I'm not trying to say that this is a good thing... not remotely. But it's not something that this endeavor is going to change.
I never said that a majority voters voted conservative... I said that a majority of voters were stupid enough to allow the conservatives to get a majority government. There is a difference.
Yes... everyone would get the message if Google joined the fray.
Unfortunately, the message that everyone would get is that Google and the others are just being a bunch of whiney tech companies who are trying to blackmail the senate into getting their own way by blocking people who have nothing to do with this from getting their jobs done. I agree with the incentives that are driving this, but doing the wrong thing for the right reason is still a wrong thing... and just because one can't think of anything else that is likely to work shouldn't be an excuse to take that road.
That's a really good question. I don't have an answer for you, unfortunately.
But how many of these inconvenienced people are actually going to even *WANT* to know about the issues that Wikipedia et al are trying to take a stand over? All I fear this blackout is liable to look like is that a few important players are throwing an immature temper tantrum over something that might further they own agenda, but doesn't matter at all to the average person, because they simply don't perceive their own ignorance on how this bill will affect them. Some might take the opportunity to find out more about the bill and why it is bad, but going dark isn't generally going to incite people to want to educate themselves... it's far more likely to simply piss people off.
The problem with this is that without the exclusivity associated with patents and copyrights, you create disincentives for people to widely publish the things that they create, unless they were already willing to completely sacrifice the exclusivity that relative obscurity offers them in the first place. While I realize there may be no lack of people who are willing to do this, it's still *SUBSTANTIALLY* lower than the number of people that utilize copyright to retain their exclusivity on the right to decide who else may make a copy. This has nothing to do with anybody's economy... because copyright is really about exclusivity, not monetization. It merely happens to be the case that the exclusivity is often monetizable because it can be utilized to create an artificial shortage of the work. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the side effect is still that the work does actually get published in the first place. Finally, it is also worth noting that even among works that are released for free, a staggering majority of them are still explicitly released under some form of copyright, which in the end, still prohibits any unauthorized copying (even if you can apparently copy and redistribute copies of the work freely, there are some caveats, such as the copyright notice must remain in place, or credit must be given, or what have you... such provisions merely grant permission to copy to the people who agree to those terms). Truly unlimited permission for absolutely anybody to copy a work, and not having any terms on such provisions at all, is actually a choice by the creator to effectively relinquish their copyright, and is just the same as public domain. While without copyright, some creators might still release their works directly into public domain, the number of such works would be certain to be dramatically lower than the number of works released today. If a variety of such works can enrich a culture, then it must follow that creating disincentives for people to widely publish works is harmful to that same culture. I understand and can sympathize with the reasons for what you are proposing, but the real ramifications of it would still not stand well to be positive.
I don't know if you realized this or not, but the voice of Canadians doesn't seem to matter one iota with regards to Copyright these days... a majority of voters were stupid enough to allow the Conservative government to get a majority position in parliament, and now the Conservatives can now do whatever the heck they damn well want, even in the face of otherwise unanimous opposition from all other party members. Since the Conservatives are in the USA's hip pocket, take a wild guess which way this is going to go? They don't even really need to worry about issues surrounding reelection, because so few Canadian voters even understand these issues or perceive them as actually important, that the Conservatives will still have plenty of supporters next election.
I understand the incentives for this sort of action, but bear in mind that this sort of "going dark" is the result of a conscious decision by participants such as Wikipedia, and not a direct ramification of the actual passing of this bill. It's a peaceful protest that will probably inconvenience a lot of people, and might even gather significant publicity, but I fear is likely to only be interpreted as an attempt to manipulate the Senate to further a particular agenda, rather than awaken anyone to the real problems with the bill, simply because so few people really understand the principles that make the bill a bad idea from the outset.
"Going dark" is much more likely to be viewed as akin to throwing a temper tantrum because one is not getting their way than it is any sort of sincere attempt to awaken anybody to the problems that this bill actually presents.... because I really can't see that it will.
It's only lower power if you don't utilize the backlight, and thereby also lose color.
The color display suffers from just as much contrast problems in sunlight as regular LCD monitors do.
There are other more promising (IMO) color displays on the horizon that offer high refresh rates, full color, and utilize a passive display that draws *NO* power whenever it is showing a static image.
It's not like it will just happen all of a sudden... although I think it's going to take much more than a hundred years. Probably more like a thousand. Although I would not dare predict which languages they will be speaking. About 2000 years ago, it looked like the entire civilized world was going to one day be speaking Latin.
It's called "copyright"... literally speaking, "the right to copy". More specifically, the exclusive right to decide who else may copy the work. Of course, I never said that any and all copying was prohibited.... only copying that is accompanied by any intent to utilize that copy for purposes that would exceed those of fair use. How this intent is objectively measured is entirely based upon how the copy actually *does* get utilized, to the extent that the person who made the copy was a collaborator of that use (for example, if you make personal use copies/backups of your CD's that are stored in your car, and your car gets broken into and your CD collection inside stolen, you would not generally considered party to that sort of distribution, and so that would be be construed to have been your intent when you made the copy). Similarly, it is not intentional distribution itself that is illegal... not even for commercial benefit, as I can legally purchase copyrighted works from a store (which are authorized copies), and give them to a friend as a gift, thereby clearly distributing copies of the works myself, but without any authorization whatsoever.
While I agree that you generally have to actually do some sort of distribution before any ability exists to objectively conclude that you have infringed on copyright, it is, in fact, the copying itself that is illegal... but *ONLY* in conjunction with an intent to distribute said copy. For an (admittedly contrived) example of how distribution would not have to occur, a recently set up pirate shop might have prepared many unauthorized copies for distribution, and if some actual hard evidence should surface that this was their intent, even before they actually manage to distribute any such copies, they could be prosecuted for copyright infringement on the basis of such evidence (as long as it was sufficiently incriminating... such as a recording of a phone conversation or something). Obviously, if the distribution has not yet occurred, the penalties could potentially (but not necessarily) be considerably lower than if distribution had already occurred, sort of like how conspiracy to commit a murder, for example, is against the law, but can have a much lower penalty than actually murdering that person. To that end, actual distribution of unauthorized copies is generally considered to be a crime as well, and if practiced by a person other than the one who made those copies, the person who does so can be held accountable for it entirely separately from any person who voluntarily supplied him with such copies.
If one is really compelled to tie copyright infringement with distribution, I suppose, then that one could reasonably argue that it is intent to distribute any unauthorized copies, and not the copying itself that is illegal, but this is still entirely different from simply shortening it to the actual distribution of any copies being illegal (not the least reason for this being that not all copies of a work are actually unauthorized, and thus perfectly legal for anybody to distribute, whether or not they have received any authorization to do so).
Although IANAL, I have had occasion to become highly acquainted with many of the intricacies of copyright law myself, and the above is, to the best of my experience and knowledge, correct in all of North America (although there are some differences between Canadian and American copyright law, it is my own understanding that they are largely superfluous to the above points).
How do you propose to do a live gig for a movie? Replace it all with live theatre?
What about books? What about software?
No... copyright is about the right to copy. Not to distribute. It is merely a point in fact that copying without authorization is not illegal unless it is accompanied by some intent that does not involve keeping the copy for oneself. If any and all copying were illegal, it would be against the law to read a copyrighteed book in the first place, since one is, in a matter of speaking, creating what could loosely be described as a facsimile copy of what one reads inside of their brain. If it were entirely about the right to distribute, book stores would need a copyright holder's permission to distribute the books that they legitmately buy for resale.
Obviously, distribution is what must happen before one can conclusively say that a crime has been committed, but if copying is done with intent to distribute, then it is still that copying itself which is an infringement. The fact that the law cannot determine intent until it actually happens is only relevant to the extent that we have to wait until the intent is carried out before any prosecution can actually commence. But this is not remotely the same thing as simply outlawing distribution.
Somebody from my ISP has told me, in so many words, that they have absolutely no intention of making IPv6 available to consumers until [!!!!] they run out of IPv4 addresses... which the fellow I spoke to insisted was still years away, and offered absolutely no timeline given for any actual switch. To top it all off, he said that they would not even be doing any sort of gradual transition when it does happen... that the switchover would be essentially instantaneous for everybody, and would be transparent for anybody using a currently patched version of their OS.
I hate my ISP... but there's only 3 to choose from where I live, and the other two each have problems of their own that I would be utterly unable to live with.
You are misinformed.
The "tax" that you pay in Canada on blank media is to partially compensate artists for your right to copy content for personal use... it does not entitle you to share copies of copyrighted content with other people without permission.
It is currently a rather significant loophole in this concept that appears to permit people to download personal use copies of copyrighted content that was being distributed without permission in the first place. A judge actually interpreted the law in this context in a widely publicized case shortly after the turn of this century. Such content is still technically infringing, however... and that decision could ultimately still be overturned in future rulings by any amendments made to copyright law which explicitly prohibit the personal use exemption to copyright infringement to apply to content that is already infringing.
When country A has the motive and the means to coerce country B for extradition of a person, it will happen... whether it ought to or not.