the greed of pirates is making the pc gaming market less attractive to publishers
You make a good point, and I appreciate you not flaming:) Though I can quibble a little bit (sharing can increase visibility and sales, wider distribution is a good thing in and of itself), I think you're right.
If I still played games (I'd like to, but need to focus on other things) I would rather do it on PC, and I have no desire to pirate them. On the other hand, I'm not convinced this outcome is terribly significant (i.e. important or morally relevant) one way or the other.
My comment is intended to refer to the wider copyright debate. What I care about, and what I would like to see more of, is increased active engagement by ordinary people. That means creativity based (like all creativity) on existing works, mashups, and so on. For video games, this means going beyond simply playing the games as written to create new works and experiences (e.g. machinima, unexpected social uses). As software, many transformations require open source, which is outside this question of piracy vs DRM. Machinima can require better licenses, which again doesn't seem heavily influenced by this, although I presume harsh DRM can prevent it from being made. To that extent, both piracy and anti-piracy measures can get in the way of valuable creativity and other activities.
Piracy driven by greed does us no favors. It diminishes the incomes of artists, brings the law into disrepute, and hands ammunitions to copyright extremists. It takes two: someone has to craft extreme and unenforceable laws, and someone has to break them. Piracy and the copyright maximalists can be an unholy combination. Each justifies the existence of the other. I hold both sides responsible for letting their greed damage things far more important than saving or making a few bucks. Then we end up censoring valuable creative and social activities which are the basic justification for caring so much about culture in the first place. When copyright blocks those activities, infringement may be the only way to do them.
Oh, look. I criticized moralizing by others, and now... *sigh* As frustrating as it is, blaming just isn't going to help. We need to figure out what we value, and we're going to have to find an effective way to maximize that (while taking into account any negative side-effects). A law that regulates our everyday communication in such complex and detailed ways cannot be made effective through enforcement alone. On the other hand, most artists must obey the law even if it stops them from engaging in valuable creativity. Without a practical system and social consensus involving everyone to back it up (regardless of the ethics of their activities), we all lose.
Piracy is the result of human nature: when faced with the option of getting something for free or paying for it, and in the absence of any significant risks, you don't need complex economic studies to show you that most people will opt for the free route.
When we talk about piracy, we say the desire to get less for more is a moral failing that must be fought and punished. When we talk about the market, this same desire is used as a justification: there's no point fighting human nature. So we have piracy, a practice driven by greed, coming up against a system, the market, also driven by greed. How do we know which greed is good and which one is bad? If this fellow really thinks piracy is human nature, then he should stop trying to fight what can't be changed and instead find a system that works with it. But that rules out moral indignation, and it can be more satisfying to pronounce on good and evil than to seek workable solutions.
Now I don't think satisfying one's greed is admirable, and I'm skeptical of claims for some immutable human nature. Adam Smith argued not for outright greed, but for enlightened self-interest. Too often in this debate, all the enlightenment is expected to be on one side, while all the self-interest is on the other.
I was paid by academics to enhance a web annotation enhancement for several open source projects. They were using the software for research and could pick and choose their browser, so they weren't interested in paying extra to make the enhancements work with IE. So that's what they got - I targeted standards compliance and ensured Firefox compatibility. Since the software is open source, many other users would have benefited from IE compatibility, but neither they nor I had the resources at the time to provide it (IE support in the initial release had increased development time by about a third). Safari, on the other hand, with some minor extra testing on the side, spontaneously worked one day when Apple implemented a missing feature (something I anticipated would happen at some point).
By the way, this work was supported by three different groups. For every one of them, IE support was far enough down their priority list that it didn't get done. Until now: following about 2 years without it, I emphasized the importance and it's in the latest release.
How many projects and features like this don't break through to wider visibility and use because of IE's failings? I bet it's more than you think.
I don't know what formal credentials Doctorow has. When he held a seminar with graduate students at my university he was anything but uneducated. Reading his popular arguments online you wouldn't know he can back them up with philosophy and theory. He can.
I have some ability to judge this. I just completed an MA in Communication, with a focus on the commons of ideas (and copyright). But it's not the letters in front of your name that make you educated: It's the reading and thinking, the talking and writing, that do. Obviously Doctorow has been doing some of those. Anyone who argues with a person's credentials instead of their ideas obviously hasn't done enough.
But of course authority (and credentialism) is what much of what the current battles over the control of knowledge, culture and ideas are about.
Why is female enrollment dropping? Saying "women simply aren't attracted to that type of work" doesn't even address the question! If it is simply a fact of life that women are inherently disinterested in this kind of work, then we would expect female participation to remain at a relatively stable and low level. But it isn't - according to this, it's dropping off a cliff. Something must have changed. What?
I mean gee guys, this kind of knee-jerk irrelevant response is unworthy. It's particularly ironic for those who claim themselves better suited to carry out scientific analysis. You're not going to find the answer when you're not even paying attention to the question or the evidence!
This is too much for me to reply to, but I'll make a few brief points.
First, let me be clear. I am not arguing against copyright in principle. I am arguing against the extreme copyright that we have today. You say, "copyright isn't actually detached from social norms. There are plenty of people who respect the fact that artists deserve some money for their work." Of course. (Well, not of course: copyright provides creators with the opportunity to make money, not a guarantee of it.) I believe the consensus that commercial piracy is wrong exceeds 99%.
However, that is not the case for many of the activities that copyright regulates today. Examples include the infamous baby dancing video with Prince music in the background, use of news and history for political purposes, century-long copyright terms, the huge penalties for making files available online, or protection of DVD region coding. This is also the case for filesharing: while a majority think it should be forbidden, that majority is not sufficient to achieve social agreement and is riven by generational and cultural divisions. But frankly, I wasn't thinking of P2P. I am fighting the Canadian DMCA; the kind of private activity I have in mind is the ability to transfer music to your MP3 player, use region-free DVD players, unlock your cell phone, or share a piece of music with members of your family.
Jamie Thomas wasn't a scapegoat? Absolutely she was. The $220,000 penalty (since overturned at great expense) was not "the price" of her offense. It far exceeded it in order to frighten others. Paying the price is all very well, but when the price is drastically inflated in an attempt to make up for spotty enforcement, and when that fails to make a dent in infringement, the law is unjust. A few suffer, while the vast majority are more fortunate and profit by their actions.
This is strong evidence that some people want them, or at least that there aren't enough people who passionate dislike copyrights to make it a hot political topic, or vote independent.
Wow. What idealism. As I said, I'm fighting the Canadian DMCA and there's every evidence the minister responsible hasn't read the bill or understood what it means. Thousands of Canadians (in a country a tenth the size of the U.S.) wrote to their representatives within a period of weeks demanding consultation. Many in the media misrepresented our opposition and the law. The system is fairly well broken, and not only in Canada. This argument is just plain weak.
Moreover, it suffers from a collective action problem. Say we have 10 big organizations that benefit from stronger copyright (Sony, Viacom, Disney, etc.) - let's arbitrarily say to the tune of $3 billion. Say that money comes from the pockets of 300 million people, who lose $10 each. Who is going to win that political battle? How many of the 300 million will even lift a finger to defend their interests? (These numbers are very neat - and wrong. Copyright introduces economic inefficiency into the system, so the losses from excessive regulation (or subsidy as one legal scholar describes it) actually exceed the benefits. But you get my point.)
Your scenario of abolishing copyright is unrealistic. What we actually face is a question of whether to expand the law. If we fail to do so, there will be no sudden collapse.
Don't now start telling me how people were donating willingly to their powers that be before taxation laws were passed. We passed it despite the protests of those who have to pay them, in order to bring them multitudinous benefits. Copyright law is similar in this way.
Your scenario is wrong. The vast majority support taxes. They will fight to transfer the burden to others, but faced with cuts to social security, health care, policing, etc., they consistently choose taxes over tax cuts. (This is more obvious in Canada, but it is true in the U.S. also.) With the law in place, the vast majority p
Laws have to be introduced sometime. We can't just make a bunch of rules at the dawn of civilisation and expect us to live by them forever onwards. . . . the fact that this law is disobeyed so frequently is not just evidence that the law is stupid, but also that the law is so necessary.
Laws don't emerge from nothing. Most human behavior is regulated by norms, not laws. When norms are insufficient, we create formal laws. To be legitimate, a law must be supported by norms. The two must evolve together. If the law accords with norms, little enforcement will be needed because people will regulate themselves. We don't need to enforce anti-theft laws against most people because most people are not thieves. We seldom need to enforce laws against murder because most people are not murderers.
If the law is detached from social norms and it cannot be enforced, then it is an unjust law. A few scapegoats are punished while the vast majority get off scott-free. The few who obey the law may be effectively disadvantaged because everyone else is breaking it. Worse, the injustice brings into question the rule of law. The result is an atmosphere of fear, of lawlessness, a breakdown of norms.
That is the situation we have with the attempt to apply copyright to the private activities of individuals. Many (I suspect most) of those who believe they respect a reasonable law in fact break it - and would in fact be astonished to learn its true scope. Think of the politicians who use news clips without permission, or the contractors who listen to the radio while working on a house, or an entire generation who made mix tapes for their friends.
The fact that the penalties for copyright infringement are now so far out of line with the harm done is proof that enforcement is failing. What we have is an attempt by a narrow sector of interests to forcibly overturn existing social norms by crafting unjust laws and applying unreasonable penalties to a few scapegoats. It isn't working. It didn't work when 17th-century France tortured and executed upwards of 1600 people to prevent the import of machine-printed fabric. It didn't work when laborers were declared outlaws for asking for higher wages following the Black Death. It didn't work for Prohibition in the 1920s. It's not working now.
We need (read: we really really want) our music, our movies, and our video games. We want it so much we will flit around the law to get more and more of it. Surely laws that safeguard the supply of such luxuries should be passed and enforced?
Passed and enforced by whom? If the people don't want them, then pray tell who gets to decide we're going to get them anyway? If we really want these luxuries, then we can decide what we're willing to do to ensure the supply. We can adjust our norms and craft laws so the two are in agreement. The supply we get will be the result of the choices we make. It is absurd dictatorial logic to suggest that people's desires should be paramount, and then turn around and use that as a justification for forcing them to accept what they don't want. (Yes, sometimes we solve collective action problems by passing a law obliging individuals to make a sacrifice. Knowing others will do the same and all will benefit, we accept such laws as reasonable and we obey them. They are supported by norms. Paying taxes, for example. That is clearly not the case here.)
Incidentally, we don't know if or how well copyright works. It seems reasonable that some level of copyright would be encourage creativity, but amazingly we have little or no research to tell us what that level might be (though we do know there's such a thing as too much). I submit this is because those pushing for the law don't care: if they wanted to know, they would find out. They don't want to know. They don't care about promoting creativity or serving consumers. And in fact they aren't.
Same here. As a developer, I paid thousands of dollars for MSDN Universal the year that Windows XP was released. Although I got a copy of XP with MSDN (actually 10 copies so long as they were for my use only), I never used it. I haven't bought (or otherwise obtained) a copy of Windows since, even though my in-laws work at Microsoft and could get discounted copies. I'm not interested in my software being on someone else's leash (that applies to you too, Adobe).
They are far from irrelevant if you listen to those arguing for extending copyright laws. They cite the need of creators to earn a living from their work. Here is EU Commissioner McCreevy arguing for term extension: "Copyright represents a moral right of the performer to control the use of his work and earn a living from his performance." Then it's perfectly reasonable to argue that this purpose of the law has already been fulfilled.
More importantly, the law is meant to serve us, not the other way around. We have every business talking about what the law should be, not only what it is. Laws are created and changed by our elected representatives. Limiting one's vision to the letter of the law is infantile and irresponsible for a citizen in a democracy.
Whether our representatives really represent us is a different matter. They certainly won't if we treat their actions - including legislation - as beyond criticism.
Chose a Ralph Lauren color chip. Went to Home Depot to have it mixed in their brand of paint. They refused. Said the color was copyrighted. Asked a different staff member on a different day - same response. This is in Canada, where despite stronger copyright law in many areas this kind of silliness seems to be rarer.
IANAL, but I don't believe the law supports the copyright of a color (a collection of colors might be a different matter). That's in theory. Practice, unless you have buckets of cash for lawyers, is another matter.
As Russel McOrmond points out, only two of these numbers are actually known: the number of machines shipped and the amount of legal BSA software. The usage estimate multiplier is an estimate of the average amount of software on a machine in a given region. The essential number, however, may be the amount of legal open source software. How on earth do you calculate that? If it is low, then the piracy numbers could be way off. I distribute some open source code, and even I don't have a clear idea of how many people use it. McOrmond says FLOSS not shipped with a PC is often not included. Read McOrmond's article for an in-depth explanation.
My Mac has only a few BSA apps - the OS, iLife, and Photoshop Elements. How is the BSA to know that I'm also running Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice (all FLOSS), or Scrivener, Tinderbox, and NetNewsWire (all legal non-BSA stuff written by and purchased from individuals)? How about my parents' machines, on which I've installed OpenOffice software? They probably wouldn't remember it was open source even if asked.
"Without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully"? The first part fits, the second is questionable. Plagiarism has much more in common with theft than does simple copying. It unquestionably does deprive the rights holder of credit for the work. (Rights holder, not owner: a rights holder owns the rights, not the work.) Such use of the words "theft" and "stealing" eliminates significant distinctions and impoverishes the language. Neither it stabilized into common usage, despite widespread propaganda.
both GPL and BSD advocates want to be associated with the word "free" . . . these are just word games
Most politics is "just" word games. The question is not who gets to be associated with the word. The question is who gets to define what freedom means (for software, but also more broadly). That matters very much.
Similarly, "piracy is theft" is an attempt to define piracy as theft - to establish (or change) the meanings of both words. The same is true of the opposing claim that piracy is not theft. Eventually the argument will be settled, at which point the question will be invisible: piracy will be theft, or it will not.
These words are not reflections of some objective meaning "out there" or handed down by God. They are defined by human beings. Their meanings are changed by human beings. Any political conflict involves struggles over meaning. The winners gets to establish their definitions as the "real" ones.
-- Geof, GPL advocate and student of communication
There is another option. We are currently represented by professional politicians. Their expertise is politics - not copyright, technology, economics, what have you. Yet they make critical decisions about specialized fields. They are not necessarily less ignorant (I see people saying "stupid") about these issues than the ordinary voter.
It is folly to expect the mass of the population to be able to be sufficiently expert on every issue to make an informed decision. But it is no less unrealistic to expect professional politicians to be experts. (There are additional problems, like the corruption of professionals or the inability of masses to delegate expertise.)
However, it is possible to have democracy without professional politicians or mass votes. Following a jury model, such proposals argue that decisions should be made by groups of ordinary citizens who come together to learn about a specific issue. They draw on experts and expertise, then make what they believe is the best decision - and then they disband. They are not corrupted by being professional, and they are not expected to acquire expertise in many fields.
Here is Benjamin Barber arguing for what he calls "strong democracy":
Pure democracy suggested a form of government in which all of the people governed themseves in all public matters all of the time; . . . Representative democracy . . . [is a system] in which some of the people, chosen by all, govern in all public matters all of the time. . . . Strong democracy tries to revitalize citizenship without neglecting the problems of efficient government by defining democracy as a form of government in which all of the people govern themselves in at least some public matters at least some of the time.
How well this would work I don't know. I do know professional politicians (as a group) would fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
mainstream media, like 99% of sane adults, care about the economy, taxes, the war in Iraq, health care and pensions.
Probably 99% of Canadians don't care a whole lot about the war in Iraq. Health care yes, even though we're all covered. But taxes? That's basically what this law is. Allow me to quote Mark Lemley on the faculty of Stanford Law School: "intellectual property is a form of government subsidy". The monopoly protection this law introduces will increase the cost of music, video, computers, cell phones, and so on. So yeah, it's a tax in all but name. But I don't listen to music and I borrow my videos from the library, so the truth is I don't care a whole lot about how much those cost. This law is a whole lot more - and the more is the problem.
I care about being able to use my computer as a I wish. I care about living in a living, vibrant culture which people can engage in, rather than having it exclusively controlled by American entertainment giants. I care about not having a War on Drugs repeat waged against 90% of the population under the age of 35% for listening to music of all things.
If people like you spent half as much time actually doing something as you do criticizing those who do (or whining about those who don't) your country and mine would be a whole lot more democratic.
Most people still get their news through the mainstream media. Many of them have published warmed-over versions of the government press release. We need to contact them to let them know how disastrous this law will be. Some examples:
Ottawa brings copyright into the digital age -- The Toronto Star
The federal government tabled new legislation Thursday morning designed to make it easier to track and prosecute anyone caught downloading copyrighted files, such as music and movies, from the Internet. -- The Globe and Mail
Controversial copyright legislation positioned as a made-in-Canada solution to stamp out online piracy -- The National Post
You're assuming that governments are the only agencies capable of providing welfare, which is simply not true. Many charities and church organizations provide aid for people that need it
This is important and valuable, especially when it constructs community and social connections between the people involved. But individual voluntary contributions run smack into collective action problems.
In order to address poverty (to take the current example, but this applies to other social problems and needs also), we need education, safe neighborhoods, effective banking, credit regulation, access to housing, transportation, health care, and so on. These things cannot be addressed by independent individuals. These goods (programs, services, etc.) require many people working together in order to be provided at all. But the more people required to ensure the good is provided, the less likely it is that each of them will participate.
Say we need better policing. We want to hire another cop at a cost of $100,000. As an individual, I might be able to put $100 towards this cause. But my donation is wasted unless others also contribute. If they do, my $100 is a drop in the bucket - it probably won't be the difference between success and failure - and I will benefit from the hiring even though I didn't donate (I can free-ride). If I contribute and others don't, my money is essentially wasted and I feel like a chump. So I don't contribute. Neither does anyone else, and nothing happens.
With collective action problems, the more individuals are required to participate, the less likely anything is to happen. They are much better provided by individual entities (including governments and corporations) than by uncoordinated or voluntary groups.
Politics is another example. I'm involved in fighting a pernicious copyright law that has been proposed in Canada. For individual citizens like myself the cause seems hopeless. Why would I spend hours lobbying politicians if only a handful of other people will do the same? Our cause appears doomed because each of us would be alone in our efforts, and each of us is alone because our cause appears doomed. Catch-22. Fortunately, it turns out I am not alone and we have had some success staving this thing off. But now look at the situation from the point of view of a corporation or professional association lobbying for this law. There are only a few of them, each is powerful enough to have an impact on its own, so they don't face the same problem. In general, organizations like this are much more politically effective, citizens are ignored, and our democracy is debased.
Churches and charities are valuable - particularly because they can provide some coordination, reducing the severity of collective action problems. But they are not enough. Social problems cannot be adequately addressed from the point of view of individuals helping individuals. It sucks. Governments, like all human institutions, are deeply flawed. But whether you're Left or Right or something else, that's just how it is.
A little off topic: those coin-operated doors were like parodies of DRM. The guy owns the apartment, but the artificially intelligent front door won't open unless he pays it. Each time he has to give it a nickel. No nickel, no open. Transaction costs through the roof but hey, the door gets paid.
The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. . . . "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity. I don't have to pay you."
"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt."
Postman has a tendency towards technological determinism. It is not necessarily fruitful to treat the Internet as a single medium, and it's certainly not a medium whose social significance has stabilized yet. At this point, the convergence with TV that you talk about is only one possible outcome - one that must be vigorously resisted.
That said, you are right to focus on the effects online activity have on people, rather than the relative value of the content they produce. Participation online can help people think and develop their capacities (e.g. writing skills), it can form communities, and it can result in action in the offline world (e.g. political organization). These effects can be beneficial even if nothing is produced, or if what is produced is not of high quality.
Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone also takes aim at television. Putnam attributes 25% of the decline in social capital (community involvement etc.) in America since the mid 1960s to television. I find his evidence compelling. See also William Gibson talking about when TV was switched on in New York. A feature on the DVD for The Naked City goes into some detail about this (I can have the text of the quote if you're interested).
You can't jump from "most visitors don't contribute to Wikipedia" to "most people don't contribute online". That's like arguing that most people don't have jobs because most of them don't work for Microsoft. It's absurd. Analysis of contribution rates at any given site tell us nothing at all about whether most people participate somewhere online or whether they are passive consumers. Nothing.
To make the claims you're making, you need to look at the overall behavior of individual people across all the sites they visit. The Pew study in the linked article did that, and found nearly half of Internet users contribute to something.
I hope you were not implying that I steriotyped, hated, or was entirely ignorant as to the Chinese people.
I meant only to criticize your comment about opium, which missed the point entirely. Your other responses to the previous poster seem generally reasonable. I did not get the sense you stereotyped or hated the Chinese people. My later remarks about anger and hatred on both sides were not directed at anyone in particular. If they appear to place more blame on Westerners than on Chinese, or to let China's human rights abuses off lightly - as it seems to me reading my words again now - that was certainly not my intent. Though we can't take responsibility for the actions of our ancestors (it's not unlikely some of my British forbearers might have been involved in the 19th century exploitation of China), it is important we recognize the history. Denying what happened makes us accomplices of a sort. One consequence of that is that we lose the authority to critique the situation today.
When we closed our doors to the world, you forced them open with drugs and guns.
The major source of opiates, the drug of choice for centuries in China, is your neighbor Afghanistan. Don't blame us for that.
Talk about ignorance. The behavior of the British in China was flat-out evil. From Wikipedia:
Britain had a large trade deficit with China and had to pay for these goods with silver. Britain began exporting opium to China from British India in the 18th century to counter its deficit.
China banned the trade and importation of opium, on the basis that "Opium is a poison, undermining our good customs and morality. Its use is prohibited by law." They even wrote to Queen Victoria, asking why, since opium was banned in Britain, the British continued to sell it in China. When China seized opium from British traders who violated the law, Britain responded by invading China, seizing territory and forcing China to allow the opium trade. Other countries achieved similar concessions (including at least the French French, Italian, American sand Japanese). At one point, the British army marched to Beijing and burned down the Old Summer Palace, then said to be one of the wonders of the world.
The Chinese are on firm ground when they criticize past Western behavior in China. They are often correct when they describe our current policies and attitudes as hypocritical and self-serving. I detect an undertone of racism, or at least of xenophobia, in much of what is said about China. These are echoed by many Chinese, in China and in the West. We need to get beyond resentment, arrogance, and paranoia on both sides. The Chinese government is brainwashing its citizens. But (as a student of Communication) I can assure you, our media is doing something similar (in response to different pressures). Even though few people pursue alternative sources of information, it is important that in the West we are permitted access to them. For example, here's an in-depth argument by an expert that the Western media have slandered China with respect to Tibet. I haven't assessed it in detail, and I don't think it exonerates the Chinese government, but it is clear there's much more to this than we're hearing.
I live in Vancouver. Chinese comprise a large proportion of the population here. To stereotype a little, they are thoughtful, productive, essential members of my society. The same is true in Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa. For me, Canada would not be Canada without them. It saddens me greatly to witness the hatred directed toward them, just as it saddens me to see so many intelligent people (on both sides) follow the party line on Tibet.
Quebecers are not the only ones who suffer the failures of the federal government. The political and governance structures of this country are collapsing and being dismantled. We call ourselves a "democracy", but that is generous. Separation will not happen tomorrow, nor is separatist sentiment about to go away. In the mean time, it is our duty and our interest to repair and revitalize what democracy we have.
Slashdot Mirror
You make a good point, and I appreciate you not flaming :) Though I can quibble a little bit (sharing can increase visibility and sales, wider distribution is a good thing in and of itself), I think you're right.
If I still played games (I'd like to, but need to focus on other things) I would rather do it on PC, and I have no desire to pirate them. On the other hand, I'm not convinced this outcome is terribly significant (i.e. important or morally relevant) one way or the other.
My comment is intended to refer to the wider copyright debate. What I care about, and what I would like to see more of, is increased active engagement by ordinary people. That means creativity based (like all creativity) on existing works, mashups, and so on. For video games, this means going beyond simply playing the games as written to create new works and experiences (e.g. machinima, unexpected social uses). As software, many transformations require open source, which is outside this question of piracy vs DRM. Machinima can require better licenses, which again doesn't seem heavily influenced by this, although I presume harsh DRM can prevent it from being made. To that extent, both piracy and anti-piracy measures can get in the way of valuable creativity and other activities.
Piracy driven by greed does us no favors. It diminishes the incomes of artists, brings the law into disrepute, and hands ammunitions to copyright extremists. It takes two: someone has to craft extreme and unenforceable laws, and someone has to break them. Piracy and the copyright maximalists can be an unholy combination. Each justifies the existence of the other. I hold both sides responsible for letting their greed damage things far more important than saving or making a few bucks. Then we end up censoring valuable creative and social activities which are the basic justification for caring so much about culture in the first place. When copyright blocks those activities, infringement may be the only way to do them.
Oh, look. I criticized moralizing by others, and now... *sigh* As frustrating as it is, blaming just isn't going to help. We need to figure out what we value, and we're going to have to find an effective way to maximize that (while taking into account any negative side-effects). A law that regulates our everyday communication in such complex and detailed ways cannot be made effective through enforcement alone. On the other hand, most artists must obey the law even if it stops them from engaging in valuable creativity. Without a practical system and social consensus involving everyone to back it up (regardless of the ethics of their activities), we all lose.
When we talk about piracy, we say the desire to get less for more is a moral failing that must be fought and punished. When we talk about the market, this same desire is used as a justification: there's no point fighting human nature. So we have piracy, a practice driven by greed, coming up against a system, the market, also driven by greed. How do we know which greed is good and which one is bad? If this fellow really thinks piracy is human nature, then he should stop trying to fight what can't be changed and instead find a system that works with it. But that rules out moral indignation, and it can be more satisfying to pronounce on good and evil than to seek workable solutions.
Now I don't think satisfying one's greed is admirable, and I'm skeptical of claims for some immutable human nature. Adam Smith argued not for outright greed, but for enlightened self-interest. Too often in this debate, all the enlightenment is expected to be on one side, while all the self-interest is on the other.
I was paid by academics to enhance a web annotation enhancement for several open source projects. They were using the software for research and could pick and choose their browser, so they weren't interested in paying extra to make the enhancements work with IE. So that's what they got - I targeted standards compliance and ensured Firefox compatibility. Since the software is open source, many other users would have benefited from IE compatibility, but neither they nor I had the resources at the time to provide it (IE support in the initial release had increased development time by about a third). Safari, on the other hand, with some minor extra testing on the side, spontaneously worked one day when Apple implemented a missing feature (something I anticipated would happen at some point).
By the way, this work was supported by three different groups. For every one of them, IE support was far enough down their priority list that it didn't get done. Until now: following about 2 years without it, I emphasized the importance and it's in the latest release.
How many projects and features like this don't break through to wider visibility and use because of IE's failings? I bet it's more than you think.
I don't know what formal credentials Doctorow has. When he held a seminar with graduate students at my university he was anything but uneducated. Reading his popular arguments online you wouldn't know he can back them up with philosophy and theory. He can.
I have some ability to judge this. I just completed an MA in Communication, with a focus on the commons of ideas (and copyright). But it's not the letters in front of your name that make you educated: It's the reading and thinking, the talking and writing, that do. Obviously Doctorow has been doing some of those. Anyone who argues with a person's credentials instead of their ideas obviously hasn't done enough.
But of course authority (and credentialism) is what much of what the current battles over the control of knowledge, culture and ideas are about.
Why is female enrollment dropping? Saying "women simply aren't attracted to that type of work" doesn't even address the question! If it is simply a fact of life that women are inherently disinterested in this kind of work, then we would expect female participation to remain at a relatively stable and low level. But it isn't - according to this, it's dropping off a cliff. Something must have changed. What?
I mean gee guys, this kind of knee-jerk irrelevant response is unworthy. It's particularly ironic for those who claim themselves better suited to carry out scientific analysis. You're not going to find the answer when you're not even paying attention to the question or the evidence!
This is too much for me to reply to, but I'll make a few brief points.
First, let me be clear. I am not arguing against copyright in principle. I am arguing against the extreme copyright that we have today. You say, "copyright isn't actually detached from social norms. There are plenty of people who respect the fact that artists deserve some money for their work." Of course. (Well, not of course: copyright provides creators with the opportunity to make money, not a guarantee of it.) I believe the consensus that commercial piracy is wrong exceeds 99%.
However, that is not the case for many of the activities that copyright regulates today. Examples include the infamous baby dancing video with Prince music in the background, use of news and history for political purposes, century-long copyright terms, the huge penalties for making files available online, or protection of DVD region coding. This is also the case for filesharing: while a majority think it should be forbidden, that majority is not sufficient to achieve social agreement and is riven by generational and cultural divisions. But frankly, I wasn't thinking of P2P. I am fighting the Canadian DMCA; the kind of private activity I have in mind is the ability to transfer music to your MP3 player, use region-free DVD players, unlock your cell phone, or share a piece of music with members of your family.
Jamie Thomas wasn't a scapegoat? Absolutely she was. The $220,000 penalty (since overturned at great expense) was not "the price" of her offense. It far exceeded it in order to frighten others. Paying the price is all very well, but when the price is drastically inflated in an attempt to make up for spotty enforcement, and when that fails to make a dent in infringement, the law is unjust. A few suffer, while the vast majority are more fortunate and profit by their actions.
Wow. What idealism. As I said, I'm fighting the Canadian DMCA and there's every evidence the minister responsible hasn't read the bill or understood what it means. Thousands of Canadians (in a country a tenth the size of the U.S.) wrote to their representatives within a period of weeks demanding consultation. Many in the media misrepresented our opposition and the law. The system is fairly well broken, and not only in Canada. This argument is just plain weak.
Moreover, it suffers from a collective action problem. Say we have 10 big organizations that benefit from stronger copyright (Sony, Viacom, Disney, etc.) - let's arbitrarily say to the tune of $3 billion. Say that money comes from the pockets of 300 million people, who lose $10 each. Who is going to win that political battle? How many of the 300 million will even lift a finger to defend their interests? (These numbers are very neat - and wrong. Copyright introduces economic inefficiency into the system, so the losses from excessive regulation (or subsidy as one legal scholar describes it) actually exceed the benefits. But you get my point.)
Your scenario of abolishing copyright is unrealistic. What we actually face is a question of whether to expand the law. If we fail to do so, there will be no sudden collapse.
Your scenario is wrong. The vast majority support taxes. They will fight to transfer the burden to others, but faced with cuts to social security, health care, policing, etc., they consistently choose taxes over tax cuts. (This is more obvious in Canada, but it is true in the U.S. also.) With the law in place, the vast majority p
Laws don't emerge from nothing. Most human behavior is regulated by norms, not laws. When norms are insufficient, we create formal laws. To be legitimate, a law must be supported by norms. The two must evolve together. If the law accords with norms, little enforcement will be needed because people will regulate themselves. We don't need to enforce anti-theft laws against most people because most people are not thieves. We seldom need to enforce laws against murder because most people are not murderers.
If the law is detached from social norms and it cannot be enforced, then it is an unjust law. A few scapegoats are punished while the vast majority get off scott-free. The few who obey the law may be effectively disadvantaged because everyone else is breaking it. Worse, the injustice brings into question the rule of law. The result is an atmosphere of fear, of lawlessness, a breakdown of norms.
That is the situation we have with the attempt to apply copyright to the private activities of individuals. Many (I suspect most) of those who believe they respect a reasonable law in fact break it - and would in fact be astonished to learn its true scope. Think of the politicians who use news clips without permission, or the contractors who listen to the radio while working on a house, or an entire generation who made mix tapes for their friends.
The fact that the penalties for copyright infringement are now so far out of line with the harm done is proof that enforcement is failing. What we have is an attempt by a narrow sector of interests to forcibly overturn existing social norms by crafting unjust laws and applying unreasonable penalties to a few scapegoats. It isn't working. It didn't work when 17th-century France tortured and executed upwards of 1600 people to prevent the import of machine-printed fabric. It didn't work when laborers were declared outlaws for asking for higher wages following the Black Death. It didn't work for Prohibition in the 1920s. It's not working now.
Passed and enforced by whom? If the people don't want them, then pray tell who gets to decide we're going to get them anyway? If we really want these luxuries, then we can decide what we're willing to do to ensure the supply. We can adjust our norms and craft laws so the two are in agreement. The supply we get will be the result of the choices we make. It is absurd dictatorial logic to suggest that people's desires should be paramount, and then turn around and use that as a justification for forcing them to accept what they don't want. (Yes, sometimes we solve collective action problems by passing a law obliging individuals to make a sacrifice. Knowing others will do the same and all will benefit, we accept such laws as reasonable and we obey them. They are supported by norms. Paying taxes, for example. That is clearly not the case here.)
Incidentally, we don't know if or how well copyright works. It seems reasonable that some level of copyright would be encourage creativity, but amazingly we have little or no research to tell us what that level might be (though we do know there's such a thing as too much). I submit this is because those pushing for the law don't care: if they wanted to know, they would find out. They don't want to know. They don't care about promoting creativity or serving consumers. And in fact they aren't.
Same here. As a developer, I paid thousands of dollars for MSDN Universal the year that Windows XP was released. Although I got a copy of XP with MSDN (actually 10 copies so long as they were for my use only), I never used it. I haven't bought (or otherwise obtained) a copy of Windows since, even though my in-laws work at Microsoft and could get discounted copies. I'm not interested in my software being on someone else's leash (that applies to you too, Adobe).
They are far from irrelevant if you listen to those arguing for extending copyright laws. They cite the need of creators to earn a living from their work. Here is EU Commissioner McCreevy arguing for term extension: "Copyright represents a moral right of the performer to control the use of his work and earn a living from his performance." Then it's perfectly reasonable to argue that this purpose of the law has already been fulfilled.
More importantly, the law is meant to serve us, not the other way around. We have every business talking about what the law should be, not only what it is. Laws are created and changed by our elected representatives. Limiting one's vision to the letter of the law is infantile and irresponsible for a citizen in a democracy.
Whether our representatives really represent us is a different matter. They certainly won't if we treat their actions - including legislation - as beyond criticism.
Chose a Ralph Lauren color chip. Went to Home Depot to have it mixed in their brand of paint. They refused. Said the color was copyrighted. Asked a different staff member on a different day - same response. This is in Canada, where despite stronger copyright law in many areas this kind of silliness seems to be rarer.
IANAL, but I don't believe the law supports the copyright of a color (a collection of colors might be a different matter). That's in theory. Practice, unless you have buckets of cash for lawyers, is another matter.
Right, but k (lower case, as in metric) is 1,000.
The BSA numbers are highly suspect. Here's their forumla:
As Russel McOrmond points out, only two of these numbers are actually known: the number of machines shipped and the amount of legal BSA software. The usage estimate multiplier is an estimate of the average amount of software on a machine in a given region. The essential number, however, may be the amount of legal open source software. How on earth do you calculate that? If it is low, then the piracy numbers could be way off. I distribute some open source code, and even I don't have a clear idea of how many people use it. McOrmond says FLOSS not shipped with a PC is often not included. Read McOrmond's article for an in-depth explanation.
My Mac has only a few BSA apps - the OS, iLife, and Photoshop Elements. How is the BSA to know that I'm also running Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice (all FLOSS), or Scrivener, Tinderbox, and NetNewsWire (all legal non-BSA stuff written by and purchased from individuals)? How about my parents' machines, on which I've installed OpenOffice software? They probably wouldn't remember it was open source even if asked.
"Without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully"? The first part fits, the second is questionable. Plagiarism has much more in common with theft than does simple copying. It unquestionably does deprive the rights holder of credit for the work. (Rights holder, not owner: a rights holder owns the rights, not the work.) Such use of the words "theft" and "stealing" eliminates significant distinctions and impoverishes the language. Neither it stabilized into common usage, despite widespread propaganda.
Bootlegging: to produce, reproduce, or distribute illicitly or without authorization
This helps to distinguish private copying from for-profit counterfeiting by organized crime.
Most politics is "just" word games. The question is not who gets to be associated with the word. The question is who gets to define what freedom means (for software, but also more broadly). That matters very much.
Similarly, "piracy is theft" is an attempt to define piracy as theft - to establish (or change) the meanings of both words. The same is true of the opposing claim that piracy is not theft. Eventually the argument will be settled, at which point the question will be invisible: piracy will be theft, or it will not.
These words are not reflections of some objective meaning "out there" or handed down by God. They are defined by human beings. Their meanings are changed by human beings. Any political conflict involves struggles over meaning. The winners gets to establish their definitions as the "real" ones.
-- Geof, GPL advocate and student of communication
There is another option. We are currently represented by professional politicians. Their expertise is politics - not copyright, technology, economics, what have you. Yet they make critical decisions about specialized fields. They are not necessarily less ignorant (I see people saying "stupid") about these issues than the ordinary voter.
It is folly to expect the mass of the population to be able to be sufficiently expert on every issue to make an informed decision. But it is no less unrealistic to expect professional politicians to be experts. (There are additional problems, like the corruption of professionals or the inability of masses to delegate expertise.)
However, it is possible to have democracy without professional politicians or mass votes. Following a jury model, such proposals argue that decisions should be made by groups of ordinary citizens who come together to learn about a specific issue. They draw on experts and expertise, then make what they believe is the best decision - and then they disband. They are not corrupted by being professional, and they are not expected to acquire expertise in many fields.
Here is Benjamin Barber arguing for what he calls "strong democracy":
How well this would work I don't know. I do know professional politicians (as a group) would fight tooth and nail to prevent it.
Probably 99% of Canadians don't care a whole lot about the war in Iraq. Health care yes, even though we're all covered. But taxes? That's basically what this law is. Allow me to quote Mark Lemley on the faculty of Stanford Law School: "intellectual property is a form of government subsidy". The monopoly protection this law introduces will increase the cost of music, video, computers, cell phones, and so on. So yeah, it's a tax in all but name. But I don't listen to music and I borrow my videos from the library, so the truth is I don't care a whole lot about how much those cost. This law is a whole lot more - and the more is the problem.
I care about being able to use my computer as a I wish. I care about living in a living, vibrant culture which people can engage in, rather than having it exclusively controlled by American entertainment giants. I care about not having a War on Drugs repeat waged against 90% of the population under the age of 35% for listening to music of all things.
If people like you spent half as much time actually doing something as you do criticizing those who do (or whining about those who don't) your country and mine would be a whole lot more democratic.
This is important and valuable, especially when it constructs community and social connections between the people involved. But individual voluntary contributions run smack into collective action problems.
In order to address poverty (to take the current example, but this applies to other social problems and needs also), we need education, safe neighborhoods, effective banking, credit regulation, access to housing, transportation, health care, and so on. These things cannot be addressed by independent individuals. These goods (programs, services, etc.) require many people working together in order to be provided at all. But the more people required to ensure the good is provided, the less likely it is that each of them will participate.
Say we need better policing. We want to hire another cop at a cost of $100,000. As an individual, I might be able to put $100 towards this cause. But my donation is wasted unless others also contribute. If they do, my $100 is a drop in the bucket - it probably won't be the difference between success and failure - and I will benefit from the hiring even though I didn't donate (I can free-ride). If I contribute and others don't, my money is essentially wasted and I feel like a chump. So I don't contribute. Neither does anyone else, and nothing happens.
With collective action problems, the more individuals are required to participate, the less likely anything is to happen. They are much better provided by individual entities (including governments and corporations) than by uncoordinated or voluntary groups.
Politics is another example. I'm involved in fighting a pernicious copyright law that has been proposed in Canada. For individual citizens like myself the cause seems hopeless. Why would I spend hours lobbying politicians if only a handful of other people will do the same? Our cause appears doomed because each of us would be alone in our efforts, and each of us is alone because our cause appears doomed. Catch-22. Fortunately, it turns out I am not alone and we have had some success staving this thing off. But now look at the situation from the point of view of a corporation or professional association lobbying for this law. There are only a few of them, each is powerful enough to have an impact on its own, so they don't face the same problem. In general, organizations like this are much more politically effective, citizens are ignored, and our democracy is debased.
Churches and charities are valuable - particularly because they can provide some coordination, reducing the severity of collective action problems. But they are not enough. Social problems cannot be adequately addressed from the point of view of individuals helping individuals. It sucks. Governments, like all human institutions, are deeply flawed. But whether you're Left or Right or something else, that's just how it is.
A little off topic: those coin-operated doors were like parodies of DRM. The guy owns the apartment, but the artificially intelligent front door won't open unless he pays it. Each time he has to give it a nickel. No nickel, no open. Transaction costs through the roof but hey, the door gets paid.
Postman has a tendency towards technological determinism. It is not necessarily fruitful to treat the Internet as a single medium, and it's certainly not a medium whose social significance has stabilized yet. At this point, the convergence with TV that you talk about is only one possible outcome - one that must be vigorously resisted.
That said, you are right to focus on the effects online activity have on people, rather than the relative value of the content they produce. Participation online can help people think and develop their capacities (e.g. writing skills), it can form communities, and it can result in action in the offline world (e.g. political organization). These effects can be beneficial even if nothing is produced, or if what is produced is not of high quality.
Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone also takes aim at television. Putnam attributes 25% of the decline in social capital (community involvement etc.) in America since the mid 1960s to television. I find his evidence compelling. See also William Gibson talking about when TV was switched on in New York. A feature on the DVD for The Naked City goes into some detail about this (I can have the text of the quote if you're interested).
You can't jump from "most visitors don't contribute to Wikipedia" to "most people don't contribute online". That's like arguing that most people don't have jobs because most of them don't work for Microsoft. It's absurd. Analysis of contribution rates at any given site tell us nothing at all about whether most people participate somewhere online or whether they are passive consumers. Nothing.
To make the claims you're making, you need to look at the overall behavior of individual people across all the sites they visit. The Pew study in the linked article did that, and found nearly half of Internet users contribute to something.
I meant only to criticize your comment about opium, which missed the point entirely. Your other responses to the previous poster seem generally reasonable. I did not get the sense you stereotyped or hated the Chinese people. My later remarks about anger and hatred on both sides were not directed at anyone in particular. If they appear to place more blame on Westerners than on Chinese, or to let China's human rights abuses off lightly - as it seems to me reading my words again now - that was certainly not my intent. Though we can't take responsibility for the actions of our ancestors (it's not unlikely some of my British forbearers might have been involved in the 19th century exploitation of China), it is important we recognize the history. Denying what happened makes us accomplices of a sort. One consequence of that is that we lose the authority to critique the situation today.
Talk about ignorance. The behavior of the British in China was flat-out evil. From Wikipedia:
China banned the trade and importation of opium, on the basis that "Opium is a poison, undermining our good customs and morality. Its use is prohibited by law." They even wrote to Queen Victoria, asking why, since opium was banned in Britain, the British continued to sell it in China. When China seized opium from British traders who violated the law, Britain responded by invading China, seizing territory and forcing China to allow the opium trade. Other countries achieved similar concessions (including at least the French French, Italian, American sand Japanese). At one point, the British army marched to Beijing and burned down the Old Summer Palace, then said to be one of the wonders of the world .
The Chinese are on firm ground when they criticize past Western behavior in China. They are often correct when they describe our current policies and attitudes as hypocritical and self-serving. I detect an undertone of racism, or at least of xenophobia, in much of what is said about China. These are echoed by many Chinese, in China and in the West. We need to get beyond resentment, arrogance, and paranoia on both sides. The Chinese government is brainwashing its citizens. But (as a student of Communication) I can assure you, our media is doing something similar (in response to different pressures). Even though few people pursue alternative sources of information, it is important that in the West we are permitted access to them. For example, here's an in-depth argument by an expert that the Western media have slandered China with respect to Tibet. I haven't assessed it in detail, and I don't think it exonerates the Chinese government, but it is clear there's much more to this than we're hearing.
I live in Vancouver. Chinese comprise a large proportion of the population here. To stereotype a little, they are thoughtful, productive, essential members of my society. The same is true in Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa. For me, Canada would not be Canada without them. It saddens me greatly to witness the hatred directed toward them, just as it saddens me to see so many intelligent people (on both sides) follow the party line on Tibet.
Quebecers are not the only ones who suffer the failures of the federal government. The political and governance structures of this country are collapsing and being dismantled. We call ourselves a "democracy", but that is generous. Separation will not happen tomorrow, nor is separatist sentiment about to go away. In the mean time, it is our duty and our interest to repair and revitalize what democracy we have.