No, no, no! Copyright is currently at its most meaningful!
I see your point, but you must understand the fundamental problems with enforcing copyright on the Internet. Our computers and the Internet itself are designed around the idea of sharing information (ones and zeroes) with other computers. For the most part these systems are non-discriminatory about the information is; they cannot distinguish between a proprietary, copyrighted work and a public domain work. Additionally, works can be copied perfectly, quickly and cheaply, and easily transmitted over the Internet. It is extremely difficult to effectively enforce copyright in such an environment. Doing so requires either a drastic overhaul of the architecture of the Internet to allow for mandatory DRM, or massive invasions of privacy to require mandatory DRM. It's very simple: A law that creates and regulates artificial scarcity of something is completely screwed in an environment where there is no such thing as scarcity of that something.
Even assuming that copyright is ethically sound in today's world, it's not technically possible to meaningfully enforce. You can advocate copyright all you like, but to do so you ought to come up with a very clever way to make it work online without compromising more important rights, such as free speech, privacy, due process and fair use.
They would much prefer to find some way of making steady income that fairly compensates them for their work. If they heard of such a business model, I'm sure they'd be very excited, and want to give it a go (yes, Big Music publishers included). But, so far, obviously, no one has come up with such a business model.
Let's say that copyright is reformed and drastically weakened, taking a bunch of rights away from artists. Let's say no functioning business model can be found. If it ends up that professional musicians cannot make decent money in such an environment, then, as much as I dislike saying this, they need to go out of business. We have to keep in mind that no individual or company is entitled to a working business model and payment through it. Times change, and as people like to say, businesses must adapt or die. It is not as though such a change would be the end of creativity, as the media companies like to claim. People created before copyright, are freely creating today, and will create long after copyright is just a bad footnote in the history books. (I also think that such a change might be good in that those artists and bands that only care about money- and by definition, produce inferior music- will leave the music scene, making way for musicians that are more passionate about their music and do it because they love it.)
Of course, that assumes that copies-sold is the only way to make money from music, which I seriously doubt. Sure, perhaps nobody has found a business model that is as lucrative as the traditional model, but that's more or less irrelevant. Copyright is pretty screwed up and needs to be reformed to balance it more towards the public and less towards artists and publishers. If that means artists can't make as much as they used to (big-name artists, anyway), then tough on them. Capitalist markets are supposed to allow failing businesses to fail.
It is, in fact, true. Most consumers, whether they pay or steal, prefer to consume works from the copyright business model. And, most artists prefer to release under copyright because, as I said above, of the lack of sensible alternatives.
This is kind of unfair because I'd wager that "most consumers" are unaware of the alternatives, such as copyleft. Right now I can go to Jamendo and surf through thirty-eight thousand music albums, all of which are Creative Commons-licensed and free for me to download and share. I'm sure that everyone has a few professional favorites that can't be replaced by anyone else, but really, if the average person knew they could hop on a
But would I, or even society fare better than it would with copyright?
Would it? I don't know. I do not advocate the full death of copyright because I see its benefits so long as it is applied in a sane manner. I think, however, there are many provisions of copyright law that should be altered or should not exist altogether. Term limits must sharply decline from life+70 years to something between 5 and 20 years (the length itself is debatable but I'd be fine with something in that range). Anticircumvention laws must allow fair use. Fair use itself must be strengthened to fight abuses (no more taking down home movies because they include a few seconds of The Simpsons in the background at one point). Most importantly, noncommercial infringement must be punished much less heavily than for-profit infringement, or not at all (my preference). There is simply no basis to support the argument that noncommercial infringement causes significant harm.
Can copyright be beneficial? Absolutely. Copyright belongs in the commercial marketplace as a safeguard against big corporations, or anyone else, grabbing up new works and rebranding them as their own. Beyond that copyright is a violation of free speech.
Because it's not actually obsolete as a whole. There may be room to disagree over the details(like length), but if you don't agree with the principle?
What's obsolete is the idea that copyright holders should expect payment for every single copy made of a work. This concept simply does not work considering that anyone can easily and quickly copy and share something for practically zero cost. Traditional copyright is based on artificial scarcity, which is incompatible with modern tech.
Derivative works do have an impact on how people feel. Your lack of respect for that shows your insensitivity and lack of class.
Hardly uncommon traits, but some of us respect others enough that not only would we not do it, we support laws protecting them (and ourselves) from it, rather than give jerks like you carte blanche to do whatever you wish.
Whether it be taking advantage of us, or just doing things we don't like with our creations.
Yeah, we're going to have to fiercely disagree on this, but I too have the law on my side. The right of first sale states that once a legal copy of a copyrighted work is sold to someone, the rights holder no longer has any claim to that copy, except insofar as the new owner violates some other provision of copyright. This means that copyright owners cannot control their customers by saying that their works cannot be used in a certain fashion. Someone could, for example, buy up every copy of your book and burn them right in front of you. No matter how much you might hate them for doing it, they can legally do it because the alternative- allowing artists and publishers to arbitrarily set terms on the usage of their work- is unacceptable.
The creation of derivative works falls under one of the limitations of first sale. I cannot buy a copy of Star Wars: A New Hope, change the names, and resell that as my own work because that's tantamount to plagiarism. However, control of derivative works is something that must be very carefully kept in check because, as I said, derivative works are the lifeblood of creativity. Anything that is created was inspired, even just a little, by something else, or a combination of somethings else. That copy of Star Wars: A New Hope might inspire me to write my own science fiction novel. Perhaps I'll borrow a couple of elements from Star Wars to do so- such as a rebellion against an oppressive galactic regime aided by a young man who, in the process, discovers his potential. Should Lucasfilm be able to sue me for that? Hell no. Inspiration and derivation are what make creativity possible.
With all that in mind, just because you don't like customers doing something with your work doesn't mean you get to l
There's no moral high ground when you rip people off.
Who's being ripped off? The copyright holder? They're only being "ripped off" insofar as a download is a lost sale. Otherwise the p2p user is gaining something at nobody's expense. Only someone who is extremely greedy for control and profit would argue that this is a bad thing.
Before file sharers should have to justify their positions and actions, first the big copyright corporations and anyone else pushing for strong copyright law needs to justify the existing law. The question is not "Why is it okay to download something for free?" but rather "Why is it okay to restrict people from sharing information with one another?"
It also does not explain why so many small businesses and independent creators get ruthlessly ripped off by the pirates.
Name one. Seriously. Name one small business or independent creator who has been unable to make a living from their work because of file sharing. Never mind that you're completely ignoring the fact that it's these small businesses and independent creators that benefit the most from p2p, as it spreads awareness of their works and builds up a larger fan base than they'd otherwise have.
Seriously, how do you know it was file sharers that killed sales of your "consumer" software? Were there any other factors taken into account when determining sales history? What software was it? Was it well-known? If so, there should be plenty of information about it online. If not, perhaps your problem was that you were marketing to a niche. If so, did you sell to most of the customers that were actually interested? Did you attempt to make up for a small number of customers by jacking up the price? Hell, do you even have any statistics on crack releases that provide even the most basic support for your position?
You're right that fighting the pirates is pointless, but your bit about how pirates think everything must be free is just trolling. The idea is that digital files can easily be replicated and distributed to anyone with a computer and Internet connection, and that this is of obvious benefit to the public. You seem to be under the impression that most file sharers don't give a damn about creators and are just selfish thieves. You couldn't be any more wrong. Crack and scene groups will often encourage downloaders to buy the media if they like it, to support artists. There've been plenty of suggestions that people who use p2p buy more because they are the big fans, and studies done on the subject to provide support. And if there are so few people interested in paying for media, why is Hollywood pulling in record profits each year? Why haven't the music, software or video game industries completely tanked within the last decade? Why is iTunes massively successful despite the abundance of free music online, both legal and illegal?
Mindless anti-piracy nonsense is still nonsense. I'm tired of people using file sharers as scapegoats when their media doesn't sell.
Nah, that's why we have Wine. A bunch of Windows users thought it was unfair that Linux users should be well protected from malware and viruses, so they built software that lets Windows malware and viruses run on Linux. Hey, fair's fair.
If I write a book, and wish to live on it, I prefer to be able to sell that book, and not worry about somebody undercutting me or just taking advantage of their lack of costs of writing it.
Well, you have a point- without any copyright whatsoever, a big publisher could theoretically grab up all the books they see and flood the market with cheap copies. However, without any copyright whatsoever, that publisher would be undercut just the same as anyone else. And considering that most everyone (even the file-sharing community) seems to be big on attribution, I think you would fare better than anyone else would.
And no, I don't want to be forced to merchandise it, or hold my hypothetical readers hostage by refusing to release more until I get enough money.
That's your choice of business model, but it isn't a reason why a certain obsolete business model should be propped up by the gov't and the public.
As for Derivative works, some of us get attached to our stories and don't like others messing with them while we're alive. Go figure.
Uh... tough. Derivative works don't change your version in any way; they just produce a new version with someone else's creativity mixed in. Which is the entire idea behind producing a creative work.
To see why this is too good to be true, try actually restricting yourself freely distributed media, and derivative works thereon.
This is not hard. I run Ubuntu on both my computers. I get my music from Jamendo, a website that hosts CC-licensed music. I play Nexuiz, a free FPS roughly based off Quake (and I'm not a big gamer). The biggest exception would be movies, as it's harder to find copylefted films, but many of those that I download are old enough that they shouldn't qualify for copyright anymore.
Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer buying recordings of music made by my favourite bands to buying T-shirts and mugs with their faces on them.
Nothing is stopping you from doing so. Nothing is stopping your favorite bands from selling recordings. Weakened or abolished copyright law will not do this either.
If copyright continues to exist, what are you losing, exactly?
If copyright in its current form continues to exist, we continue to see gut-churning abuses of it by big corporations and governments alike. It needs reform or it needs to go; preferably the former.
Why? Why should artists make money the same way as a builder? Why should artists only be paid for live music?
To answer the intent of your question, because the mechanism through which an artist sells recordings (copyright) is clashing head-on with modern tech, and losing. Copyright is meaningless when digital files can be instantly replicated and shared. If recording artists manage to make livings selling copies despite this, great. Everyone wins. If they fail, they have no one to blame but themselves. If they try to change technology to suit their chosen business model, we throw them on the street.
Hmm. Last time I checked, the "outdated" business model that you're referring to is currently more favoured by both artists and consumers
Sorry, you can't possible say that with a straight face. Traditional copyright is under attack from everyone except big media corporations and government interests.
Global economic collapse? One of the worst people to over exist? You may wish to cut down on the rhetoric a bit. If we've put ourselves into an economic situation wherein so much relies on imaginary property laws, we have a big problem because we've built our economy on something that is not only fundamentally unethical, but cannot be effectively enforced. Copyright law is fundamentally at odds with the digital age and the Internet; effectively enforcing it requires either a complete and drastic overhaul of the structure of the Internet or massive invasions of privacy and restrictions on free speech, neither of which is acceptable. You just cannot stop people from infringing copyright if they really want to.
With that in mind, do you really think it's a good idea to prop up old business models at everyone's expense? If software vendors choose to sell their software on a per-copy basis, that doesn't mean they are entitled to be paid for their choice of business model. It's obsolete, outdated, and enforcing it means stifling technological progress, repressing free speech, and violating privacy rights- all of which are more important than imaginary property law. I refuse to believe that there is no other viable business model for software that is compatible with modern tech. Even if that were the case, I would sooner see a reduction in commercially available software than see the continued expansion of copyright law.
If MMOs are the future for PC gaming, I expect to see a significant drop in price. You don't pay nearly as much for a month's subscription to WoW as you do for a PC game off the shelf, since you're paying for access, not for a game.
The fact that "intellectual property" law (that phrase is misleading) makes economic sense doesn't solely justify its existence and enforcement. Yeah, property laws are artificial, but they're also based on scarcity, a trait that information (such as copyrighted works) does not have once released to the public (as copyrighted works are, by definition). Not only are laws like these artificial, but they just don't make sense in the age of the Internet. Essentially what you're saying is that without copyright protection, the software market would collapse and take the global economy with it- a pretty dubious claim. Not only would it be childish for all software developers to ragequit because of a weakening of copyright law, but it wouldn't make good business sense. I highly doubt that selling copies of software is the only way to profit from it, especially if it's an industry rep saying so.
On that note, we shouldn't have to prop up old business models simply because these companies refuse to adapt. Yup, it gets repeated a lot, but it's true. In a capitalist market, when technological change makes a business model obsolete, we don't give it a gov't bail out. We let it vanish into history and we allow new models, models that can take advantage of the change, to take its place.
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One last thing to consider: Perhaps independently produced content isn't as popular as it could be because big media corporations with massive advertising budgets drown out small indie guys, preventing them from getting a foothold in the market.
Realistically, something is your property insofar as you can control it; my car is my property because I have the keys and can do what I want with it. (It helps that I legally own the car as well, but legal property rights do not guarantee that things won't be stolen.) If someone does steal my car, then legally I still own it, but realistically I don't have it anymore.
Copyrighted and publicly released media such as video games are legally owned by the copyright holder(s), but realistically, they are 'owned' by either everyone or no one. Once something goes on the Internet, any privately held control over it is basically nullified. Anyone can copy it and redistribute it to anyone else. The 'owners' can come close enough to actual ownership by not releasing the media or information, but once that happens it is, for all intents and purposes, public domain.
That's why I think the term "digital property" is an oxymoron. It can't exist because of the nature of the Internet, which is the unbiased sharing of information from one computer to another, and no DRM garbage will change that.
Then the taxpayers will have to think twice about who they're electing to the school district, who will have to think twice about doing stupid shit like this.
Is it really? Perhaps I can get some education here. *nix systems come with a tool called shred, which overwrites a file multiple times with random data to provide secure deletion. We also have tools like dban, which will do basically the same thing to the whole drive. How securely do tools like these erase data?
It appears that your mindset regarding copyrighted works is that each copy is a product on its own, and that rights holders should be compensated for the use of each copy. This mindset is a relic of times gone by, when control over copyrighted works was easy because the act of copying was difficult. Now that mindset is obsolete because we have moved into a time when copying is effortless, and so businesses that focus on copyrighted works must shift their business models to adapt to technological progress. They must stop feeling entitled to compensation per copy- again, this is unrealistic in a world wherein anything can be easily copied- and research other revenue streams. They must move from selling products to selling services, in other words.
You're probably a rights holder, given your virulent and hysterical stance against copyright infringement. You probably think you deserve to be compensated for each copy of your work that is made. As I said, however, this mindset is obsolete, so instead of adapting to the times and finding ways to work with would-be customers in an attitude that's friendly towards them, you're raging on Slashdot about the scapegoat called piracy, calling people names and refusing to consider legitimate arguments made towards your fallacious points. Posting in caps lock does not make you any more right, or any less wrong. I suggest you improve your attitude if you really want to argue against piracy- otherwise you look just like another blithering anti-pirate troll, out to piss people off with obvious fallacies. You won't get taken seriously.
I see your strawman is burning nicely, since I never made a comparison between my work and someone else's. Please feel free to try again, only I suggest that you use actual, reasoned arguments this time. Or, in your own words, "Prove me wrong. Your argument is bull shit otherwise."
Welcome back to another edition of Let's Count The Fallacies, everyone.
What other professions are expected to work for free.
Aside from any involved in the IP industries, you mean? Why, none. Do you know why? Because no other professions are involved in anything resembling IP. There is nothing that resembles IP except other IP. Just about every other profession out there deals in either products- physical objects that are scarce and individually valuable- or services, which, while being intangible insofar as they are not physical objects, are still measurable and, perhaps more importantly, scarce. And right now there's a tug-of-war going on over IP: Media corporations want copyrighted content to be considered as a product, what with their DRM and their lobbying for harsh copyright, law that artificially equates information to physical property. Everyone else wants it to be more akin to a service, owing to the widespread disdain for DRM and the idea that publicly available information can be owned, but not-uncommon acceptance towards services that provide said content, such as Steam and Spotify. The reason for this? Media corporations are stuck in the past, with their near-universal control over content. Technological change has handed that control to everyone else, and they're pissy about it. Welcome to the War on Piracy.
TO GIVE THEIR PRODUCTS AWAY WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.
With amusement I note your comparison of a copyrighted work to a physical product, as I spoke of above. Anyway. Judging by your use of CAPS, I assume you think it's unfair that rights holders should be "forced" to give away their works for free whether they like it or not. Your implied assertion depends on an idea that I challenge: that it is okay for a rights holder to restrict publicly available information like that in the first place. Why is it okay for someone to put a certain piece of information out into the world, where anyone can see it, and yet say that certain people cannot do so? Why is it okay to set terms on something that is infinitely reproducible at no cost once it's put out there? Modern copyright must be justified before piracy can be attacked from the moral "high ground" of copyright; after all, copyright is not a self-evident right. It is a privilege that exists because we allow it to, although a bunch of people don't much like how far towards the rights holders the social contract of copyright has skewed.
You are REFUSING to pay a person for their work by pirating.
Do you know this for a fact? Can you honestly say with absolute certainty, and with reasoning to back it up, that when Alice downloads a movie, she is costing the producers of that movie a sale? Do you, in other words, believe that every download is a lost sale? Of course you don't. It's a ludicrous assertion. After all, who knows whether Alice plans to buy a copy of the movie if she likes it enough? Who knows whether Alice already owns a copy of the movie and is creating a convenient digital backup? Who knows whether Alice plans to edit a few seconds from that movie into a project she's working on? There could be plenty of legitimate reasons for downloading that movie. Categorizing all of them as piracy, plain and simple, is intellectually dishonest.
Perhaps you feel the urge to interrupt me and claim that you aren't talking about anything like that, but rather, you speak of those who willfully download the movie instead of buying it. Well, sure- if they're capable of doing so, they ought to support the artists (read: artists, not corporate middlemen) whose work they enjoy. And perhaps those are genuine lost sales. But if so, there really can't be that many people like this. After all, if everyone acted like this, the media industries would have tanked years ago... yet they're still around, and some are more profitable than ever. So I guess there can't be that many "true pirates," can there?
I agree with your last paragraph: If game developers continue to religiously look for ways to lock down their games, the ultimate transition will be to online-only games. The problem is that when you "get" this game, you're not buying a game; you're buying a subscription to a game. People pay $50 and up nowadays for a physical disc that they can keep forever and play whenever they want. (And in the case of digital sales, like with Steam, you're still getting your own copy.) I do not think gamers will pay the same price for the ability to log in to a publisher's server and play something installed on there, rather than having it for themselves.
Ladies and gents, let's play Let's Count The Fallacies:
1. The tired comparison of piracy to theft of physical objects. Don't do it. 2. Implication that piracy is killing the industries because "everybody" just downloads instead of buying. That's not happening until someone comes up with indisputable proof that it is. 3. What is "100% DRM"? Are you in favor of a certain amount of DRM? Are you aware that -all- DRM by nature is customer-hostile and ineffective? It doesn't stop people from sharing. 4. "I buy all my DVDs and buy all of my music because I want to support those actors or musicians I like." If you're mostly buying mainstream, which I assume, then you're supporting the record labels and movie studios that make digital life hell by pushing for stupid copyright provisions and by suing people... but you're doing practically nothing for the actors or musicians.
I agree. Call it fanboyism, but I do not think Linux is such a terrible operating system that it would see no use whatsoever, or practically so. Perhaps more colleges are requiring certain software that's Windows- and/or Mac-only. Perhaps there's been an increase in multimedia design students, for which I understand a Mac is best. But Linux is a pretty decent OS on its own merits, and it's free- something that ought to appeal to poor starving college students.
I'm undoing moderation for this, but you might want to try Lavabit as an alternative to Gmail. You have a choice between free, ad-supported, and paid accounts, with increasing benefits for each. Its features page has an impressive list of privacy- and security-friendly features that are supported. Oh, and pop and imap support too. Works pretty well for my purposes.
Unfortunately, the smart extremists will keep away from communications methods the government can monitor. India's government basically just publicly told terrorist groups that if they want to safely organize a bombing or assassination, they should use a Blackberry.
Slashdot Mirror
I see your point, but you must understand the fundamental problems with enforcing copyright on the Internet. Our computers and the Internet itself are designed around the idea of sharing information (ones and zeroes) with other computers. For the most part these systems are non-discriminatory about the information is; they cannot distinguish between a proprietary, copyrighted work and a public domain work. Additionally, works can be copied perfectly, quickly and cheaply, and easily transmitted over the Internet. It is extremely difficult to effectively enforce copyright in such an environment. Doing so requires either a drastic overhaul of the architecture of the Internet to allow for mandatory DRM, or massive invasions of privacy to require mandatory DRM. It's very simple: A law that creates and regulates artificial scarcity of something is completely screwed in an environment where there is no such thing as scarcity of that something.
Even assuming that copyright is ethically sound in today's world, it's not technically possible to meaningfully enforce. You can advocate copyright all you like, but to do so you ought to come up with a very clever way to make it work online without compromising more important rights, such as free speech, privacy, due process and fair use.
Let's say that copyright is reformed and drastically weakened, taking a bunch of rights away from artists. Let's say no functioning business model can be found. If it ends up that professional musicians cannot make decent money in such an environment, then, as much as I dislike saying this, they need to go out of business. We have to keep in mind that no individual or company is entitled to a working business model and payment through it. Times change, and as people like to say, businesses must adapt or die. It is not as though such a change would be the end of creativity, as the media companies like to claim. People created before copyright, are freely creating today, and will create long after copyright is just a bad footnote in the history books. (I also think that such a change might be good in that those artists and bands that only care about money- and by definition, produce inferior music- will leave the music scene, making way for musicians that are more passionate about their music and do it because they love it.)
Of course, that assumes that copies-sold is the only way to make money from music, which I seriously doubt. Sure, perhaps nobody has found a business model that is as lucrative as the traditional model, but that's more or less irrelevant. Copyright is pretty screwed up and needs to be reformed to balance it more towards the public and less towards artists and publishers. If that means artists can't make as much as they used to (big-name artists, anyway), then tough on them. Capitalist markets are supposed to allow failing businesses to fail.
This is kind of unfair because I'd wager that "most consumers" are unaware of the alternatives, such as copyleft. Right now I can go to Jamendo and surf through thirty-eight thousand music albums, all of which are Creative Commons-licensed and free for me to download and share. I'm sure that everyone has a few professional favorites that can't be replaced by anyone else, but really, if the average person knew they could hop on a
Would it? I don't know. I do not advocate the full death of copyright because I see its benefits so long as it is applied in a sane manner. I think, however, there are many provisions of copyright law that should be altered or should not exist altogether. Term limits must sharply decline from life+70 years to something between 5 and 20 years (the length itself is debatable but I'd be fine with something in that range). Anticircumvention laws must allow fair use. Fair use itself must be strengthened to fight abuses (no more taking down home movies because they include a few seconds of The Simpsons in the background at one point). Most importantly, noncommercial infringement must be punished much less heavily than for-profit infringement, or not at all (my preference). There is simply no basis to support the argument that noncommercial infringement causes significant harm.
Can copyright be beneficial? Absolutely. Copyright belongs in the commercial marketplace as a safeguard against big corporations, or anyone else, grabbing up new works and rebranding them as their own. Beyond that copyright is a violation of free speech.
What's obsolete is the idea that copyright holders should expect payment for every single copy made of a work. This concept simply does not work considering that anyone can easily and quickly copy and share something for practically zero cost. Traditional copyright is based on artificial scarcity, which is incompatible with modern tech.
Yeah, we're going to have to fiercely disagree on this, but I too have the law on my side. The right of first sale states that once a legal copy of a copyrighted work is sold to someone, the rights holder no longer has any claim to that copy, except insofar as the new owner violates some other provision of copyright. This means that copyright owners cannot control their customers by saying that their works cannot be used in a certain fashion. Someone could, for example, buy up every copy of your book and burn them right in front of you. No matter how much you might hate them for doing it, they can legally do it because the alternative- allowing artists and publishers to arbitrarily set terms on the usage of their work- is unacceptable.
The creation of derivative works falls under one of the limitations of first sale. I cannot buy a copy of Star Wars: A New Hope, change the names, and resell that as my own work because that's tantamount to plagiarism. However, control of derivative works is something that must be very carefully kept in check because, as I said, derivative works are the lifeblood of creativity. Anything that is created was inspired, even just a little, by something else, or a combination of somethings else. That copy of Star Wars: A New Hope might inspire me to write my own science fiction novel. Perhaps I'll borrow a couple of elements from Star Wars to do so- such as a rebellion against an oppressive galactic regime aided by a young man who, in the process, discovers his potential. Should Lucasfilm be able to sue me for that? Hell no. Inspiration and derivation are what make creativity possible.
With all that in mind, just because you don't like customers doing something with your work doesn't mean you get to l
Who's being ripped off? The copyright holder? They're only being "ripped off" insofar as a download is a lost sale. Otherwise the p2p user is gaining something at nobody's expense. Only someone who is extremely greedy for control and profit would argue that this is a bad thing.
Before file sharers should have to justify their positions and actions, first the big copyright corporations and anyone else pushing for strong copyright law needs to justify the existing law. The question is not "Why is it okay to download something for free?" but rather "Why is it okay to restrict people from sharing information with one another?"
Name one. Seriously. Name one small business or independent creator who has been unable to make a living from their work because of file sharing. Never mind that you're completely ignoring the fact that it's these small businesses and independent creators that benefit the most from p2p, as it spreads awareness of their works and builds up a larger fan base than they'd otherwise have.
Mod parent Flamebait.
Seriously, how do you know it was file sharers that killed sales of your "consumer" software? Were there any other factors taken into account when determining sales history? What software was it? Was it well-known? If so, there should be plenty of information about it online. If not, perhaps your problem was that you were marketing to a niche. If so, did you sell to most of the customers that were actually interested? Did you attempt to make up for a small number of customers by jacking up the price? Hell, do you even have any statistics on crack releases that provide even the most basic support for your position?
You're right that fighting the pirates is pointless, but your bit about how pirates think everything must be free is just trolling. The idea is that digital files can easily be replicated and distributed to anyone with a computer and Internet connection, and that this is of obvious benefit to the public. You seem to be under the impression that most file sharers don't give a damn about creators and are just selfish thieves. You couldn't be any more wrong. Crack and scene groups will often encourage downloaders to buy the media if they like it, to support artists. There've been plenty of suggestions that people who use p2p buy more because they are the big fans, and studies done on the subject to provide support. And if there are so few people interested in paying for media, why is Hollywood pulling in record profits each year? Why haven't the music, software or video game industries completely tanked within the last decade? Why is iTunes massively successful despite the abundance of free music online, both legal and illegal?
Mindless anti-piracy nonsense is still nonsense. I'm tired of people using file sharers as scapegoats when their media doesn't sell.
Nah, that's why we have Wine. A bunch of Windows users thought it was unfair that Linux users should be well protected from malware and viruses, so they built software that lets Windows malware and viruses run on Linux. Hey, fair's fair.
Well, you have a point- without any copyright whatsoever, a big publisher could theoretically grab up all the books they see and flood the market with cheap copies. However, without any copyright whatsoever, that publisher would be undercut just the same as anyone else. And considering that most everyone (even the file-sharing community) seems to be big on attribution, I think you would fare better than anyone else would.
That's your choice of business model, but it isn't a reason why a certain obsolete business model should be propped up by the gov't and the public.
Uh... tough. Derivative works don't change your version in any way; they just produce a new version with someone else's creativity mixed in. Which is the entire idea behind producing a creative work.
This is not hard. I run Ubuntu on both my computers. I get my music from Jamendo, a website that hosts CC-licensed music. I play Nexuiz, a free FPS roughly based off Quake (and I'm not a big gamer). The biggest exception would be movies, as it's harder to find copylefted films, but many of those that I download are old enough that they shouldn't qualify for copyright anymore.
Nothing is stopping you from doing so. Nothing is stopping your favorite bands from selling recordings. Weakened or abolished copyright law will not do this either.
If copyright in its current form continues to exist, we continue to see gut-churning abuses of it by big corporations and governments alike. It needs reform or it needs to go; preferably the former.
To answer the intent of your question, because the mechanism through which an artist sells recordings (copyright) is clashing head-on with modern tech, and losing. Copyright is meaningless when digital files can be instantly replicated and shared. If recording artists manage to make livings selling copies despite this, great. Everyone wins. If they fail, they have no one to blame but themselves. If they try to change technology to suit their chosen business model, we throw them on the street.
Sorry, you can't possible say that with a straight face. Traditional copyright is under attack from everyone except big media corporations and government interests.
A better link to the comic for anyone who views this thread after tonight, when a new comic goes up.
Global economic collapse? One of the worst people to over exist? You may wish to cut down on the rhetoric a bit. If we've put ourselves into an economic situation wherein so much relies on imaginary property laws, we have a big problem because we've built our economy on something that is not only fundamentally unethical, but cannot be effectively enforced. Copyright law is fundamentally at odds with the digital age and the Internet; effectively enforcing it requires either a complete and drastic overhaul of the structure of the Internet or massive invasions of privacy and restrictions on free speech, neither of which is acceptable. You just cannot stop people from infringing copyright if they really want to.
With that in mind, do you really think it's a good idea to prop up old business models at everyone's expense? If software vendors choose to sell their software on a per-copy basis, that doesn't mean they are entitled to be paid for their choice of business model. It's obsolete, outdated, and enforcing it means stifling technological progress, repressing free speech, and violating privacy rights- all of which are more important than imaginary property law. I refuse to believe that there is no other viable business model for software that is compatible with modern tech. Even if that were the case, I would sooner see a reduction in commercially available software than see the continued expansion of copyright law.
If MMOs are the future for PC gaming, I expect to see a significant drop in price. You don't pay nearly as much for a month's subscription to WoW as you do for a PC game off the shelf, since you're paying for access, not for a game.
The fact that "intellectual property" law (that phrase is misleading) makes economic sense doesn't solely justify its existence and enforcement. Yeah, property laws are artificial, but they're also based on scarcity, a trait that information (such as copyrighted works) does not have once released to the public (as copyrighted works are, by definition). Not only are laws like these artificial, but they just don't make sense in the age of the Internet. Essentially what you're saying is that without copyright protection, the software market would collapse and take the global economy with it- a pretty dubious claim. Not only would it be childish for all software developers to ragequit because of a weakening of copyright law, but it wouldn't make good business sense. I highly doubt that selling copies of software is the only way to profit from it, especially if it's an industry rep saying so.
On that note, we shouldn't have to prop up old business models simply because these companies refuse to adapt. Yup, it gets repeated a lot, but it's true. In a capitalist market, when technological change makes a business model obsolete, we don't give it a gov't bail out. We let it vanish into history and we allow new models, models that can take advantage of the change, to take its place.
/ One last thing to consider: Perhaps independently produced content isn't as popular as it could be because big media corporations with massive advertising budgets drown out small indie guys, preventing them from getting a foothold in the market.
Realistically, something is your property insofar as you can control it; my car is my property because I have the keys and can do what I want with it. (It helps that I legally own the car as well, but legal property rights do not guarantee that things won't be stolen.) If someone does steal my car, then legally I still own it, but realistically I don't have it anymore.
Copyrighted and publicly released media such as video games are legally owned by the copyright holder(s), but realistically, they are 'owned' by either everyone or no one. Once something goes on the Internet, any privately held control over it is basically nullified. Anyone can copy it and redistribute it to anyone else. The 'owners' can come close enough to actual ownership by not releasing the media or information, but once that happens it is, for all intents and purposes, public domain.
That's why I think the term "digital property" is an oxymoron. It can't exist because of the nature of the Internet, which is the unbiased sharing of information from one computer to another, and no DRM garbage will change that.
Then the taxpayers will have to think twice about who they're electing to the school district, who will have to think twice about doing stupid shit like this.
Can you elaborate on how shred is defeated by any file system besides ext2? For example, does it not function properly on other file systems?
Is it really? Perhaps I can get some education here. *nix systems come with a tool called shred, which overwrites a file multiple times with random data to provide secure deletion. We also have tools like dban, which will do basically the same thing to the whole drive. How securely do tools like these erase data?
It appears that your mindset regarding copyrighted works is that each copy is a product on its own, and that rights holders should be compensated for the use of each copy. This mindset is a relic of times gone by, when control over copyrighted works was easy because the act of copying was difficult. Now that mindset is obsolete because we have moved into a time when copying is effortless, and so businesses that focus on copyrighted works must shift their business models to adapt to technological progress. They must stop feeling entitled to compensation per copy- again, this is unrealistic in a world wherein anything can be easily copied- and research other revenue streams. They must move from selling products to selling services, in other words.
You're probably a rights holder, given your virulent and hysterical stance against copyright infringement. You probably think you deserve to be compensated for each copy of your work that is made. As I said, however, this mindset is obsolete, so instead of adapting to the times and finding ways to work with would-be customers in an attitude that's friendly towards them, you're raging on Slashdot about the scapegoat called piracy, calling people names and refusing to consider legitimate arguments made towards your fallacious points. Posting in caps lock does not make you any more right, or any less wrong. I suggest you improve your attitude if you really want to argue against piracy- otherwise you look just like another blithering anti-pirate troll, out to piss people off with obvious fallacies. You won't get taken seriously.
I see your strawman is burning nicely, since I never made a comparison between my work and someone else's. Please feel free to try again, only I suggest that you use actual, reasoned arguments this time. Or, in your own words, "Prove me wrong. Your argument is bull shit otherwise."
Aside from any involved in the IP industries, you mean? Why, none. Do you know why? Because no other professions are involved in anything resembling IP. There is nothing that resembles IP except other IP. Just about every other profession out there deals in either products- physical objects that are scarce and individually valuable- or services, which, while being intangible insofar as they are not physical objects, are still measurable and, perhaps more importantly, scarce. And right now there's a tug-of-war going on over IP: Media corporations want copyrighted content to be considered as a product, what with their DRM and their lobbying for harsh copyright, law that artificially equates information to physical property. Everyone else wants it to be more akin to a service, owing to the widespread disdain for DRM and the idea that publicly available information can be owned, but not-uncommon acceptance towards services that provide said content, such as Steam and Spotify. The reason for this? Media corporations are stuck in the past, with their near-universal control over content. Technological change has handed that control to everyone else, and they're pissy about it. Welcome to the War on Piracy.
With amusement I note your comparison of a copyrighted work to a physical product, as I spoke of above. Anyway. Judging by your use of CAPS, I assume you think it's unfair that rights holders should be "forced" to give away their works for free whether they like it or not. Your implied assertion depends on an idea that I challenge: that it is okay for a rights holder to restrict publicly available information like that in the first place. Why is it okay for someone to put a certain piece of information out into the world, where anyone can see it, and yet say that certain people cannot do so? Why is it okay to set terms on something that is infinitely reproducible at no cost once it's put out there? Modern copyright must be justified before piracy can be attacked from the moral "high ground" of copyright; after all, copyright is not a self-evident right. It is a privilege that exists because we allow it to, although a bunch of people don't much like how far towards the rights holders the social contract of copyright has skewed.
Do you know this for a fact? Can you honestly say with absolute certainty, and with reasoning to back it up, that when Alice downloads a movie, she is costing the producers of that movie a sale? Do you, in other words, believe that every download is a lost sale? Of course you don't. It's a ludicrous assertion. After all, who knows whether Alice plans to buy a copy of the movie if she likes it enough? Who knows whether Alice already owns a copy of the movie and is creating a convenient digital backup? Who knows whether Alice plans to edit a few seconds from that movie into a project she's working on? There could be plenty of legitimate reasons for downloading that movie. Categorizing all of them as piracy, plain and simple, is intellectually dishonest.
Perhaps you feel the urge to interrupt me and claim that you aren't talking about anything like that, but rather, you speak of those who willfully download the movie instead of buying it. Well, sure- if they're capable of doing so, they ought to support the artists (read: artists, not corporate middlemen) whose work they enjoy. And perhaps those are genuine lost sales. But if so, there really can't be that many people like this. After all, if everyone acted like this, the media industries would have tanked years ago... yet they're still around, and some are more profitable than ever. So I guess there can't be that many "true pirates," can there?
I agree with your last paragraph: If game developers continue to religiously look for ways to lock down their games, the ultimate transition will be to online-only games. The problem is that when you "get" this game, you're not buying a game; you're buying a subscription to a game. People pay $50 and up nowadays for a physical disc that they can keep forever and play whenever they want. (And in the case of digital sales, like with Steam, you're still getting your own copy.) I do not think gamers will pay the same price for the ability to log in to a publisher's server and play something installed on there, rather than having it for themselves.
Ladies and gents, let's play Let's Count The Fallacies:
1. The tired comparison of piracy to theft of physical objects. Don't do it.
2. Implication that piracy is killing the industries because "everybody" just downloads instead of buying. That's not happening until someone comes up with indisputable proof that it is.
3. What is "100% DRM"? Are you in favor of a certain amount of DRM? Are you aware that -all- DRM by nature is customer-hostile and ineffective? It doesn't stop people from sharing.
4. "I buy all my DVDs and buy all of my music because I want to support those actors or musicians I like." If you're mostly buying mainstream, which I assume, then you're supporting the record labels and movie studios that make digital life hell by pushing for stupid copyright provisions and by suing people... but you're doing practically nothing for the actors or musicians.
I agree. Call it fanboyism, but I do not think Linux is such a terrible operating system that it would see no use whatsoever, or practically so. Perhaps more colleges are requiring certain software that's Windows- and/or Mac-only. Perhaps there's been an increase in multimedia design students, for which I understand a Mac is best. But Linux is a pretty decent OS on its own merits, and it's free- something that ought to appeal to poor starving college students.
I'm undoing moderation for this, but you might want to try Lavabit as an alternative to Gmail. You have a choice between free, ad-supported, and paid accounts, with increasing benefits for each. Its features page has an impressive list of privacy- and security-friendly features that are supported. Oh, and pop and imap support too. Works pretty well for my purposes.
Unfortunately, the smart extremists will keep away from communications methods the government can monitor. India's government basically just publicly told terrorist groups that if they want to safely organize a bombing or assassination, they should use a Blackberry.