This "civil disobedience" argument is a crock, and it's a crock because civil disobedience is about public protest, it is not about expediently redistributing resources ( whether they be tangible or other ) in ones own direction.
Once again, you're right. I shouldn't have brought up anything about civil disobedience because in this case, the act itself (of downlaoding music) isn't civil disobedience per se. To call it that does a great disservice to Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and others who had more important issues over which to protest. But I stick to my guns and say that there need no longer be laws which allow the ownership of information. What I'm doing when I download music is illegal, but I don't think it should be. The laws are unecessary since we already have too much mainstream media artillery and very little incentive to do anything creative ourselves.
The fact that you paid for your computer does not absolve you of your obligation to pay for other things you use. One might as well argue that riding the train without paying is not "freeloading" because you paid for your computer.
I'm sorry, yes, that was a weak argument. I think you're quite right that it's a total red herring. Thanks for calling me on it. In my defense, I was in a hurry trying to finish my thought before netscape crashed...:-)
Um, I got the distinct impression that he meant "stealing" in the moral sense, not so much as in the legal sense. Yes, some people consider stealing to be morally wrong, regardless of the legality of it.
Yes, he may have meant stealing in the moral sense and yes, some people (rightly) consider stealing to be morally wrong. What I thought we were arguing about was whether the laws that treat information as property are good laws or bad laws. If they are good laws, then we can agree that information can have a rightful owner, and taking such property from its rightful owner is theft. If title-to-information laws are bad laws then information cannot have a rightful owner. Using something that doesn't have a rightful owner is called "finding" not "stealing". I am open to correction if I am wrong, but I think that most people regard the use of a found object as morally acceptable.
Maybe there would be -- but I bet that you'd lose all except the most "economically viable" musicians.
Yeah, jury's out on that. I think if you take the example of what happened after Condorcet's proposal was implemented after the French Revolution, it's quite possible that the market would be flooded with a bunch of crappy artists doing covers of already existing songs. Condorcet eventually recanted and decided that some intellectual property laws were necessary, but I think the base he was starting from was much less solid than the base we would be starting from today.
you are out of touch of the new music scene if you do not read CMJ or listen to college radio!
Why do I have to be "in touch" with the "new music scene" in order to make an informed statement about the music industry? I listen *exclusively* to college radio in fact, and I can't think of anything I've heard that would have influenced what I said. I listen to college radio stations but I don't base my opinions on whatever today's 3 second long trend happens to be.
I'm not surprised or scared. Let them put everyone in jail. Eventually they'll have no room for murderers and rapists. So the really dangerous people will be outside the prison walls. That would be a really fine outcome of intellectual property law enforcement. Thanks for the heads up, though.
I write a song, music, spend time and effort, and it's not mine? It's yours for the downloading? Looting: theft from a third party, causing loss.
First of all, intellectual property laws do not guarantee that because you put time and effort into something that you will therefore have property rights to the result. I can spend years painstakingly hand copying a book but copyright will not protect the result of my effort. In fact it labels me a criminal. The "fruits of labour" argument is a little off base because intellectual property laws are aimed at creative works, not just works that require a certain amount of effort. The poet who hears voices in his head and simply writes them down isn't exerting much more effort than the person who copied the book by hand, but copyright rewards the former and punishes the latter.
I invent something, I want control of it.
Frankly I don't see how your wanting anything is an argument for what ought to be legal. I want to be Prime Minister of Canada, so I ought to be Prime Minister of Canada. Doesn't make much sense, does it?
If I choose to diseminate it I will. And I can do so, by explicitly allowing it.
You're thinking of trade secret legislation, which allows you to keep something from being discovered surreptitiously and exposed. Choosing to disseminate such information simply makes it impossible to claim trade secret status. But you do have the option of deciding whether or not to disseminate your trade secret.
Looting: theft from a third party, causing loss. It's not an invalid analogy, especially in response to the statement I replied to, in that "well, everyone's doing it now, so bad luck".
Yep, I agree. I'm totally against mob rule. That's why I'm taking my time and trying to mount real arguments against the moral and utilitarian underpinnings of intellectual property laws. To do something just because everyone else is doing it is the antithesis of liberal democracy. I don't even like what happened in Seattle, to the extent that the street theatre tended to drown out debate.
There will be a lot less (movies, music, software) for you to take involuntarily from others.
Amen to that, brother. You could cut the music industry down to a tenth the size it is now, and there'd still be more music available than you could possibly listen to in your lifetime.
Ah but someone does get hurt....all the people who worked to produce the (movie, music,software)
Don't try and equate that with a threat to public safety.
How does it feel to be so out of touch with the music these kids are listening to these days?
I wish I were out of touch with the music kids are listening to these days. Unfortunately, I have a television set and sometimes watch the LimpBizkit show where Regis Philbin asks people about obscure "Youth Oriented Rock" groups. Every question features the same video clue: that clip of Blink182 with their dicks hanging out. Regis makes a couple of jokes and then the contestant usually farts a couple of times.
What's your point? Do you think that being young makes you an expert? Being young doesn't make you anything except young. You are apparently just as clueless as me, or you would have said something relevant.
It's stealing if you believe that the copyright owners are rightful owners. I happen to believe they are not rightful owners. No one is. Besides, even if it is stealing, the law distinguishes between theft and armed robbery. Perpetrators of this "crime" are not a risk to public safety. No one gets hurt. The previous poster was trying to compare downloading music to rioting, looting, and doing grievous bodily harm to innocent bystanders. I just thought it was inappropriate. But who cares whether his little analogy stands or falls. Intellectual property laws have to be dismantled. Let's get going, there's work to be done!
Yes you do have that right so long as you are willing to take the penalty that comes with that protest. I beleive it was Martin Luther King Jr. yousaid "let's fill the jails."
I'm definitely willing to go to jail to break intellectual property laws. But the time for that is yet to come. People have to wake up first. Music and books and TV are things that people do for pleasure. Most of the (non-sexual) things people do for pleasure these days come from big corporations. There's nothing inherently evil about big corporations. But every minute of our day, the things we see and hear are things that pretend to be human (the talking head on tv). We're missing a lot by being locked into a world of one way communication. We don't get to hear what's inside our heads because the noise makes it impossible.
I download music off the internet to try to break the record companies because they are ruining human experience. It doesn't even really hurt them very much. Certainly not as badly as it would if I were to threaten senior executives with violence (NSA: Are you listening? Please quote in context).
I'm not doing it because it's cheap. I had to have a two thousand dollar computer in order to do it. That's not freeloading. Somebody in the system gets some reward from that. Call it stealing if you want, but it's not wrong. Plain and simple.
Right... "Wait, Mr. Cop! What do you mean, I am under arrest? I wasn't stealing that six-pack of Molson, I was in fact complimenting the brewery on their fine, ice-cold beverage! You can't do this to me! Waaaa!"
And then I told the cop to count the number of beer cases in the warehouse and he found there weren't any missing... strange.
I think that downloading copyrighted music against the copyright owner's will is immoral.
And I think it's morally wrong for people to sell recorded copies of songs that are derivative. Anyone who tries to be really original like Stockhausen couldn't sell CD's anyway. The more "creative" you are, the less people understand you and the less commercial potential you have as a musical act. So offering to market someone's intellectual property is no formula for ensuring that it will be creative. It is a formula for greed and mediocrity.
Besides all that I think there's far too much cultural noise. We could use a long break from the constant barrage of "this week's Coca-Cola(tm) Countdown". Copyright laws were made in a time before ghetto blasters and discman and car stereos and Nomad MP3 players. It made sense then to promote the development of culture (particularly in America, since they had no culture of their own) by enacting special laws. We don't have to prime the pump any more, fellas. The job is done. Culture is alive and well -- we don't need to coddle it anymore. Having intellectual property laws in the year 2000 makes as much sense as putting growth hormone on a garden that's overgrown to the point of choking itself. We've created a system that's threatening to eat us alive, and we still keep feeding it blood.
And moreover, it doesn't matter if the music industry were to stop growing or shrink. It wouldn't matter if tomorrow there were no rock stars, no celebrities, no late night chat shows, no video games. You know what? People would learn to do fun things all by themselves. Nobody really needs the entertainment industry except the entertainment industry.
The overwhelming masses of Napster users and the likes are now the dominating force. A cancer too large to suppress. They are not the ones who need to change....
Robert S Gormley sayeth contra post a:
Just like the post-Rodney King rampagers/looters?
Do you really want to compare downloading music with physical violence? One argument in favour of free access to digital music is that it's non-violent and (arguably) doesn't harm anyone. If you ask me, I'd rather have all the gang kids online trying to find mp3's or DoSing CNN.com than out in the streets shooting each other. Half the time they're killing each other so that they can have more CD's (no stats to back that up, of course, but you get my point). Your analogy is way, way off.
And then there are free speech advocates. "Information wants to be free," they chant, over and over, conveniently ignoring the fact that freeing information can be stealing.
I'm starting to understand why people around Slashdot get very cranky. I think you must be the 200th person who has answered an argument about the legality of x with the answer that x is illegal. Does that sound like an argument? No, you're just pounding the pulpit, stamping your feet, and holding your breath until you turn blue. You'll NEVER have a meaningful discussion about law if all you do is assume that all laws are good laws.
Now that I got that off my chest, suppose I were to suggest that the law that currently makes trafficking information a crime is a bad law. It ought to be legal for me to do insider trading, transmit music wherever I want, copy and redistribute ideas freely etc etc. Let's argue about whether or not society would be better off without copyright, patents, or trademarks. That's the level at which you can enter a debate with someone who disagrees with the law of the land.
If I want to share my information, I should be allowed to do that, and it should be my choice.
I think it's very important to distinguish between personal information and public information. What you do at home is your business. I have no right to pry into your life and nor should the state. I think everyone agrees on that. It is a different matter if you do something publicly. If you stand on a street corner telling jokes, the jokes that you tell are not private in the same sense as your medical records are. When I say "information wants to be free" (I think that phrase is stupid, and I can't speak for people who really use it) I would mean non-personal information. I think that corporate secrets are fair game because the information concerned is not of a personal nature.
If you choose to share something about your personal life with someone, it's morally wrong for them to spread that information around, but it shouldn't be a crime, or even grounds for civil action.
And before anyone tries it, I don't care about "But I use it to preview music for my next CD purchase" arguments... all evidence I've seen is biased and anecdotal.
You're right, this is probably 80% bullshit. People are downloading music because they would rather not pay for it if they don't have to. You say that legally they DO have to pay, and I agree that's true. I just think that the laws are simply wrong. If I download music from the internet, it's not stealing, it's making a political statement. It's civil disobedience. It's a peaceful form of protest. Don't I have the right to protest?
You would answer that no, I don't have the right to protest if by doing so I harm the creator of the music. My response would be that I haven't harmed the creator of the music. I have complimented him or her. I enjoyed their music. That doesn't mean I necessarily must pay for it.
I'm sure Boies will do a good job defending Napster, but even if he wins, there's going to be some candy-assed, backroom settlement to ensure that the price of recorded music stays just where it is and nothing will really change. I think either Gnutella or FreeNet would do a better job of subverting distribution channels.
The best solution, of course, is to stop buying recorded music and either support live music or learn to play a musical instrument. Music isn't a commodity. Songs are for people to sing, not machines. I know that I will be drawn and quartered for expressing luddite views in this forum, but that's ok -- I needed to lose a little weight.
On the other hand, secrecy isn't that important. The information probably didn't include full engineering drawings and instructions for building bombs, just diagrams and instructions needed for deactivating them.
I think this is a very good point. In the 19th century, military intelligence was limited to tactical information such as troop movement or enemy supply routes. There is very little benefit in expending a lot of effort preventing weapons secrets from falling into the wrong hands. Better to work out countermeasures as part of designing the thing in the first place. Assume that the enemy already has the same weapon and govern yourself accordingly. This way, a country doesn't get lulled into a false sense of security derived from the mistaken belief that mere technological superiority will win a war.
It's ridiculous to even have military secrecy, or even an intelligence service, during peacetime. Guard your borders. If you see someone coming and they're armed, shoot to kill. Ask questions later. But don't spend billions of dollars designing microphones that can be implanted in a condom and sending agents into risky undercover sitations in other countries. That's nonsense. Stop playing games and start concentrating on preserving what's left of civilization.
If I believe something, doesn't that mean I'm advocating it in some way, even if it's just generally voicing that opinion?
Not necessarily. But the constitutional protections against state intervention in personal affairs would be meaningless if they didn't allow speaking about one's beliefs. The right to believe and not speak about something is hardly granting a right at all. It would be a small step away from Orwell's 1984.
Article 4 - Freedom is the power to do anything which does not harm another: therefore, the only limits to the exercise of each person's natural rights are those which ensure that the other members of the community enjoy those same rights. Legislation only may set these limits.
Or this quote from JS Mill' On Liberty:
This, then is the appropriate region of human liberty. It comprises first, the inward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects...
and then goes on to add:
The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it.
These quotes reflect the concern for free speech which existed at the time of the birth of modern democracy. Things have changed a bit since then. Some people feel that once the citizens have descended into barbarism, the state's use of despotic measures is appropriate. Hence the reinstatement of the death penalty. Depends on your point of view, I guess.
Personally, I think that silencing holocaust deniers only strengthens their cause and pushes them underground where they are much more of a threat.
It is not talent that is rewarded, it's productivity. There's obviously a positive correlation between the two.
If by productivity, you mean "material output", then I agree. If you mean something like Taylorism ("scientific" efficiency studies) then I disagree. Even so, I never claimed that an *individual* copyrighted work is an example of rewarding talent. It is not. Copyright and patents reward the material output of talent, or as you say, (an instance or example of) a person's productivity.
When I say "intellectual property laws reward inborn talent" I just meant that the overall effect (and the intent) of intellectual property laws is to reward those who are "original" or "creative". I could, for example, copyright an edition of a published phone directory or a mailing list, but not the data contained therein. Court decisions have shown such lists are not works that copyright was intended to protect. That is why database and mailing list resellers are pushing for NEW laws to protect those types of works.
The problem of awarding property rights based on the criteria of "original" or "creative" is that those criteria are by their nature open-ended. Who can define what those words mean? This is where intellectual property laws must appeal to concepts like "Non-obvious to an expert in the relevant field" or to hair-splitting tactics like trying to decide whether a translation of a book constitutes a new work. Trying to nail down a legal definition of "creative" is an exercise in futility. It's like trying to legally define what constitutes Bach's or Beethoven's individual "styles". Yet the rapid expansion of the scope of property rights in information content has been driven by precisely this loophole, with respect to which the law must necessarily be indeterminate. With no hard line to draw in the sand, there is no rationale to stop the ever-widening enclosure of what is really a public resource.
if you don't reward hard work and productivity, there is simply no incentive for anyone to work hard.
I agree. However, it does not follow that our only means of accomplishing that end is for hard-workers to be granted residual property rights in the fruits of their labour. People can be rewarded for hard work by being paid for their time, by sharing profits, by giving awards for productivity etc, etc. This is all first year commerce stuff. If what you say were true, auto workers would get royalties from the sale of cars, and would have some authority over their resale and subsequent use. That would be a scenario in which hard work is rewarded with property rights.
Western democracies all have similar views about the rewarding hard work and effort. The tax system shouldn't punish people for hard work. Labour laws shouldn't punish people for wanting to work as hard as they can. None of these requirements necessitate the granting of property rights. The subject of property rights in information commodities is not native to the debate about rewarding hard work. Property rights are the immediate and essential concern only of discussions about power structures or heirarchies or social order.
I repeat: Just because I work a little harder or I'm born with a higher IQ than you doesn't entitle me to greater *property rights*. There are other solutions which deserve at least to be considered, a fact which no one has so far admitted. I'm not advocating tinkering with the paramters of the current implementation. I am questioning the moral and utilitarian underpinnings of the whole scheme. That's why I feel it's necessary to push the envelope a little bit.
When I said "these things are renewable" I was referring to the provisional application and not the patent. According to the Patent Office's website, the provisional application can be applied for more than once. Since the provisional application gives the applicant the right to print the words "Patent Pending" on their product, it gives the invention covered by the application some protection.
That being said, I am not a lawyer. In fact, I am not even a human being. I'm just a teletype machine sitting in an abandoned warehouse.
A provisional application is just that - an application. It is not a patent, and never will become a patent. Most patent attorneys see no use for them at all.
I know they're not patents, but they *do* provide legal protection. They allow applicants to print "Patent Pending" on devices covered by the application. There are statutory restrictions on the use of that description, so I assume there is SOME legal advantage in doing so. So if the provisional application can be renewed one year at a time, that sounds to me like a patent whose duration can be extended, albeit not indefinitely.
The open standards idea goes somewhat counter to normal capitalist thinking.
I don't know if that's true. Think of what has been achieved by standardizing industrial parts. Total interoperability. The electrical system has been standardized. The telephone system has been standardized. The fuel distribution system has been standardized. Our weights and measurements systems have been standardized. Time zones have been standardized. The internet has been standardized. There are probably many more examples which show that capitalism is not averse to standardization.
The problem seems to be more endemic to the computer industry which has only a few juggernauts who make the rules. One or two vendors control prices and and dictate obsolescence cycles. This makes it difficult for regulators to keep up with technology. I'm just speculating wildly, but I'm sure the lack of standardization in the computer industry all stems from IBM's early dominance and the failure of the market to support healthy competitors. Historians out there? Throw me a few facts, if you can.
Funny. I liked that movie. But I was dead serious when I said economic growth is stealing from the future. What I meant was: (I probably shouldn't have tried to be a smart-ass) economic growth was achieved by stripping non-renewable resources from the Earth. That is an externality which will eventually catch up to us. Hence today's economic growth is "stolen" from the future.
Slashdot Mirror
Once again, you're right. I shouldn't have brought up anything about civil disobedience because in this case, the act itself (of downlaoding music) isn't civil disobedience per se. To call it that does a great disservice to Martin Luther King, Ghandi, and others who had more important issues over which to protest. But I stick to my guns and say that there need no longer be laws which allow the ownership of information. What I'm doing when I download music is illegal, but I don't think it should be. The laws are unecessary since we already have too much mainstream media artillery and very little incentive to do anything creative ourselves.
I'm sorry, yes, that was a weak argument. I think you're quite right that it's a total red herring. Thanks for calling me on it. In my defense, I was in a hurry trying to finish my thought before netscape crashed... :-)
Yes, he may have meant stealing in the moral sense and yes, some people (rightly) consider stealing to be morally wrong. What I thought we were arguing about was whether the laws that treat information as property are good laws or bad laws. If they are good laws, then we can agree that information can have a rightful owner, and taking such property from its rightful owner is theft. If title-to-information laws are bad laws then information cannot have a rightful owner. Using something that doesn't have a rightful owner is called "finding" not "stealing". I am open to correction if I am wrong, but I think that most people regard the use of a found object as morally acceptable.
Thank you for the stylistic advice. I'll try to tone it down a bit. I'm definitely not intending to troll. I'm dead serious.
Yeah, jury's out on that. I think if you take the example of what happened after Condorcet's proposal was implemented after the French Revolution, it's quite possible that the market would be flooded with a bunch of crappy artists doing covers of already existing songs. Condorcet eventually recanted and decided that some intellectual property laws were necessary, but I think the base he was starting from was much less solid than the base we would be starting from today.
Why do I have to be "in touch" with the "new music scene" in order to make an informed statement about the music industry? I listen *exclusively* to college radio in fact, and I can't think of anything I've heard that would have influenced what I said. I listen to college radio stations but I don't base my opinions on whatever today's 3 second long trend happens to be.
I'm not surprised or scared. Let them put everyone in jail. Eventually they'll have no room for murderers and rapists. So the really dangerous people will be outside the prison walls. That would be a really fine outcome of intellectual property law enforcement. Thanks for the heads up, though.
First of all, intellectual property laws do not guarantee that because you put time and effort into something that you will therefore have property rights to the result. I can spend years painstakingly hand copying a book but copyright will not protect the result of my effort. In fact it labels me a criminal. The "fruits of labour" argument is a little off base because intellectual property laws are aimed at creative works, not just works that require a certain amount of effort. The poet who hears voices in his head and simply writes them down isn't exerting much more effort than the person who copied the book by hand, but copyright rewards the former and punishes the latter.
I invent something, I want control of it.
Frankly I don't see how your wanting anything is an argument for what ought to be legal. I want to be Prime Minister of Canada, so I ought to be Prime Minister of Canada. Doesn't make much sense, does it?
If I choose to diseminate it I will. And I can do so, by explicitly allowing it.
You're thinking of trade secret legislation, which allows you to keep something from being discovered surreptitiously and exposed. Choosing to disseminate such information simply makes it impossible to claim trade secret status. But you do have the option of deciding whether or not to disseminate your trade secret.
Looting: theft from a third party, causing loss. It's not an invalid analogy, especially in response to the statement I replied to, in that "well, everyone's doing it now, so bad luck".
Yep, I agree. I'm totally against mob rule. That's why I'm taking my time and trying to mount real arguments against the moral and utilitarian underpinnings of intellectual property laws. To do something just because everyone else is doing it is the antithesis of liberal democracy. I don't even like what happened in Seattle, to the extent that the street theatre tended to drown out debate.
Amen to that, brother. You could cut the music industry down to a tenth the size it is now, and there'd still be more music available than you could possibly listen to in your lifetime.
Ah but someone does get hurt....all the people who worked to produce the (movie, music,software)
Don't try and equate that with a threat to public safety.
I wish I were out of touch with the music kids are listening to these days. Unfortunately, I have a television set and sometimes watch the LimpBizkit show where Regis Philbin asks people about obscure "Youth Oriented Rock" groups. Every question features the same video clue: that clip of Blink182 with their dicks hanging out. Regis makes a couple of jokes and then the contestant usually farts a couple of times.
What's your point? Do you think that being young makes you an expert? Being young doesn't make you anything except young. You are apparently just as clueless as me, or you would have said something relevant.
It's stealing if you believe that the copyright owners are rightful owners. I happen to believe they are not rightful owners. No one is. Besides, even if it is stealing, the law distinguishes between theft and armed robbery. Perpetrators of this "crime" are not a risk to public safety. No one gets hurt. The previous poster was trying to compare downloading music to rioting, looting, and doing grievous bodily harm to innocent bystanders. I just thought it was inappropriate. But who cares whether his little analogy stands or falls. Intellectual property laws have to be dismantled. Let's get going, there's work to be done!
Thanks, I knew someone would prove me correct.
I'm definitely willing to go to jail to break intellectual property laws. But the time for that is yet to come. People have to wake up first. Music and books and TV are things that people do for pleasure. Most of the (non-sexual) things people do for pleasure these days come from big corporations. There's nothing inherently evil about big corporations. But every minute of our day, the things we see and hear are things that pretend to be human (the talking head on tv). We're missing a lot by being locked into a world of one way communication. We don't get to hear what's inside our heads because the noise makes it impossible.
I download music off the internet to try to break the record companies because they are ruining human experience. It doesn't even really hurt them very much. Certainly not as badly as it would if I were to threaten senior executives with violence (NSA: Are you listening? Please quote in context).
I'm not doing it because it's cheap. I had to have a two thousand dollar computer in order to do it. That's not freeloading. Somebody in the system gets some reward from that. Call it stealing if you want, but it's not wrong. Plain and simple.
And then I told the cop to count the number of beer cases in the warehouse and he found there weren't any missing... strange.
I think that downloading copyrighted music against the copyright owner's will is immoral.
And I think it's morally wrong for people to sell recorded copies of songs that are derivative. Anyone who tries to be really original like Stockhausen couldn't sell CD's anyway. The more "creative" you are, the less people understand you and the less commercial potential you have as a musical act. So offering to market someone's intellectual property is no formula for ensuring that it will be creative. It is a formula for greed and mediocrity.
Besides all that I think there's far too much cultural noise. We could use a long break from the constant barrage of "this week's Coca-Cola(tm) Countdown". Copyright laws were made in a time before ghetto blasters and discman and car stereos and Nomad MP3 players. It made sense then to promote the development of culture (particularly in America, since they had no culture of their own) by enacting special laws. We don't have to prime the pump any more, fellas. The job is done. Culture is alive and well -- we don't need to coddle it anymore. Having intellectual property laws in the year 2000 makes as much sense as putting growth hormone on a garden that's overgrown to the point of choking itself. We've created a system that's threatening to eat us alive, and we still keep feeding it blood.
And moreover, it doesn't matter if the music industry were to stop growing or shrink. It wouldn't matter if tomorrow there were no rock stars, no celebrities, no late night chat shows, no video games. You know what? People would learn to do fun things all by themselves. Nobody really needs the entertainment industry except the entertainment industry.
Robert S Gormley sayeth contra post a:
Do you really want to compare downloading music with physical violence? One argument in favour of free access to digital music is that it's non-violent and (arguably) doesn't harm anyone. If you ask me, I'd rather have all the gang kids online trying to find mp3's or DoSing CNN.com than out in the streets shooting each other. Half the time they're killing each other so that they can have more CD's (no stats to back that up, of course, but you get my point). Your analogy is way, way off.
I'm starting to understand why people around Slashdot get very cranky. I think you must be the 200th person who has answered an argument about the legality of x with the answer that x is illegal. Does that sound like an argument? No, you're just pounding the pulpit, stamping your feet, and holding your breath until you turn blue. You'll NEVER have a meaningful discussion about law if all you do is assume that all laws are good laws.
Now that I got that off my chest, suppose I were to suggest that the law that currently makes trafficking information a crime is a bad law. It ought to be legal for me to do insider trading, transmit music wherever I want, copy and redistribute ideas freely etc etc. Let's argue about whether or not society would be better off without copyright, patents, or trademarks. That's the level at which you can enter a debate with someone who disagrees with the law of the land.
If I want to share my information, I should be allowed to do that, and it should be my choice.
I think it's very important to distinguish between personal information and public information. What you do at home is your business. I have no right to pry into your life and nor should the state. I think everyone agrees on that. It is a different matter if you do something publicly. If you stand on a street corner telling jokes, the jokes that you tell are not private in the same sense as your medical records are. When I say "information wants to be free" (I think that phrase is stupid, and I can't speak for people who really use it) I would mean non-personal information. I think that corporate secrets are fair game because the information concerned is not of a personal nature.
If you choose to share something about your personal life with someone, it's morally wrong for them to spread that information around, but it shouldn't be a crime, or even grounds for civil action.
And before anyone tries it, I don't care about "But I use it to preview music for my next CD purchase" arguments... all evidence I've seen is biased and anecdotal.
You're right, this is probably 80% bullshit. People are downloading music because they would rather not pay for it if they don't have to. You say that legally they DO have to pay, and I agree that's true. I just think that the laws are simply wrong. If I download music from the internet, it's not stealing, it's making a political statement. It's civil disobedience. It's a peaceful form of protest. Don't I have the right to protest?
You would answer that no, I don't have the right to protest if by doing so I harm the creator of the music. My response would be that I haven't harmed the creator of the music. I have complimented him or her. I enjoyed their music. That doesn't mean I necessarily must pay for it.
Oops -- gotta quit now before netscape crashes.
The best solution, of course, is to stop buying recorded music and either support live music or learn to play a musical instrument. Music isn't a commodity. Songs are for people to sing, not machines. I know that I will be drawn and quartered for expressing luddite views in this forum, but that's ok -- I needed to lose a little weight.
I think this is a very good point. In the 19th century, military intelligence was limited to tactical information such as troop movement or enemy supply routes. There is very little benefit in expending a lot of effort preventing weapons secrets from falling into the wrong hands. Better to work out countermeasures as part of designing the thing in the first place. Assume that the enemy already has the same weapon and govern yourself accordingly. This way, a country doesn't get lulled into a false sense of security derived from the mistaken belief that mere technological superiority will win a war.
It's ridiculous to even have military secrecy, or even an intelligence service, during peacetime. Guard your borders. If you see someone coming and they're armed, shoot to kill. Ask questions later. But don't spend billions of dollars designing microphones that can be implanted in a condom and sending agents into risky undercover sitations in other countries. That's nonsense. Stop playing games and start concentrating on preserving what's left of civilization.
Not necessarily. But the constitutional protections against state intervention in personal affairs would be meaningless if they didn't allow speaking about one's beliefs. The right to believe and not speak about something is hardly granting a right at all. It would be a small step away from Orwell's 1984.
Consider this quote from the France's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Or this quote from JS Mill' On Liberty:
and then goes on to add:
These quotes reflect the concern for free speech which existed at the time of the birth of modern democracy. Things have changed a bit since then. Some people feel that once the citizens have descended into barbarism, the state's use of despotic measures is appropriate. Hence the reinstatement of the death penalty. Depends on your point of view, I guess.
Personally, I think that silencing holocaust deniers only strengthens their cause and pushes them underground where they are much more of a threat.
If by productivity, you mean "material output", then I agree. If you mean something like Taylorism ("scientific" efficiency studies) then I disagree. Even so, I never claimed that an *individual* copyrighted work is an example of rewarding talent. It is not. Copyright and patents reward the material output of talent, or as you say, (an instance or example of) a person's productivity.
When I say "intellectual property laws reward inborn talent" I just meant that the overall effect (and the intent) of intellectual property laws is to reward those who are "original" or "creative". I could, for example, copyright an edition of a published phone directory or a mailing list, but not the data contained therein. Court decisions have shown such lists are not works that copyright was intended to protect. That is why database and mailing list resellers are pushing for NEW laws to protect those types of works.
The problem of awarding property rights based on the criteria of "original" or "creative" is that those criteria are by their nature open-ended. Who can define what those words mean? This is where intellectual property laws must appeal to concepts like "Non-obvious to an expert in the relevant field" or to hair-splitting tactics like trying to decide whether a translation of a book constitutes a new work. Trying to nail down a legal definition of "creative" is an exercise in futility. It's like trying to legally define what constitutes Bach's or Beethoven's individual "styles". Yet the rapid expansion of the scope of property rights in information content has been driven by precisely this loophole, with respect to which the law must necessarily be indeterminate. With no hard line to draw in the sand, there is no rationale to stop the ever-widening enclosure of what is really a public resource.
if you don't reward hard work and productivity, there is simply no incentive for anyone to work hard.
I agree. However, it does not follow that our only means of accomplishing that end is for hard-workers to be granted residual property rights in the fruits of their labour. People can be rewarded for hard work by being paid for their time, by sharing profits, by giving awards for productivity etc, etc. This is all first year commerce stuff. If what you say were true, auto workers would get royalties from the sale of cars, and would have some authority over their resale and subsequent use. That would be a scenario in which hard work is rewarded with property rights.
Western democracies all have similar views about the rewarding hard work and effort. The tax system shouldn't punish people for hard work. Labour laws shouldn't punish people for wanting to work as hard as they can. None of these requirements necessitate the granting of property rights. The subject of property rights in information commodities is not native to the debate about rewarding hard work. Property rights are the immediate and essential concern only of discussions about power structures or heirarchies or social order.
I repeat: Just because I work a little harder or I'm born with a higher IQ than you doesn't entitle me to greater *property rights*. There are other solutions which deserve at least to be considered, a fact which no one has so far admitted. I'm not advocating tinkering with the paramters of the current implementation. I am questioning the moral and utilitarian underpinnings of the whole scheme. That's why I feel it's necessary to push the envelope a little bit.
When I said "these things are renewable" I was referring to the provisional application and not the patent. According to the Patent Office's website, the provisional application can be applied for more than once. Since the provisional application gives the applicant the right to print the words "Patent Pending" on their product, it gives the invention covered by the application some protection.
That being said, I am not a lawyer. In fact, I am not even a human being. I'm just a teletype machine sitting in an abandoned warehouse.
I know they're not patents, but they *do* provide legal protection. They allow applicants to print "Patent Pending" on devices covered by the application. There are statutory restrictions on the use of that description, so I assume there is SOME legal advantage in doing so. So if the provisional application can be renewed one year at a time, that sounds to me like a patent whose duration can be extended, albeit not indefinitely.
I don't know if that's true. Think of what has been achieved by standardizing industrial parts. Total interoperability. The electrical system has been standardized. The telephone system has been standardized. The fuel distribution system has been standardized. Our weights and measurements systems have been standardized. Time zones have been standardized. The internet has been standardized. There are probably many more examples which show that capitalism is not averse to standardization.
The problem seems to be more endemic to the computer industry which has only a few juggernauts who make the rules. One or two vendors control prices and and dictate obsolescence cycles. This makes it difficult for regulators to keep up with technology. I'm just speculating wildly, but I'm sure the lack of standardization in the computer industry all stems from IBM's early dominance and the failure of the market to support healthy competitors. Historians out there? Throw me a few facts, if you can.
Funny. I liked that movie. But I was dead serious when I said economic growth is stealing from the future. What I meant was: (I probably shouldn't have tried to be a smart-ass) economic growth was achieved by stripping non-renewable resources from the Earth. That is an externality which will eventually catch up to us. Hence today's economic growth is "stolen" from the future.
Would this be sung to the tune of "Georgie Girl"?