It's well established that a wide range of intellectual works would not be created if not for copyright.
Can you elaborate? Who has established this?
Sorry but teams of hobbyists do not organize themselves on the weekends to create financial analysis software.
True, but those types of softare are highly unlikely to be pirated in any case. Usually, a company pays the producer large sums of money to have the financial software installed and modified to fit their business needs, and keep paying large sums in consulting fees over the years. A copy of the financial software is unusable without the know-how and modifications the producer offers. Even today, with copyright laws, most of the income from making financial software comes from consulting fees, not from selling copies of the software itself.
In other words, the types of software which are least likely to be created by hobbyists, are also the ones which are affected the least by copyright protection.
However, for those who feel that legal protection is absolutely necessary for some types of software, there is a compromise detailed here.
So the downloads increased more than thousandfold when you made it free. In other words, most of the people who downloaded the free version would never have done so if it wasn't free. Likewise, most of the people who downloaded a pirated version would never have got it if they had to pay.
So it boils down to stopping people from benefiting from something which doesn't hurt anyone.
If I devote time and money to make my garden beautiful, is it unjust of my neighbours to enjoy the sight of it, having done nothing to deserve it? Should scientists stop using Newton's equations because they have done nothing to uncover them? Should writers avoid being inspired by Homeros because they have in no way contributed to his works? If it is morally wrong to get something for free, then we have to answer 'yes' to those questions.
Do you think in a capitalistic society that having no copyright is going to promote the production of goods such as video games? Or basically any work of similar nature?
Yes, it certainly will. You are focusing on the production of the original game/movie/book, but the production of copies is equally important. And the production of copies will certainly be stimulated by abolishing copyright.
Without copyright, anyone can copy a game/book/movie and offer it for a lower price or in a more convenient form. Instead of selling a few copies for a high price, they will sell a large number of copies for a lower price, meaning they will benefit a much larger number of people. The artificial scarcity enforced by copyright is a terrible economic waste. A book or movie or piece of software can be copied for a few cents and enrich someone's life, but with copyright, the copyright holder suppresses the number of copies in order to keep the price high.
The only time increased production of copies might be a bad thing, is if it causes people to stop producing the original games/movies/books, but it seems highly unlikely that will happen. So far, piracy hasn't lead to decreased revenues for the movie, music(*) or literature industries. People generally don't seem to pirate to save money, but rather to get access to a larger volume of books/movies/software. The money "saved" on pirate copies is generally used to buy other books/games/music.
(*) The music industry would have us believe they are the verge of bankruptcy, but that is simply not true. The record sales have gone down during the last decade, but that is more than offset by the increase in legally downloaded music and the increased revenues from collection agencies like ASCAP. As a whole, the music industry is making more money than ever.
No, in a free market economy, you pay to receive goods or have services performed, which is not the same thing. You can't demand payment from someone using your product. For example, you can sell a hammer, but you can't demand payment from someone using the hammer you once sold. Once sold, the hammer can be resold, loaned, or lost & found, and the original seller can do nothing about it
But getting rich on their business model is not their choice. It's up to the market.
I could come up with a business model where I, say, make up new, innovative first names that people can give to their babies, and publish them on a web site. Then I start suing parents who use one of my names without paying the $5.
I obviously have the right to choose any business model I want, no matter how ludicrous, but does that give me the right to ensure a profit from it?
Copyright is just an arbitrary social convention. Three hundred years ago, composers were happy when their music was used by others. Today, the staff at restaurants can’t sing the Happy Birthday song to their customers because it would constitute an unauthorised commercial use.
Copyright was a legal construct the printers (not the writers!) lobbied for in order to increase their profits, and soon, people got used to it and started seeing it as a god-given right. Perhaps in the future it will be possible to copyright individual sentences, and speaking them without the permission of the originator will be seen as ”stealing”. Perhaps there will be moral outrage, like the one over piracy, when people insist on speaking any sentence they like without paying the appropriate fee.
There are some morals which are very basic and vital to society, like the taboos against murder or theft, but copyright is not one of them. Copyright is a legal construct which gives priveleges to some (primarily large media corporations) at the expense of others (consumers). Copyright should be judged on how beneficial it is for society as a whole. It is an economic instrument meant to stimulate the production of literary and artistic works, not to ensure the income of writers and artists.
That version of the grand father post selection paradox can go soap opera silly really fast. It would get really strange if everyone you kept killing in your family tree resulted in discovering that each generation was conceived in a series of illicit relationships.
What are you talking about? The Peikoff quote isn't about everyone being equal. It's about the universe being so well-ordered that things will automatically turn out well for the one who adapts to it, barring temporary and exceptional events, like accidents. That is an example of the mystical, wishful thinking objectivism chides others for.
The other quote is Rand saying the same things in her own words, but you need to read it in context to get the full meaning.
Accidents are by their nature temporary and exceptional. If you would like to refute the idea that Rand believed real-life difficulties were temporary and exceptional, why not start by explaining the Peikoff quote I provided?
It's new-age woo-merchants like Deepak Chopra who argue that "limitations outside of yourself are always temporary and exceptional" - Rand would have been appalled at the idea.
She certainly would. But being appalled by other people doing something, never stopped Rand from doing it herself. In her "benevolent universe premise", she makes herself guilty of the same mystical wishful thinking she accuses others of. She tells us to be rational and accept reality as it is, while at the same time telling us to assume that everything will turn out to the best, because it feels right.
"Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power or the triumph of evil. No matter what corruption one observes in one’s immediate background, one is unable to accept it as normal, permanent or metaphysically right. One feels: 'This injustice (or terror or falsehood or frustration or pain or agony) is the exception in life, not the rule.' One feels certain that somewhere on earth—even if not anywhere in one’s surroundings or within one’s reach—a proper, human way of life is possible to human beings, and justice matters." - Ayn Rand in The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy
Ayn Rand was thoroughly confused. She despised mysticism, while many of her teachings themselves rest on mystical thoughts and assumptions.
[Rand] certainly never suggested that everyone is equal or that everyone has the same opportunities.
She may not have claimed that everyone has the same opportunities, but she certainly claimed that anyone who chooses to succeed, can succeed.
"But reality is “benevolent” in the sense that if you do adapt to it—i.e., if you do think, value, and act rationally, then you can (and barring accidents you will) achieve your values. You will, because those values are based on reality." - Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosphy of Objectivism"
For example, being born with a disability is no excuse for failing, since limitations outside of yourself are always temporary and exceptional.
Sheer nonsense. Forbes magazine tracks the richest people in the world, and currently has a list of some 800 billionaires globally. More than 60% of the people on that list are "self-made".
In the sense that they made their MONEY themselves. But if you look closer at many of the "self-made billionaires", they were born into families with contacts and friends in high places.
When we all have automatic toilet-cleaners, fitting and maintaining them will be the new toilet-cleaning, which anyone who considers themselves the top 5% will refuse to do. Social attitudes are much harder to change than technology.
And now, in Europe, we are repeating the mistake with the European Union. Several dozens of culturally diverse countries attempting to have a common government, common laws and a common currency.
A lot of things happen in police encounters and sometimes a camera can have a chilling effect on the proceedings.
So the best thing to do, as a private citizen, would be to film the police encounter secretly, and only reveal the film if there was any kind of abuse. That way, we minimise the risk that witnesses keep quiet, or that the criminals take revenge on them because of the filming.
If you systematically expose abuse of power, can't you reduce it to a point where the public's trust can be earned again?
In some countries, taking bribes is the norm, not the exception, for civil servants. Exposing and jailing the corrupted is bound to be expensive and lead to protests, but it makes society function better, not worse.
And, as much as it might be convenient to an argument we want to make in a case like this, I don't think anyone here really wants to live in a world in which the trier of fact in a legal case is bound to treat all witnesses as equally credible without being free to make judgements about potential bias, indicators of honesty, training and experience relevant to the assessments of facts the witness is presenting, etc.
That's not what the grandparent is saying. It's saying that the credibility of law enforcement officers should be judged by the same standard as anyone else's. They should not automatically be assumed to be more credible just because they are law enforcement officers
There's a huge difference between following a car at a constant distance and look at your speedometer - anyone who can drive can do that - and judging the speed of a passing car. I sincerely doubt that the latter can be done with any degree of accuracy.
When there is reason to believe there is a danger, yes.
Even if we've never observed diseases jumping from implanted tissue to host, we've seen plenty of cases where they jumped between organisms being in close contact - like the AIDS virus jumping from monkeys to humans in Africa, or all the different variants of flu jumping from poultry to human in Asia.
The artists are making more money than ever. CD sales are going badly, but that is more than offset by the increase in sale of downloadable music, and the increased revenues from collection agencies (like ASCAP) - which the RIAA carefully avoids mentioning when they present their statistics.
At the same time, more and more studies show that pirates are the ones who spend the most money on music and movies. In other words, it seems that most pirates pirate not to save money, but to get access to a wider assortment of media.
It seems that the most fanatical pro-pirates, the ones who said that the industry as a whole would not lose a dime but instead be forced to renew itself, were the ones who were right.
Slashdot Mirror
It's well established that a wide range of intellectual works would not be created if not for copyright.
Can you elaborate? Who has established this?
Sorry but teams of hobbyists do not organize themselves on the weekends to create financial analysis software.
True, but those types of softare are highly unlikely to be pirated in any case. Usually, a company pays the producer large sums of money to have the financial software installed and modified to fit their business needs, and keep paying large sums in consulting fees over the years. A copy of the financial software is unusable without the know-how and modifications the producer offers. Even today, with copyright laws, most of the income from making financial software comes from consulting fees, not from selling copies of the software itself.
In other words, the types of software which are least likely to be created by hobbyists, are also the ones which are affected the least by copyright protection.
However, for those who feel that legal protection is absolutely necessary for some types of software, there is a compromise detailed here.
So the downloads increased more than thousandfold when you made it free. In other words, most of the people who downloaded the free version would never have done so if it wasn't free. Likewise, most of the people who downloaded a pirated version would never have got it if they had to pay.
So it boils down to stopping people from benefiting from something which doesn't hurt anyone.
If I devote time and money to make my garden beautiful, is it unjust of my neighbours to enjoy the sight of it, having done nothing to deserve it? Should scientists stop using Newton's equations because they have done nothing to uncover them? Should writers avoid being inspired by Homeros because they have in no way contributed to his works? If it is morally wrong to get something for free, then we have to answer 'yes' to those questions.
Do you think in a capitalistic society that having no copyright is going to promote the production of goods such as video games? Or basically any work of similar nature?
Yes, it certainly will. You are focusing on the production of the original game/movie/book, but the production of copies is equally important. And the production of copies will certainly be stimulated by abolishing copyright.
Without copyright, anyone can copy a game/book/movie and offer it for a lower price or in a more convenient form. Instead of selling a few copies for a high price, they will sell a large number of copies for a lower price, meaning they will benefit a much larger number of people. The artificial scarcity enforced by copyright is a terrible economic waste. A book or movie or piece of software can be copied for a few cents and enrich someone's life, but with copyright, the copyright holder suppresses the number of copies in order to keep the price high.
The only time increased production of copies might be a bad thing, is if it causes people to stop producing the original games/movies/books, but it seems highly unlikely that will happen. So far, piracy hasn't lead to decreased revenues for the movie, music(*) or literature industries. People generally don't seem to pirate to save money, but rather to get access to a larger volume of books/movies/software. The money "saved" on pirate copies is generally used to buy other books/games/music.
(*) The music industry would have us believe they are the verge of bankruptcy, but that is simply not true. The record sales have gone down during the last decade, but that is more than offset by the increase in legally downloaded music and the increased revenues from collection agencies like ASCAP. As a whole, the music industry is making more money than ever.
No, in a free market economy, you pay to receive goods or have services performed, which is not the same thing. You can't demand payment from someone using your product. For example, you can sell a hammer, but you can't demand payment from someone using the hammer you once sold. Once sold, the hammer can be resold, loaned, or lost & found, and the original seller can do nothing about it
But getting rich on their business model is not their choice. It's up to the market.
I could come up with a business model where I, say, make up new, innovative first names that people can give to their babies, and publish them on a web site. Then I start suing parents who use one of my names without paying the $5.
I obviously have the right to choose any business model I want, no matter how ludicrous, but does that give me the right to ensure a profit from it?
Copyright is just an arbitrary social convention. Three hundred years ago, composers were happy when their music was used by others. Today, the staff at restaurants can’t sing the Happy Birthday song to their customers because it would constitute an unauthorised commercial use.
Copyright was a legal construct the printers (not the writers!) lobbied for in order to increase their profits, and soon, people got used to it and started seeing it as a god-given right. Perhaps in the future it will be possible to copyright individual sentences, and speaking them without the permission of the originator will be seen as ”stealing”. Perhaps there will be moral outrage, like the one over piracy, when people insist on speaking any sentence they like without paying the appropriate fee.
There are some morals which are very basic and vital to society, like the taboos against murder or theft, but copyright is not one of them. Copyright is a legal construct which gives priveleges to some (primarily large media corporations) at the expense of others (consumers). Copyright should be judged on how beneficial it is for society as a whole. It is an economic instrument meant to stimulate the production of literary and artistic works, not to ensure the income of writers and artists.
That version of the grand father post selection paradox can go soap opera silly really fast. It would get really strange if everyone you kept killing in your family tree resulted in discovering that each generation was conceived in a series of illicit relationships.
I see that you don't live in my neigbourhood :)
What are you talking about? The Peikoff quote isn't about everyone being equal. It's about the universe being so well-ordered that things will automatically turn out well for the one who adapts to it, barring temporary and exceptional events, like accidents. That is an example of the mystical, wishful thinking objectivism chides others for.
The other quote is Rand saying the same things in her own words, but you need to read it in context to get the full meaning.
Accidents are by their nature temporary and exceptional. If you would like to refute the idea that Rand believed real-life difficulties were temporary and exceptional, why not start by explaining the Peikoff quote I provided?
It's new-age woo-merchants like Deepak Chopra who argue that "limitations outside of yourself are always temporary and exceptional" - Rand would have been appalled at the idea.
She certainly would. But being appalled by other people doing something, never stopped Rand from doing it herself. In her "benevolent universe premise", she makes herself guilty of the same mystical wishful thinking she accuses others of. She tells us to be rational and accept reality as it is, while at the same time telling us to assume that everything will turn out to the best, because it feels right.
"Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power or the triumph of evil. No matter what corruption one observes in one’s immediate background, one is unable to accept it as normal, permanent or metaphysically right. One feels: 'This injustice (or terror or falsehood or frustration or pain or agony) is the exception in life, not the rule.' One feels certain that somewhere on earth—even if not anywhere in one’s surroundings or within one’s reach—a proper, human way of life is possible to human beings, and justice matters." - Ayn Rand in The Inexplicable Personal Alchemy
Ayn Rand was thoroughly confused. She despised mysticism, while many of her teachings themselves rest on mystical thoughts and assumptions.
[Rand] certainly never suggested that everyone is equal or that everyone has the same opportunities.
She may not have claimed that everyone has the same opportunities, but she certainly claimed that anyone who chooses to succeed, can succeed.
"But reality is “benevolent” in the sense that if you do adapt to it—i.e., if you do think, value, and act rationally, then you can (and barring accidents you will) achieve your values. You will, because those values are based on reality." - Leonard Peikoff, "The Philosphy of Objectivism"
For example, being born with a disability is no excuse for failing, since limitations outside of yourself are always temporary and exceptional.
Sheer nonsense. Forbes magazine tracks the richest people in the world, and currently has a list of some 800 billionaires globally. More than 60% of the people on that list are "self-made".
In the sense that they made their MONEY themselves. But if you look closer at many of the "self-made billionaires", they were born into families with contacts and friends in high places.
When we all have automatic toilet-cleaners, fitting and maintaining them will be the new toilet-cleaning, which anyone who considers themselves the top 5% will refuse to do. Social attitudes are much harder to change than technology.
Watching somebody eat cake. Not so much.
Except if it's two girls eating cake from each other.
That would be a great joke :)
You are not alone.
And now, in Europe, we are repeating the mistake with the European Union. Several dozens of culturally diverse countries attempting to have a common government, common laws and a common currency.
I hear the chocolate ration will increase.
Yes, from 25 to 20 grams per month.
A lot of things happen in police encounters and sometimes a camera can have a chilling effect on the proceedings.
So the best thing to do, as a private citizen, would be to film the police encounter secretly, and only reveal the film if there was any kind of abuse. That way, we minimise the risk that witnesses keep quiet, or that the criminals take revenge on them because of the filming.
If you systematically expose abuse of power, can't you reduce it to a point where the public's trust can be earned again?
In some countries, taking bribes is the norm, not the exception, for civil servants. Exposing and jailing the corrupted is bound to be expensive and lead to protests, but it makes society function better, not worse.
And, as much as it might be convenient to an argument we want to make in a case like this, I don't think anyone here really wants to live in a world in which the trier of fact in a legal case is bound to treat all witnesses as equally credible without being free to make judgements about potential bias, indicators of honesty, training and experience relevant to the assessments of facts the witness is presenting, etc.
That's not what the grandparent is saying. It's saying that the credibility of law enforcement officers should be judged by the same standard as anyone else's. They should not automatically be assumed to be more credible just because they are law enforcement officers
There's a huge difference between following a car at a constant distance and look at your speedometer - anyone who can drive can do that - and judging the speed of a passing car. I sincerely doubt that the latter can be done with any degree of accuracy.
When there is reason to believe there is a danger, yes.
Even if we've never observed diseases jumping from implanted tissue to host, we've seen plenty of cases where they jumped between organisms being in close contact - like the AIDS virus jumping from monkeys to humans in Africa, or all the different variants of flu jumping from poultry to human in Asia.
"... even if ONE of their parents is a mouse" ;-)
The artists are making more money than ever. CD sales are going badly, but that is more than offset by the increase in sale of downloadable music, and the increased revenues from collection agencies (like ASCAP) - which the RIAA carefully avoids mentioning when they present their statistics.
At the same time, more and more studies show that pirates are the ones who spend the most money on music and movies. In other words, it seems that most pirates pirate not to save money, but to get access to a wider assortment of media.
It seems that the most fanatical pro-pirates, the ones who said that the industry as a whole would not lose a dime but instead be forced to renew itself, were the ones who were right.