sure, after all, he has been dead for a looooong time, and easily recouped his investment from public performances of his plays (which were not free). Now exlain how that translates into torrenting the new spiderman movie, for which hundreds of people worked for years, and are currently using the fruits of their labour to pay their grocery bills and rent?
yes, copyright periods should be shorter. Ignoring all copyright and taking all copyrighted works (including very recent ones) works AGAINST this argument, as it just persuades content creators that copyright needs stronger enforcement, and that those who violate copyright are opposed to paying the creators for their work at all.
If you really have a beef with copyright, start a campaigning website, write articles on it, pester your elected representative, boycott companies that lobby for extensions, and make a public fuss about it through the democratic system. persuade others of your case. I agree 100% that copyright should never extend past the lifetime of the author, and probably be shorter still. Do NOT kid yourself that doing none of the above, but sitting in your bedroom downloading hollywood movies achieves anything towards this aim. It just increases the justification for stronger DRM, more draconian sentences for copyright infringement, and makes governments more sympathetic to the complaints of big business. Pirating Spiderman 3 is not a political gesture, it's just getting a movie for free.
absolutely everyone thought that sim city would be shit. will wright had to start his own company to make the game, because everyone thought he was mad. yet its a hugely popular and successful game. Most true genius and innovation occurs in direct opposition to the prevailing culture. If you ask the general public what they want, they will answer "more of the same". offer them something innovative and good, and they often incorporate that into what they want next. Nobody was clamouring for 'the matrix', but after it was made everyone was 'it should include bullet time'. This is the fundamnetal problem. Asking for donations before you make something will never work, or it will only work for bland sequels to existing ideas. I dont see a problem with paying money to view entertainment other people worked hard on. Nor do most people.
Taking something someone else made whilst not paying for it (when they are asking for payment) is theft. Most clear ideas can be expressed this simply. when it takes pages of waffle to excuse your actions, you know your in the wrong.
I love the way you draw a line between companies and people. companies are 'teh evil' and people are innocent blameless victims. I am a one man company, sorry to blow apart your world view. Has it occured to you that 'teh evil RIAA' actually represents thousands of working people? I don't think it has. Companies arent staffed by aliens, but by working people. Some of them earn more money that you, deal with it, or go live in N korea.
and personally I find fucking morons like you beneath contempt. Its people like you that wiped out the PC game industry, now all we have are console ports because fucking idiots like you think tis ok to take peoples work for free. im sick of arguing with idiots and thieves.
ah right, so you just take it for free, and pretend it's a moral decision. Nice, why dont you email the bands whose music you love and tell them its all their fault they dont earn anything. they will appreciate hearing from you.
"The small guys in the business of music and movies? They're the ones who are glad when their stuff gets downloaded and shared"
as a small guy who works in software, I can tell you that is total and utter bullshit. Sorry to rain on your parade there, but it is absolutely heart-rending to give up your job and invest everything including a years hard work in something, charge a reasonable price, andsee people just take it for free, and sinult you while they do it. If that happened to you, you might change your perspective a bit. This nonsense about "actually they love it when i pirate their content" is purely to make YOU feel better, it has sod all basis in reality.
"People need to start thinking about new ways to deliver content that is acceptable to both the creator and the consumer"
that would be DRM, or centralised servers for single player games. Can you imagine how popular this will be with people like you?
"Should we be also legally guarantee that if someone makes something, they will get revenue from it, even if it sucks?"
what twaddle. if nobody wants something, why are they sat in a queue to torrent it? you dont get the basic point do you? if you want something enough to take the full version of it, it must be worth having, if its worth having, its worth compensating the maker for. At what point has anyone suggested that unpopular music and software should earn money? Never, yet you trot out that nonsensical statement to try and bolster your 'point'. *sigh*
We can at least agree that Dream Theater are fucking excellent, and its well worth owning every album they have made. The thing is, there is a world of difference between friends copying albums for friends when they highly recommend them, and people leaving emule or utorrent running 24/7 copying their entire music collection to strangers they never met. I dont get agitated if someone copies one of my games that they purchased for their brother or best mate, I *do* feel differently if I see a full copy shared for everyone on the internet. its a totally different scale, with vastly different effects. what we need is a fairer definition of fair use, less silly lawsuits on marginal cases, and better enforcement of the law against those who willfully try to destroy the whole concept of copyright and IP. Plus those who genuinely believe in reasonable copyright as a concept should stop throwing in their flag with people like thepirate bay and warez sites who just want to take everything they can get and make a buck advertising on the side.
oh please... you are missing out the description of your brave new world business model. Where nobody gets paid for creating ANYTHING that can be easily copied. Do you have ANY idea how much work is involved in making something like Photoshop, or The lord Of The rings? or Halo? Why the fuck is anyone going to spend any money on making entertainmnt if it can be freely copied without compensation? let me guess, you dont care, because like most copyright infringers, you dont make creative content for a living, and are just loving the excuse to take other peoples work for free arent you?
and the way you supprot and encourage this is to BUY the music from the bands who have gone independent and sell direct. make them such success stories, that they tell their fellow artists that they do not needs a record deal at all, but can do the same thing themselves. I wish people would do this. heck, i wish people bought my games direct rather than through yahoo, which takes half my money. But I suspect that 99% of people using sites like those described do so because they can take stuff for free, and reckon they wont get caught. Until people who want copyright and music industry reform actually start lobbying the hardcore pirates not to distribute copies of independent bands music, this will never change, and musicians will rightfully feel that the pirates dont give a shit.
so you only listen to music from indie bands? or do you 'overrule' those bands that you like who chose to sign a record deal? Or do you pirate the music but send cash in the mail to the bands?
Actually 99% of people on earth can cope quite easily with the concept that if something is created by someone, and they wish to sell it, and other people copy it for free or resell it without compensating the owner, then yup, that is theft. You can argue about definitions all you want, but it just makes you look like your trying to rationalise something that you know is wrong. If musicians create music you like you SHOULD be paying them (if they want paying). By paying musicians you incentivise them to keep at it, rather than selling the guitar and working in wal mart, which is apparently what slashdot posters would rather their fave artists had to do.*
*by the way, not all musicians are millionaires, so dont trot out any of that "madonna doesnt need any more cash* straw man bullshit.
WTF? What idiots modded this insightful? what do you not understand. Nobody cares if you buy a DVD instead, or if you make your own CD, its when you take the CD AND USE it and do NOT pay for it, that we have a problem. It's really not complex. If something is priced at X dollars by the person who made it, and you want that thing, you PAY for it or you don't have it. Anything else is just a load of pseudo-intellectual waffle to justify taking other peoples hard work for free. Why is this concept so beyond otherwise intelligent people? because they will rationalise any bullshit if it lets them take stuff for free. Be honest. Your taking stuff and not paying for it, because you think you wont get caught. Any other debate on the issue is just window dressing.
thats a good point. who is responsible if a missed phone call means an accident victim doesnt make it? I think we would be better off in the US president just stays in the USA where he is safe and people love him.
Cool, I'm glad it's not just me. One of my fave games news sites often has news items now that run something like this:
"rumour of new announcement of new game by big known company coming tommorow!"
followed by
"its true! new game will be released sometime towards the end of next year, says company X!"
when really the first item isn't news at all. (arguably neither is the second). I have a new game coming out in ten days, and I'm just starting to tell press about it now. Maybe I am old school, but I feel that a lot of game marketing depts are guilty of becomming "the boy who cried wolf". I actually have no idea when S.T.A.L.K.E.R was released, because I was so bludgeoned with constant waffle about it for years leading up to the games release. By all means get excited the week before Spore and Halo 3 are on shelves, until then, let me know what is on shelves now, and whether I should buy it.
Who gives a fuck? this agme is coming out in 4 MONTHS. whooopy so. how about games 'journalists' actually report on stuff I can actually enjoy, rather than what might be 'just around the corner' 4 months away. I'm sick of people hyping stuff a million years before release. unless you are gullible enough to 'pre-order' a game, who cares about any of them until they are in stores? or maybe a month away if you need to put money aside?
the very last thing I would ever do is sell off part of my company to someone else to get a few pennies to grow it. There are plenty of sources (house included) that will lend you money without strings attached. If I wanted to make other people rich, I'd work for them, the whole point of having my own company is for me to be in charge, and me to benefit.
or remortgage your house. I'd never invest my money in a company where the founder wasn't prepared to risk his house to promote the company. If he doesn't believe in it that much, and it's *his company* why would anyone else go near it?
"We could offer government grants or public works contracts" great, government approved music, TV and mvoies. are you trying to be funny? you can kiss films like farenheight 9/11 goodbye right away, same with an inconvenient truth.
Its silly to compare modern times with hundreds of years ago. You couldn't click a button and make perfect copies of a piece of work and distribute it globally why you slept then. This is flipping obvious. Let me guess, you don't actually make a living from creating digital content do you?
"I could suggest that A: your experiences may not be as unique as you think and B: if it were never written, would it matter? Perhaps it really would, but lots of writing, whether in book or electronic form, will happen, regardless of copyright."
holy fuck, thats the most lame attempt to try and defend an obsessive attack against copyright I have ever heard. Yeah, I'm sure that Iain Banks and Neal stephenson have no appreciable talent, and that if they had not written anything, but kept to thier day jobs to earn a living, that someone else would have written exactly the same novels, that would be just as good, and of course, done so in their spare time, because your dreamy copyright-free world means they woulnt earn a bean from them.
It's always people who do not work full time on creating copyright-protected content who wheel out this shit about "it will get made anyway". By WHO? YOU? if you are not working full time creating such works now, how likely is it you will suddenly start doing it when you won't earn any money from it? Try asking some authors how they feel about copyright. Not amateurs, ones who write full time. Better still, write to your favorite 3 authors and ask them.
I don't want 'lots of writing', I want GOOD writing, by talented people who can make money from their books under copyright, and thus enable them to write full time.
I am an individual, and also a one-man corporation. In your reasoning, do I get lumped with the evil mafiaa and accused of terrorizing 7 year old girls because I supprot copyright law and fight against people who would abuse my copyright? I have no idea why you cannot see the difference between a concept and its implementation. I strongly support copyright and believe it should be enforced much more effectively than it currently is, but I also believe in a quicker term of expiration, and a beefier definition of fair use, including format shifting. See... it's easy.
why would he have to quit? Just don't do it. What is the worst that can happen? they fire you? I don't know US law but in the UK, that would be clear cut unfair dismissal and they could be severely punished by the courts. I doubt you are a union member, but if you are, this is the kind of thing you would have them handle. It amazes me that execs in companies can be such thieving bastards, even in companies that themselves make software. If it was somehow necessary for you to quit, then I would 100% definitely report them to FAST if they went ahead anyway. In any case, it sounds like a pretty low-life employer, so your medium to long term plan should be to leave anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
sure, after all, he has been dead for a looooong time, and easily recouped his investment from public performances of his plays (which were not free). Now exlain how that translates into torrenting the new spiderman movie, for which hundreds of people worked for years, and are currently using the fruits of their labour to pay their grocery bills and rent?
yes, copyright periods should be shorter. Ignoring all copyright and taking all copyrighted works (including very recent ones) works AGAINST this argument, as it just persuades content creators that copyright needs stronger enforcement, and that those who violate copyright are opposed to paying the creators for their work at all.
If you really have a beef with copyright, start a campaigning website, write articles on it, pester your elected representative, boycott companies that lobby for extensions, and make a public fuss about it through the democratic system. persuade others of your case. I agree 100% that copyright should never extend past the lifetime of the author, and probably be shorter still. Do NOT kid yourself that doing none of the above, but sitting in your bedroom downloading hollywood movies achieves anything towards this aim. It just increases the justification for stronger DRM, more draconian sentences for copyright infringement, and makes governments more sympathetic to the complaints of big business. Pirating Spiderman 3 is not a political gesture, it's just getting a movie for free.
absolutely everyone thought that sim city would be shit. will wright had to start his own company to make the game, because everyone thought he was mad. yet its a hugely popular and successful game. Most true genius and innovation occurs in direct opposition to the prevailing culture. If you ask the general public what they want, they will answer "more of the same". offer them something innovative and good, and they often incorporate that into what they want next. Nobody was clamouring for 'the matrix', but after it was made everyone was 'it should include bullet time'.
This is the fundamnetal problem. Asking for donations before you make something will never work, or it will only work for bland sequels to existing ideas.
I dont see a problem with paying money to view entertainment other people worked hard on. Nor do most people.
Taking something someone else made whilst not paying for it (when they are asking for payment) is theft. Most clear ideas can be expressed this simply. when it takes pages of waffle to excuse your actions, you know your in the wrong.
I love the way you draw a line between companies and people. companies are 'teh evil' and people are innocent blameless victims. I am a one man company, sorry to blow apart your world view. Has it occured to you that 'teh evil RIAA' actually represents thousands of working people? I don't think it has. Companies arent staffed by aliens, but by working people. Some of them earn more money that you, deal with it, or go live in N korea.
and personally I find fucking morons like you beneath contempt.
Its people like you that wiped out the PC game industry, now all we have are console ports because fucking idiots like you think tis ok to take peoples work for free.
im sick of arguing with idiots and thieves.
ah right, so you just take it for free, and pretend it's a moral decision. Nice, why dont you email the bands whose music you love and tell them its all their fault they dont earn anything. they will appreciate hearing from you.
"The small guys in the business of music and movies? They're the ones who are glad when their stuff gets downloaded and shared"
as a small guy who works in software, I can tell you that is total and utter bullshit. Sorry to rain on your parade there, but it is absolutely heart-rending to give up your job and invest everything including a years hard work in something, charge a reasonable price, andsee people just take it for free, and sinult you while they do it. If that happened to you, you might change your perspective a bit. This nonsense about "actually they love it when i pirate their content" is purely to make YOU feel better, it has sod all basis in reality.
"People need to start thinking about new ways to deliver content that is acceptable to both the creator and the consumer"
that would be DRM, or centralised servers for single player games. Can you imagine how popular this will be with people like you?
oh dear, it looks like the concept of 'fixed costs' is beyond you.
"Should we be also legally guarantee that if someone makes something, they will get revenue from it, even if it sucks?"
what twaddle. if nobody wants something, why are they sat in a queue to torrent it? you dont get the basic point do you? if you want something enough to take the full version of it, it must be worth having, if its worth having, its worth compensating the maker for. At what point has anyone suggested that unpopular music and software should earn money? Never, yet you trot out that nonsensical statement to try and bolster your 'point'.
*sigh*
We can at least agree that Dream Theater are fucking excellent, and its well worth owning every album they have made. The thing is, there is a world of difference between friends copying albums for friends when they highly recommend them, and people leaving emule or utorrent running 24/7 copying their entire music collection to strangers they never met.
I dont get agitated if someone copies one of my games that they purchased for their brother or best mate, I *do* feel differently if I see a full copy shared for everyone on the internet. its a totally different scale, with vastly different effects. what we need is a fairer definition of fair use, less silly lawsuits on marginal cases, and better enforcement of the law against those who willfully try to destroy the whole concept of copyright and IP.
Plus those who genuinely believe in reasonable copyright as a concept should stop throwing in their flag with people like thepirate bay and warez sites who just want to take everything they can get and make a buck advertising on the side.
but not lord of the rings. I dont think those movies or the matrix could have been made by part timers with day jobs in wal mart. But who cares right?
do you do this? personally? Most bands have websites with contact details. You send them the cash after you torrent the album right?
oh please... you are missing out the description of your brave new world business model. Where nobody gets paid for creating ANYTHING that can be easily copied. Do you have ANY idea how much work is involved in making something like Photoshop, or The lord Of The rings? or Halo? Why the fuck is anyone going to spend any money on making entertainmnt if it can be freely copied without compensation?
let me guess, you dont care, because like most copyright infringers, you dont make creative content for a living, and are just loving the excuse to take other peoples work for free arent you?
and the way you supprot and encourage this is to BUY the music from the bands who have gone independent and sell direct. make them such success stories, that they tell their fellow artists that they do not needs a record deal at all, but can do the same thing themselves.
I wish people would do this. heck, i wish people bought my games direct rather than through yahoo, which takes half my money. But I suspect that 99% of people using sites like those described do so because they can take stuff for free, and reckon they wont get caught. Until people who want copyright and music industry reform actually start lobbying the hardcore pirates not to distribute copies of independent bands music, this will never change, and musicians will rightfully feel that the pirates dont give a shit.
so you only listen to music from indie bands? or do you 'overrule' those bands that you like who chose to sign a record deal? Or do you pirate the music but send cash in the mail to the bands?
Actually 99% of people on earth can cope quite easily with the concept that if something is created by someone, and they wish to sell it, and other people copy it for free or resell it without compensating the owner, then yup, that is theft. You can argue about definitions all you want, but it just makes you look like your trying to rationalise something that you know is wrong. If musicians create music you like you SHOULD be paying them (if they want paying). By paying musicians you incentivise them to keep at it, rather than selling the guitar and working in wal mart, which is apparently what slashdot posters would rather their fave artists had to do.*
*by the way, not all musicians are millionaires, so dont trot out any of that "madonna doesnt need any more cash* straw man bullshit.
WTF? What idiots modded this insightful? what do you not understand. Nobody cares if you buy a DVD instead, or if you make your own CD, its when you take the CD AND USE it and do NOT pay for it, that we have a problem. It's really not complex. If something is priced at X dollars by the person who made it, and you want that thing, you PAY for it or you don't have it. Anything else is just a load of pseudo-intellectual waffle to justify taking other peoples hard work for free.
Why is this concept so beyond otherwise intelligent people? because they will rationalise any bullshit if it lets them take stuff for free.
Be honest. Your taking stuff and not paying for it, because you think you wont get caught. Any other debate on the issue is just window dressing.
thats a good point. who is responsible if a missed phone call means an accident victim doesnt make it?
I think we would be better off in the US president just stays in the USA where he is safe and people love him.
Cool, I'm glad it's not just me. One of my fave games news sites often has news items now that run something like this:
"rumour of new announcement of new game by big known company coming tommorow!"
followed by
"its true! new game will be released sometime towards the end of next year, says company X!"
when really the first item isn't news at all. (arguably neither is the second). I have a new game coming out in ten days, and I'm just starting to tell press about it now. Maybe I am old school, but I feel that a lot of game marketing depts are guilty of becomming "the boy who cried wolf". I actually have no idea when S.T.A.L.K.E.R was released, because I was so bludgeoned with constant waffle about it for years leading up to the games release.
By all means get excited the week before Spore and Halo 3 are on shelves, until then, let me know what is on shelves now, and whether I should buy it.
Who gives a fuck? this agme is coming out in 4 MONTHS. whooopy so. how about games 'journalists' actually report on stuff I can actually enjoy, rather than what might be 'just around the corner' 4 months away. I'm sick of people hyping stuff a million years before release. unless you are gullible enough to 'pre-order' a game, who cares about any of them until they are in stores? or maybe a month away if you need to put money aside?
the very last thing I would ever do is sell off part of my company to someone else to get a few pennies to grow it. There are plenty of sources (house included) that will lend you money without strings attached. If I wanted to make other people rich, I'd work for them, the whole point of having my own company is for me to be in charge, and me to benefit.
or remortgage your house. I'd never invest my money in a company where the founder wasn't prepared to risk his house to promote the company. If he doesn't believe in it that much, and it's *his company* why would anyone else go near it?
"We could offer government grants or public works contracts" great, government approved music, TV and mvoies. are you trying to be funny? you can kiss films like farenheight 9/11 goodbye right away, same with an inconvenient truth.
Its silly to compare modern times with hundreds of years ago. You couldn't click a button and make perfect copies of a piece of work and distribute it globally why you slept then. This is flipping obvious.
Let me guess, you don't actually make a living from creating digital content do you?
"I could suggest that A: your experiences may not be as unique as you think and B: if it were never written, would it matter? Perhaps it really would, but lots of writing, whether in book or electronic form, will happen, regardless of copyright."
holy fuck, thats the most lame attempt to try and defend an obsessive attack against copyright I have ever heard.
Yeah, I'm sure that Iain Banks and Neal stephenson have no appreciable talent, and that if they had not written anything, but kept to thier day jobs to earn a living, that someone else would have written exactly the same novels, that would be just as good, and of course, done so in their spare time, because your dreamy copyright-free world means they woulnt earn a bean from them.
It's always people who do not work full time on creating copyright-protected content who wheel out this shit about "it will get made anyway". By WHO? YOU? if you are not working full time creating such works now, how likely is it you will suddenly start doing it when you won't earn any money from it? Try asking some authors how they feel about copyright. Not amateurs, ones who write full time. Better still, write to your favorite 3 authors and ask them.
I don't want 'lots of writing', I want GOOD writing, by talented people who can make money from their books under copyright, and thus enable them to write full time.
I am an individual, and also a one-man corporation. In your reasoning, do I get lumped with the evil mafiaa and accused of terrorizing 7 year old girls because I supprot copyright law and fight against people who would abuse my copyright?
I have no idea why you cannot see the difference between a concept and its implementation. I strongly support copyright and believe it should be enforced much more effectively than it currently is, but I also believe in a quicker term of expiration, and a beefier definition of fair use, including format shifting. See... it's easy.
why would he have to quit? Just don't do it. What is the worst that can happen? they fire you? I don't know US law but in the UK, that would be clear cut unfair dismissal and they could be severely punished by the courts. I doubt you are a union member, but if you are, this is the kind of thing you would have them handle.
It amazes me that execs in companies can be such thieving bastards, even in companies that themselves make software. If it was somehow necessary for you to quit, then I would 100% definitely report them to FAST if they went ahead anyway. In any case, it sounds like a pretty low-life employer, so your medium to long term plan should be to leave anyway.