ironic that parents often choose names that refer to cultural associations in the past.
as culture becomes _completetly_ corperate, completely defended by lawyers, we will be unable to be free in selecting a name for our offspring.
i mean, this is like saying the way to garauntee protection for everybody is to build 20 yard high metal walls around all of our houses. yeah, we'd all be well protected, but we'd completetly obliterate any notion of living a normal life.
parents want to name children after heros, role models, etc. well, as the heros and role models get better and better lawyers, you can kiss that 'priviledge' (snort) goodbye.
LOL, its 100% true tho. Actors and musicians routinely change their names.. and it really does affect their viability in the mainstream entertainment market (not a ton, but a name can help or hinder.)
Not that I support the real Bill sueing the fake Bill.. too bad there arnt more instances of mutually assured bankrupcy so we could have a cold war of litigation.
> Why doesn't everybody write their own OS, server and client to do a shopping cart on the web?
Because most people cant. Why doesn't everybody outsource the prodecure of putting the toilet lid down when they're done? Because they can.
Point is: if you can do it (and there are fuckloads of cases where its cheaper to do something yourself), you shouldnt be forced to buy into the market. Thats not a free market, thats a free market youre not free to avoid when it makes you wealthier (one of the goals of healthy capitalism, no?)
- wed also like to suggest that all car hoods be soddered shut so that Ford cant find out how GM builds an internal combustion engine; because if that happened, jesus christ, Ford might start selling cars! and thats bad for business!
Of course, but you'll find people want to trust groups of people more than one person.
If _everybody_ is using a compiler, you can trust it. (or trust that if there is a backdoor, _everybody_ has the backdoor, so you're still on a level playing field.)
But not _everybody_ is using windows to install custom firewalls. The trust can't come from a wide community of users, so it has to come from examining the actual construction of the product itself.
People don't trust a company nearly as much as they trust groups of people who should have already encountered the problems youre attempting to avoid should a problem in the product exist. Since that is impossible (or at least difficult) with respect to Windows as a custom firewall platform, because of the lower visibility of use and the lesser amount of people using it in this fasion, I'd realize I had no groups of users to trust and this I'd only trust the innards of the product once I could examine them myself.
One more thing; had it been illegal to disassemble competitors' physical products (ie, not actually TAKE the ideas, but see what they are doing and how their product is designed and assembled), we'd have tossed 20 years of technological progress out the door. Technology would way furthur behind without the ability to do anything you like to a product you purchase because thats one less way for scientists and engineers to share ideas or be inspired by ideas or improve upon ideas.
You're right. And instead of the Army servicing their own F14s, the hoods should be locked shut, and they should outsource all their service and development to Kinkos. And police shouldn't be allowed to tamper with their bullet proof vests to confirm that there really is kevlar in them. They should just trust the company that made it for them.
Am I the only person who understands that software companies build software.. this isn't like some magic voodoo cult. They're just building something. Why shouldn't I be able to actually confirm that what I bought is what I'm getting, and why shouldn't I be able to customize that product I just bought? Why the hell should I be forced into forking over more cash when I can just do the goddamn work myself.
The gall people have. When folks bitch about the government wasting money, your proposal is the PERFECT example of wasting money. Why waste the money when you can do it in house? WHY, GOD, WHY?
WHY do we support the abject protection of intellectual 'property' in order to keep the market functioning when that goal of protection can be used to tamper with market forces? Think about it; a market isn't just somewhere where you can get what you want. Its important that you have the option _not_ to be forced to go back into the market when you can just do the work yourself.
Re:Hack a computer, spend life in prison.
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hell yeah, I agree with you.
i was just pointing out how this has all be done before. the punishment is more to scare would-be participators of said movements (or resistances might be a better word) rather than punishing the actual transgressors.
Re:Hack a computer, spend life in prison.
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HomeSec In the News
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Reminds me of the law for luddites at the turn of the century.. it was called the "life for a loom" law. Basically, destroy a loom, and you die.
Typically, when people use technology in ways unforseen or unwanted by lawmakers (I'm not arguing that cracking systems is moral, but there are cases where it isn't immoral.), the punishment isn't really meant to suit the magnitude of the crime. Its mean to scare the shit out of would-be hackers.
> Isn't the producer's right to his work a capital-R 'right'?
I'm a musician. I write music. But you are going to have to be the one that tries to explain to the masses that I get a Right to my creations like people have a Right to a fair trial or a Right not to get slaughtered by their government.
Shit dude. My Rights, whatever they are, pale in comparison to those Rights. My only Right should be to be awarded compesation for publishing, not determining who can use my music and in what format its presented. I can't believe how closely people relate economical 'rights' to human Rights. I mean, c'mon.
> without him, the product would not exist, so why shouldn't he reap the full benefits?
Because if everybody followed this logic, in every situation, we'd all be complete assholes to each other.
1. The GPL doesn't bar anybody from making money off it. But yes, I can make a licence that does (although I dont believe I should have right right, see below). Point made.
2. > be prepared to loose everything when some mob decides they want the things you've produced
Prepared? I simply don't believe that mob would exist were I offering my works at a fair price and by a means, in a format, people want. (Important to note price isnt the only thing here. If I use the exclusivity of my content as a means of prodiving it in a format or way people dont want, I have no right to complain when they pillage me. The key here is subjecting _YOURSELF_ to market forces by avoiding exclusivity and format advantages in order to influence the market. Its the equivilent of the 'invisible hand' slapping me upside the head for my stubborness in meeting the demands of the market.)
And morality *is* up for vote, as soon as youve protected peoples rights. So yup, you've hit the nail on the head.
I challenge a producers right to his work for two reasons:
1. That 'right' has changed over the course of 500 years, from 20 years to 90 after his death. Personally, I believe the owner has a right to payment, but not a right to licence his work exclusively. It'd keep labels from securing exclusivity clauses that allow them to abuse the market place with scarcity (ie, by restricting distribution and copying, one can artificially inflate the value through scaracity, the very opposite of the intended effects of capitalism and an open makret.) I readily contend that were a right to copy copyrighted works (provided royalty is paid) given to consumers and would-be distributors, we wouldn't be in the situation. SOMEBODY would have started selling music online and paying the artists for it. The only right an author should have is the right to fair compensation. The right to control publication, distribution, and format are all rights granted by virtue of producers and distributors recognizing that these factors allow one to artifically affect the value of the coyrighted work.
> 250 years ago, the majority agreed that slavery was decent and moral.
Actually, your majority here doesn't include the votes the people being exploited would have had (ie, the slaves.. and presumably wed include the family and friends of the people being exploited - ie, the population of the colonated countries.) The majority in the 'is it okay to recreationally copy copywritten works for non-profit' would include the exploited, and maybe you might find the majority thinks its okay.
> 400 years ago, the majority thought it would be ok to light people on fire because they thought that they were witches.
Uh, really? I thought mobs of people burned the witches, but I wasn't aware of some overreaching concensus by which people not involved in witch hunts felt morally okay with burning people at the stake. Are you sure you're not confusing the majority with the participating majority here? This brings me to the next point..
You seem to want to know how many people _engage in that behaviour_. Useless. How many people _feel okay with that behaviour_. People get scared, cause they equate a majority saying its okay with a majority actually doing it. Well hey, I think its morally okay to be gay, but I'm not going to be gay. I think its morally okay to do mushrooms, but I don't do mushrooms. So, you can't say that just because most people dont do it that most people wouldn't say that the act itself was morally okay. (In fact, the very notion that lots of people dont do it is often a reason people thinking its okay to do. See: littering. Works the other way too of course. See: homosexuality.) I'm not going to fetch you some numbers, because thats a pretty easy google: how many unique people were charged with theft last year vs. how many unique users there are on Kazaa. It doesn't really matter tho. (I just want to add that rights are a means of addressing the point you bring up; there are certainly some fundamental rights that the moral majority should not be permitted to infringe upon, which is why I claimed the moral majority is right with respect to copying. I recognize that there are certain aspects of life which you must protect from the moral majority, although usually only in situations where the majority shares a cultural homogeneousness.. where the notion of protecting somebody else in order to protect yourself in the future is void.)
As for the cassettes:
a) You still can't unless you invest heavily in bandwidth, disk storage, etc. You can't do much damage with a thin pipe and 3 songs on your hard drive. The damage you can do to the market is a function of the hardware you have. Same with cassettes. Yes, on a greater scale. Then again, cassettes could do it on a greater scale than the player piano could. So I guess cassette copying hurt the industry _way_ more than the playerpiano. Except, oops, the industry got more power from cassettes too (you could bring cassettes with you, some people bought tapes because they heard a cassette copy, etc.) EVERYONE benifits from the power of new technology. A producer choosing not to empower themselves (not through regulating behaviour but by adding value to product and opening up new markets and opportunities thanks to the nature of new technology) is no reason for the consumer market not to use said power. But again, everyone gains from new technology. The increase in power to the consumer is no excuse; the producer has access to that power too. The Big 5 just seem to think its a better idea to mandate behaviour instead of strengthen their offerings. Tough shit.. they won't go out of business soon enough, unless they wake up, in which case.. maybe in a year or two I'll be singing their praises for offering me content in a format and way that I want.
b) this point is true, but the likelihood that shared copies online come from ONE legally obtained copy is silly. for a file to become widely available on the net, there has to have been demand for it; in which case there were probably lots of 'nodes' your computer knew that had the original copy. as usual, the stuff that gets copied the most is usually the stuff that sells the most.. in most cases, of course. This doesn't work for 'leaked' previews (I am in complete disagreement with individuals who leak advance copies of work - way more important than money is the disrespectful act of leaking an artistic work before the artist is finished with it) but I'm not prepared to allow the actions of a few spoil the recreational rule bending of the many.
c) true, but there were ways of cleaning the signal, and it wasn't impossible (maybe 40$ a month) to get your hands on a DAT machine to make unlimited copies from a digital copy. I had cassettes that were copies of copies of copies, and when you start working exponetially, you can get thousands of listenable copies from one master tape (as in 1x8x8x8x8x8... before the copy started to become unlistenable.)
All I see is that technology has empowered the consumer and the producer. However, the producer chooses to not utilize that power, and then prevent people from using it.
Look, my arguments are usually construed for an A-OK to mass copying. No! My argument is like jwalking, littering, homosexuality, alcohol/prohibition, etc. Trying to control people's behaviour 100% of the time is more expensive to EVERYBODY than simply allowing those who _want_ to circumvent the law (in which nobody is physically harmed nor absolutely prevented from earning a living (because, as per above, and as you note, not everybody copies.))
I have no issues with enforcing copyright law. I have issues with attempting to disempower consumers when history tells us that you needn't put people in handcuffs in order for them to behave in a non-destructive fashion as a whole. The few will act irresponsibly, but I place blame in the hands of providers who refuse to service the many for the misdeeds of the few. Thats what a business plan should include; how to ensure that the few won't spoil it for the many. Fucking the many for the few gets a -1: Irresponsible and Stubborn in my book.
All that said, I don't napsterize (I belong to the paying mp3 site: emusic.com, all legal, everybody gets paid), I don't copy music, and I honestly believe that folks who leak advance copies are scum. I just will not accept that todays copying technolgoies are the stakes in the heart, never before seen, unparalled threats to business that some people claim they are.. nor that we shouldn't tolerate some level of 'deviant behaviour'.. because that deviant behaviour often has unforseen consequences that benifits everybody, even those that sought so hard to disempower them.
Your points are not without merit, but they echo of a certain familiar "the sky could fall" attitude that _always_ surrounds new technology. As for the morality debate, rights are meant to protect certain things from the moral majority and I wont argue that the majority can want to infringe upon those rights. I'd simply contend that in many cases, the majorities held up in examples are participating majorites (or worse yet, priviledged majorities), and not the absolute majority of everybody affected by those actions. Thats much more difficult to prove tho, and I'm willing to accept that I shouldn't have held up the moral majority case without better defitions and axioms upon which to build off of.
A good reply tho; certainly the most worthy of attempting to rebuke.
The absolute funniest part about all this is that copyright law was introduced because the act of theft wasn't synonymous with copying an authors work in the days when copying technologies started to become more widespread (ie, the printing press.)
If its so _obviously_ stealing, why the fuck did copyright law come into existance when laws covered the act of theft in the first place.
Do you see the stupidity of your argument? If its so obviously theft, why have copyright law in the first place? Why not just tack on "copying the work of an author" to the laws pertaining to theft and abolish copyright law altogher?
Oh gee, I wonder if its because the act of copying something is a FUNDAMENTALLY different effect within the economy, and thus we must handle copying authors' works in entirely different ways than we handle the act of theft?
So explain that: why have copyright law at all if copying an authors work without their permission is simply 'theft'? Why don't we just say that an authors work is tantamount to a physical object, and they have eternal ownership and complete control over copying mechanisms, exclusivity, etc...
Here's one clue: It _is_ different, and giving authors' property-like rights to copyrighted works (unlimited inherent ownership of creations, treating copying of said work to theft) has been shown time and time again, over the course of hundreds of years, as being bad for the producer, bad for the consumer, and bad for culture altogether.
This was the _REASON FOR COPYRIGHT LAW_. Its not the same as theft, and thats the reason for its very existance. And ironically, now you claim that its theft because its copywritten. In reality, its copywritten for the very reason that copying it is not theft, as lawmakers discovered centuries ago. All this is notwithstanding that copyright was introduced to weaken the 'ownership' argument content producers, publishers, and distributors claimed they had (as granted by the king at the time) on cultural works because said claim was shown to damage both the industry they operated within and the social culture at large. Get with the program, or at least read a book on the nature of copyright, its history, and how market forces operate differently on reproducable artistic works than they do on physical property.
> At some point the piece of media would be inexpensive enough for you to purchase, but because you have access to it for effectively free.. you have no economic incentive to ever pay for it, even when you value it enough to pay for it at some price point.
WRONG. The food riots showed that people were far more interested in paying a fair price for something than stealing it outright. Faced with the recognition that looting and pillaging food producers for free would cause said producers to be able to make food for the future, people rioted.. and damanded a fair price for the food. Mobs of people could have just gotten the food for free, but we're animals; if we can tell if our behaviour is going to destroy the producers of the things we value, we wont seek said product for free. AKA, we do have an incentive not to get said product for free. Anybody that denies this is saying that humans are _incapable_ of recognizing the need not to destroy the very systems we depend on for our lives. Thats patently untrue, as we can see in everything from p2p behavior to the food riots of earlier centuries in the UK when the price of food rose above what a majority of the population could afford (one of the unfortunate results of the implementation of capitalism in feudal times.)
The incentive for people to pay is to keep folks producing this valued content. You yourself say people place some value in the product, so WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE WANNA RUN THE PRODUCT OUT OF BUSINESS. Nobody.
So people 'copy' when they feel they are not in danger of causing the producer to go out of business. But they _WONT_ pay for shit just for the sake of _garaunteeing_ that the producer wont go out of business.
I mean, risk is part of business. Whether or not you go out of business because people won't pay your asking price or because people circumvent your asking price because they feel its too high.. ITS THE SAME THING. THe key difference is in the sake of the physical realm, youve deprived the original owner of product. In the digital world, you havn't in any way affected the producers ability to sell to other people because *each one of those people will either pay what you're asking for or won't*.
> Or the best: if I can download this movie for free, it will encourage me to steal^H^H^H^H^H buy more DVDs!
Siphoning gas from your neighbours tank is dead simple. But people don't do it. Why? It's stealing. But explain to me why people don't mind steal^H^Hcopying movies/music/etc when clearly there are so many other things that can be easily stolen in life? Gee, maybe because its not stealing. Its copying. And yes, it can be terribly immoral (ie, selling bootlegs for profit, or downloading movies to circumvent renting or theatre going altogether.)
Also note that copyright holders' rights have never been 100% protected. If you listen to a CD at a friends house, I could easily make the case that you're stealing the music because _you_ didn't buy the CD.
If you wanna build a case for the immorality of copying content without paying for it, at least respect that a majority of peoples' behaviours dictate the morality. Morality isn't simply somebody or some group passing a law; that doesn't make breaking that law intrinsically immoral. I'm tired of folks using whats set in law as the yard stick of morality. There are plenty of legal things I can do to you that is immoral, and there are plenty of illegal things I can do that are moral.
> Or the best: if I can download this movie for free, it will encourage me to steal^H^H^H^H^H buy more DVDs!
That might be a valid point if you had any real (not annecdotal) evidence backing it up. I can understand your reasoning (if you can have it for free, why would anybody rent the DVD).. but it flies in the face of so many other cases of observed human behaviour. There are plenty of things that are easy to steal, and people don't do it nearly to the degree that people copy movies and music. This is the key point that folks postulating your line of reasoning seem unable to explain.
If you want to convince anybody that copying movies and music is bad, you might start with explaining why the amount of people stealing music and movies is so much higher than people who steal ungaurded physical objects. You'd probably also want to make sure that you viewed the rampant cassette copying of the 80s as highly immoral as well for consistancy (in addition to recording TV, recording the radio, etc).
> cos all measures (legal) to gain market over your competition are ok.
Let me get this straight, because its an awfully confusing concept that can't be said by/.-ers enough:
All action to stiffle competition that isn't illegal is legal?
Wow, that just like, totally blew my mind.
(Of course, we wouldn't want to get into a debate about which actions are ultimately _good_ for MS or good for their competition, would we? Nah, its much more intellectually stimulating just to post, "Thats ok! Remember, its legal!" posts.)
Actually, we can change this planet enough to seriously affect people's health and welfare.
And thats all that matters. Not even the greenest-of-the-green is trying to say that we can destroy the planet. For that matter, what does destroying the planet mean, anyhow? I think if you stopped and tried to apply context to most people who talk about damaging the earth, you'd realize they're really talking about damaging the ecosystem and conditions _we_ need to live.
Everytime there's an environment article, someone has to go point out how we can't destroy the planet. Of course we can't, but we can and have adversely affected the environment _we_ have to live in.
When folks yell "Save the Planet" they really mean "Save the Planet enough such that we can stay alive."
We shouldn't care about the distinction. Of course our efforts are designed to save ourselves. Folks who think humans are arrogant because we talk like we can destroy the planet (ie, not just the habitable conditions we require as a species) are simply looking for an 'out'.. a semantical justification for not giving a shit.
Of course planet earth will go on just fine without us; who cares what the words we use are, I'd just like to ensure we (or my grandkids, for that matter) don't have to wear gas masks to go to the corner store at some point in the future.
So I agree with you, but it's always confused me why people feel the need to point it out. In the end, a person either believes that we're setting ourselves up for some _serious_ human-endangering problems or not.
Think about it. When people say, "Save my house!" (lets say its on fire), nobody points out that the house doesn't have feelings or that all the molecules in the house will just end up in other places (in the smoke or in the ashes). We recognize that what the person _means_ is "Save the house I have to live in!" Same logic applies to the environmentalist's warcry.
> The growing and dangerous intrusion of this new technology," Jack Valenti said, threatens an entire industry's "economic vitality and future security." Mr. Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, and he was ready for a rhetorical rumble. The new technology, he said, "is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone."
It was back in the day (late 70s or 80s, cant remember.)
Google up 'Valenti Boston Strangler' (sans quotes of course).. youll get shitloads of links.
Except in the music biz, the artist pays for the creation of the work; the label only fronts the money. They didn't pay for anything (although they pay promotional costs, but this is typically once they're assured a favourable ROI); they simply accepted the risks of investment.
Weakening the risk by strengthening laws that protect their investment simply elminates their incentive to find _good_ artists.
Do you think the stock market would work/last if we artifically weakened (that is, the law approached eliminating the risk altogether) the risk involved in participating in it?
As an addenum, you seem to understand that ownership does and (in my mind) should exist, but completetly unable to grasp the difference between being in favour of legislated ownership and being in favour of weakening or strengening the rights and/or priledges that accompanies said ownership.
Actually, I'm also interested in knowing how old you are, since I'm trying to group various stances on the issue into various age brakets so I can get a sense of what demographics support which view. You don't have to answer that, of course.
As a final aside, for somebody that claims to regard right to ownership as a very important thing, its somewhat ironic that you should choose to eschew the ownership of your ideas by posting as an AC. I take it you only support ownership when it serves you but not when it doesnt?
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ironic that parents often choose names that refer to cultural associations in the past.
as culture becomes _completetly_ corperate, completely defended by lawyers, we will be unable to be free in selecting a name for our offspring.
i mean, this is like saying the way to garauntee protection for everybody is to build 20 yard high metal walls around all of our houses. yeah, we'd all be well protected, but we'd completetly obliterate any notion of living a normal life.
parents want to name children after heros, role models, etc. well, as the heros and role models get better and better lawyers, you can kiss that 'priviledge' (snort) goodbye.
LOL, its 100% true tho. Actors and musicians routinely change their names .. and it really does affect their viability in the mainstream entertainment market (not a ton, but a name can help or hinder.)
.. too bad there arnt more instances of mutually assured bankrupcy so we could have a cold war of litigation.
Not that I support the real Bill sueing the fake Bill
> Why doesn't everybody write their own OS, server and client to do a shopping cart on the web?
Because most people cant. Why doesn't everybody outsource the prodecure of putting the toilet lid down when they're done? Because they can.
Point is: if you can do it (and there are fuckloads of cases where its cheaper to do something yourself), you shouldnt be forced to buy into the market. Thats not a free market, thats a free market youre not free to avoid when it makes you wealthier (one of the goals of healthy capitalism, no?)
- wed also like to suggest that all car hoods be soddered shut so that Ford cant find out how GM builds an internal combustion engine; because if that happened, jesus christ, Ford might start selling cars! and thats bad for business!
> You have to trust someone at some point.
Of course, but you'll find people want to trust groups of people more than one person.
If _everybody_ is using a compiler, you can trust it. (or trust that if there is a backdoor, _everybody_ has the backdoor, so you're still on a level playing field.)
But not _everybody_ is using windows to install custom firewalls. The trust can't come from a wide community of users, so it has to come from examining the actual construction of the product itself.
People don't trust a company nearly as much as they trust groups of people who should have already encountered the problems youre attempting to avoid should a problem in the product exist. Since that is impossible (or at least difficult) with respect to Windows as a custom firewall platform, because of the lower visibility of use and the lesser amount of people using it in this fasion, I'd realize I had no groups of users to trust and this I'd only trust the innards of the product once I could examine them myself.
One more thing; had it been illegal to disassemble competitors' physical products (ie, not actually TAKE the ideas, but see what they are doing and how their product is designed and assembled), we'd have tossed 20 years of technological progress out the door. Technology would way furthur behind without the ability to do anything you like to a product you purchase because thats one less way for scientists and engineers to share ideas or be inspired by ideas or improve upon ideas.
> why not ask Microsoft to create that instead?
.. this isn't like some magic voodoo cult. They're just building something. Why shouldn't I be able to actually confirm that what I bought is what I'm getting, and why shouldn't I be able to customize that product I just bought? Why the hell should I be forced into forking over more cash when I can just do the goddamn work myself.
You're right. And instead of the Army servicing their own F14s, the hoods should be locked shut, and they should outsource all their service and development to Kinkos. And police shouldn't be allowed to tamper with their bullet proof vests to confirm that there really is kevlar in them. They should just trust the company that made it for them.
Am I the only person who understands that software companies build software
The gall people have. When folks bitch about the government wasting money, your proposal is the PERFECT example of wasting money. Why waste the money when you can do it in house? WHY, GOD, WHY?
WHY do we support the abject protection of intellectual 'property' in order to keep the market functioning when that goal of protection can be used to tamper with market forces? Think about it; a market isn't just somewhere where you can get what you want. Its important that you have the option _not_ to be forced to go back into the market when you can just do the work yourself.
hell yeah, I agree with you.
i was just pointing out how this has all be done before. the punishment is more to scare would-be participators of said movements (or resistances might be a better word) rather than punishing the actual transgressors.
Reminds me of the law for luddites at the turn of the century .. it was called the "life for a loom" law. Basically, destroy a loom, and you die.
Typically, when people use technology in ways unforseen or unwanted by lawmakers (I'm not arguing that cracking systems is moral, but there are cases where it isn't immoral.), the punishment isn't really meant to suit the magnitude of the crime. Its mean to scare the shit out of would-be hackers.
> Isn't the producer's right to his work a capital-R 'right'?
I'm a musician. I write music. But you are going to have to be the one that tries to explain to the masses that I get a Right to my creations like people have a Right to a fair trial or a Right not to get slaughtered by their government.
Shit dude. My Rights, whatever they are, pale in comparison to those Rights. My only Right should be to be awarded compesation for publishing, not determining who can use my music and in what format its presented. I can't believe how closely people relate economical 'rights' to human Rights. I mean, c'mon.
> without him, the product would not exist, so why shouldn't he reap the full benefits?
Because if everybody followed this logic, in every situation, we'd all be complete assholes to each other.
er, two things:
1. The GPL doesn't bar anybody from making money off it. But yes, I can make a licence that does (although I dont believe I should have right right, see below). Point made.
2. > be prepared to loose everything when some mob decides they want the things you've produced
Prepared? I simply don't believe that mob would exist were I offering my works at a fair price and by a means, in a format, people want. (Important to note price isnt the only thing here. If I use the exclusivity of my content as a means of prodiving it in a format or way people dont want, I have no right to complain when they pillage me. The key here is subjecting _YOURSELF_ to market forces by avoiding exclusivity and format advantages in order to influence the market. Its the equivilent of the 'invisible hand' slapping me upside the head for my stubborness in meeting the demands of the market.)
And morality *is* up for vote, as soon as youve protected peoples rights. So yup, you've hit the nail on the head.
I challenge a producers right to his work for two reasons:
1. That 'right' has changed over the course of 500 years, from 20 years to 90 after his death. Personally, I believe the owner has a right to payment, but not a right to licence his work exclusively. It'd keep labels from securing exclusivity clauses that allow them to abuse the market place with scarcity (ie, by restricting distribution and copying, one can artificially inflate the value through scaracity, the very opposite of the intended effects of capitalism and an open makret.) I readily contend that were a right to copy copyrighted works (provided royalty is paid) given to consumers and would-be distributors, we wouldn't be in the situation. SOMEBODY would have started selling music online and paying the artists for it. The only right an author should have is the right to fair compensation. The right to control publication, distribution, and format are all rights granted by virtue of producers and distributors recognizing that these factors allow one to artifically affect the value of the coyrighted work.
Good reply.
> 250 years ago, the majority agreed that slavery was decent and moral.
.. and presumably wed include the family and friends of the people being exploited - ie, the population of the colonated countries.) The majority in the 'is it okay to recreationally copy copywritten works for non-profit' would include the exploited, and maybe you might find the majority thinks its okay.
..
.. where the notion of protecting somebody else in order to protect yourself in the future is void.)
.. they won't go out of business soon enough, unless they wake up, in which case .. maybe in a year or two I'll be singing their praises for offering me content in a format and way that I want.
.. in most cases, of course. This doesn't work for 'leaked' previews (I am in complete disagreement with individuals who leak advance copies of work - way more important than money is the disrespectful act of leaking an artistic work before the artist is finished with it) but I'm not prepared to allow the actions of a few spoil the recreational rule bending of the many.
... before the copy started to become unlistenable.)
.. nor that we shouldn't tolerate some level of 'deviant behaviour' .. because that deviant behaviour often has unforseen consequences that benifits everybody, even those that sought so hard to disempower them.
Actually, your majority here doesn't include the votes the people being exploited would have had (ie, the slaves
> 400 years ago, the majority thought it would be ok to light people on fire because they thought that they were witches.
Uh, really? I thought mobs of people burned the witches, but I wasn't aware of some overreaching concensus by which people not involved in witch hunts felt morally okay with burning people at the stake. Are you sure you're not confusing the majority with the participating majority here? This brings me to the next point
You seem to want to know how many people _engage in that behaviour_. Useless. How many people _feel okay with that behaviour_. People get scared, cause they equate a majority saying its okay with a majority actually doing it. Well hey, I think its morally okay to be gay, but I'm not going to be gay. I think its morally okay to do mushrooms, but I don't do mushrooms. So, you can't say that just because most people dont do it that most people wouldn't say that the act itself was morally okay. (In fact, the very notion that lots of people dont do it is often a reason people thinking its okay to do. See: littering. Works the other way too of course. See: homosexuality.) I'm not going to fetch you some numbers, because thats a pretty easy google: how many unique people were charged with theft last year vs. how many unique users there are on Kazaa. It doesn't really matter tho. (I just want to add that rights are a means of addressing the point you bring up; there are certainly some fundamental rights that the moral majority should not be permitted to infringe upon, which is why I claimed the moral majority is right with respect to copying. I recognize that there are certain aspects of life which you must protect from the moral majority, although usually only in situations where the majority shares a cultural homogeneousness
As for the cassettes:
a) You still can't unless you invest heavily in bandwidth, disk storage, etc. You can't do much damage with a thin pipe and 3 songs on your hard drive. The damage you can do to the market is a function of the hardware you have. Same with cassettes. Yes, on a greater scale. Then again, cassettes could do it on a greater scale than the player piano could. So I guess cassette copying hurt the industry _way_ more than the playerpiano. Except, oops, the industry got more power from cassettes too (you could bring cassettes with you, some people bought tapes because they heard a cassette copy, etc.) EVERYONE benifits from the power of new technology. A producer choosing not to empower themselves (not through regulating behaviour but by adding value to product and opening up new markets and opportunities thanks to the nature of new technology) is no reason for the consumer market not to use said power. But again, everyone gains from new technology. The increase in power to the consumer is no excuse; the producer has access to that power too. The Big 5 just seem to think its a better idea to mandate behaviour instead of strengthen their offerings. Tough shit
b) this point is true, but the likelihood that shared copies online come from ONE legally obtained copy is silly. for a file to become widely available on the net, there has to have been demand for it; in which case there were probably lots of 'nodes' your computer knew that had the original copy. as usual, the stuff that gets copied the most is usually the stuff that sells the most
c) true, but there were ways of cleaning the signal, and it wasn't impossible (maybe 40$ a month) to get your hands on a DAT machine to make unlimited copies from a digital copy. I had cassettes that were copies of copies of copies, and when you start working exponetially, you can get thousands of listenable copies from one master tape (as in 1x8x8x8x8x8
All I see is that technology has empowered the consumer and the producer. However, the producer chooses to not utilize that power, and then prevent people from using it.
Look, my arguments are usually construed for an A-OK to mass copying. No! My argument is like jwalking, littering, homosexuality, alcohol/prohibition, etc. Trying to control people's behaviour 100% of the time is more expensive to EVERYBODY than simply allowing those who _want_ to circumvent the law (in which nobody is physically harmed nor absolutely prevented from earning a living (because, as per above, and as you note, not everybody copies.))
I have no issues with enforcing copyright law. I have issues with attempting to disempower consumers when history tells us that you needn't put people in handcuffs in order for them to behave in a non-destructive fashion as a whole. The few will act irresponsibly, but I place blame in the hands of providers who refuse to service the many for the misdeeds of the few. Thats what a business plan should include; how to ensure that the few won't spoil it for the many. Fucking the many for the few gets a -1: Irresponsible and Stubborn in my book.
All that said, I don't napsterize (I belong to the paying mp3 site: emusic.com, all legal, everybody gets paid), I don't copy music, and I honestly believe that folks who leak advance copies are scum. I just will not accept that todays copying technolgoies are the stakes in the heart, never before seen, unparalled threats to business that some people claim they are
Your points are not without merit, but they echo of a certain familiar "the sky could fall" attitude that _always_ surrounds new technology. As for the morality debate, rights are meant to protect certain things from the moral majority and I wont argue that the majority can want to infringe upon those rights. I'd simply contend that in many cases, the majorities held up in examples are participating majorites (or worse yet, priviledged majorities), and not the absolute majority of everybody affected by those actions. Thats much more difficult to prove tho, and I'm willing to accept that I shouldn't have held up the moral majority case without better defitions and axioms upon which to build off of.
A good reply tho; certainly the most worthy of attempting to rebuke.
The absolute funniest part about all this is that copyright law was introduced because the act of theft wasn't synonymous with copying an authors work in the days when copying technologies started to become more widespread (ie, the printing press.)
...
If its so _obviously_ stealing, why the fuck did copyright law come into existance when laws covered the act of theft in the first place.
Do you see the stupidity of your argument? If its so obviously theft, why have copyright law in the first place? Why not just tack on "copying the work of an author" to the laws pertaining to theft and abolish copyright law altogher?
Oh gee, I wonder if its because the act of copying something is a FUNDAMENTALLY different effect within the economy, and thus we must handle copying authors' works in entirely different ways than we handle the act of theft?
So explain that: why have copyright law at all if copying an authors work without their permission is simply 'theft'? Why don't we just say that an authors work is tantamount to a physical object, and they have eternal ownership and complete control over copying mechanisms, exclusivity, etc
Here's one clue: It _is_ different, and giving authors' property-like rights to copyrighted works (unlimited inherent ownership of creations, treating copying of said work to theft) has been shown time and time again, over the course of hundreds of years, as being bad for the producer, bad for the consumer, and bad for culture altogether.
This was the _REASON FOR COPYRIGHT LAW_. Its not the same as theft, and thats the reason for its very existance. And ironically, now you claim that its theft because its copywritten. In reality, its copywritten for the very reason that copying it is not theft, as lawmakers discovered centuries ago. All this is notwithstanding that copyright was introduced to weaken the 'ownership' argument content producers, publishers, and distributors claimed they had (as granted by the king at the time) on cultural works because said claim was shown to damage both the industry they operated within and the social culture at large. Get with the program, or at least read a book on the nature of copyright, its history, and how market forces operate differently on reproducable artistic works than they do on physical property.
> At some point the piece of media would be inexpensive enough for you to purchase, but because you have access to it for effectively free.. you have no economic incentive to ever pay for it, even when you value it enough to pay for it at some price point.
.. and damanded a fair price for the food. Mobs of people could have just gotten the food for free, but we're animals; if we can tell if our behaviour is going to destroy the producers of the things we value, we wont seek said product for free. AKA, we do have an incentive not to get said product for free. Anybody that denies this is saying that humans are _incapable_ of recognizing the need not to destroy the very systems we depend on for our lives. Thats patently untrue, as we can see in everything from p2p behavior to the food riots of earlier centuries in the UK when the price of food rose above what a majority of the population could afford (one of the unfortunate results of the implementation of capitalism in feudal times.)
.. ITS THE SAME THING. THe key difference is in the sake of the physical realm, youve deprived the original owner of product. In the digital world, you havn't in any way affected the producers ability to sell to other people because *each one of those people will either pay what you're asking for or won't*.
WRONG. The food riots showed that people were far more interested in paying a fair price for something than stealing it outright. Faced with the recognition that looting and pillaging food producers for free would cause said producers to be able to make food for the future, people rioted
The incentive for people to pay is to keep folks producing this valued content. You yourself say people place some value in the product, so WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANYONE WANNA RUN THE PRODUCT OUT OF BUSINESS. Nobody.
So people 'copy' when they feel they are not in danger of causing the producer to go out of business. But they _WONT_ pay for shit just for the sake of _garaunteeing_ that the producer wont go out of business.
I mean, risk is part of business. Whether or not you go out of business because people won't pay your asking price or because people circumvent your asking price because they feel its too high
More like the war on drugs.
Terrorism does kill people.
Weed mostly hurts the folks involved in the business of distributing it. To which we can thank the war on drugs.
Millions (or billions) of dollars will be spent on fighting something thats both unpreventable and not always socially or economically damaging.
> Or the best: if I can download this movie for free, it will encourage me to steal^H^H^H^H^H buy more DVDs!
.. but it flies in the face of so many other cases of observed human behaviour. There are plenty of things that are easy to steal, and people don't do it nearly to the degree that people copy movies and music. This is the key point that folks postulating your line of reasoning seem unable to explain.
Siphoning gas from your neighbours tank is dead simple. But people don't do it. Why? It's stealing.
But explain to me why people don't mind steal^H^Hcopying movies/music/etc when clearly there are so many other things that can be easily stolen in life? Gee, maybe because its not stealing. Its copying. And yes, it can be terribly immoral (ie, selling bootlegs for profit, or downloading movies to circumvent renting or theatre going altogether.)
Also note that copyright holders' rights have never been 100% protected. If you listen to a CD at a friends house, I could easily make the case that you're stealing the music because _you_ didn't buy the CD.
If you wanna build a case for the immorality of copying content without paying for it, at least respect that a majority of peoples' behaviours dictate the morality. Morality isn't simply somebody or some group passing a law; that doesn't make breaking that law intrinsically immoral. I'm tired of folks using whats set in law as the yard stick of morality. There are plenty of legal things I can do to you that is immoral, and there are plenty of illegal things I can do that are moral.
> Or the best: if I can download this movie for free, it will encourage me to steal^H^H^H^H^H buy more DVDs!
That might be a valid point if you had any real (not annecdotal) evidence backing it up. I can understand your reasoning (if you can have it for free, why would anybody rent the DVD)
If you want to convince anybody that copying movies and music is bad, you might start with explaining why the amount of people stealing music and movies is so much higher than people who steal ungaurded physical objects. You'd probably also want to make sure that you viewed the rampant cassette copying of the 80s as highly immoral as well for consistancy (in addition to recording TV, recording the radio, etc).
> cos all measures (legal) to gain market over your competition are ok.
/.-ers enough:
Let me get this straight, because its an awfully confusing concept that can't be said by
All action to stiffle competition that isn't illegal is legal?
Wow, that just like, totally blew my mind.
(Of course, we wouldn't want to get into a debate about which actions are ultimately _good_ for MS or good for their competition, would we? Nah, its much more intellectually stimulating just to post, "Thats ok! Remember, its legal!" posts.)
Actually, we can change this planet enough to seriously affect people's health and welfare.
And thats all that matters. Not even the greenest-of-the-green is trying to say that we can destroy the planet. For that matter, what does destroying the planet mean, anyhow? I think if you stopped and tried to apply context to most people who talk about damaging the earth, you'd realize they're really talking about damaging the ecosystem and conditions _we_ need to live.
Everytime there's an environment article, someone has to go point out how we can't destroy the planet. Of course we can't, but we can and have adversely affected the environment _we_ have to live in.
Congratulations for scoring a +5 on a moot point.
When folks yell "Save the Planet" they really mean "Save the Planet enough such that we can stay alive."
.. a semantical justification for not giving a shit.
We shouldn't care about the distinction. Of course our efforts are designed to save ourselves. Folks who think humans are arrogant because we talk like we can destroy the planet (ie, not just the habitable conditions we require as a species) are simply looking for an 'out'
Of course planet earth will go on just fine without us; who cares what the words we use are, I'd just like to ensure we (or my grandkids, for that matter) don't have to wear gas masks to go to the corner store at some point in the future.
So I agree with you, but it's always confused me why people feel the need to point it out. In the end, a person either believes that we're setting ourselves up for some _serious_ human-endangering problems or not.
Think about it. When people say, "Save my house!" (lets say its on fire), nobody points out that the house doesn't have feelings or that all the molecules in the house will just end up in other places (in the smoke or in the ashes). We recognize that what the person _means_ is "Save the house I have to live in!" Same logic applies to the environmentalist's warcry.
> The growing and dangerous intrusion of this new technology," Jack Valenti said, threatens an entire industry's "economic vitality and future security." Mr. Valenti, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, was testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, and he was ready for a rhetorical rumble. The new technology, he said, "is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone."
.. youll get shitloads of links.
It was back in the day (late 70s or 80s, cant remember.)
Google up 'Valenti Boston Strangler' (sans quotes of course)
its the wang in my hand I wish was easier to hide!
(let the small penis jokes begin. i can take it!)
Except in the music biz, the artist pays for the creation of the work; the label only fronts the money. They didn't pay for anything (although they pay promotional costs, but this is typically once they're assured a favourable ROI); they simply accepted the risks of investment.
Weakening the risk by strengthening laws that protect their investment simply elminates their incentive to find _good_ artists.
Do you think the stock market would work/last if we artifically weakened (that is, the law approached eliminating the risk altogether) the risk involved in participating in it?
But ceriously, even tho you could make inroads with me in terms of strengthening your credibility, choose to post AC. Hrm.
What practice? What cases? Support your claim!
The book is still going ahead as planed; NASA wont be funding or publishing it, is all.
;)
It's amazing what a little article-reading can get ya.
As an addenum, you seem to understand that ownership does and (in my mind) should exist, but completetly unable to grasp the difference between being in favour of legislated ownership and being in favour of weakening or strengening the rights and/or priledges that accompanies said ownership.
Actually, I'm also interested in knowing how old you are, since I'm trying to group various stances on the issue into various age brakets so I can get a sense of what demographics support which view. You don't have to answer that, of course.
As a final aside, for somebody that claims to regard right to ownership as a very important thing, its somewhat ironic that you should choose to eschew the ownership of your ideas by posting as an AC. I take it you only support ownership when it serves you but not when it doesnt?