So your answer to my original question is no then.
I do not understand what you are getting at, it seems that your question was: Do I have absolute, all-encompassing rights to all things even most remotely related to my "creation", trumping all other rights of all other people, including all their freedoms, until the end of time?
By your argument, it would be perfectly legal to copy any piece of software because the company that sold it released it on CD/DVD.
That is correct. It is merely a logical consequence of nature of information.
You have the right to view it, but not to redistribute it or modify it, which is the crux of the issue; regardless of what your personal feelings are on the issue. The law is quite clear.
The laws and morally justified rights are two different things. There were times when "law" would make one person "property" of another. Laws are drafted by men, sometimes by evil men with ulterior motives or just well meaning men with no clue about the consequences. If you want to argue what is the state of law, it is sufficient to point out that if the current laws are taken to their logical conclusion, the only way to enforce their consistency is to expand them until a "Right To Read", total police-state exists to enforce the "information as property" model. Needless to say general-purpose computers and Open Source would have to be banned.
"thoughts and images that appear before our eyes" and ACTIVELY seeking to view said thoughts and images
No there is not, all our lifes are spent "actively" seeking experiences, and all we do is process thoughts and images. Some of which you claim to be forbidden until payment rendered. My point stands
Hey genius. My personal information is CLEARLY displayed, if you had ANY clue as to what my username meant. It takes less than 5 seconds to get my full name, address and telephone number.
Oh dear, you mean to tell me that you somehow attained the universal and exclusive control of the word VE3ECM? Slashdot does not have even your email address listed and Google shows a horde of posts by parties unknown under the id of VE3ECM with unverifiable credentials... is that what you meant? Or are we to be playing a cryptographer to figure out what the sequence means? Besides as I explained, I have reasons for not boasting my name here just as valid as most other people.
Uh huh. Yeah. If I create something I have every right to show it wo who I want and not show it to who I don't.
Sure you do. But if you were about to stand on a rooftop and show it to all passers by and then shout "those who did not pay close your eyes" it would make you a deranged and insane person. But that is precisely what the media companies do, they broadcast the images and then demand that those who they deem not worthy, do not turn on their receivers or computers. Furthermore, if you showed your creation to someone and allowed him to photograph it and he then proceeded to show the photo to someone else, do you now claim that a photo of your creation is yours too? Your right only extends as far as physical access to your creation for viewing. As soon as you broadcast its image through any publically accessible medium, your right vanishes because you no longer control the physical access.
So because I don't feel that we have the right to view anything we want anytime we want, that makes me a corporatist?
Yes it does, and worse, since you now claim that we are to reject thoughts and images that appear before our eyes based on someones demands for money, thus calling for self-censoring control of thoughts, it makes you a proponent of creation of an Orwellian style society for the benefit of corporations.
Still waiting for that name and address, though, Captain Courageous.
No less courageuos then most people here, you perheaps did notice that very few of them, yourself included (pot, meet kettle), are brandishing their personal information. There are good reasons for that.
While I agree partially with both of you, I feel the need to point out that you are being hypocritical by stating that all information needs to be free, but yet your name does not need to be free.
I do not claim that "information needs to be free" as in roaming freely through the universe, I merely claim that "information cannot be property" and thus cannot be exchanged for monetary consideration. That is not altering other characteristics of information. For example, unlike physical property, information can exist in a state of "being unknown" or "being secret". That is I can keep a secret thought, to which you dont have access based on your lack of access to the information storage medium. There is nothing wrong with secrecy in regards to information but that is not what we are discussing here.
So information needs to be free if it means you get to download fansubbed anime, but it does not need to be free if it will help someone prosecute/sue you.
Information (or in this case, a work of art) is property.
Sigh. No it is not. Unless you define "property" as vibrations of air molecules. "Property" is a physical object which can have a controlling person "the owner". Once the owner is deprived of the object by someone, that act is called "stealing". If someone were to look at your chair and then duplicate it in his house using his own materials, according to you he "stole" it. And dont even bother go the "revenue depravation" route because that is even more illogical then treating shapes and vibrations as "property".
Someone created it. Someone spent their time, energy, and money to produce it for my enjoyment.
I seriously have to get myself a set of responses to this never ending drivel to cut and paste here. The fact that someone "created" something does not constitute grounds for demanding payment. I spent time typing this reply in... cough up the money, you are reading it, are you not? I too spent time, energy and money (my internet service + my PC) for your "enjoyment"!
Thoughts of your own, get it?
Great! And what if I think a thought that someone thought before me! Oh shit! That means someone owns that thought and I am, as a part of my mind and soul is, someone else's property? Bubba, you gotta think (think, get it?) these things through before spouting them.
One day you'll have kids (or maybe at least a hamster) to feed and clothe and you'll understand what work is. I'm not greedy, I just like to eat, and sleep inside. Hot showers are nice, too. One day your parents will stop supplying all of that for you.
Nice set of assumptions here, so sorry to dissapoint, I am probably older then you. But fun aside, if you are seriously believing this nonsese, consider this: for most of human history, people like Plato, Aristotle, DaVinci, Newton, Shakespeare, Mozart, Bethoven etc etc created sicence and art without needing any of the "intellectual property" scams. In fact they all did it, as scientists and artists do for the love of discovery and art. In a properly functioning society, sicentists get paid by public academia and private research grants and their work is for all to enjoy free of charge. But more importantly, their work is used freely by other scientists to further our understanding of things. Artists are funded by art patrons, be it concert goers or art foundations. And they do not care, because no artist creates for the money, or else he is not an artist. This whole idea of "intellectual property" is for people and by the poeple who only understand one thing: greed. And there is a million of other aspects like compromises to the free-market model, corporate anti-competetive welfare, detremental effects on arts and science and ultimately a need to introduce a police-state in order to "protect" the "intellectual property" to consider here. But all you can go on about is hamsters and "think of the children!".
I never once said I agree with them. I just stated that the laws are quite concrete when it comes to what they're doing.
You explictely stated that it is not people's "right". A right is something above a legal system de jeur and thus is something one considers a crucial element of his/her outlook on the world. That is what identifies you as a corporatist even though you are trying to backpedal furiously now. Perheaps you are in denial or just worshiping greed subconciously, hoping to "make it big" sometime soon?
But if you sincerely believe that all information needs to be free (I assume that you've watched Hackers one time too many), please feel free to post your full name and address so the corporations can contact you and you can exercise your "civic duty to fight [them]".
Your assumption is incorrect, but consistent with your apparent deferrence to movie studios as the only possible source of ideas for people. And as to my name, it is known to the corporations but as there is a wee little legal "misunderstanding" about to happen, between me and them it is only wise to control where from one's writings appear in court. Thus I shall remain incognito here, verry sorry about that.
The use of the verb to steal to describe the taking of things that are intangible is not new. You've always been able to steal ideas. You've always been able to steal someone's affection for someone else. To suggest that the concept of theft being applied to intangibles is a new phenomenon is to blatantly disregard the facts.
No such thing is being suggested. What is happening is a new usage of word "steal" to refer to financial loss and thus criminal activity akin to car theft.
Stop trying to redefine words to suit your purposes. Doing so is intellectually dishonest.
Not noticing the above and then trying to call me "dishonest" is somewhat stretching it... but then again I am talking to an AC, am I not?
Do you think you have a right to see something that's distributed in Japan-only?
Actually, since I believe that there is no such thing as "intellectual property" I do indeed believe that anyone has that right. But you clearly are a corporatist and believe that you can demand that people do not try to use electronic signals which you consider your right to beam through their hosues and even bodies. In other words your greed is more important than other people's freedom. A term "sanctimonious greedy asshole" springs to mind.
You don't.
See above, Mr. I Can Tell Others What They Cannot Do Because That Makes Me Rich.
Please see above comment about not having any rights to see something that isn't intended for a US audience.
See above indeed. In short, you believe that that "intellectual property" and all the associated "ownership of information" is the Brave New World and we better get in line or your buddies will put a smackdown on us. I believe it is an immoral depravity by greed-worshipping con men and consider it my civic duty to fight it and its proponents everywhere.
Regardless of definitions of theft, it's going against the wishes of the copyright holder.
Some "copyright holders" wish you to pay for mere thinking about of their "product". By not doing so you are going against their wishes. And that is, quite bluntly, wrong.
If you don't consider it wrong, then it's not wrong for Microsoft, Apple or Sun to decide that they can copy the entire Linux kernel, modify it for their own purposes and make it into a proprietary Winux or iLinux for example... because they believe it can then reach a wider audience, or be written by paid coders, or make up for the copyright holder (those who wrote GPL code) not allowing distribution in a proprietary form.
This is a first rate strawman. People who understand this know that GPL is merely a defensive mechanism constructed to thwart the proponents of "intellectual property" by cleverly turning their own legal system on them. If no copyrights existed, neither would GPL and there would be no issue with Sun incorporating our code into thiers, because the resulting code... would be free for anyone to share (even though being closed) and thus Sun would have absolutely no incentive to close it in the first place i.e. they would be hardware company and all the software would by necessity be cooperative, licenceless, Open Source.
So you say that somehow the companies are losing profits from fans releasing a series in a country where no legal/official release will ever occur?
Why of course! They are "losing" money everytime when you merely think about their sacred, divine "intellectual property" "product". If you were a good citizen of the corporate republic, you would have immediately run and "bought" the "product" because by thinking about it, you are "experiencing" in part the "joy" of the "product" and thus "depriving" its "creator" of his justly deserved "revenue".
P.S. Don't forget to buy individual copies for each time you plan to "experience" it, think of the poor starving "content producers"! Think of the children!
Re:"It's like taping an [sic] tv episode..."
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Fansubbers Under Fire
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· Score: 1, Insightful
It would be like a TV episode *IF* these fansubbers weren't sticking them on bittorrent and letting thousands upon thousands of people download them.
Right, and that would be different from getting a honking big antenna and watching the stuff from Japan directly how exactly?
What they are doing is acting as a network of relays for a TV signal and they even add value by putting subtitles on with no commercial expectations.
I fail to see what the issue is here.
Yes you fail to see implications of these attempts by contents "producers" to create "right to read" society indeed.
Whether it's theft of service, or theft of property, it's still theft.
Here we go again... no you cannot "steal" information because information does not have the required physical attributes to be "stolen". Anime is not "service" either because service requires a physical action to be performed for you by someone. And by using the word "theft" in this context you merely showed yourself to be a propagandist for people who believe one can "own thoughts and ideas".
In other words you have no clue what you are talking about but you do have a knee jerk reaction that clearly identifies you as a worshipper of greed.
So, the people who copied my work instead of paying me for it *are* taking food (or a car repair, or a vacation, or a critical operation) from me. It most certainly *does* deprive the creator of revenue, which directly relates to physical goods.
If you go the "revenue depravation" route all sorts of irreconcilable illogic insues. For example: you "bought" a DVD. You watched it with your girlfriend who also liked it. Bam! A revenue depravation, if you were single she would have bought it too. One sale "lost". You watched it with your pals who came over for a card game... now you are a serial "thief". How about you watch broadcast TV and you skip over commercials... whammo! You "deprived" the poor TV station of ad revenue. Thus FCC has to introduce "broadcast flag" to stop your PVR from recording the show/skipping the commercials. But lets forget technology orientation for a second as it is a mere distraction: You like a song you heard... and you whistle it in the shower.. is it copyright violation? How about you play the same song loudly in your car with windows open? The whole steet is hearing it... Or how about your team managed to create a new mathematical formula. Is it now your "property" even tho it is quite likely many other mathematicians can come up with it? How about you changed some molecules in a DNA sequence to make red mice? Are the red mice your "property"? If someone were to do the same, your "Red Mouse Inc." would be deprived revenue even tho the sequence could (unlikely but possible) be obtained by random mutation. Etc. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseum.
These consequences which are inevietable as soon as you make that "revenue depravation" leap lead to a situation where as a natural progression (logical and inevietable) the "Right To Read" society arises about which RMS wrote his famous essay. There are also other variations on this theme like for example "Rights Based Economy" whereby as machines become more and more sophistcated a possibility of per-use micro-payments based on "intellectual property" is created. I wont get into all the ghastly implications of this thinking, suffice to say that the outcomes of this simple "revenue depravation" concept are frightening.
The idea of basing this argument on "compensation" is fundamentally flawed. There is not a thing to measure the "revenue" by here. All of these are effects of attempts to achieve an immoral (and in long-term impossible) thing: creating scarcity of information so that it can become "property". As I tried to explain earlier, information, try as you might, is not capable of becoming such not due to what you or I want but due to what it is. Facts have an unfortunate way of getting the upper hand no matter how much bullshit and convoluted obfuscation greedy people produce to hide them.
I think that's an opinion that has become accepted as fact today, given the general state of the world. Granted, I did almost explore the basic assumption of *anyone* having a right to work, and thus live, but skipped it favor of time and brevity.
Life does not equal work unless you happen to be an exteme libertarian in which case you believe that anyone capable but unemployed should starve to death. In an ideal scenario most capable people are employed but this situation is not likely to become a norm, and worse as "productivity" and "efficiency" of corporations increase you are going to find more and more people out of work until the current model of "greed, growth and damn the torpedoes" collapses. But that is another discussion.
Which is exactly what each of us is. When you buy the CD, you are a patron of the arts. When you buy the drug, you are supplying your little piece of the stipend for the scientists that discovered it
Not at all. This is actually a pivotal difference. In the example of academia stipend the sicentist is free to use all the other scientist's ideas to incorporate into his. In thecase of "information" as "product" paid for by "consumers", such a thi
Ah. I think I've seen your posts before. Why are you usually so caustic in discussions? There's no need for that.
I grew to be somewhat sarcastic in these last years as it would seem that wisdom and empirical experience is no longer desired and instead unwavering, uncritical Faith in God and His Presidential Messiah (or alternatively in the Allmighty Buck... or both) have taken firm hold on what used to be a shining metropolis of enlightenment. While of course on the other side of the planet a competing set of witch-doctors is bewitching minds of the poor and future-less in the name of Allah.
I am getting this very disturbing vibe that some of us will end up crawling in ditches setting up IEDs to blow up troops of the new army of bright-eyed, infallable, Divine Christian Ubermenschen of Marching Freedom And Limitless Cruelty or end up trying to blow the brains out of some foaming at the mouth rabid wannabe "martyr" rushing with a bomb strapped to his ass before he gets too close.
Needles to say, I am not looking forward to the future as I used to.
I am in favor of chairty and helping people. In fact I'm glad charity has been there. It's just the idea of being forced.
Trouble is that charity is woefully insufficient and unreliable. If it were up to charity, stuff like: 40% of people in the US having no medical care and 1/3 of world population being starving or malnutrished would be true!... oh wait....
Lets say you have cash, and some other people do not.
Now lets say that you worked fairly hard for your cash. (I know not everyone does)
Now lets say I'm awfully lazy, and instead of doing anything to help myself.
Now you are violating my rights when you refuse to pay for me, no?
If it is a basic human right, it dosen't just extend to the permantly-disabled. I deserve free food. If there are exepctions it isn't a basic human right. Greed may not be good, but IMHO socalism is just as bad as any invasion of privacy.
This is indeed the "classic" anti social-safety-net argument. It is also patently false. While it is possible to have anti-social lazy bum/addict/mentally ill people who will indeed do nothing, their "right" is only as deep as their ability to survive. We are talking basic sustinence. For everything else they have to work for. Hope is that at least in some cases they can see the error of their ways and work their way up to some reasonable standard of living. But there is also another, more cold and calculating side of this argument: if there is no provision for most basic things such as water and sustinence level of food as well as education for those who are willing to get the grades (i.e they have to work at learning), what will happen is that whole swathes of societies will be relegated to permanent strata of disfranchisement and poverty. This is a recipe for political and in the long-run military disaster as these people will inevietably revolt, and worse yet, fall under influence of those who will promise them those basic human necessities i.e. the likes of Al-Qeida. Taking a more long-term view, things look even dimmer. As "productivity" and "efficiency" of corporatist societies running the show at this point increases, so will the unemployment as the most "efficient" corporation is one with 100% automation and no employees. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of problems which will cause far more pain and misery if we do not try address them. In short, your "privacy" will be the last of your concerns when faced with hundreds of millions of people who have nothing to lose.
I know that it is libertarian phillosophy that once societies become free-market and free of government influence they will somehow flourish regardless of prior ethnic, historical, political, geographic and other conditions. I find that theory as peruasive and practical as that of one Mr. Karl Marx.
But the government is just not (in my opinion, which is no more valid than yours) the right vector for accomplishing this.
I see governments, specially big ones, to be hives of corruption, bureaucracy, inefficiency and waste... and yet I cannot see any practical way of accomplishing estabilishment of a backbone of society other then with determination trying to force those slimey creatures who run them to do the right thing. Otherwise it is left to individual citizens who unfortunately are in sufficient numbers, sufficiently ignorant, selfish, greedy and vicious to make sure that any other solution is unworkable. That is the great tragedy of this whole thing. If everyone was wise and did the right thing, we would not need governments, UN, etc. and libertarians would be totally right... and so would communists... and any other utopian system followers because all those depend on this one impossible pre-condition.
Unless I'm reading this wrong, people can demand that someone else pay for their food/water/education. This is just anti-liberty (In a libertarian sense)
Quick questions then: is it a libertarian position that permanently-disabled who cant work die from starvation or thirst? Perheaps it is "libertarian" to allow children from families who are too poor to fund their education to stay un-educated and poor as it were the child's choice where to get born? If the answer to any of these is yes, then you and I sir will be mortal enemies, me on the side of all what is humane and just and you on the side of Universal And Supreme Selfish Greed Above All.
Why is it, exactly, that certain people think that protecting your physical property is OK, but protecting a story you thought up is not? Frankly, I really think it boils down to the fact that a story is easier to steal. I think people put a mental value on things based on how hard it is to acquire or have taken..
Actually no, in my case it because the whole idea of "property" is based on scarcity of physical goods and our animalistic instincts to "posses things". Furthermore, and more critically, as I explained, the idea of "property" is simply not applicable to information, not because it is my political or personal conviction but because information lacks the required attributes for it. Thus it is a question of logic and empirical experience.
Unless you're 1) In the same financial position as an artist; and 2) Giving away all of your productivity for nothing; and 3) not dead in a month from starvation; then you have no right to say that information should be free.
Again a fallacy, you made an assumption (very popular one) that "the artist" has a "right" to renumeration for his work. No such right exists, and furthermore if he is an artist that was not his objective anyhow. The reason the right does not exist is because none of us has the "right" to work. We only have an ability to ask others to renumerate us for our services to them. Also we have a right that once we enter an agreement with someone to perform work for them, they (as well as us) must obide by its terms (with exceptions dealing with lies and misrepresentations etc. but these are beside the point). These two combined form the foundation of all commerce.
To posit that "ancient" ideas of property and stealing are somehow still applicable today (even though those laws were written for their particular circumstances; hmm, I must be getting old... am I talking about the Bible or IP here?) without putting forward a workable solution that keeps everyone fed, is a hollow exercise
Another fallacy. What you are stating is this: "Since you exposed these con-men for what they are, now you are responsible for feeding them while making sure they can continue to practice their 'profession' undisturbed".
Bad news here: the "music industry", "film industry", "software industry" and similiar cons are simply not viable economicaly in non police-state societies. This is what it boils down to. The people "working" in these have two morally consistent choices: find some other work and forget about any of this... or try to get funded as artists by art lovers and produce their (true then) art for all to enjoy.
Further, why is it that it's other people's ideas of property that need to change?
I was under impression that was me who is insisting that they do not change and that we stick to norms established since written history began...
What I see (if you take away the "evil" heavy-handed way in which things are implemented) is one group of people trying to use today's technology and still feed the producer, and one group of people that want something for nothing. I happen to like a good 7-10 year no-compete law for intellectual works. Just because I despise purpetual copyright extentions, it doesn't mean I think somebody should get the shaft when they produce something that lots of people find useful but also find easy to copy.
It all comes down to your view of what constitutes "getting the shaft". A scientist or an artist will seek discovery or expression and will receive in return recognition and attribution for his/her discoveries and art. Plus money from academia or art foundations or art patrons at a performance etc. What he should not expect is to get is untold billions from all corners of the planet where his performance (which he did only once) is re-played by countless machines owned by other people, powered by energy paid for by those same people etc.
In other words the problem is the culture of insane greed
IP will continue to be a rich/poor battleground, as it has been for generations, but paranoia of your caliber deserves a bigger object of fixation.
Yes, its all paranoia and delusions and none of this is really happening. Software and information are not having an exponentially increasing role in human civilization and noone is really trying to take control of it. Just as noone is patenting new DNA strains and then suing people on whose fields they spread. We can all go back to sleep. You sure did.
I'd suggest the War On Drugs at the very least, and more likely an international banking conspiracy of some kind, or perhaps something involving plagues and/or famine.
I find it curious that you suggest the kinds of pursuits which are the favourite of those who promote "intellectual property". Last time I looked it was MPAA/RIAA who were conducting "War on piracy" and it was poeple like me who were against it. I guess you probably call all those who used to point out non-existence of WMDs in Iraq prior to the war "paranoid people obsessed with famines and plagues" too.
Well, of course you do! Since there is no such thing as intellectual property, you should just go for it.
Damn right, but you should also remember that there is another, completely unrelated aspect of this: attribution. Most artists and scientists do not care about making a fortune but the do care about being attributed the authorship of their ideas. That is their "reward" and I have nothing against it.
Slashdot Mirror
I do not understand what you are getting at, it seems that your question was: Do I have absolute, all-encompassing rights to all things even most remotely related to my "creation", trumping all other rights of all other people, including all their freedoms, until the end of time?
In which case the answer is indeed no.
That is correct. It is merely a logical consequence of nature of information.
You have the right to view it, but not to redistribute it or modify it, which is the crux of the issue; regardless of what your personal feelings are on the issue. The law is quite clear.
The laws and morally justified rights are two different things. There were times when "law" would make one person "property" of another. Laws are drafted by men, sometimes by evil men with ulterior motives or just well meaning men with no clue about the consequences. If you want to argue what is the state of law, it is sufficient to point out that if the current laws are taken to their logical conclusion, the only way to enforce their consistency is to expand them until a "Right To Read", total police-state exists to enforce the "information as property" model. Needless to say general-purpose computers and Open Source would have to be banned.
No there is not, all our lifes are spent "actively" seeking experiences, and all we do is process thoughts and images. Some of which you claim to be forbidden until payment rendered. My point stands
Hey genius. My personal information is CLEARLY displayed, if you had ANY clue as to what my username meant. It takes less than 5 seconds to get my full name, address and telephone number.
Oh dear, you mean to tell me that you somehow attained the universal and exclusive control of the word VE3ECM? Slashdot does not have even your email address listed and Google shows a horde of posts by parties unknown under the id of VE3ECM with unverifiable credentials... is that what you meant? Or are we to be playing a cryptographer to figure out what the sequence means? Besides as I explained, I have reasons for not boasting my name here just as valid as most other people.
Sure you do. But if you were about to stand on a rooftop and show it to all passers by and then shout "those who did not pay close your eyes" it would make you a deranged and insane person. But that is precisely what the media companies do, they broadcast the images and then demand that those who they deem not worthy, do not turn on their receivers or computers. Furthermore, if you showed your creation to someone and allowed him to photograph it and he then proceeded to show the photo to someone else, do you now claim that a photo of your creation is yours too? Your right only extends as far as physical access to your creation for viewing. As soon as you broadcast its image through any publically accessible medium, your right vanishes because you no longer control the physical access.
Yes it does, and worse, since you now claim that we are to reject thoughts and images that appear before our eyes based on someones demands for money, thus calling for self-censoring control of thoughts, it makes you a proponent of creation of an Orwellian style society for the benefit of corporations.
Still waiting for that name and address, though, Captain Courageous.
No less courageuos then most people here, you perheaps did notice that very few of them, yourself included (pot, meet kettle), are brandishing their personal information. There are good reasons for that.
I do not claim that "information needs to be free" as in roaming freely through the universe, I merely claim that "information cannot be property" and thus cannot be exchanged for monetary consideration. That is not altering other characteristics of information. For example, unlike physical property, information can exist in a state of "being unknown" or "being secret". That is I can keep a secret thought, to which you dont have access based on your lack of access to the information storage medium. There is nothing wrong with secrecy in regards to information but that is not what we are discussing here.
So information needs to be free if it means you get to download fansubbed anime, but it does not need to be free if it will help someone prosecute/sue you.
See above.
Yes, that is our right as it always was for all of the recorded history until a cabal of greedy men concocted their new "laws".
Sigh. No it is not. Unless you define "property" as vibrations of air molecules. "Property" is a physical object which can have a controlling person "the owner". Once the owner is deprived of the object by someone, that act is called "stealing". If someone were to look at your chair and then duplicate it in his house using his own materials, according to you he "stole" it. And dont even bother go the "revenue depravation" route because that is even more illogical then treating shapes and vibrations as "property".
Someone created it. Someone spent their time, energy, and money to produce it for my enjoyment.
I seriously have to get myself a set of responses to this never ending drivel to cut and paste here. The fact that someone "created" something does not constitute grounds for demanding payment. I spent time typing this reply in... cough up the money, you are reading it, are you not? I too spent time, energy and money (my internet service + my PC) for your "enjoyment"!
Thoughts of your own, get it?
Great! And what if I think a thought that someone thought before me! Oh shit! That means someone owns that thought and I am, as a part of my mind and soul is, someone else's property? Bubba, you gotta think (think, get it?) these things through before spouting them.
One day you'll have kids (or maybe at least a hamster) to feed and clothe and you'll understand what work is. I'm not greedy, I just like to eat, and sleep inside. Hot showers are nice, too. One day your parents will stop supplying all of that for you.
Nice set of assumptions here, so sorry to dissapoint, I am probably older then you. But fun aside, if you are seriously believing this nonsese, consider this: for most of human history, people like Plato, Aristotle, DaVinci, Newton, Shakespeare, Mozart, Bethoven etc etc created sicence and art without needing any of the "intellectual property" scams. In fact they all did it, as scientists and artists do for the love of discovery and art. In a properly functioning society, sicentists get paid by public academia and private research grants and their work is for all to enjoy free of charge. But more importantly, their work is used freely by other scientists to further our understanding of things. Artists are funded by art patrons, be it concert goers or art foundations. And they do not care, because no artist creates for the money, or else he is not an artist. This whole idea of "intellectual property" is for people and by the poeple who only understand one thing: greed. And there is a million of other aspects like compromises to the free-market model, corporate anti-competetive welfare, detremental effects on arts and science and ultimately a need to introduce a police-state in order to "protect" the "intellectual property" to consider here. But all you can go on about is hamsters and "think of the children!".
You explictely stated that it is not people's "right". A right is something above a legal system de jeur and thus is something one considers a crucial element of his/her outlook on the world. That is what identifies you as a corporatist even though you are trying to backpedal furiously now. Perheaps you are in denial or just worshiping greed subconciously, hoping to "make it big" sometime soon?
But if you sincerely believe that all information needs to be free (I assume that you've watched Hackers one time too many), please feel free to post your full name and address so the corporations can contact you and you can exercise your "civic duty to fight [them]".
Your assumption is incorrect, but consistent with your apparent deferrence to movie studios as the only possible source of ideas for people. And as to my name, it is known to the corporations but as there is a wee little legal "misunderstanding" about to happen, between me and them it is only wise to control where from one's writings appear in court. Thus I shall remain incognito here, verry sorry about that.
I admit my guilt in full and will report to the nearest parentheses rehabilitation center forthwith.
No such thing is being suggested. What is happening is a new usage of word "steal" to refer to financial loss and thus criminal activity akin to car theft.
Stop trying to redefine words to suit your purposes. Doing so is intellectually dishonest.
Not noticing the above and then trying to call me "dishonest" is somewhat stretching it... but then again I am talking to an AC, am I not?
Actually, since I believe that there is no such thing as "intellectual property" I do indeed believe that anyone has that right. But you clearly are a corporatist and believe that you can demand that people do not try to use electronic signals which you consider your right to beam through their hosues and even bodies. In other words your greed is more important than other people's freedom. A term "sanctimonious greedy asshole" springs to mind.
You don't.
See above, Mr. I Can Tell Others What They Cannot Do Because That Makes Me Rich.
Please see above comment about not having any rights to see something that isn't intended for a US audience.
See above indeed. In short, you believe that that "intellectual property" and all the associated "ownership of information" is the Brave New World and we better get in line or your buddies will put a smackdown on us. I believe it is an immoral depravity by greed-worshipping con men and consider it my civic duty to fight it and its proponents everywhere.
Some "copyright holders" wish you to pay for mere thinking about of their "product". By not doing so you are going against their wishes. And that is, quite bluntly, wrong.
If you don't consider it wrong, then it's not wrong for Microsoft, Apple or Sun to decide that they can copy the entire Linux kernel, modify it for their own purposes and make it into a proprietary Winux or iLinux for example... because they believe it can then reach a wider audience, or be written by paid coders, or make up for the copyright holder (those who wrote GPL code) not allowing distribution in a proprietary form.
This is a first rate strawman. People who understand this know that GPL is merely a defensive mechanism constructed to thwart the proponents of "intellectual property" by cleverly turning their own legal system on them. If no copyrights existed, neither would GPL and there would be no issue with Sun incorporating our code into thiers, because the resulting code ... would be free for anyone to share (even though being closed) and thus Sun would have absolutely no incentive to close it in the first place i.e. they would be hardware company and all the software would by necessity be cooperative, licenceless, Open Source.
Why of course! They are "losing" money everytime when you merely think about their sacred, divine "intellectual property" "product". If you were a good citizen of the corporate republic, you would have immediately run and "bought" the "product" because by thinking about it, you are "experiencing" in part the "joy" of the "product" and thus "depriving" its "creator" of his justly deserved "revenue".
P.S. Don't forget to buy individual copies for each time you plan to "experience" it, think of the poor starving "content producers"! Think of the children!
Right, and that would be different from getting a honking big antenna and watching the stuff from Japan directly how exactly?
What they are doing is acting as a network of relays for a TV signal and they even add value by putting subtitles on with no commercial expectations.
I fail to see what the issue is here.
Yes you fail to see implications of these attempts by contents "producers" to create "right to read" society indeed.
End of story.
Sanctimonious jerk, are you?
Here we go again... no you cannot "steal" information because information does not have the required physical attributes to be "stolen". Anime is not "service" either because service requires a physical action to be performed for you by someone. And by using the word "theft" in this context you merely showed yourself to be a propagandist for people who believe one can "own thoughts and ideas".
In other words you have no clue what you are talking about but you do have a knee jerk reaction that clearly identifies you as a worshipper of greed.
If you go the "revenue depravation" route all sorts of irreconcilable illogic insues. For example: you "bought" a DVD. You watched it with your girlfriend who also liked it. Bam! A revenue depravation, if you were single she would have bought it too. One sale "lost". You watched it with your pals who came over for a card game ... now you are a serial "thief". How about you watch broadcast TV and you skip over commercials... whammo! You "deprived" the poor TV station of ad revenue. Thus FCC has to introduce "broadcast flag" to stop your PVR from recording the show/skipping the commercials. But lets forget technology orientation for a second as it is a mere distraction: You like a song you heard... and you whistle it in the shower.. is it copyright violation? How about you play the same song loudly in your car with windows open? The whole steet is hearing it... Or how about your team managed to create a new mathematical formula. Is it now your "property" even tho it is quite likely many other mathematicians can come up with it? How about you changed some molecules in a DNA sequence to make red mice? Are the red mice your "property"? If someone were to do the same, your "Red Mouse Inc." would be deprived revenue even tho the sequence could (unlikely but possible) be obtained by random mutation. Etc. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseum.
These consequences which are inevietable as soon as you make that "revenue depravation" leap lead to a situation where as a natural progression (logical and inevietable) the "Right To Read" society arises about which RMS wrote his famous essay. There are also other variations on this theme like for example "Rights Based Economy" whereby as machines become more and more sophistcated a possibility of per-use micro-payments based on "intellectual property" is created. I wont get into all the ghastly implications of this thinking, suffice to say that the outcomes of this simple "revenue depravation" concept are frightening.
The idea of basing this argument on "compensation" is fundamentally flawed. There is not a thing to measure the "revenue" by here. All of these are effects of attempts to achieve an immoral (and in long-term impossible) thing: creating scarcity of information so that it can become "property". As I tried to explain earlier, information, try as you might, is not capable of becoming such not due to what you or I want but due to what it is. Facts have an unfortunate way of getting the upper hand no matter how much bullshit and convoluted obfuscation greedy people produce to hide them.
I think that's an opinion that has become accepted as fact today, given the general state of the world. Granted, I did almost explore the basic assumption of *anyone* having a right to work, and thus live, but skipped it favor of time and brevity.
Life does not equal work unless you happen to be an exteme libertarian in which case you believe that anyone capable but unemployed should starve to death. In an ideal scenario most capable people are employed but this situation is not likely to become a norm, and worse as "productivity" and "efficiency" of corporations increase you are going to find more and more people out of work until the current model of "greed, growth and damn the torpedoes" collapses. But that is another discussion.
Which is exactly what each of us is. When you buy the CD, you are a patron of the arts. When you buy the drug, you are supplying your little piece of the stipend for the scientists that discovered it
Not at all. This is actually a pivotal difference. In the example of academia stipend the sicentist is free to use all the other scientist's ideas to incorporate into his. In thecase of "information" as "product" paid for by "consumers", such a thi
I grew to be somewhat sarcastic in these last years as it would seem that wisdom and empirical experience is no longer desired and instead unwavering, uncritical Faith in God and His Presidential Messiah (or alternatively in the Allmighty Buck ... or both) have taken firm hold on what used to be a shining metropolis of enlightenment. While of course on the other side of the planet a competing set of witch-doctors is bewitching minds of the poor and future-less in the name of Allah.
I am getting this very disturbing vibe that some of us will end up crawling in ditches setting up IEDs to blow up troops of the new army of bright-eyed, infallable, Divine Christian Ubermenschen of Marching Freedom And Limitless Cruelty or end up trying to blow the brains out of some foaming at the mouth rabid wannabe "martyr" rushing with a bomb strapped to his ass before he gets too close.
Needles to say, I am not looking forward to the future as I used to.
Trouble is that charity is woefully insufficient and unreliable. If it were up to charity, stuff like: 40% of people in the US having no medical care and 1/3 of world population being starving or malnutrished would be true! ... oh wait....
Lets say you have cash, and some other people do not. Now lets say that you worked fairly hard for your cash. (I know not everyone does) Now lets say I'm awfully lazy, and instead of doing anything to help myself. Now you are violating my rights when you refuse to pay for me, no? If it is a basic human right, it dosen't just extend to the permantly-disabled. I deserve free food. If there are exepctions it isn't a basic human right. Greed may not be good, but IMHO socalism is just as bad as any invasion of privacy.
This is indeed the "classic" anti social-safety-net argument. It is also patently false. While it is possible to have anti-social lazy bum/addict/mentally ill people who will indeed do nothing, their "right" is only as deep as their ability to survive. We are talking basic sustinence. For everything else they have to work for. Hope is that at least in some cases they can see the error of their ways and work their way up to some reasonable standard of living. But there is also another, more cold and calculating side of this argument: if there is no provision for most basic things such as water and sustinence level of food as well as education for those who are willing to get the grades (i.e they have to work at learning), what will happen is that whole swathes of societies will be relegated to permanent strata of disfranchisement and poverty. This is a recipe for political and in the long-run military disaster as these people will inevietably revolt, and worse yet, fall under influence of those who will promise them those basic human necessities i.e. the likes of Al-Qeida. Taking a more long-term view, things look even dimmer. As "productivity" and "efficiency" of corporatist societies running the show at this point increases, so will the unemployment as the most "efficient" corporation is one with 100% automation and no employees. And that is just the tip of the iceberg of problems which will cause far more pain and misery if we do not try address them. In short, your "privacy" will be the last of your concerns when faced with hundreds of millions of people who have nothing to lose.
I know that it is libertarian phillosophy that once societies become free-market and free of government influence they will somehow flourish regardless of prior ethnic, historical, political, geographic and other conditions. I find that theory as peruasive and practical as that of one Mr. Karl Marx.
But the government is just not (in my opinion, which is no more valid than yours) the right vector for accomplishing this.
I see governments, specially big ones, to be hives of corruption, bureaucracy, inefficiency and waste... and yet I cannot see any practical way of accomplishing estabilishment of a backbone of society other then with determination trying to force those slimey creatures who run them to do the right thing. Otherwise it is left to individual citizens who unfortunately are in sufficient numbers, sufficiently ignorant, selfish, greedy and vicious to make sure that any other solution is unworkable. That is the great tragedy of this whole thing. If everyone was wise and did the right thing, we would not need governments, UN, etc. and libertarians would be totally right... and so would communists ... and any other utopian system followers because all those depend on this one impossible pre-condition.
Quick questions then: is it a libertarian position that permanently-disabled who cant work die from starvation or thirst? Perheaps it is "libertarian" to allow children from families who are too poor to fund their education to stay un-educated and poor as it were the child's choice where to get born? If the answer to any of these is yes, then you and I sir will be mortal enemies, me on the side of all what is humane and just and you on the side of Universal And Supreme Selfish Greed Above All.
Actually no, in my case it because the whole idea of "property" is based on scarcity of physical goods and our animalistic instincts to "posses things". Furthermore, and more critically, as I explained, the idea of "property" is simply not applicable to information, not because it is my political or personal conviction but because information lacks the required attributes for it. Thus it is a question of logic and empirical experience.
Unless you're 1) In the same financial position as an artist; and 2) Giving away all of your productivity for nothing; and 3) not dead in a month from starvation; then you have no right to say that information should be free.
Again a fallacy, you made an assumption (very popular one) that "the artist" has a "right" to renumeration for his work. No such right exists, and furthermore if he is an artist that was not his objective anyhow. The reason the right does not exist is because none of us has the "right" to work. We only have an ability to ask others to renumerate us for our services to them. Also we have a right that once we enter an agreement with someone to perform work for them, they (as well as us) must obide by its terms (with exceptions dealing with lies and misrepresentations etc. but these are beside the point). These two combined form the foundation of all commerce.
To posit that "ancient" ideas of property and stealing are somehow still applicable today (even though those laws were written for their particular circumstances; hmm, I must be getting old... am I talking about the Bible or IP here?) without putting forward a workable solution that keeps everyone fed, is a hollow exercise
Another fallacy. What you are stating is this: "Since you exposed these con-men for what they are, now you are responsible for feeding them while making sure they can continue to practice their 'profession' undisturbed".
Bad news here: the "music industry", "film industry", "software industry" and similiar cons are simply not viable economicaly in non police-state societies. This is what it boils down to. The people "working" in these have two morally consistent choices: find some other work and forget about any of this ... or try to get funded as artists by art lovers and produce their (true then) art for all to enjoy.
Further, why is it that it's other people's ideas of property that need to change?
I was under impression that was me who is insisting that they do not change and that we stick to norms established since written history began...
What I see (if you take away the "evil" heavy-handed way in which things are implemented) is one group of people trying to use today's technology and still feed the producer, and one group of people that want something for nothing. I happen to like a good 7-10 year no-compete law for intellectual works. Just because I despise purpetual copyright extentions, it doesn't mean I think somebody should get the shaft when they produce something that lots of people find useful but also find easy to copy.
It all comes down to your view of what constitutes "getting the shaft". A scientist or an artist will seek discovery or expression and will receive in return recognition and attribution for his/her discoveries and art. Plus money from academia or art foundations or art patrons at a performance etc. What he should not expect is to get is untold billions from all corners of the planet where his performance (which he did only once) is re-played by countless machines owned by other people, powered by energy paid for by those same people etc.
In other words the problem is the culture of insane greed
Lemme guess... Global Crossing? Gary, is that you?!
Yes, its all paranoia and delusions and none of this is really happening. Software and information are not having an exponentially increasing role in human civilization and noone is really trying to take control of it. Just as noone is patenting new DNA strains and then suing people on whose fields they spread. We can all go back to sleep. You sure did.
I'd suggest the War On Drugs at the very least, and more likely an international banking conspiracy of some kind, or perhaps something involving plagues and/or famine.
I find it curious that you suggest the kinds of pursuits which are the favourite of those who promote "intellectual property". Last time I looked it was MPAA/RIAA who were conducting "War on piracy" and it was poeple like me who were against it. I guess you probably call all those who used to point out non-existence of WMDs in Iraq prior to the war "paranoid people obsessed with famines and plagues" too.
Damn right, but you should also remember that there is another, completely unrelated aspect of this: attribution. Most artists and scientists do not care about making a fortune but the do care about being attributed the authorship of their ideas. That is their "reward" and I have nothing against it.
Go ahead, although I am afraid there are people who can express these things far better then I could.