"I didn't say Allofmp3 was legal; in fact, I warned people I recommended the site to that they operated in a gray area. However, they were still willing to pay for songs that had a guaranteed quality, were easy to find and worked on their devices. Now that they can't use Allofmp3 anymore, they prefer to pirate songs - they are more difficult to find, don't have a guaranteed quality, but work on their devices."
If your friends are willing to pay for pirated content, sounds like a good opportunity for you to make a little extra money from your less technically savvy friends:
Your friends tell you what music they want.
You get it via BT (if you don't have it already) and do the necessary format conversion.
Sell the tracks to your friends
Steal underpants (optional)
Profit!!!
If you want to be more like allofmp3, you can have another friend set up his own rights clearance organization. It doesn't matter if he's recognized by BMI/ASCAP, etc. -- ROMS certainly isn't, so that's not the point. Then, pay your friend 10% of the money you get from selling MP3s to your friends, and you'll be precisely on the same moral ground as allofmp3.
For extra bonus points, tell your friends that you are "considering" giving some of your money to the musicians, just as allofmp3 has stated.
Why is it that people think that the slippery slope is some sort of sound legal reasoning? It's illegal to smoke marijuana, so by this logic, it's illegal to smoke oregano. It might be considered fair use to make one copy of my CD for a friend, so by this logic, it would be fair use to put it on a filesharing network for 10,000 of my closest friends. I am allowed to physically discipline my child in some states; by this logic, I am allowed to physically discipline my spouse.
Using somebody's Wi-Fi without their permission is illegal in some places. This is because the law says so. It has nothing to do with anything else.
"what the hell is wrong with you? do you think that cars, mansions, designer clothes, and heroin pays for itself? what about rehab? what about agent fees? what about lawyers and accountants? these are all very expensive things that help starts live their expensive lives. who's going to pay for all of that stuff?"
Huh? We're ragging on Mary Wilson because she's so greedy, right? She lives a much more down-to-earth life than you might think. She had an angioplasty last year and was in a car accident that killed her son a few years back. Perhaps the angioplasty was due in part to years of heroin abuse, and perhaps she was on heroin when the accident occurred, but those theories don't match up with what is known about Mary Wilson.
Your post, and the GP post, are refreshing. The usual Slashdot story is that artists get the short end of the stick from the record companies and end their contracts just as broke as when they started -- a situation which Mary Wilson certainly found herself in. As we can see from your post, not everybody believes this. For Mary's sake, I hope you're right about her. If the article is to be believed, she's performing at an Indian bingo casino in Milwaukee. She's 63 years old, and unlike the "regular people" you mention, she has no pension plan.
"The average person in India earns less in a year than you earn in a month and there is no way that they can afford to 'buy' a genuine copy of windows."
I think you're being fooled by the statistics. India has a very high percentage of poor people, but in the industrial centers, wages and costs of living are comparable to those of other industrialized nations. It's easy to lie with statistics and use the average salary in India, including the countless dirt farmers who do not own computers, but it's useless in this context. In an unrelated note, a more common scenario of being fooled by statistics is the oft-quoted statistic that the average lifespan was 38 years or somesuch in the Middle Ages. People tend to think that this means that folks of the day commonly dropped dead in their 30's; the reality is that plenty of people lived to their 60s, 70s, and 80s -- just as they do now -- but there was a high infant mortality rate, much higher than today. If you survived childhood, you had a decent chance of seeing much more than 38 candles on your cake.
The important thing is that the customers of these shops are buying computers, big-screen TVs, mobile phones, and other luxury trappings. They could afford that $99 Windows license to go with their $800 computer, but they choose not to, as it's widely available for free. And, if a retailer were to buck the trend and start charging for Windows licenses and other preloaded software, his customers would simply go to one of the ten other shops on the road which would still happily continue to preload the software for free.
"wait, i am confused, how is not paying for a product being a customer?"
Well, you already know that when record companies catch pirates, they are "suing their customers," and when Fry's or Macy's catch people shoplifting, they are "having their customers arrested."
It seems that simply using, or even simply wanting your product makes me a customer of yours.
"If Lincoln were President today, he'd be very unpopular with the Slashdot crowd. Slavery issues aside, he believed and acted in a manner that strengthened the federal government. He even ordered confedracy sympathizers in Maryland arrested prior to election day so that Maryland, the seat of power for the Federal government, wouldn't secede."
Plus, there's the personal grooming issue. I think the relevant phrase on Slashdot would be "goatee considered harmful."
"That's not to say that Kanellos isn't entitled to draw a conclusion; I just expect a little more support than "I've spoken to a lot of patent trolls and they were all nice blokes! Plus there's money to be made, so there!". Ad if you have any expectations at all for professional media, then I think you require higher standards as well."
That's an interesting outlook. To what standard are you holding him? I've read lots of editorials in my day -- in the NYT, Washington Post, and various other well-known newspapers, as well as more magazines that I can count. Kanellos' piece seems to fit within those standards. No debate, or balanced consideration of all sides, or even (as another poster suggested) posting of one's research data is typically expected... these are editorials, not doctoral theses.
"So let me get this straight. You've got one example of a site that you believe isn't abusing the current copyright system that you happen to like. On this basis you wish to keep the existing system despite the overwhelming amount of abuse? We're talking human rights issues when you're willing to throw someone in jail for protecting their work. That's irrational."
Yes, you understand me exactly. I want to throw people in jail for protecting their work!
Forgive me if the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a little when people want to reform copyright by preventing "middlemen" from making a profit by selling copyrighted works. Leaves the door a bit too wide open for declaring bookstores to be in violation of the new utopian copyright system. Yes, perhaps it would ultimately be better for authors and consumers alike if we do so, but it's all a bit too Randian for me. And, when people talk about changing the law to give artists fewer rights, it makes me sad.
I am sorry that your local zoo (like many, many businesses) has a policy which prevents you from taking commercial photography on their private property, and that the music provided by unsigned artists isn't of good enough quality for you to use in your videos. I am sorrier still that you consider this to be a human rights issue.
Those are some interesting ideas. I have a question for you:
"What we need is a system that financially compensates the creator, not the middle man. Make it unprofitable to be a middle-man and institutions like RIAA/MPAA go away. There should be a cap on what anyone else can make from selling a person's creation."
One of my favorite sites right now is istockphoto. It's really great -- I can buy some often really great quality work for a buck or two an image, which is far less than Corbis and the rest charge. And, the artist gets about half of the money from the sale. If I understand you correctly, your system would be the death of istockphoto, because they're a middleman. This would suck for me, because I really like this site and it's enabled me to find -- and compensate -- artists that I could not before. It would suck for the artists as well, as they would be left to their own devices to find potential customers.
"2) Does not allow an artist/inventor/creator to control distribution or use of the work."
I think istockphoto would run afoul of your new system here, too. One can buy either a standard license (in which each item starts at a buck) or an extended license, which is a bit more. The extended license allows you to do more things, like put the image on t-shirts. I like this two-tier system, since it allows me to get stuff cheaply.
In short... I love istockphoto, it's hugely popular with photographers and artists (and they are paid fairly), and if the guy who launched the site makes a zillion dollars, then more power to him.
If your copyright system were put into place, it would be a loss for istockphoto, the artists who use it, and customers like me. Can you explain how istockphoto exemplifies what's broken about today's copyright system?
"So basically it seems like this guy doesn't want to do away with copyright, he just wants to change it so that any non-GPL-style license is prohibited."
You can see the appeal here. All the free music and movies you want, but nobody gets to mess with your FOSS project in a way you don't want. Since most of us are coders, and not musicians or moviemakers (or, we're more likely to have friends who are the former, not the latter), it's an attractive idea to many Slashdotters.
"in the case of the music industry the products are not equivilent. If you want to by a copy of a particular song legally that copy must have been made or authorised to be made by the copyright holder."
I don't follow. If I want a Lotus Elise, I've gotta buy it from Lotus. Sure, GM, BMW, Porsche, etc. all make vehicles which are much like the Elise, but only Lotus can sell me an Elise. Likewise, if Dreyer's strawberry ice cream is my favorite, I've got to buy it from them. Other vendors make strawberry ice cream, and some are quite good, but if I want Dreyer's unique recipe, there's only one source.
Lots of people claim that since you have no choice but to, say, patronize Fat Wreck Chords if you want the latest track by Bad Astronaut, then the recording industry is a monopoly (and thus we are morally obliged to pirate their work; as it means that we are fighting the good fight). They are a monopoly in the sense that Lotus has a monopoly on the Elise or Dreyer's has a monopoly on their strawberry ice cream. They do have a monopoly, in a manner of speaking, but not in a sense that exempts them from market competition. If Fat Wreck Chords or Lotus or Dreyer's price their product too high, consumers will simply go elsewhere.
"There is also almost certainly some level of collousion between the record labels (isn't that why we have the riaa in the first place?)"
I've no doubt that record companies have colluded on pricing, but the existence of the RIAA doesn't relate here. Lots of industries -- including the ice cream and auto industry -- have trade associations.
At any rate, the price of music over the years has served as an excellent example of pricing adapting to market forces (case in point, CD prices have dropped about 20% in the past five years, and about 50% in the past 20 years. CDs (as well as autos by segment, and ice cream by segment) cost about the same from all manufacturers not because of price collusion, but because the market is highly competitive.
"And yet CDs, which are DRM free, have the highest quality audio and will cost about the same, offer a physical medium, and packaging as opposed to what will be available online."
I guess the lesson that we can learn from the success of the iTunes store is that people will pay extra for convenience, even if it means that they'll get a little less.
You appear to have a better grasp of the whole extradition business than was apparent with your first post. As you've correctly pointed out, it must be illegal in both countries.
I'll read your post about Mexico if I happen to come across it, but keep in mind a couple of other things: there has to be prima facie evidence that a crime has been committed, and that extradition requests aren't punched into ExtraditionBot(tm) software which issues the approval simply based on the facts. Real judges look at the requests, and apply common sense. Each case is different, and running a software piracy ring is not making a Mexican death threat*.
This is a straightforward enough concept. I think that what has so many Slashdotters up in arms is that running a piracy ring doesn't seem like such a bad thing to many of us -- in fact, perhaps some of us see him as a hero, and can thank DrinkOrDie for many of the warez we've gotten our hands on over the years. Thus, it seems inconceivable to even compare this to the normal situations that arise with extradition treaties -- it's taking the concept to the extreme when our own government is using extradition treaties to hurt the good guys.
* my Mexican Death Threat recipe: 2 parts Kahlua, one part jagermeister, one part Drambui.
"Should I then risk being extradited to any of the ten countries? Or maybe to all of them, in turn?"
Yes, if you distributed enough for the act to be criminal nature in all countries involved, including the country in which you reside.
This is a tough one, because many Slashdotters see piracy as a victimless crime -- information wants to be free, and all that. Unfortunately, the laws don't always agree with us.
"Should a US citizen be required to follow the laws of my country? There are many acts which are considered illegal and immoral in Sweden, but are legal in the U.S. Besides, extradition should only occur if the alleged act is criminal in both the country requesting and the country making the extradition."
Exactly -- you've asked and answered your own question. If it's only against the law in Sweden but not the US, then Sweden can't extradite. If it's against the law in both countries and the Swedish government has sufficient interest in the case (say, I sat in my home in California and ran a Ponzi scheme targeting Swedes) then your government may ask to extradite.
"So if you send, say a cartoon picture of Mohammad, to someone who happens to be in Iran when they view the email. You should be extradited to Iran to face charges of insulting Islam since your action was a crime under Iranian law, and did harm to individuals that are protected by Iranian law?"
No; the US does not have an extradition treaty with Iran.
A list of countries with which the US not have treaties may be found here.
If you're asking on behalf of an Australian citizen, Google may help, but doubt very much that Australia and Iran have a treaty.
...and they show up whenever the discussion of copyright comes up on Slashdot. But abolitionists who also want to keep the GPL? Never met one. I suspect the blog entry is a big ol' straw man.
I think that many people who hope for a copyright-free future have an idealized vision that does not adequately take into account the fact that people will still have profit motives, and will be competitive. The immedate benefits are easy to understand... free music and movies for everybody! But over the long term, economic strength would seep away from those countries which are good at creation and innovation, and toward those countries which are good at copying and producing hard goods. In the short term, US citizens would no longer be required to pay whatever price Disney sets for a Mickey Mouse t-shirt; we'd have our choice from all the Chinese factories which can turn out t-shirts really cheap... and if we don't want all that money going to China's economy, then we'd just have to pay our own workers less. This is, of course, the free and open competition that I think copyright abolitionists want; it's better for the consumer. But, not so hot for nations like the USA with healthy post-industrial economies.
Neal Stephenson nailed it; six paragraphs in to Snow Crash, he writes that there are only four things that the USA does better than anybody else (everybody say it with me): music, movies, software, and high-speed pizza delivery. This is exactly why we're using the WTO to lean on China and Russia to have more respect for our output. When copyright is abolished and these economies wither away, it will be a bumpy ride for the USA. Enjoy your pizza.
"Today's pirating student is tomorrow's paying customer. When I was a student I didn't have money, so
I never paid for music, computer games or any other software - I copied it. Once I started working I had money and I started buying all these things that I learned to appreciate through copying."
If only more people were like you! The utter explosion in piracy with the advent of the P2P networks several years back would have been followed by a similarly explosive wave of revenue, as all those college students entered the workforce and -- just like you -- started buying. The record industry would be soaring now, rather than the Evel Knievel Snake Canyon impression it's doing now. Instead, I think the "everything you want is now free" situation created by the P2P revolution is, instead, showing a significant percentage of Gen Y that IP laws don't matter much. Many of my friends who grew up pirating in the 90's still happily do to this day, despite the fact that they also have jobs. For them, it's simply because free beats paid for, 100% of the time.
As far as them "getting it" -- I think their actions are driven a little too much by their taking sales, rather than the sentiments of you and others like you. Unfortunately, in the business world they often rely on actual data rather than promises or sentiments. If more people acted like you do, then I think they'd get it just fine.
"Irregardless copyright infringement isn't theft and thus isn't criminal."
I don't follow. Like many other activities, if you do enough of it, there are criminal penalties. Pirating more than $1K worth of content within 180 days will put you in criminal infringement territory. And, yeah, folks have gone to jail.
I think your "it has to be theft in order to be criminal" statement breaks down. If somebody rapes a woman, she might claim that her "innocence has been stolen." This might evoke similar outcry from Slashdotters, as it is not theft in the legal sense. But it is still a crime.
The threshold for criminal infringement is pretty low -- just $1,000 worth of stuff within 180 days. If he's being asked to install Office Professional 2007, he'd hit that (well... $999.90) with two installations.
But to your point -- I believe the common threshold for actual prosecution is much higher... in the five figure range. Bigger fish, and all that.
"I thought the *real* pirates where the guys who were doing bit for bit copies of the disks, encryption and all, so they could sell them? Cracks mean nothing in that context."
Nope, trading HD-DVD movies via BitTorrent with links you found on The Pirate Bay is piracy, too. The relevant definition of "pirate" is pretty broad -- dictionary.com has it as "a person who uses or reproduces the work or invention of another without authorization." Nothing about how it's copied, how it's distributed, or whether it's sold.
My unsolicited advice is not to worry too much about others' perception of your actions; I don't think there's a need to call sellers of pirated DVDs "real pirates" to justify your own piracy. If you enjoy using cracking software to create "back ups" to share, or if you enjoy torrenting HD-DVDs, then don't sweat it. All that matters is your own moral compass, and not some arbitrary third person's. Enjoy your movies, and enjoy the money you've saved.
"You don't have a two year old kid. I have two kids under three years old. I put all our Little Einstein disks and Elmo disks away after the first got destroyed."
Actually, one is on the way, so I'll probably know what you mean really soon! But, I still won't be using the HD-DVD crack. I don't think it will be necessary to buy her DVDs in HD format (720 lines should be fine for a toddler), and by the time comes that HD-DVD becomes the only option at retail, hopefully she'll be well past the DVD-destroying age.
Slashdot Mirror
"Is it me or is the whole DRM, RIAA, ect getting out of hand realy fast, there attacking people in other contries."
Huh? This article was about the IFPI; they're an international trade group operating in a whole bunch of countries.
If this were about the RIAA (a US organization) causing a ruckus in the UK, then you're right -- it would be a little weird.
"I didn't say Allofmp3 was legal; in fact, I warned people I recommended the site to that they operated in a gray area. However, they were still willing to pay for songs that had a guaranteed quality, were easy to find and worked on their devices. Now that they can't use Allofmp3 anymore, they prefer to pirate songs - they are more difficult to find, don't have a guaranteed quality, but work on their devices."
If your friends are willing to pay for pirated content, sounds like a good opportunity for you to make a little extra money from your less technically savvy friends:
If you want to be more like allofmp3, you can have another friend set up his own rights clearance organization. It doesn't matter if he's recognized by BMI/ASCAP, etc. -- ROMS certainly isn't, so that's not the point. Then, pay your friend 10% of the money you get from selling MP3s to your friends, and you'll be precisely on the same moral ground as allofmp3.
For extra bonus points, tell your friends that you are "considering" giving some of your money to the musicians, just as allofmp3 has stated.
Why is it that people think that the slippery slope is some sort of sound legal reasoning? It's illegal to smoke marijuana, so by this logic, it's illegal to smoke oregano. It might be considered fair use to make one copy of my CD for a friend, so by this logic, it would be fair use to put it on a filesharing network for 10,000 of my closest friends. I am allowed to physically discipline my child in some states; by this logic, I am allowed to physically discipline my spouse.
Using somebody's Wi-Fi without their permission is illegal in some places. This is because the law says so. It has nothing to do with anything else.
"what the hell is wrong with you? do you think that cars, mansions, designer clothes, and heroin pays for itself? what about rehab? what about agent fees? what about lawyers and accountants? these are all very expensive things that help starts live their expensive lives. who's going to pay for all of that stuff?"
Huh? We're ragging on Mary Wilson because she's so greedy, right? She lives a much more down-to-earth life than you might think. She had an angioplasty last year and was in a car accident that killed her son a few years back. Perhaps the angioplasty was due in part to years of heroin abuse, and perhaps she was on heroin when the accident occurred, but those theories don't match up with what is known about Mary Wilson.
Your post, and the GP post, are refreshing. The usual Slashdot story is that artists get the short end of the stick from the record companies and end their contracts just as broke as when they started -- a situation which Mary Wilson certainly found herself in. As we can see from your post, not everybody believes this. For Mary's sake, I hope you're right about her. If the article is to be believed, she's performing at an Indian bingo casino in Milwaukee. She's 63 years old, and unlike the "regular people" you mention, she has no pension plan.
"How, exactly, does software go out with a bang? Doesn't "bang" imply success, and therefore, not going out?"
I think the editors may have been a bit too literary this time. It's from a T. S. Elliot poem called "The Hollow Men." The last two lines are:
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The meaning of the poem is subject to interpretation, but it's clear that the bang/whimper comparison very much refers to an end to the world.
"The average person in India earns less in a year than you earn in a month and there is no way that they can afford to 'buy' a genuine copy of windows."
I think you're being fooled by the statistics. India has a very high percentage of poor people, but in the industrial centers, wages and costs of living are comparable to those of other industrialized nations. It's easy to lie with statistics and use the average salary in India, including the countless dirt farmers who do not own computers, but it's useless in this context. In an unrelated note, a more common scenario of being fooled by statistics is the oft-quoted statistic that the average lifespan was 38 years or somesuch in the Middle Ages. People tend to think that this means that folks of the day commonly dropped dead in their 30's; the reality is that plenty of people lived to their 60s, 70s, and 80s -- just as they do now -- but there was a high infant mortality rate, much higher than today. If you survived childhood, you had a decent chance of seeing much more than 38 candles on your cake.
The important thing is that the customers of these shops are buying computers, big-screen TVs, mobile phones, and other luxury trappings. They could afford that $99 Windows license to go with their $800 computer, but they choose not to, as it's widely available for free. And, if a retailer were to buck the trend and start charging for Windows licenses and other preloaded software, his customers would simply go to one of the ten other shops on the road which would still happily continue to preload the software for free.
"wait, i am confused, how is not paying for a product being a customer?"
Well, you already know that when record companies catch pirates, they are "suing their customers," and when Fry's or Macy's catch people shoplifting, they are "having their customers arrested."
It seems that simply using, or even simply wanting your product makes me a customer of yours.
"If Lincoln were President today, he'd be very unpopular with the Slashdot crowd. Slavery issues aside, he believed and acted in a manner that strengthened the federal government. He even ordered confedracy sympathizers in Maryland arrested prior to election day so that Maryland, the seat of power for the Federal government, wouldn't secede."
Plus, there's the personal grooming issue. I think the relevant phrase on Slashdot would be "goatee considered harmful."
"Too soon! Too soon! ;-)"
So I suppose it's too early to say "Other than that, Jackie, how was the motorcade?"
"That's not to say that Kanellos isn't entitled to draw a conclusion; I just expect a little more support than "I've spoken to a lot of patent trolls and they were all nice blokes! Plus there's money to be made, so there!". Ad if you have any expectations at all for professional media, then I think you require higher standards as well."
That's an interesting outlook. To what standard are you holding him? I've read lots of editorials in my day -- in the NYT, Washington Post, and various other well-known newspapers, as well as more magazines that I can count. Kanellos' piece seems to fit within those standards. No debate, or balanced consideration of all sides, or even (as another poster suggested) posting of one's research data is typically expected... these are editorials, not doctoral theses.
"So let me get this straight. You've got one example of a site that you believe isn't abusing the current copyright system that you happen to like. On this basis you wish to keep the existing system despite the overwhelming amount of abuse? We're talking human rights issues when you're willing to throw someone in jail for protecting their work. That's irrational."
Yes, you understand me exactly. I want to throw people in jail for protecting their work!
Forgive me if the hairs on the back of my neck stand up a little when people want to reform copyright by preventing "middlemen" from making a profit by selling copyrighted works. Leaves the door a bit too wide open for declaring bookstores to be in violation of the new utopian copyright system. Yes, perhaps it would ultimately be better for authors and consumers alike if we do so, but it's all a bit too Randian for me. And, when people talk about changing the law to give artists fewer rights, it makes me sad.
I am sorry that your local zoo (like many, many businesses) has a policy which prevents you from taking commercial photography on their private property, and that the music provided by unsigned artists isn't of good enough quality for you to use in your videos. I am sorrier still that you consider this to be a human rights issue.
Those are some interesting ideas. I have a question for you:
"What we need is a system that financially compensates the creator, not the middle man. Make it unprofitable to be a middle-man and institutions like RIAA/MPAA go away. There should be a cap on what anyone else can make from selling a person's creation."
One of my favorite sites right now is istockphoto. It's really great -- I can buy some often really great quality work for a buck or two an image, which is far less than Corbis and the rest charge. And, the artist gets about half of the money from the sale. If I understand you correctly, your system would be the death of istockphoto, because they're a middleman. This would suck for me, because I really like this site and it's enabled me to find -- and compensate -- artists that I could not before. It would suck for the artists as well, as they would be left to their own devices to find potential customers.
"2) Does not allow an artist/inventor/creator to control distribution or use of the work."
I think istockphoto would run afoul of your new system here, too. One can buy either a standard license (in which each item starts at a buck) or an extended license, which is a bit more. The extended license allows you to do more things, like put the image on t-shirts. I like this two-tier system, since it allows me to get stuff cheaply.
In short... I love istockphoto, it's hugely popular with photographers and artists (and they are paid fairly), and if the guy who launched the site makes a zillion dollars, then more power to him.
If your copyright system were put into place, it would be a loss for istockphoto, the artists who use it, and customers like me. Can you explain how istockphoto exemplifies what's broken about today's copyright system?
"So basically it seems like this guy doesn't want to do away with copyright, he just wants to change it so that any non-GPL-style license is prohibited."
You can see the appeal here. All the free music and movies you want, but nobody gets to mess with your FOSS project in a way you don't want. Since most of us are coders, and not musicians or moviemakers (or, we're more likely to have friends who are the former, not the latter), it's an attractive idea to many Slashdotters.
"in the case of the music industry the products are not equivilent. If you want to by a copy of a particular song legally that copy must have been made or authorised to be made by the copyright holder."
I don't follow. If I want a Lotus Elise, I've gotta buy it from Lotus. Sure, GM, BMW, Porsche, etc. all make vehicles which are much like the Elise, but only Lotus can sell me an Elise. Likewise, if Dreyer's strawberry ice cream is my favorite, I've got to buy it from them. Other vendors make strawberry ice cream, and some are quite good, but if I want Dreyer's unique recipe, there's only one source.
Lots of people claim that since you have no choice but to, say, patronize Fat Wreck Chords if you want the latest track by Bad Astronaut, then the recording industry is a monopoly (and thus we are morally obliged to pirate their work; as it means that we are fighting the good fight). They are a monopoly in the sense that Lotus has a monopoly on the Elise or Dreyer's has a monopoly on their strawberry ice cream. They do have a monopoly, in a manner of speaking, but not in a sense that exempts them from market competition. If Fat Wreck Chords or Lotus or Dreyer's price their product too high, consumers will simply go elsewhere.
"There is also almost certainly some level of collousion between the record labels (isn't that why we have the riaa in the first place?)"
I've no doubt that record companies have colluded on pricing, but the existence of the RIAA doesn't relate here. Lots of industries -- including the ice cream and auto industry -- have trade associations.
At any rate, the price of music over the years has served as an excellent example of pricing adapting to market forces (case in point, CD prices have dropped about 20% in the past five years, and about 50% in the past 20 years. CDs (as well as autos by segment, and ice cream by segment) cost about the same from all manufacturers not because of price collusion, but because the market is highly competitive.
"And yet CDs, which are DRM free, have the highest quality audio and will cost about the same, offer a physical medium, and packaging as opposed to what will be available online."
I guess the lesson that we can learn from the success of the iTunes store is that people will pay extra for convenience, even if it means that they'll get a little less.
You appear to have a better grasp of the whole extradition business than was apparent with your first post. As you've correctly pointed out, it must be illegal in both countries.
I'll read your post about Mexico if I happen to come across it, but keep in mind a couple of other things: there has to be prima facie evidence that a crime has been committed, and that extradition requests aren't punched into ExtraditionBot(tm) software which issues the approval simply based on the facts. Real judges look at the requests, and apply common sense. Each case is different, and running a software piracy ring is not making a Mexican death threat*.
This is a straightforward enough concept. I think that what has so many Slashdotters up in arms is that running a piracy ring doesn't seem like such a bad thing to many of us -- in fact, perhaps some of us see him as a hero, and can thank DrinkOrDie for many of the warez we've gotten our hands on over the years. Thus, it seems inconceivable to even compare this to the normal situations that arise with extradition treaties -- it's taking the concept to the extreme when our own government is using extradition treaties to hurt the good guys.
* my Mexican Death Threat recipe: 2 parts Kahlua, one part jagermeister, one part Drambui.
"Should I then risk being extradited to any of the ten countries? Or maybe to all of them, in turn?"
Yes, if you distributed enough for the act to be criminal nature in all countries involved, including the country in which you reside.
This is a tough one, because many Slashdotters see piracy as a victimless crime -- information wants to be free, and all that. Unfortunately, the laws don't always agree with us.
"Should a US citizen be required to follow the laws of my country? There are many acts which are considered illegal and immoral in Sweden, but are legal in the U.S. Besides, extradition should only occur if the alleged act is criminal in both the country requesting and the country making the extradition."
Exactly -- you've asked and answered your own question. If it's only against the law in Sweden but not the US, then Sweden can't extradite. If it's against the law in both countries and the Swedish government has sufficient interest in the case (say, I sat in my home in California and ran a Ponzi scheme targeting Swedes) then your government may ask to extradite.
"So if you send, say a cartoon picture of Mohammad, to someone who happens to be in Iran when they view the email. You should be extradited to Iran to face charges of insulting Islam since your action was a crime under Iranian law, and did harm to individuals that are protected by Iranian law?"
No; the US does not have an extradition treaty with Iran.
A list of countries with which the US not have treaties may be found here.
If you're asking on behalf of an Australian citizen, Google may help, but doubt very much that Australia and Iran have a treaty.
I hope this helps.
...and they show up whenever the discussion of copyright comes up on Slashdot. But abolitionists who also want to keep the GPL? Never met one. I suspect the blog entry is a big ol' straw man.
I think that many people who hope for a copyright-free future have an idealized vision that does not adequately take into account the fact that people will still have profit motives, and will be competitive. The immedate benefits are easy to understand... free music and movies for everybody! But over the long term, economic strength would seep away from those countries which are good at creation and innovation, and toward those countries which are good at copying and producing hard goods. In the short term, US citizens would no longer be required to pay whatever price Disney sets for a Mickey Mouse t-shirt; we'd have our choice from all the Chinese factories which can turn out t-shirts really cheap... and if we don't want all that money going to China's economy, then we'd just have to pay our own workers less. This is, of course, the free and open competition that I think copyright abolitionists want; it's better for the consumer. But, not so hot for nations like the USA with healthy post-industrial economies.
Neal Stephenson nailed it; six paragraphs in to Snow Crash, he writes that there are only four things that the USA does better than anybody else (everybody say it with me): music, movies, software, and high-speed pizza delivery. This is exactly why we're using the WTO to lean on China and Russia to have more respect for our output. When copyright is abolished and these economies wither away, it will be a bumpy ride for the USA. Enjoy your pizza.
"Today's pirating student is tomorrow's paying customer. When I was a student I didn't have money, so I never paid for music, computer games or any other software - I copied it. Once I started working I had money and I started buying all these things that I learned to appreciate through copying."
If only more people were like you! The utter explosion in piracy with the advent of the P2P networks several years back would have been followed by a similarly explosive wave of revenue, as all those college students entered the workforce and -- just like you -- started buying. The record industry would be soaring now, rather than the Evel Knievel Snake Canyon impression it's doing now. Instead, I think the "everything you want is now free" situation created by the P2P revolution is, instead, showing a significant percentage of Gen Y that IP laws don't matter much. Many of my friends who grew up pirating in the 90's still happily do to this day, despite the fact that they also have jobs. For them, it's simply because free beats paid for, 100% of the time.
As far as them "getting it" -- I think their actions are driven a little too much by their taking sales, rather than the sentiments of you and others like you. Unfortunately, in the business world they often rely on actual data rather than promises or sentiments. If more people acted like you do, then I think they'd get it just fine.
"Irregardless copyright infringement isn't theft and thus isn't criminal."
I don't follow. Like many other activities, if you do enough of it, there are criminal penalties. Pirating more than $1K worth of content within 180 days will put you in criminal infringement territory. And, yeah, folks have gone to jail.
I think your "it has to be theft in order to be criminal" statement breaks down. If somebody rapes a woman, she might claim that her "innocence has been stolen." This might evoke similar outcry from Slashdotters, as it is not theft in the legal sense. But it is still a crime.
The threshold for criminal infringement is pretty low -- just $1,000 worth of stuff within 180 days. If he's being asked to install Office Professional 2007, he'd hit that (well... $999.90) with two installations.
But to your point -- I believe the common threshold for actual prosecution is much higher... in the five figure range. Bigger fish, and all that.
"I thought the *real* pirates where the guys who were doing bit for bit copies of the disks, encryption and all, so they could sell them? Cracks mean nothing in that context."
Nope, trading HD-DVD movies via BitTorrent with links you found on The Pirate Bay is piracy, too. The relevant definition of "pirate" is pretty broad -- dictionary.com has it as "a person who uses or reproduces the work or invention of another without authorization." Nothing about how it's copied, how it's distributed, or whether it's sold.
My unsolicited advice is not to worry too much about others' perception of your actions; I don't think there's a need to call sellers of pirated DVDs "real pirates" to justify your own piracy. If you enjoy using cracking software to create "back ups" to share, or if you enjoy torrenting HD-DVDs, then don't sweat it. All that matters is your own moral compass, and not some arbitrary third person's. Enjoy your movies, and enjoy the money you've saved.
"You don't have a two year old kid. I have two kids under three years old. I put all our Little Einstein disks and Elmo disks away after the first got destroyed."
Actually, one is on the way, so I'll probably know what you mean really soon! But, I still won't be using the HD-DVD crack. I don't think it will be necessary to buy her DVDs in HD format (720 lines should be fine for a toddler), and by the time comes that HD-DVD becomes the only option at retail, hopefully she'll be well past the DVD-destroying age.