I'm rather wondering why you think this would require us to turn our back on the last hundred years of culture. It seems to me that Internet radio is more of a grassroots phenomenon, and online broadcasters not being able to play RIAA-controlled music does not mean that people won't be able to listen to it on conventional radio, or CDs, or iPods.
My analysis (for what it is worth) is just that the RIAA has been priced out of the market by this - any new stations won't be able to afford their music, and frankly that's a pity. I have a feeling there are some labels that are doing the math and getting very concerned about this. But, it's good news for the independent artists, and with the way the RIAA labels treat recording artists these days, I'm all for the indy artists being able to distribute their work, have their copyrights respected, and keeping free of the system.
As far as the retroactive royalty fees go, I hate to disagree with you, but while I think it will cause some chaos, I also think that it will be fought tooth and nail, and I don't think the RIAA is going to come out on top of this one. If AOL gets a bill for millions of dollars in retroactive royalties, I can't see them taking it lightly, and they are a giant.
You may very well be right about the loss of some independent stations as this is being sorted out, although I really hope you aren't. Frankly, they don't deserve this, and what's being asked is very unreasonable.
I've read the article, and while the royalty rates are on the ludicrous side, I've got to wonder why everybody is thinking that this is a bad thing. Frankly, this could be the best thing to ever happen to internet radio and the music scene.
I've been thinking about the impact a lot since reading it, and it seems to me that there are two groups of radio stations to consider:
1. Online pirate stations who are broadcasting the music illegally. While I don't think they should be pirating the music, the fact is that if they are pirating it now, making the royalty rates higher are not going to stop them from pirating the music and playing it. To misquote Terry Pratchett, "they're PIRATES - they don't care about the law." So, no real impact there.
2. Online stations that are playing the music legitimately. This will have quite an impact on them, and most likely a positive one all round. Well, I should say, for everybody except the labels represented by the RIAA, who just got themselves priced out of the market.
It seems to me that online radio isn't going to disappear, but will do something else - the broadcasters will vote with their feet. SoundExchange and the RIAA will have a very difficult time proving that retroactive royalties are due in any court of law, and the larger stations should be large enough to defend themselves, so I doubt that the RIAA will press too hard on that one (after all, if the RIAA tried to collect from AOL, you'd have a battle royale that would take years to sort out, and my money would be on AOL). But, with the royalty rates so high, no radio station will be able to play music from an RIAA label, and the broadcasters will be very hungry for new material.
So where do they find this new material? Independent artists. With the online broadcasters desperate for material, it will be a seller's market for independent recording artists, in the process giving that section of the market just the sort of boost it needs. This will raise the profile of the independent music scene, while at the same time allowing the independent artists to negotiate a reasonable royalty situation with the broadcasters. So, the listeners who get exposed to new (and less corporate) material win, the independent artists win, and the broadcasters get out from under the RIAA thumb, so they win.
Come to think of it, the only people who lose are the RIAA, who just got shot in the foot and lost a market...
Norman Cantor covered this in his book "The Civilization of the Middle Ages," which is a very good general resource (although it does have a few inaccuracies regarding arms and armour).
In Muslim society up to the 12th century, the scholars and scientists tended to be secular, without an attachment to the organized Muslim faith (meaning that they weren't imams). The religious leaders were either fundamentalists and religious legalists or mystics - and they had never tried to reconcile their theology and scientific thought.
Around the end of the 12th century, as Europe was seeing the intellectual impact of the Twelfth Century Renaissance through the transmission of Greek thought via Spain and Sicily (not the Holy Land, though - that was actually considered to be an intellectual backwater even before the First Crusade), the religious section of Muslim society across the board decided that scientific thought was a threat to the traditional faith, and managed to enlist the help of the state. As Cantor put it, "after 1200 scientific thought in the Islamic world was dead."
Frankly, it was a tragedy, and not only did it bring an end to the Muslim golden age, but I don't think Islam ever recovered.
(I don't think the Crusades really had anything to do with this, though - as I said, the Holy Land was considered a backwater, to the point that when Jerusalem fell, some Muslims took up protesting in mosques to make authorities at least notice that it had fallen. I think this religious movement happened on its own, and we do have similar movements in Christianity in the Western World - think of the Intelligent Design controversy, for example.)
I understand the controversy quite well, at least from the actors' and actresses' points of view. Oddly enough, this comes from my first professional writing sale.
My first pro writing sale was an assignment to write a review of Myth II: Soulblighter for Computer Gaming World. I had been hired partly because of my writing talent, and partly because of my background as a Medievalist. And, just being allowed to write a feature review like that was one hell of a step for somebody who hadn't published anything more spectacular than Doctor Who fanfiction and some forum posts.
So, I wrote a review of Myth II. Personally, I thought it felt a bit too much like an expansion pack, and I said so. I wrote a sidebar about actual Medieval combat and how it compared (this was before the Total War series). And, having edited the review two or three times, I sent it in.
Thing was, it had to go before an editorial review board first. And, since it was work for hire, they could modify it however they liked. And they did - they turned my positive but not glowing review of the game and turned it into a glowing review. I figure somewhere between 30-50% of what I had written actually was in what was published. The writing style was modified to the point that I barely recognized it. The sidebar was shortened in such a way as to be historically inaccurate. And it had my name on it.
To say the least, it felt fraudulent. I certainly felt embarrassed using it as part of my portfolio for other pitches - it was a coup just to get that contract, but what was published wasn't mine. To this day a large part of me wishes they had removed my name from the final product.
So I can see why there is a controversy here. Actors are paid to act, to give a performance. When the basic performance is digitally changed (beyond, say, adding visible breath to simulate cold weather), it's no longer their performance.
Okay - my brain imploded reading this. Between the historical inaccuracies and the complete lack of understanding of what copyright is...this needs a correction.
"But that isn't the key element of why "piracy" is good for the market of art creation -- "piracy" is the return of power to everyone, rather than just those who are politically powerful."
Um, no, it doesn't. Piracy is the movement of power to the pirates. Creative power has changed hands to a large degree, but not in the way that you've described, but more on that below.
"For the first few thousand years or so of writing on paper, the distribution mechanism was a tiny industry of copy-writers."
Um...no, that isn't really true. The distribution depends a great deal on the level of literacy, and there have been some very literate societies in the past. I'm working on a textbook right now about ancient Greek and Roman humour, and if one thing is certain, it is that these people had access to literature, could read, and could write. The copying of manuscripts itself was the source of a scribal industry, but it certainly doesn't seem to be centralized at all, and the more literate the society, the larger the industry. Actually getting the manuscripts to people is another matter entirely, and we know for a fact that there were libraries - the Great Library of Alexandria being a perfect (and very famous) example.
There is some centralization after the fall of the Roman Empire, where the copying of manuscripts moves into the monasteries.
"Most villages had one Bible as their own written word, and it stayed this way for generations."
Frankly, that's really not true at all. The various Jewish communities, even through the "Dark Ages," required that everybody be able to read Torah, and a lot of commentaries were written as these communities moved around. The Islamic world remained very literate. Monasteries had their own private libraries. In many villages, however, where life had gone to a subsistence level, they didn't even have a Bible - at least not one they could generally read. While there was an Old English translation (which apparently has the war in Heaven written into Genesis), it was the exception, and the Bibles were written in Latin.
"The printing press blew open the door for people getting their ideas out -- that is all it was about."
Well, not really. The printing press made it possible to have a literate society, as it was now possible to reproduce books quickly and with (relatively) minimal effort. But, Gutenberg was trying to make money by solving a problem of reproduction, and it seems the first book off his press was an edition of the Bible. And, one of his biggest moneymakers was printing indulgences for the Church. I very much doubt Gutenberg had such lofty ideals. But, the inexpensive reproduction of texts came at a time when Europe was ready, and made the expression of ideas to a larger, literate public, possible.
"People wrote to increase their power to attract an audience to pay them for their knowledge."
Um...that's a half truth. When it came to sheer knowledge, you have to look at the first universities, based on the Cathedral Schools, where the textbook was reproduced by the professor dictating it to his students, who copyied it down verbatum. There were people like Talhoffer (one of the great swordfighting masters) who would write a book containing some of his knowledge to drum up business. Prior to the eighteenth century, most people seem to have been writing poetry, fiction, or academic treatises. Writers didn't get paid for their work at this point - they were paid a stipend by a wealthy patron who they would dedicate their work to (it's a subtle distinction, but a very important one - they were being paid to make their patron look good in their writing, not making money off the success of their work).
"Shakespeare's money didn't come from bookmaking, but from attracting others to his plays. His name was strong because of the press, but
I don't know about everybody else, but I really don't buy this story at all. It seems just a bit too out of character on the Lucas side:
1. Two Star Wars projects were "announced" by Lucas shortly after Episode 3 came out, and an older Han Solo doesn't fit into either of them. One is another Clone Wars series, and the other is a live-action series set between Episodes 3 and 4. Even if the Han Solo character does appear in the live action show, Ford is just too old to play him.
2. Considering that Star Wars is moving to the small screen anyway, doesn't it seem a bit unrealistic for Lucas to be offering anybody a lump sum of around $40 million for a single character on a television series (for that matter, has that ever happened in television history)?
3. Even if Lucas was going to be using Han Solo in one of the Star Wars spin-offs, Lucas doesn't really have a history of using big-name stars in the Star Wars movies. The biggest star who appeared in the prequels was Samuel L. Jackson, and he was a relatively minor supporting character. I can't really see Lucas breaking his pattern by bringing in a big name actor for either one of the television shows, particularly when he himself has stated in public that movie budgets have gotten too big for their own good, and he'd want to stretch his budget as far as possible over the twenty-odd shows of the season (if you do the math, that would mean that Ford would be using up around $2 million of the budget of each episode).
Frankly, I think the source article is based on a rumour inspired by wishful thinking. I can't really believe that Ford was offered the opportunity to reprise his Star Wars role at all, I'm afraid.
Actually, from what the article says, the lawsuit does have merit.
Myspace isn't being sued because their users are pirating, but because they are actively assisting in that piracy by reformatting the music file for the user. That makes them a participant rather than just a carrier.
Whether this has legal merit is for a judge to decide, but from first glance of the article and the details in it, I think Myspace may actually be in some trouble here.
I think the hundreds of authors who make less than minimum wage for years of work on their first book, and the recording artists who can sell a million records and make less than a waitress would disagree on that.
"Oddly though, novelists and studio musicians have invented some strange notion that they need to get paid more than once. They want some money for writing the book (or recording the song), and then some more money for every copy sold."
No, that is not the case.
A novelist is paid by royalties - they get a small percentage of every book that is sold. As far as payment models goes, it rewards success and punishes failure - the more books are sold, the more money the author gets. When the author signs a contract, they get an advance on those royalties. If the author gets an advance of $10,000, s/he does not see a cent of royalties until the book has earned back that $10,000. And, if the book doesn't earn back the advance, there are cases of the publisher asking for the unearned advance money back. The advance and royalties are part of the same payment.
"They don't own a printing press or a CD duplicator, they don't make copies of books, but some piece of magical thinking allows them to believe that they're creating more value by allowing the book to be duplicated."
Other people get to read it. Value created.
"If the book is made into a play, and the play into a movie, and the movie into a videogame, they want a slice each time."
Actually, the rights structure is a lot more complicated than that. But, what is wanted is perfectly reasonable. If somebody is going to take your exact creative work (plot, characters, world, etc.) and use it to make money, it is reasonable to have a cut. They're called adaptation rights. And, unless negotiated otherwise, they involve a one-time payment.
"When someone proposes that this notion will eventually evaporate or collapse under it's own weight the novelists can't conceive of such a thing..."
Perhaps it's because the novelists make a point of being informed, and are aware enough to notice that in almost three centuries of this rights structure existing, it HASN'T collapsed. It's not even teetering. What it has done is take creative artists and actually put them in a position where they are not as exploited as they used to be (well, with the notable exception of the music industry).
"This means that musicians and ALL artists will have to work just like everyone. They can create live (a show) for a fee. They can produce something unique (a jingle, or a painting) for a fee. They will have to do real jobs doing their thing if they want to make money."
One of these days, I want to find the person who started this entire myth about what the life of an artist is like and shoot them. Several times.
I've got news for you - the creative artists who get really rich off their work are the tiny minority. Most of the creative artists out there create in their spare time - they keep their day jobs, because that's the only way to support themselves.
That first novel? Well, guess what - you're lucky if when it's all said and done you make minimum wage for the hours you spent on it - and believe me, I know - my first published print book came out to around $800/month for the time I was working on it, and I worked on it full-time. Courtney Love, in a famous speech, pointed out that most recording artists make less in their first year of recording than they would waiting tables. And most actors getting started need a part-time job to keep a roof over their heads. I can't speak for the visual arts, but I haven't heard of too many who make that massive sale to a gallery.
Now, consider this - if the compensation for the creative arts was fair and equitable, you'd be paying a lot more for it, not a lot less. Perhaps instead of talking about us like we're some spoiled children, you should be grateful that we love our craft and our art to the point that despite being short-changed for it, we are still producing work for you to consume. Perhaps you should thank us for tolerating living below poverty lines to create your entertainment. And perhaps, just perhaps, you should do some research before posting, so that you don't offend those of us who actually CREATE.
I may not be a programmer, but I have worked in an election (Canadian) before, and I can tell you exactly what's wrong with that approach - the moment you ask for the SSN, it stops being a secret ballot. Even if you don't record what the ballot is in relation to the SSN, there's still the possibility (and suspicion) that it can be hacked into, and the votes revealed.
(And, part of being able to correct if something goes wrong with this would have to be matching up the vote to the SSN, and all of a sudden it's no longer a secret ballot anyway.)
I'm planning to teach writing at the college level once I've finished my career change, and I have no doubt I'll be facing a similar challenge as you are. So, let's see - how would I approach this?
Well, I recall Stephen King once saying that the key to creating terror is to take the ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary. Perhaps this would work with teaching intellectual rights and their issues.
I guess if I was doing it, I'd start with a CD, a DVD, or a book - something that everybody knows and takes for granted. Then I'd separate the physical disc/book/whatever from the intellectual property on it, pointing out the difference between selling, say, a CD at a used CD store, and making copies of the CD and selling them, and stuff like that. Once I've done that, in theory the class should be hooked and thinking about it - that could lead to a discussion of the Berne Convention, and then applications of the principles of copyright, and then abuse of copyright (for example, the RIAA lawsuits, which should get them hooked right off the bat - it seems to me that a good way to approach it is to begin with the rights of the artist, and then question whether the RIAA's actions are actually related to them, or just using them as an excuse, and go from there).
The one thing I would suggest is to avoid taking a side - let the students do that. Before writing this I read a lot of replies that involved pushing one side in exclusion to the other, which would turn the class from something thoughtful into indocrination. As a teacher (and I've done some teaching here and there, and my mother is a teacher, so I am talking a bit from experience) you need to be able to make the students examine both sides, and determine where the ethical standpoint actually lies for themselves. Playing devil's advocate can really make them think, and keep the class lively. I guess for a class like this, the best result is to end with the students questioning the implications of what they've always taken for granted.
Okay - I will concede that I may have been a bit harsh with you. I had just come away from a discussion where somebody had been doing an impression of a brick wall, and I was seeing many of the same arguments, although looking back, you are actually trying to provide groundwork for them, rather than just repeating them and doing an ostrich impression anytime somebody disagrees with you.
However, that doesn't mean that I see an understanding of what copyright is. I do not doubt that you understand the history of copyright, or the issues in the debate, but you're not giving any signs of understanding what copyright does RIGHT NOW (and I'm talking about the basic function of the law, not the issues surrounding it). That's what my initial post was about - trying to clear that up.
So, I'm going to reply, and address your concerns. You can think what you want about them.
1. The definition of information. Just in case I had been mistaken, I looked up the dictionary definition of the word in a dictionary I trust. So, "information" in the Oxford Dictionary of Current English is defined as: "n. 1 a something told; knowledge. b items of knowledge; news. 2 charge or complaint lodged with court, etc."
Now, I am a professional writer, and I hold two B.A.s, one of which is in English Literature, and I would like to think that I have a comprehensive knowledge of at least the basic English words. In all of my reading, I have never seen the word used in the context that you use it except in one place - in the posts of people who are trying to advocate for the complete destruction of copyright, and most often by those who are abusing the debate to justify pirating music or movies. Your definition is wrong. The one sticky point is the first definition, "something told," but in the context of the second part of that definition, the best interpretation is a fact being told, not a created work.
That being said, you are right - information should be free. Ideas should be free. But a created work draws on both, and is something different, and greater. Whether it should be free or not doesn't matter, because it is something that somebody created - what should matter is their wishes regarding it, within reason.
Now, unfortunately, what you say about the GPL and your work under it can also be translated to saying "I'm a wage labourer." But, the GPL does bear examination. It is based on copyright law, and uses it to create a situation where sharing is mandated. It also respects the creator's rights - if a programmer wants to code something and have it be shared, the GPL ensures that there is a legal groundwork for that to happen, and not be abused. If a programmer wants to code something and have it be proprietary, so long as they don't use GPL'ed code, they are welcome to do so (at least that is my reading of it - I may be wrong on that detail). It's all perfectly legal, wonderfully utopian, and I hope that it lasts a very long time. Quite frankly, as a writer I don't have to worry about patent law doing silly things that will force me to do an impression of a pretzel just to write - but as a programmer, you've got to worry about that. At least the GPL provides some way of fighting that.
Your vision of a world where everybody's needs are met is wonderful and utopian, and I wish we lived in a perfect world where something like that is possible. But, we don't. The big problem is that your vision raises a question - how will your vision of how intellectual rights should work be enforced? Any framework will be abused by people - it happens over and over again. Just look at the RIAA right now. I'm a creative artist, and they do NOT represent my views on copyright or how it should be enforced. They are abusing the law, and I am waiting with baited breath for somebody to file a class action suit against them and stop this madness (I'd do it myself, except that I live in Canada, and I don't have the resources to start it). Your vision will require some legal framework to protect the
I'm not willing to get into a pissing match with you. I've been here too many times before. It doesn't matter what I say - it's like talking to a brick wall. I can make point after point, present evidence after evidence, and I'll be told that I'm ignorant, lying, and misled. In the meantime, I'll see arguments claiming that what was good in the 18th century is obviously what we need now (tell that to women and blacks), or that all the effort and time that goes into art creates nothing but information. I even had somebody claim that the Internet had killed mainstream distribution, and when I challenged him to prove it, he claimed that the very fact that we were discussing his claim made it true. And quite frankly, I have neither the time nor the inclination to dance this dance again.
I wonder what your agenda actually is. Do you want reform, or are you actually just looking for some free music? If you want reform, than you have a lot of learning to do. Before you can reform a thing, you must first understand that thing. And, regardless of your protestations of how "uninformed" I am, I'm the one here who has published books, and who has put his blood sweat, and tears into his work, and has made a point of understanding the Berne Convention.
I'd also suggest looking at the Stationer's Log, the system of artistic patronage and how it developed prior to the first signing of the Berne Convention, and the social history of the 19th century in the United States and England.
And that is the last I am willing to say in this particular discussion thread.
I haven't heard of that standing up in court, though. From what I understand, most EULAs aren't enforceable in the first place. I think there was one case involving a university student selling a copy of MS Office on eBay, and the court sided with the student (can't for the life of me remember the name, though).
I am not a lawyer, but I am a published author and a professional writer. And, while there's a lot wrong in the post one branch above this one, getting into a pissing match over it isn't going to help, particularly when most of this tends to be over a misunderstanding about what copyright is and why it is there.
So, instead of arguing, I'm going to educate - this is copyright 101. So please pay close attention, and you'll understand what is going on a lot better. I'm going to start by describing what copyright is and what it does, and then talk about why we still need it (and, I'd argue, need it even more than before).
Copyright today in most western countries is based on an international agreement called the Berne Convention, first signed at the end of the 19th century, and most recently updated in the 1970s. There is a history of copyright that goes far beyond the Berne Convention, such as the Stationer's Log in 17th century England and a clause in the original U.S. Constitution, but we're dealing with copyright as it is today, not its history (which, while relevant, is for another discussion). For the sake of this discussion, we'll call the copyrighted material "art" (it takes less time to type than "copyrighted material").
Copyright covers two basic functions - the first is the right to distribute (hence "copy-right"), and the second is derivative works. Both of these tend to be misunderstood a great deal by laymen.
The right to distribute basically means that the creator of the art is able to decide how that art is to be distributed within reasonable means. If the creator wishes the art to be released to the public for free download, the creator is allowed to do that. If the creator wants to sell the publication rights to a publisher, the creator can do that too. It's important to note that there is no explicit instruction in copyright law of how a creator is to distribute his/her art - what this amounts to in the end is that the wishes of the creator must be respected under law.
There are limits to these wishes, however. For example, while the creator owns the copyrights to the content itself, s/he does not own what the content is distributed on. So, if I write a book about an alien invasion where the aliens are using biological weapons, sell the publication rights to a publisher, and you buy the printed book, I cannot tell you that you can only read it in the wee hours of the morning, or anything like that. I also cannot tell you that you can't give that book you just bought away as a present, or sell it to a used bookstore, as you own the paper it is printed on, and can do what you like with it in that regard. I CAN tell you that you cannot copy it and sell it on the street corner, or give copies of it away, as that would undermine my wishes as to how it is to be distributed. If you disregard my wishes in terms of distribution, copyright law allows me to take action to protect my intellectual property and ensure that my wishes are respected.
(An example of copyright in action is the open source license, which recently stood up in court. That license has its binding power because copyright law supports it.)
These wishes are also mitigated by fair use. Fair use means that if you are writing an academic paper and you want to quote the aforementioned book about the alien invastion, you may do so without asking permission, so long as you give credit where it is due. There are other clauses and limitations, but those vary internationally, and most people here actually do have a good sense of what fair use is - it's copyright that seems to cause people all the trouble.
Depending on what country you are in, copyright extends anywhere from 50-75 years after the death of the creator. This is a source of much debate. On the creator's side, it allows the creator to leave a legacy for his/her family based on his/her hard work. When it comes to what it means on the side of the publishers or public, it's a bit more complicated. A lot depends on what ri
"The generalization should be broad enough to include the motion picture industry as well."
Are you sure about about? There's an argument to be made that Hollywood hasn't put out an original product in years...:-)
"Sharing is a norm; stealing is not."
We'd have to agree to disagree here, I guess. I wouldn't say that sharing is a norm. I wouldn't say that stealing in and of itself is a norm either. I'd put the norm more at territorialism (both individual- and group-oriented) and self-interest.
Sorry to take so long to reply to this - I was caught up in racing an editing deadline and another part of this argument had me occupied (although I have finished with that one, thank God).
First of all, thank you - you have to be one of the first people I've seen in this general argument who has provided an intelligent claim on this side and evidence to back it up. After seeing stuff like patent law being mistaken for copyright law, and somebody actually declaring that discussion of a claim was evidence that the claim was correct, it's a breath of fresh air. Almost everything you've said I can't really argue with, and so I'll just deal with the points I disagree with.
"But today the brutal over-enforcement by the content cartel, and the control of the creative process by corporations and insurance companies which assume the fair use defense is nonexistent, and require clearances for everything, is making for a lot of difficulty, and threatens the creation of new things."
I certainly can't disagree with the statement that there is over-enforcement, but there must be a distinction made between the letter of a law and abuse of that law. Unfortunately, the music industry has a history of treating its artists very badly in this regard (there was a wonderful piece by Courtney Love, I believe, about how the impact of a pirated song was nothing compared to how the music industry rips off the musicians themselves). This isn't necessarily reflected in other creative media, though, so I don't think that a generalization really works here.
"I do think that sharing is an integral part of human nature, while stealing is an unfortunate trait of some humans, but not one that promotes human life."
We certainly form communities - I can't argue against that part of it. However, history is replete with examples of one community trying to wipe out another over resources. There is also a long history of people lying, cheating, and stealing to monopolize information both inside and outside of the academic community. The idea of everybody sharing knowledge is certainly a wonderful ideal, and there are certainly people who follow that ideal and are the better for it, but at the same time there are far too many counter-examples of people being territorial and greedy for me to consider the ideal the norm.
"> Translation: you don't actually have an argument or proof to refute me, so you're calling my argument names instead.
Correction. I don't have time to educate you. I've done it enough times on slashdot with people who hold the exact same self-justifying beliefs and found them to be intractable to logic. But just so it is clear, that your post was fully of misdirection of sophistry - just what kind of bizarro world do you live in that you think citing the extinction of neaderthals is proof that humans do not naturally share knowledge?
> Translation: you don't actually have a clue as to what copyright is in the first place, or what it means to be a creator, or the difference between a work of art and a spreadsheet, so you're trying to bully an idea through without proof of any sort.
Ok, tell me. Just what makes "a work of art" so much different from a spreadsheet? Is it the time and effort that went into creating it? Is it the skill of the creator and their understanding of what the spreadsheet represents? Is it the uniqueness of the spreadsheet? Is it the thoughts and insight that the spreadsheet can inspire in the minds of people who view it? Or maybe it is what the market will pay for the spreadsheet? I give up. What difference is there? Come on mr holier-than-thou-because-i-am-zee-artiste, put your cards on the table.
I'll give you $2000 via paypal if you can distinguish between digitzed "art" bits and "information" bits. Here are two sets of 32 bits in hexadecimal format, one is copied from a jpeg scan of the mona lisa, the other is copied from a gnumeric spreadsheet:
0x387A2F4F 0x24324373
If art is not information, surely you can tell the difference. I've got $2K I am ready to spend on a Panasonic AX100U projector, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is. If you aren't full of bullshit, then prove it and come and take my money."
The only reason I am justifying this with a response is that you have put your money where your mouth is, and in this case I am quite happy to take the money from an ignorant, arrogant fool.
The challenge is, on first glance, a trick question. What you've provided are bits, which are just raw computer data. They're useless to anybody without the context to place them. Unfortunately for you, you never specified HOW I had to distinguish between them, and it's too late for you to do so now. You also only challenged me to demonstrate that I can - not to actually do so. So, my method would be to look at the entire file containing each bit, determine what type of file it is (easily enough done using the file extension, or trying file extensions until something reads as an image file), and that would determine which one is the jpeg (and since the Mona Lisa is easily the most famous painting in the world, the work of art). By process of elimination, that makes the other one the data from a spreadsheet. So, yes, I CAN tell the difference, and having presented a workable solution, I've won the challenge.
Unfortunately, I don't use paypal, so you'll have to pay me by certified cheque. Contact me at delric at istar.ca and I'll give you the address to mail it to.
(Word to the wise - don't ever try to bluff out somebody holding the proverbial nut flush.)
Not that I expect to get paid. You'll make some idiotic claim that I cheated, or misunderstood your words, or that I didn't prove what I was supposed to be arguing, and weasel out of it. I've seen your type on here before. You're like one of those creationists - it doesn't matter what hard evidence I present, you'll just claim that I'm misleading you, presenting inconclusive evidence, or lying. And I don't like having conversations with the equivalent of a brick wall. So, I'm not going to waste any more time with you. If you want to talk some more, you're going to have to make good on your bet.
"That statement sums up your position perfectly. Everything else you posted was silly misdirection and sophistry, but this takes the cake."
Translation: you don't actually have an argument or proof to refute me, so you're calling my argument names instead.
"Everyone who makes that kind of semantic distinction is an idiot because it demonstrates a willful ignorance of the modern world. If it can be digitized, it is information. No ifs, ands or buts."
Translation: you don't actually have a clue as to what copyright is in the first place, or what it means to be a creator, or the difference between a work of art and a spreadsheet, so you're trying to bully an idea through without proof of any sort.
"That you don't understand this fundamental fact is all the proof in the world that you have zero qualification to pontificate on the topic of copyright. Every single issue that makes copyright controversial today is a direct result of this fact. If we were still in a world where all copyrighted materials had to be semi-permanently fixed in some sort of physical medium like a CD or a book, then piracy would be so rare that it would hardly be a topic of even academic debate much less the central issue of a PR campaign included at the start of every movie out of Hollywood."
Translation: you haven't bothered to actually become informed, understand why copyright is there, or its history, but you have seen anti-piracy ads at the theatre, and you don't like them.
Don't bother to reply to this - you are to an intelligent discussion what a guillotine is to a sore throat, and you've proved that enough over the last two days.
">>distribution is dead and the internet killed it..." ">Prove it
We would not be having this conversation if it were not the case. Dinosaurs did not die over night, and neither will the distribution industry. When the entire point of the internet is to make massive distribution of information at minimum cost, the end is obvious."
Sorry, but that's not proof. That's turning it into a circular argument. And the end is not obvious. If it was, the tape recorder and radio would have killed the music store decades ago, and the VCR would have done the same to the movie business. When it came to the ebook, history has instead shown is that online distribution tends to become a "sibling" form of distribution to the mainstream distribution channels, and also that online sales tend to be lower than mainstream sales. This is even quite logical. This may come as a shock to you, but even though it's cheaper to distribute online, most people actually prefer to not be chained to their computer for their entertainment needs.
"> 1. The law is adapting and changing, and is far from anachronistic.
Prove it! Lol. Show me one bit of legislation that accepts, rather than ignores or is in conflict with, the fact that distribution is essentially zero-cost on the net."
Well, first of all, copyright law has nothing to do with the cost of distribution - it's about who is allowed to distribute. The cost of distribution is irrelevant to the actual law itself. As far as legislators trying to adapt to the issues of new technology, in the United States alone you've got the: Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Benefit Authors without Limiting Advancement or Net Consumer Expectations Act (still being debated), the No Electronic Theft Act, the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (still being debated), and the Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004 (still being debated). Not all of these will pass, and not all of them will get it right, but all of them are proof that legislators are trying to understand and deal with the issues involved.
"You write as if the law entitles you to something. The law is not morality, and copyright law is an arbitrary restriction on inherently non-rivalrous goods."
Actually, the law explicitly entitles me to certain protections of my work, and to have all of my reasonable wishes regarding that work respected. And the law may not be morality, but all law is based on morality in some way.
"Who are you to judge other people's agendas? You just don't like it because it calls your entitlement into question. Seems like two sides of the same coin to me."
I'm part of the group whose rights you want to strip away. I'm protecting reasonable rights that are guaranteed to me under law. And I'm somebody with a brain in my head who can see your agenda for the bullshit it is, and is willing to take you to task for it. There are so many ways to fight the RIAA that it isn't funny. But you're not talking about writing letters to newspapers or congressmen/congresswomen/senators, or donating to the EFF or defense funds, or getting involved in organizing protests or protesting, or launching a lawsuit, or writing blog entries or editorials, or making your voice heard in any way that would be noticed and counted - you're talking about hiding in a corner and illegally downloading music, and complaining that there's somebody who would take you to task on it. The actions do not match the agenda. If you want free music, then come out and say it. But stop being dishonest about it.
"Just how do you think the knowledge to make agriculture efficient was distributed? SHARING. Was the wheel patented? Was the lunar calendar copyrighted? I don't deny that people are unwilling to freely share rivalrous goods. But information is non-rivalrous and non-exclusive, making the free sharing of it natural, efficient and inevitable."
Oh, go read a book about history, for crying out loud. And try telling that crap about sha
"As you say, we now have a great deal more creative content available than ever before. Yet is this because of copyright law or despite of it? With so much content available, society as a whole can not afford all of it. Is this a cost benefit selection where consumers must make do with the limited amount of content they can afford? Does preventing the free flow of digital expressions of thoughts and ideas really encourage the creation of new thoughts and ideas?"
I would say that the amount of content available right now has almost nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. It does have a lot to do with population, literacy, pop culture, and perception of the trade (there is this idea that writing for a living is this wonderful, glamourous life with lots of sex and money, but that is almost never the case in reality - the joke in the trade is that if we had exciting lives, we wouldn't be spending all our time writing). But people start creating out of love for the craft. When they get good enough that they can spend months on a single project and have it be worth something, they need to support themselves, and copyright law is there to prevent them from getting screwed over.
For example, one of my acquaintances is an amateur writer who has actually stopped posting her work. From what I hear, she's only a couple of steps away from her writing being professional quality. But, every time she posted a story, a bunch of websites copied it, took her name off it, and slapped on their own. That's what copyright is supposed to protect artists from. I really wish she had the time and money to sue those people - the credit for her own work should never have been taken away from her. And now she's been so badly burned that it's quite possible that none of her new writing will ever see the light of day - content none of us will ever read.
This is an abuse that shows up a lot. There was even a Slashdot news story about how a lot of bloggers were plagerizing, rather than doing their own work. Copyright is the law that allows the original author to fight against that.
The idea that society can't afford all of this content is laughable. Society doesn't just buy content wholesale - creative artists put it on the market, and people buy or rent what they like. And there are lots of inexpensive means of distribution. Songs can be listened to for free on the radio. Books can be borrowed from a library for only the cost of a library card. Movies can be rented for a minor fee from a video rental outlet. And that's not counting all the content that shows up on television, paid for either by advertisements that don't cost the consumer a cent, or a small fee in the case of cable television. And then there's places like Amazon, which offer discounts on pretty much any orders. We may be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of content, but unable to afford it? Not at all.
To think that copyright prevents the free flow of ideas is nonsense. Copyright law does not allow one to copyright an idea - only a specific implementation of one. There is nothing stopping somebody taking the same idea and going their own direction with it, nor should there be. Patent law, which is a much different matter, allows one to monopolize an idea. And copyright law is not about taking away the expression of thoughts and ideas - merely ensuring that the creator of the expression of thoughts and ideas is able to decide what happens with their own work. Having to pay X amount of dollars for a book doesn't stop that book from being on the bookshelf in the first place. It's still available. It's just your choice whether or not to pay to read it.
To deal with your final paragraph:
"Nothing wrong with asking. But is it okay to demand for payment? Is it acceptable to deny others access to your hard work? Does society really benefit more by keeping your content under legal protection? Isn't the debate over where to draw this line exactly what society should be having right now?"
"The content cartel are the only ones who benefit from the anachronistic system staying in place. Rather than allow the law to really catch up with the revolutionary change in society - namely that distribution is dead and the internet killed it..."
Prove it.
Quite frankly, I see plenty of bookstores around, and the e-book was supposed to kill those years ago. Lots of music stores around. About the only place I've seen evidence that there is a marked drop in sales is in video stores, and those tended to be in regards to movies that weren't that good in the first place. So, you've made a claim - let's see some reports of profits going down across the board.
"Instead of railing at people who are behaving naturally to file a lawsuit -- yes it is human nature to share freely, without it civilization would have never got off the ground -- why don't YOU get busy and figure out how to get paid for your hard work in a way that doesn't rely on an anachronistic, unenforceable law?"
Because:
1. The law is adapting and changing, and is far from anachronistic.
2. It's not my job to give you everything you think you're entitled to. I'll write whatever I want to write, and it will sell however it ends up selling in the market.
3. I'm railing against people doing things that are pointless, or using an unrelated cause to justify their own agenda. You want to pirate music, fine - there's nothing I can do to stop you. But don't claim you're doing it in protest of something. Have the decency to be honest enough to say that it's because you want free music. The RIAA won't even notice the loss of your money. It WILL notice a class action suit. And if it lost such a suit, it would probably lose enough money that the entire RIAA issue would be settled in a positive way for everybody. That's how you fight back.
4. It is not human nature to share freely, and that did not get civilization started. Civilization started when hunter gatherers settled with everybody working the land. Eventually agriculture got efficient enough that people could be paid with food for services unrelated to cultivation. It was a barter economy, not people sharing freely. Considering the number of wars in the ancient world that were fought over areas of land with trade routes or resources, it's a lot more justified to say that human nature is territorial and greedy. Read Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse" if you want a better idea of how civilizations develop across history.
And here is the world's smallest violin, playing for you...
I'm sorry, but I can't stand this argument, I really can't. It's so hypocritical it isn't funny. You're surrounded by content, drowning in it, even. There is more creative content available today than there has been in the whole of human history. But God help us creative artists if we actually want to charge money for that year's worth of writing/painting/composing/sculpting work, or leave a legacy for our families. You're allowed to do that, but we aren't. You can complain about the Mickey Mouse Act all you like, but it's still hypocrisy.
How about this? How about actually trying to understand the law, and how copyright works? How about understanding how reprint rights work, and how once they are sold to a publisher, it is actually up to the publisher when and how a work is reprinted? How about understanding the history of intellectual rights (and this goes WAY beyond a clause in the original constitution), and why it is important for copyright, and any code of laws, for that matter, to change and adapt as society changes? How about trying to understand the difference between a law itself and abuse of that law?
Guess what - asking you to pay for somebody else's hard work is not theft. Somebody abusing a law to their own ends does not make the law itself invalid. And if you want to hurt the RIAA, file a class action suit against them for abusing and breaking the law, rather than using them as an excuse to break the law yourself. But disrespecting an artist's wishes while claiming that the RIAA's actions give you a moral right to do so is wrong - they do no such thing, and to claim otherwise is hypocritical.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm rather wondering why you think this would require us to turn our back on the last hundred years of culture. It seems to me that Internet radio is more of a grassroots phenomenon, and online broadcasters not being able to play RIAA-controlled music does not mean that people won't be able to listen to it on conventional radio, or CDs, or iPods.
My analysis (for what it is worth) is just that the RIAA has been priced out of the market by this - any new stations won't be able to afford their music, and frankly that's a pity. I have a feeling there are some labels that are doing the math and getting very concerned about this. But, it's good news for the independent artists, and with the way the RIAA labels treat recording artists these days, I'm all for the indy artists being able to distribute their work, have their copyrights respected, and keeping free of the system.
As far as the retroactive royalty fees go, I hate to disagree with you, but while I think it will cause some chaos, I also think that it will be fought tooth and nail, and I don't think the RIAA is going to come out on top of this one. If AOL gets a bill for millions of dollars in retroactive royalties, I can't see them taking it lightly, and they are a giant.
You may very well be right about the loss of some independent stations as this is being sorted out, although I really hope you aren't. Frankly, they don't deserve this, and what's being asked is very unreasonable.
I've read the article, and while the royalty rates are on the ludicrous side, I've got to wonder why everybody is thinking that this is a bad thing. Frankly, this could be the best thing to ever happen to internet radio and the music scene.
I've been thinking about the impact a lot since reading it, and it seems to me that there are two groups of radio stations to consider:
1. Online pirate stations who are broadcasting the music illegally. While I don't think they should be pirating the music, the fact is that if they are pirating it now, making the royalty rates higher are not going to stop them from pirating the music and playing it. To misquote Terry Pratchett, "they're PIRATES - they don't care about the law." So, no real impact there.
2. Online stations that are playing the music legitimately. This will have quite an impact on them, and most likely a positive one all round. Well, I should say, for everybody except the labels represented by the RIAA, who just got themselves priced out of the market.
It seems to me that online radio isn't going to disappear, but will do something else - the broadcasters will vote with their feet. SoundExchange and the RIAA will have a very difficult time proving that retroactive royalties are due in any court of law, and the larger stations should be large enough to defend themselves, so I doubt that the RIAA will press too hard on that one (after all, if the RIAA tried to collect from AOL, you'd have a battle royale that would take years to sort out, and my money would be on AOL). But, with the royalty rates so high, no radio station will be able to play music from an RIAA label, and the broadcasters will be very hungry for new material.
So where do they find this new material? Independent artists. With the online broadcasters desperate for material, it will be a seller's market for independent recording artists, in the process giving that section of the market just the sort of boost it needs. This will raise the profile of the independent music scene, while at the same time allowing the independent artists to negotiate a reasonable royalty situation with the broadcasters. So, the listeners who get exposed to new (and less corporate) material win, the independent artists win, and the broadcasters get out from under the RIAA thumb, so they win.
Come to think of it, the only people who lose are the RIAA, who just got shot in the foot and lost a market...
Norman Cantor covered this in his book "The Civilization of the Middle Ages," which is a very good general resource (although it does have a few inaccuracies regarding arms and armour).
In Muslim society up to the 12th century, the scholars and scientists tended to be secular, without an attachment to the organized Muslim faith (meaning that they weren't imams). The religious leaders were either fundamentalists and religious legalists or mystics - and they had never tried to reconcile their theology and scientific thought.
Around the end of the 12th century, as Europe was seeing the intellectual impact of the Twelfth Century Renaissance through the transmission of Greek thought via Spain and Sicily (not the Holy Land, though - that was actually considered to be an intellectual backwater even before the First Crusade), the religious section of Muslim society across the board decided that scientific thought was a threat to the traditional faith, and managed to enlist the help of the state. As Cantor put it, "after 1200 scientific thought in the Islamic world was dead."
Frankly, it was a tragedy, and not only did it bring an end to the Muslim golden age, but I don't think Islam ever recovered.
(I don't think the Crusades really had anything to do with this, though - as I said, the Holy Land was considered a backwater, to the point that when Jerusalem fell, some Muslims took up protesting in mosques to make authorities at least notice that it had fallen. I think this religious movement happened on its own, and we do have similar movements in Christianity in the Western World - think of the Intelligent Design controversy, for example.)
I understand the controversy quite well, at least from the actors' and actresses' points of view. Oddly enough, this comes from my first professional writing sale.
My first pro writing sale was an assignment to write a review of Myth II: Soulblighter for Computer Gaming World. I had been hired partly because of my writing talent, and partly because of my background as a Medievalist. And, just being allowed to write a feature review like that was one hell of a step for somebody who hadn't published anything more spectacular than Doctor Who fanfiction and some forum posts.
So, I wrote a review of Myth II. Personally, I thought it felt a bit too much like an expansion pack, and I said so. I wrote a sidebar about actual Medieval combat and how it compared (this was before the Total War series). And, having edited the review two or three times, I sent it in.
Thing was, it had to go before an editorial review board first. And, since it was work for hire, they could modify it however they liked. And they did - they turned my positive but not glowing review of the game and turned it into a glowing review. I figure somewhere between 30-50% of what I had written actually was in what was published. The writing style was modified to the point that I barely recognized it. The sidebar was shortened in such a way as to be historically inaccurate. And it had my name on it.
To say the least, it felt fraudulent. I certainly felt embarrassed using it as part of my portfolio for other pitches - it was a coup just to get that contract, but what was published wasn't mine. To this day a large part of me wishes they had removed my name from the final product.
So I can see why there is a controversy here. Actors are paid to act, to give a performance. When the basic performance is digitally changed (beyond, say, adding visible breath to simulate cold weather), it's no longer their performance.
Okay - my brain imploded reading this. Between the historical inaccuracies and the complete lack of understanding of what copyright is...this needs a correction.
"But that isn't the key element of why "piracy" is good for the market of art creation -- "piracy" is the return of power to everyone, rather than just those who are politically powerful."
Um, no, it doesn't. Piracy is the movement of power to the pirates. Creative power has changed hands to a large degree, but not in the way that you've described, but more on that below.
"For the first few thousand years or so of writing on paper, the distribution mechanism was a tiny industry of copy-writers."
Um...no, that isn't really true. The distribution depends a great deal on the level of literacy, and there have been some very literate societies in the past. I'm working on a textbook right now about ancient Greek and Roman humour, and if one thing is certain, it is that these people had access to literature, could read, and could write. The copying of manuscripts itself was the source of a scribal industry, but it certainly doesn't seem to be centralized at all, and the more literate the society, the larger the industry. Actually getting the manuscripts to people is another matter entirely, and we know for a fact that there were libraries - the Great Library of Alexandria being a perfect (and very famous) example.
There is some centralization after the fall of the Roman Empire, where the copying of manuscripts moves into the monasteries.
"Most villages had one Bible as their own written word, and it stayed this way for generations."
Frankly, that's really not true at all. The various Jewish communities, even through the "Dark Ages," required that everybody be able to read Torah, and a lot of commentaries were written as these communities moved around. The Islamic world remained very literate. Monasteries had their own private libraries. In many villages, however, where life had gone to a subsistence level, they didn't even have a Bible - at least not one they could generally read. While there was an Old English translation (which apparently has the war in Heaven written into Genesis), it was the exception, and the Bibles were written in Latin.
"The printing press blew open the door for people getting their ideas out -- that is all it was about."
Well, not really. The printing press made it possible to have a literate society, as it was now possible to reproduce books quickly and with (relatively) minimal effort. But, Gutenberg was trying to make money by solving a problem of reproduction, and it seems the first book off his press was an edition of the Bible. And, one of his biggest moneymakers was printing indulgences for the Church. I very much doubt Gutenberg had such lofty ideals. But, the inexpensive reproduction of texts came at a time when Europe was ready, and made the expression of ideas to a larger, literate public, possible.
"People wrote to increase their power to attract an audience to pay them for their knowledge."
Um...that's a half truth. When it came to sheer knowledge, you have to look at the first universities, based on the Cathedral Schools, where the textbook was reproduced by the professor dictating it to his students, who copyied it down verbatum. There were people like Talhoffer (one of the great swordfighting masters) who would write a book containing some of his knowledge to drum up business. Prior to the eighteenth century, most people seem to have been writing poetry, fiction, or academic treatises. Writers didn't get paid for their work at this point - they were paid a stipend by a wealthy patron who they would dedicate their work to (it's a subtle distinction, but a very important one - they were being paid to make their patron look good in their writing, not making money off the success of their work).
"Shakespeare's money didn't come from bookmaking, but from attracting others to his plays. His name was strong because of the press, but
I don't know about everybody else, but I really don't buy this story at all. It seems just a bit too out of character on the Lucas side:
1. Two Star Wars projects were "announced" by Lucas shortly after Episode 3 came out, and an older Han Solo doesn't fit into either of them. One is another Clone Wars series, and the other is a live-action series set between Episodes 3 and 4. Even if the Han Solo character does appear in the live action show, Ford is just too old to play him.
2. Considering that Star Wars is moving to the small screen anyway, doesn't it seem a bit unrealistic for Lucas to be offering anybody a lump sum of around $40 million for a single character on a television series (for that matter, has that ever happened in television history)?
3. Even if Lucas was going to be using Han Solo in one of the Star Wars spin-offs, Lucas doesn't really have a history of using big-name stars in the Star Wars movies. The biggest star who appeared in the prequels was Samuel L. Jackson, and he was a relatively minor supporting character. I can't really see Lucas breaking his pattern by bringing in a big name actor for either one of the television shows, particularly when he himself has stated in public that movie budgets have gotten too big for their own good, and he'd want to stretch his budget as far as possible over the twenty-odd shows of the season (if you do the math, that would mean that Ford would be using up around $2 million of the budget of each episode).
Frankly, I think the source article is based on a rumour inspired by wishful thinking. I can't really believe that Ford was offered the opportunity to reprise his Star Wars role at all, I'm afraid.
Actually, from what the article says, the lawsuit does have merit.
Myspace isn't being sued because their users are pirating, but because they are actively assisting in that piracy by reformatting the music file for the user. That makes them a participant rather than just a carrier.
Whether this has legal merit is for a judge to decide, but from first glance of the article and the details in it, I think Myspace may actually be in some trouble here.
"The compensation is fair and equitable."
I think the hundreds of authors who make less than minimum wage for years of work on their first book, and the recording artists who can sell a million records and make less than a waitress would disagree on that.
"Oddly though, novelists and studio musicians have invented some strange notion that they need to get paid more than once. They want some money for writing the book (or recording the song), and then some more money for every copy sold."
No, that is not the case.
A novelist is paid by royalties - they get a small percentage of every book that is sold. As far as payment models goes, it rewards success and punishes failure - the more books are sold, the more money the author gets. When the author signs a contract, they get an advance on those royalties. If the author gets an advance of $10,000, s/he does not see a cent of royalties until the book has earned back that $10,000. And, if the book doesn't earn back the advance, there are cases of the publisher asking for the unearned advance money back. The advance and royalties are part of the same payment.
"They don't own a printing press or a CD duplicator, they don't make copies of books, but some piece of magical thinking allows them to believe that they're creating more value by allowing the book to be duplicated."
Other people get to read it. Value created.
"If the book is made into a play, and the play into a movie, and the movie into a videogame, they want a slice each time."
Actually, the rights structure is a lot more complicated than that. But, what is wanted is perfectly reasonable. If somebody is going to take your exact creative work (plot, characters, world, etc.) and use it to make money, it is reasonable to have a cut. They're called adaptation rights. And, unless negotiated otherwise, they involve a one-time payment.
"When someone proposes that this notion will eventually evaporate or collapse under it's own weight the novelists can't conceive of such a thing..."
Perhaps it's because the novelists make a point of being informed, and are aware enough to notice that in almost three centuries of this rights structure existing, it HASN'T collapsed. It's not even teetering. What it has done is take creative artists and actually put them in a position where they are not as exploited as they used to be (well, with the notable exception of the music industry).
"This means that musicians and ALL artists will have to work just like everyone. They can create live (a show) for a fee. They can produce something unique (a jingle, or a painting) for a fee. They will have to do real jobs doing their thing if they want to make money."
One of these days, I want to find the person who started this entire myth about what the life of an artist is like and shoot them. Several times.
I've got news for you - the creative artists who get really rich off their work are the tiny minority. Most of the creative artists out there create in their spare time - they keep their day jobs, because that's the only way to support themselves.
That first novel? Well, guess what - you're lucky if when it's all said and done you make minimum wage for the hours you spent on it - and believe me, I know - my first published print book came out to around $800/month for the time I was working on it, and I worked on it full-time. Courtney Love, in a famous speech, pointed out that most recording artists make less in their first year of recording than they would waiting tables. And most actors getting started need a part-time job to keep a roof over their heads. I can't speak for the visual arts, but I haven't heard of too many who make that massive sale to a gallery.
Now, consider this - if the compensation for the creative arts was fair and equitable, you'd be paying a lot more for it, not a lot less. Perhaps instead of talking about us like we're some spoiled children, you should be grateful that we love our craft and our art to the point that despite being short-changed for it, we are still producing work for you to consume. Perhaps you should thank us for tolerating living below poverty lines to create your entertainment. And perhaps, just perhaps, you should do some research before posting, so that you don't offend those of us who actually CREATE.
I may not be a programmer, but I have worked in an election (Canadian) before, and I can tell you exactly what's wrong with that approach - the moment you ask for the SSN, it stops being a secret ballot. Even if you don't record what the ballot is in relation to the SSN, there's still the possibility (and suspicion) that it can be hacked into, and the votes revealed.
(And, part of being able to correct if something goes wrong with this would have to be matching up the vote to the SSN, and all of a sudden it's no longer a secret ballot anyway.)
I'm planning to teach writing at the college level once I've finished my career change, and I have no doubt I'll be facing a similar challenge as you are. So, let's see - how would I approach this?
Well, I recall Stephen King once saying that the key to creating terror is to take the ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary. Perhaps this would work with teaching intellectual rights and their issues.
I guess if I was doing it, I'd start with a CD, a DVD, or a book - something that everybody knows and takes for granted. Then I'd separate the physical disc/book/whatever from the intellectual property on it, pointing out the difference between selling, say, a CD at a used CD store, and making copies of the CD and selling them, and stuff like that. Once I've done that, in theory the class should be hooked and thinking about it - that could lead to a discussion of the Berne Convention, and then applications of the principles of copyright, and then abuse of copyright (for example, the RIAA lawsuits, which should get them hooked right off the bat - it seems to me that a good way to approach it is to begin with the rights of the artist, and then question whether the RIAA's actions are actually related to them, or just using them as an excuse, and go from there).
The one thing I would suggest is to avoid taking a side - let the students do that. Before writing this I read a lot of replies that involved pushing one side in exclusion to the other, which would turn the class from something thoughtful into indocrination. As a teacher (and I've done some teaching here and there, and my mother is a teacher, so I am talking a bit from experience) you need to be able to make the students examine both sides, and determine where the ethical standpoint actually lies for themselves. Playing devil's advocate can really make them think, and keep the class lively. I guess for a class like this, the best result is to end with the students questioning the implications of what they've always taken for granted.
Okay - I will concede that I may have been a bit harsh with you. I had just come away from a discussion where somebody had been doing an impression of a brick wall, and I was seeing many of the same arguments, although looking back, you are actually trying to provide groundwork for them, rather than just repeating them and doing an ostrich impression anytime somebody disagrees with you.
However, that doesn't mean that I see an understanding of what copyright is. I do not doubt that you understand the history of copyright, or the issues in the debate, but you're not giving any signs of understanding what copyright does RIGHT NOW (and I'm talking about the basic function of the law, not the issues surrounding it). That's what my initial post was about - trying to clear that up.
So, I'm going to reply, and address your concerns. You can think what you want about them.
1. The definition of information. Just in case I had been mistaken, I looked up the dictionary definition of the word in a dictionary I trust. So, "information" in the Oxford Dictionary of Current English is defined as: "n. 1 a something told; knowledge. b items of knowledge; news. 2 charge or complaint lodged with court, etc."
Now, I am a professional writer, and I hold two B.A.s, one of which is in English Literature, and I would like to think that I have a comprehensive knowledge of at least the basic English words. In all of my reading, I have never seen the word used in the context that you use it except in one place - in the posts of people who are trying to advocate for the complete destruction of copyright, and most often by those who are abusing the debate to justify pirating music or movies. Your definition is wrong. The one sticky point is the first definition, "something told," but in the context of the second part of that definition, the best interpretation is a fact being told, not a created work.
That being said, you are right - information should be free. Ideas should be free. But a created work draws on both, and is something different, and greater. Whether it should be free or not doesn't matter, because it is something that somebody created - what should matter is their wishes regarding it, within reason.
Now, unfortunately, what you say about the GPL and your work under it can also be translated to saying "I'm a wage labourer." But, the GPL does bear examination. It is based on copyright law, and uses it to create a situation where sharing is mandated. It also respects the creator's rights - if a programmer wants to code something and have it be shared, the GPL ensures that there is a legal groundwork for that to happen, and not be abused. If a programmer wants to code something and have it be proprietary, so long as they don't use GPL'ed code, they are welcome to do so (at least that is my reading of it - I may be wrong on that detail). It's all perfectly legal, wonderfully utopian, and I hope that it lasts a very long time. Quite frankly, as a writer I don't have to worry about patent law doing silly things that will force me to do an impression of a pretzel just to write - but as a programmer, you've got to worry about that. At least the GPL provides some way of fighting that.
Your vision of a world where everybody's needs are met is wonderful and utopian, and I wish we lived in a perfect world where something like that is possible. But, we don't. The big problem is that your vision raises a question - how will your vision of how intellectual rights should work be enforced? Any framework will be abused by people - it happens over and over again. Just look at the RIAA right now. I'm a creative artist, and they do NOT represent my views on copyright or how it should be enforced. They are abusing the law, and I am waiting with baited breath for somebody to file a class action suit against them and stop this madness (I'd do it myself, except that I live in Canada, and I don't have the resources to start it). Your vision will require some legal framework to protect the
I'm not willing to get into a pissing match with you. I've been here too many times before. It doesn't matter what I say - it's like talking to a brick wall. I can make point after point, present evidence after evidence, and I'll be told that I'm ignorant, lying, and misled. In the meantime, I'll see arguments claiming that what was good in the 18th century is obviously what we need now (tell that to women and blacks), or that all the effort and time that goes into art creates nothing but information. I even had somebody claim that the Internet had killed mainstream distribution, and when I challenged him to prove it, he claimed that the very fact that we were discussing his claim made it true. And quite frankly, I have neither the time nor the inclination to dance this dance again.
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I wonder what your agenda actually is. Do you want reform, or are you actually just looking for some free music? If you want reform, than you have a lot of learning to do. Before you can reform a thing, you must first understand that thing. And, regardless of your protestations of how "uninformed" I am, I'm the one here who has published books, and who has put his blood sweat, and tears into his work, and has made a point of understanding the Berne Convention.
So, if you want to actually understand this thing, I'd suggest starting with the Berne Convention. The Paris text can be found at http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overvie
I'd also suggest looking at the Stationer's Log, the system of artistic patronage and how it developed prior to the first signing of the Berne Convention, and the social history of the 19th century in the United States and England.
And that is the last I am willing to say in this particular discussion thread.
I haven't heard of that standing up in court, though. From what I understand, most EULAs aren't enforceable in the first place. I think there was one case involving a university student selling a copy of MS Office on eBay, and the court sided with the student (can't for the life of me remember the name, though).
I am not a lawyer, but I am a published author and a professional writer. And, while there's a lot wrong in the post one branch above this one, getting into a pissing match over it isn't going to help, particularly when most of this tends to be over a misunderstanding about what copyright is and why it is there.
So, instead of arguing, I'm going to educate - this is copyright 101. So please pay close attention, and you'll understand what is going on a lot better. I'm going to start by describing what copyright is and what it does, and then talk about why we still need it (and, I'd argue, need it even more than before).
Copyright today in most western countries is based on an international agreement called the Berne Convention, first signed at the end of the 19th century, and most recently updated in the 1970s. There is a history of copyright that goes far beyond the Berne Convention, such as the Stationer's Log in 17th century England and a clause in the original U.S. Constitution, but we're dealing with copyright as it is today, not its history (which, while relevant, is for another discussion). For the sake of this discussion, we'll call the copyrighted material "art" (it takes less time to type than "copyrighted material").
Copyright covers two basic functions - the first is the right to distribute (hence "copy-right"), and the second is derivative works. Both of these tend to be misunderstood a great deal by laymen.
The right to distribute basically means that the creator of the art is able to decide how that art is to be distributed within reasonable means. If the creator wishes the art to be released to the public for free download, the creator is allowed to do that. If the creator wants to sell the publication rights to a publisher, the creator can do that too. It's important to note that there is no explicit instruction in copyright law of how a creator is to distribute his/her art - what this amounts to in the end is that the wishes of the creator must be respected under law.
There are limits to these wishes, however. For example, while the creator owns the copyrights to the content itself, s/he does not own what the content is distributed on. So, if I write a book about an alien invasion where the aliens are using biological weapons, sell the publication rights to a publisher, and you buy the printed book, I cannot tell you that you can only read it in the wee hours of the morning, or anything like that. I also cannot tell you that you can't give that book you just bought away as a present, or sell it to a used bookstore, as you own the paper it is printed on, and can do what you like with it in that regard. I CAN tell you that you cannot copy it and sell it on the street corner, or give copies of it away, as that would undermine my wishes as to how it is to be distributed. If you disregard my wishes in terms of distribution, copyright law allows me to take action to protect my intellectual property and ensure that my wishes are respected.
(An example of copyright in action is the open source license, which recently stood up in court. That license has its binding power because copyright law supports it.)
These wishes are also mitigated by fair use. Fair use means that if you are writing an academic paper and you want to quote the aforementioned book about the alien invastion, you may do so without asking permission, so long as you give credit where it is due. There are other clauses and limitations, but those vary internationally, and most people here actually do have a good sense of what fair use is - it's copyright that seems to cause people all the trouble.
Depending on what country you are in, copyright extends anywhere from 50-75 years after the death of the creator. This is a source of much debate. On the creator's side, it allows the creator to leave a legacy for his/her family based on his/her hard work. When it comes to what it means on the side of the publishers or public, it's a bit more complicated. A lot depends on what ri
"The generalization should be broad enough to include the motion picture industry as well."
:-)
Are you sure about about? There's an argument to be made that Hollywood hasn't put out an original product in years...
"Sharing is a norm; stealing is not."
We'd have to agree to disagree here, I guess. I wouldn't say that sharing is a norm. I wouldn't say that stealing in and of itself is a norm either. I'd put the norm more at territorialism (both individual- and group-oriented) and self-interest.
Sorry to take so long to reply to this - I was caught up in racing an editing deadline and another part of this argument had me occupied (although I have finished with that one, thank God).
First of all, thank you - you have to be one of the first people I've seen in this general argument who has provided an intelligent claim on this side and evidence to back it up. After seeing stuff like patent law being mistaken for copyright law, and somebody actually declaring that discussion of a claim was evidence that the claim was correct, it's a breath of fresh air. Almost everything you've said I can't really argue with, and so I'll just deal with the points I disagree with.
"But today the brutal over-enforcement by the content cartel, and the control of the creative process by corporations and insurance companies which assume the fair use defense is nonexistent, and require clearances for everything, is making for a lot of difficulty, and threatens the creation of new things."
I certainly can't disagree with the statement that there is over-enforcement, but there must be a distinction made between the letter of a law and abuse of that law. Unfortunately, the music industry has a history of treating its artists very badly in this regard (there was a wonderful piece by Courtney Love, I believe, about how the impact of a pirated song was nothing compared to how the music industry rips off the musicians themselves). This isn't necessarily reflected in other creative media, though, so I don't think that a generalization really works here.
"I do think that sharing is an integral part of human nature, while stealing is an unfortunate trait of some humans, but not one that promotes human life."
We certainly form communities - I can't argue against that part of it. However, history is replete with examples of one community trying to wipe out another over resources. There is also a long history of people lying, cheating, and stealing to monopolize information both inside and outside of the academic community. The idea of everybody sharing knowledge is certainly a wonderful ideal, and there are certainly people who follow that ideal and are the better for it, but at the same time there are far too many counter-examples of people being territorial and greedy for me to consider the ideal the norm.
"> Translation: you don't actually have an argument or proof to refute me, so you're calling my argument names instead.
Correction. I don't have time to educate you. I've done it enough times on slashdot with people who hold the exact same self-justifying beliefs and found them to be intractable to logic. But just so it is clear, that your post was fully of misdirection of sophistry - just what kind of bizarro world do you live in that you think citing the extinction of neaderthals is proof that humans do not naturally share knowledge?
> Translation: you don't actually have a clue as to what copyright is in the first place, or what it means to be a creator, or the difference between a work of art and a spreadsheet, so you're trying to bully an idea through without proof of any sort.
Ok, tell me. Just what makes "a work of art" so much different from a spreadsheet? Is it the time and effort that went into creating it? Is it the skill of the creator and their understanding of what the spreadsheet represents? Is it the uniqueness of the spreadsheet? Is it the thoughts and insight that the spreadsheet can inspire in the minds of people who view it? Or maybe it is what the market will pay for the spreadsheet? I give up. What difference is there? Come on mr holier-than-thou-because-i-am-zee-artiste, put your cards on the table.
I'll give you $2000 via paypal if you can distinguish between digitzed "art" bits and "information" bits. Here are two sets of 32 bits in hexadecimal format, one is copied from a jpeg scan of the mona lisa, the other is copied from a gnumeric spreadsheet:
0x387A2F4F 0x24324373
If art is not information, surely you can tell the difference. I've got $2K I am ready to spend on a Panasonic AX100U projector, but I'm putting my money where my mouth is. If you aren't full of bullshit, then prove it and come and take my money."
The only reason I am justifying this with a response is that you have put your money where your mouth is, and in this case I am quite happy to take the money from an ignorant, arrogant fool.
The challenge is, on first glance, a trick question. What you've provided are bits, which are just raw computer data. They're useless to anybody without the context to place them. Unfortunately for you, you never specified HOW I had to distinguish between them, and it's too late for you to do so now. You also only challenged me to demonstrate that I can - not to actually do so. So, my method would be to look at the entire file containing each bit, determine what type of file it is (easily enough done using the file extension, or trying file extensions until something reads as an image file), and that would determine which one is the jpeg (and since the Mona Lisa is easily the most famous painting in the world, the work of art). By process of elimination, that makes the other one the data from a spreadsheet. So, yes, I CAN tell the difference, and having presented a workable solution, I've won the challenge.
Unfortunately, I don't use paypal, so you'll have to pay me by certified cheque. Contact me at delric at istar.ca and I'll give you the address to mail it to.
(Word to the wise - don't ever try to bluff out somebody holding the proverbial nut flush.)
Not that I expect to get paid. You'll make some idiotic claim that I cheated, or misunderstood your words, or that I didn't prove what I was supposed to be arguing, and weasel out of it. I've seen your type on here before. You're like one of those creationists - it doesn't matter what hard evidence I present, you'll just claim that I'm misleading you, presenting inconclusive evidence, or lying. And I don't like having conversations with the equivalent of a brick wall. So, I'm not going to waste any more time with you. If you want to talk some more, you're going to have to make good on your bet.
"That statement sums up your position perfectly. Everything else you posted was silly misdirection and sophistry, but this takes the cake."
Translation: you don't actually have an argument or proof to refute me, so you're calling my argument names instead.
"Everyone who makes that kind of semantic distinction is an idiot because it demonstrates a willful ignorance of the modern world. If it can be digitized, it is information. No ifs, ands or buts."
Translation: you don't actually have a clue as to what copyright is in the first place, or what it means to be a creator, or the difference between a work of art and a spreadsheet, so you're trying to bully an idea through without proof of any sort.
"That you don't understand this fundamental fact is all the proof in the world that you have zero qualification to pontificate on the topic of copyright. Every single issue that makes copyright controversial today is a direct result of this fact. If we were still in a world where all copyrighted materials had to be semi-permanently fixed in some sort of physical medium like a CD or a book, then piracy would be so rare that it would hardly be a topic of even academic debate much less the central issue of a PR campaign included at the start of every movie out of Hollywood."
Translation: you haven't bothered to actually become informed, understand why copyright is there, or its history, but you have seen anti-piracy ads at the theatre, and you don't like them.
Don't bother to reply to this - you are to an intelligent discussion what a guillotine is to a sore throat, and you've proved that enough over the last two days.
">>distribution is dead and the internet killed it..."
">Prove it
We would not be having this conversation if it were not the case. Dinosaurs did not die over night, and neither will the distribution industry. When the entire point of the internet is to make massive distribution of information at minimum cost, the end is obvious."
Sorry, but that's not proof. That's turning it into a circular argument. And the end is not obvious. If it was, the tape recorder and radio would have killed the music store decades ago, and the VCR would have done the same to the movie business. When it came to the ebook, history has instead shown is that online distribution tends to become a "sibling" form of distribution to the mainstream distribution channels, and also that online sales tend to be lower than mainstream sales. This is even quite logical. This may come as a shock to you, but even though it's cheaper to distribute online, most people actually prefer to not be chained to their computer for their entertainment needs.
"> 1. The law is adapting and changing, and is far from anachronistic.
Prove it! Lol. Show me one bit of legislation that accepts, rather than ignores or is in conflict with, the fact that distribution is essentially zero-cost on the net."
Well, first of all, copyright law has nothing to do with the cost of distribution - it's about who is allowed to distribute. The cost of distribution is irrelevant to the actual law itself. As far as legislators trying to adapt to the issues of new technology, in the United States alone you've got the: Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Benefit Authors without Limiting Advancement or Net Consumer Expectations Act (still being debated), the No Electronic Theft Act, the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (still being debated), and the Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004 (still being debated). Not all of these will pass, and not all of them will get it right, but all of them are proof that legislators are trying to understand and deal with the issues involved.
"You write as if the law entitles you to something. The law is not morality, and copyright law is an arbitrary restriction on inherently non-rivalrous goods."
Actually, the law explicitly entitles me to certain protections of my work, and to have all of my reasonable wishes regarding that work respected. And the law may not be morality, but all law is based on morality in some way.
"Who are you to judge other people's agendas? You just don't like it because it calls your entitlement into question. Seems like two sides of the same coin to me."
I'm part of the group whose rights you want to strip away. I'm protecting reasonable rights that are guaranteed to me under law. And I'm somebody with a brain in my head who can see your agenda for the bullshit it is, and is willing to take you to task for it. There are so many ways to fight the RIAA that it isn't funny. But you're not talking about writing letters to newspapers or congressmen/congresswomen/senators, or donating to the EFF or defense funds, or getting involved in organizing protests or protesting, or launching a lawsuit, or writing blog entries or editorials, or making your voice heard in any way that would be noticed and counted - you're talking about hiding in a corner and illegally downloading music, and complaining that there's somebody who would take you to task on it. The actions do not match the agenda. If you want free music, then come out and say it. But stop being dishonest about it.
"Just how do you think the knowledge to make agriculture efficient was distributed? SHARING. Was the wheel patented? Was the lunar calendar copyrighted? I don't deny that people are unwilling to freely share rivalrous goods. But information is non-rivalrous and non-exclusive, making the free sharing of it natural, efficient and inevitable."
Oh, go read a book about history, for crying out loud. And try telling that crap about sha
"As you say, we now have a great deal more creative content available than ever before. Yet is this because of copyright law or despite of it? With so much content available, society as a whole can not afford all of it. Is this a cost benefit selection where consumers must make do with the limited amount of content they can afford? Does preventing the free flow of digital expressions of thoughts and ideas really encourage the creation of new thoughts and ideas?"
I would say that the amount of content available right now has almost nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. It does have a lot to do with population, literacy, pop culture, and perception of the trade (there is this idea that writing for a living is this wonderful, glamourous life with lots of sex and money, but that is almost never the case in reality - the joke in the trade is that if we had exciting lives, we wouldn't be spending all our time writing). But people start creating out of love for the craft. When they get good enough that they can spend months on a single project and have it be worth something, they need to support themselves, and copyright law is there to prevent them from getting screwed over.
For example, one of my acquaintances is an amateur writer who has actually stopped posting her work. From what I hear, she's only a couple of steps away from her writing being professional quality. But, every time she posted a story, a bunch of websites copied it, took her name off it, and slapped on their own. That's what copyright is supposed to protect artists from. I really wish she had the time and money to sue those people - the credit for her own work should never have been taken away from her. And now she's been so badly burned that it's quite possible that none of her new writing will ever see the light of day - content none of us will ever read.
This is an abuse that shows up a lot. There was even a Slashdot news story about how a lot of bloggers were plagerizing, rather than doing their own work. Copyright is the law that allows the original author to fight against that.
The idea that society can't afford all of this content is laughable. Society doesn't just buy content wholesale - creative artists put it on the market, and people buy or rent what they like. And there are lots of inexpensive means of distribution. Songs can be listened to for free on the radio. Books can be borrowed from a library for only the cost of a library card. Movies can be rented for a minor fee from a video rental outlet. And that's not counting all the content that shows up on television, paid for either by advertisements that don't cost the consumer a cent, or a small fee in the case of cable television. And then there's places like Amazon, which offer discounts on pretty much any orders. We may be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of content, but unable to afford it? Not at all.
To think that copyright prevents the free flow of ideas is nonsense. Copyright law does not allow one to copyright an idea - only a specific implementation of one. There is nothing stopping somebody taking the same idea and going their own direction with it, nor should there be. Patent law, which is a much different matter, allows one to monopolize an idea. And copyright law is not about taking away the expression of thoughts and ideas - merely ensuring that the creator of the expression of thoughts and ideas is able to decide what happens with their own work. Having to pay X amount of dollars for a book doesn't stop that book from being on the bookshelf in the first place. It's still available. It's just your choice whether or not to pay to read it.
To deal with your final paragraph:
"Nothing wrong with asking. But is it okay to demand for payment? Is it acceptable to deny others access to your hard work? Does society really benefit more by keeping your content under legal protection? Isn't the debate over where to draw this line exactly what society should be having right now?"
Yes, it is okay to demand pa
"The content cartel are the only ones who benefit from the anachronistic system staying in place. Rather than allow the law to really catch up with the revolutionary change in society - namely that distribution is dead and the internet killed it..."
Prove it.
Quite frankly, I see plenty of bookstores around, and the e-book was supposed to kill those years ago. Lots of music stores around. About the only place I've seen evidence that there is a marked drop in sales is in video stores, and those tended to be in regards to movies that weren't that good in the first place. So, you've made a claim - let's see some reports of profits going down across the board.
"Instead of railing at people who are behaving naturally to file a lawsuit -- yes it is human nature to share freely, without it civilization would have never got off the ground -- why don't YOU get busy and figure out how to get paid for your hard work in a way that doesn't rely on an anachronistic, unenforceable law?"
Because:
1. The law is adapting and changing, and is far from anachronistic.
2. It's not my job to give you everything you think you're entitled to. I'll write whatever I want to write, and it will sell however it ends up selling in the market.
3. I'm railing against people doing things that are pointless, or using an unrelated cause to justify their own agenda. You want to pirate music, fine - there's nothing I can do to stop you. But don't claim you're doing it in protest of something. Have the decency to be honest enough to say that it's because you want free music. The RIAA won't even notice the loss of your money. It WILL notice a class action suit. And if it lost such a suit, it would probably lose enough money that the entire RIAA issue would be settled in a positive way for everybody. That's how you fight back.
4. It is not human nature to share freely, and that did not get civilization started. Civilization started when hunter gatherers settled with everybody working the land. Eventually agriculture got efficient enough that people could be paid with food for services unrelated to cultivation. It was a barter economy, not people sharing freely. Considering the number of wars in the ancient world that were fought over areas of land with trade routes or resources, it's a lot more justified to say that human nature is territorial and greedy. Read Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse" if you want a better idea of how civilizations develop across history.
And here is the world's smallest violin, playing for you...
I'm sorry, but I can't stand this argument, I really can't. It's so hypocritical it isn't funny. You're surrounded by content, drowning in it, even. There is more creative content available today than there has been in the whole of human history. But God help us creative artists if we actually want to charge money for that year's worth of writing/painting/composing/sculpting work, or leave a legacy for our families. You're allowed to do that, but we aren't. You can complain about the Mickey Mouse Act all you like, but it's still hypocrisy.
How about this? How about actually trying to understand the law, and how copyright works? How about understanding how reprint rights work, and how once they are sold to a publisher, it is actually up to the publisher when and how a work is reprinted? How about understanding the history of intellectual rights (and this goes WAY beyond a clause in the original constitution), and why it is important for copyright, and any code of laws, for that matter, to change and adapt as society changes? How about trying to understand the difference between a law itself and abuse of that law?
Guess what - asking you to pay for somebody else's hard work is not theft. Somebody abusing a law to their own ends does not make the law itself invalid. And if you want to hurt the RIAA, file a class action suit against them for abusing and breaking the law, rather than using them as an excuse to break the law yourself. But disrespecting an artist's wishes while claiming that the RIAA's actions give you a moral right to do so is wrong - they do no such thing, and to claim otherwise is hypocritical.
...I beat them to it.
By the way, the entire English-speaking world now owes me a LOT of money...