Not really an answer to the topic starter's question, but very much this. Modern copyright is retarded, and its terms are outrageous. Nobody should ever feel guilty for copying long unavailable works, just make sure you aren't caught.
"temporary debit card" service, where you could get a Visa Electron that expires immediately after the predetermined amount is withdrawn?
Isn't is possible with Visa Virtual? My bank allows me to instantly create Visa Virtual cards online that are tied to my Visa Classic card and valid for specified number of transactions and specified time (smth like 60 days max).
I think we need a law that makes it a criminal offense to make new criminal offenses (of course not applicable to itself). And this law should be quite retroactive.
I just think you should examine the possible consequences before you exercise the right
Yes, one should always examine the possible consequences of one's actions, *including such consequence as a violation of one's rights*. This however in no way affects rights themselves.
And free speech does not guarantee your right to not be physically attacked for what you say
Yes it does, otherwise it is meaningless.
Free speech only guarantees your right to speak your mind...which is only relevant as a right not to be physically attacked as a result of speaking one's mind, or else there's no point whatsoever in having such a "right."
Indeed, as the previous poster said, why do you feel the need to hide behind weasel words such as "responsibility" and arbitrarily redefine common terms such as "speech"? Why not have the basic intellectual honesty and admit that you are in fact against free speech?
Free speech, should this term have any real meaning, amounts to the *right* to not be physically attacked for any act of speech. You think this right is bad? Fine with me. You say you can punch someone in the face if he calls you names? Probably, but under free speech, you don't have the *right* to do so, even if you can. Just as you don't have the right to rape 3 yo kids even if you are physically able and likely to do that.
See, it's not about free speech being good or bad. It about having the hoinesty to call things their proper names.
Yes, we're talking about semantics, and not just now, but from the very start. That's because semantics actually matters. Without semantics, you can't tell good from bad, because ethics necessarily relies on it.
Whoever had first coined the term "steal an idea", was guilty of sloppy thinking (which, sadly, is rather common in the society, though not universal) and produced a misnomer. The reason is not only that you cannot really "steal" an idea the way it can be done with a tangible thing. It's also that stealing is bad exactly because it deprives somebody of the thing for the time that it's stolen - something that just doesn't happen with ideas. And that if there is something closer to real, physical theft or robbery, it's the prohibition to "steal" ideas. So, in spite of the semantics here being topsy-turvy, one sneaks in the bad emotional connotations associated with real theft, and voila - copying someone else's idea suddenly appears like something bad. Which in fact it may or may not be, but even if it is, it must be for entirely different reasons than with physical theft.
And yet we contantly see the explanations to the effect that copyright infringement is bad because it is theft. If we analyse the semantics, we can see that this is not an explanation at all, just an attempt to substitute a rational argument with an emotional one. Your example of "puppy hugging" is actually a very good one and works both ways. Just as simply calling copyright infringement "puppy hugging" doesn't make it good, calling it "theft" doesn't make it bad. One needs to employ some other type of argumentation to justify one's ethical stance on copyright.
You bring up many points that might be interesting to discuss but increasingly offtopic.
My initial point is that regardless of whether you think of copyright as right or wrong, copyright infringement is not theft because a) intangible things cannot possibly be stolen for reasons described above, and b) even with tangible things, there are cases when I can take something that doesn't belong to me and yet not commit theft.
Land that you cite as one example is perfectly ownable as a tangible thing. The same land spot cannot be used by me for building a house and by you for growing corn at the same time. In your other example with a summer house you conveniently omit the crucial point of simultaneousness, not to mention wear and tear that may result from other people using the house.
To sum up, it is OK to think that copyright is good and copyright infringement is bad. While my opinion on that topic is complex, this is irrelevant here. What I am for is calling things their proper names. If copyright infringement is so bad on its own, one doesn't have to call it with a name of another bad thing (which has had a very specific and different meaning from the time immemorial). However, if one does feel the need to do that, it raises the suspicion that one tries to muddy the waters by injecting an emotional component in the rational discussion.
Regarding the whole "social agreement" thing, I will only make the following remark without the intent to discuss it any further at this time. Agreement, if this word is to have any meaning, is not the same as giving in to coercion and accepting things as they are. Otherwise even the most oppressive and tyrannic regime would have to be called a result of some "social agreement". I haven't entered any agreements of the sort and neither have you.
There's no natural construct keeping me from occupying someone's summer home in the winter. After all, as you said yourself, there's no physical loss in me doing so.
There is a natural construct keeping you from simultaneously possessing the same tangible thing with someone else. If I take a tangible thing from you, you no longer have it. That holds for squirrels and acorns, too.
Now who exactly is the rightful owner of a specific tangible thing, is another question that is offtopic here. But the point is that it is ownable in that at least its possession is necessarily exclusive. Intangibles are not. Yes you can have contracts about intangible things, even contracts that remind copyright/patents/etc. rather closely in effect, but you have to specifically enter them. No, legislation is not a contract. And even then, you don't normally call breach of contract "theft".
Of course, nothing prevents the goverment (I don't buy that "social agreement" bullshit) from creating an artificial monopoly for, say, winking, and calling a wink someone's property. And then I guess if I wink without being granted this monopoly, you would call me a thief, too. But don't be surprised if people don't subscribe this ridiculous notion and continue to act as if it didn't exist (to the extent they can avoid being caught). Because it really isn't property for the natural reasons outlined above.
I can't see how you taking something that does not belong to you is anything but stealing
The air does not belong to me. I breathe, and yet I am not stealing the air. Because in this case it does not belong to anybody, even despite the air being a physical, tangible thing.
As an intanglible thing that ceases to be scarce once first published, information doesn't belong to anybody, either. It cannot be anyone's property, regardless of any fictional legal constructions. There goes all your logic.
In fact, if anything related to IP *is* similar to theft (or, more precisely, robbery), it is copyright itself. Because it infringes on my physical property rights, preventing me from giving a specific shape to my physical property.
Now you can argue that some kinds of theft or robbery, like copyright or taxes, can be beneficial and world is better off with them than without. That is another question altogether and may be a valid argument of ethical nature. But saying that copyright infringement is theft is an intellectual negligence or dishonesty, regardless of your ethical stance.
The same applies to "copyright infringement is theft". Anyway, copyright itself IS much more similar to theft because it implies infringement on physical property rights.
Did you click "Reply to This" under your opponent's comment but ended up replying to yourself instead? A similar thing happened to me in this thread. The new Slashdot commenting system is buggy as hell.
They are paying for the resources of society that you use. Rich and poor alike use those, but some get more benefit from them and should pay more for that.
What does my benefit has to do with the cost of a resource to the society? For the same cost to the society, my benefit can wildly differ (and is entirely subjective.) Why the heck should I pay for the benefit and not for the cost? It's not like the society is a business and should be allowed to do price discrimination. Yes the cost of shared resources I consume that is not already included in the untaxed price of goods I buy may depend on my income, but in no way is it directly proportional to the income, and for some recources it actually decreases with the income.
If they fell straight down out of the sky with no horizontal speed, the wreckages and blackboxes would all be in one place, which wasn't the case here.
Let's say one of your vendor, a freelancer, used a pirated version of some software to produce a result that you use in your products. Then Microsoft finds out about it and sues *you* for a % of your revenue from those products. Now even if the vendor agreed to compensate you for all regulatory and legal expenses due to usage of pirated software, what is the probability that he/she will be *able* to do so before going bankrupt?
And remember, effectively policing vendors for licence compliance, especially foreign ones - rather than just putting the relevant conditions into contracts - is a non-trivial and costly task. Do you really want that additional cost in the price of your products?
To me, the most reasonable solution is for rights holders to sue copyright violators and only copyright violators, and to inform the end customers about sellers whose products involved using pirated software so that they can decide themselves if they want to support these sellers. (If the customers do want to support them - I say tough for the rights holders.) All this presumes that one doesn't intentionally choose a vendor that is known to use pirated software for tasks directly connected to the end product.
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Your strawman against libertarianism is even worse in that regard.
Dynamically inserting competitors' trade names and other search terms in advertisements doesn't mean deceipt per se and hence shouldn't be a problem.
I agree as someone whose job involves reading lots of MS marketing materials.
Not really an answer to the topic starter's question, but very much this.
Modern copyright is retarded, and its terms are outrageous. Nobody should ever feel guilty for copying long unavailable works, just make sure you aren't caught.
I take it you never defend yourself when somebody attacks you. Mr. Darwin approves of that.
n/t
"temporary debit card" service, where you could get a Visa Electron that expires immediately after the predetermined amount is withdrawn?
Isn't is possible with Visa Virtual? My bank allows me to instantly create Visa Virtual cards online that are tied to my Visa Classic card and valid for specified number of transactions and specified time (smth like 60 days max).
No, by that standard you have a right *not* to be subjected to aggressive violence. This doesn't imply anyone else's slavery.
I think we need a law that makes it a criminal offense to make new criminal offenses (of course not applicable to itself). And this law should be quite retroactive.
I just think you should examine the possible consequences before you exercise the right
Yes, one should always examine the possible consequences of one's actions, *including such consequence as a violation of one's rights*. This however in no way affects rights themselves.
And free speech does not guarantee your right to not be physically attacked for what you say
Yes it does, otherwise it is meaningless.
Free speech only guarantees your right to speak your mind ...which is only relevant as a right not to be physically attacked as a result of speaking one's mind, or else there's no point whatsoever in having such a "right."
Indeed, as the previous poster said, why do you feel the need to hide behind weasel words such as "responsibility" and arbitrarily redefine common terms such as "speech"? Why not have the basic intellectual honesty and admit that you are in fact against free speech?
Free speech, should this term have any real meaning, amounts to the *right* to not be physically attacked for any act of speech. You think this right is bad? Fine with me. You say you can punch someone in the face if he calls you names? Probably, but under free speech, you don't have the *right* to do so, even if you can. Just as you don't have the right to rape 3 yo kids even if you are physically able and likely to do that.
See, it's not about free speech being good or bad. It about having the hoinesty to call things their proper names.
Yes, we're talking about semantics, and not just now, but from the very start. That's because semantics actually matters. Without semantics, you can't tell good from bad, because ethics necessarily relies on it.
Whoever had first coined the term "steal an idea", was guilty of sloppy thinking (which, sadly, is rather common in the society, though not universal) and produced a misnomer. The reason is not only that you cannot really "steal" an idea the way it can be done with a tangible thing. It's also that stealing is bad exactly because it deprives somebody of the thing for the time that it's stolen - something that just doesn't happen with ideas. And that if there is something closer to real, physical theft or robbery, it's the prohibition to "steal" ideas. So, in spite of the semantics here being topsy-turvy, one sneaks in the bad emotional connotations associated with real theft, and voila - copying someone else's idea suddenly appears like something bad. Which in fact it may or may not be, but even if it is, it must be for entirely different reasons than with physical theft.
And yet we contantly see the explanations to the effect that copyright infringement is bad because it is theft. If we analyse the semantics, we can see that this is not an explanation at all, just an attempt to substitute a rational argument with an emotional one. Your example of "puppy hugging" is actually a very good one and works both ways. Just as simply calling copyright infringement "puppy hugging" doesn't make it good, calling it "theft" doesn't make it bad. One needs to employ some other type of argumentation to justify one's ethical stance on copyright.
You bring up many points that might be interesting to discuss but increasingly offtopic.
My initial point is that regardless of whether you think of copyright as right or wrong, copyright infringement is not theft because a) intangible things cannot possibly be stolen for reasons described above, and b) even with tangible things, there are cases when I can take something that doesn't belong to me and yet not commit theft.
Land that you cite as one example is perfectly ownable as a tangible thing. The same land spot cannot be used by me for building a house and by you for growing corn at the same time. In your other example with a summer house you conveniently omit the crucial point of simultaneousness, not to mention wear and tear that may result from other people using the house.
To sum up, it is OK to think that copyright is good and copyright infringement is bad. While my opinion on that topic is complex, this is irrelevant here. What I am for is calling things their proper names. If copyright infringement is so bad on its own, one doesn't have to call it with a name of another bad thing (which has had a very specific and different meaning from the time immemorial). However, if one does feel the need to do that, it raises the suspicion that one tries to muddy the waters by injecting an emotional component in the rational discussion.
Regarding the whole "social agreement" thing, I will only make the following remark without the intent to discuss it any further at this time. Agreement, if this word is to have any meaning, is not the same as giving in to coercion and accepting things as they are. Otherwise even the most oppressive and tyrannic regime would have to be called a result of some "social agreement". I haven't entered any agreements of the sort and neither have you.
There's no natural construct keeping me from occupying someone's summer home in the winter. After all, as you said yourself, there's no physical loss in me doing so.
There is a natural construct keeping you from simultaneously possessing the same tangible thing with someone else. If I take a tangible thing from you, you no longer have it. That holds for squirrels and acorns, too.
Now who exactly is the rightful owner of a specific tangible thing, is another question that is offtopic here. But the point is that it is ownable in that at least its possession is necessarily exclusive. Intangibles are not. Yes you can have contracts about intangible things, even contracts that remind copyright/patents/etc. rather closely in effect, but you have to specifically enter them. No, legislation is not a contract. And even then, you don't normally call breach of contract "theft".
Of course, nothing prevents the goverment (I don't buy that "social agreement" bullshit) from creating an artificial monopoly for, say, winking, and calling a wink someone's property. And then I guess if I wink without being granted this monopoly, you would call me a thief, too. But don't be surprised if people don't subscribe this ridiculous notion and continue to act as if it didn't exist (to the extent they can avoid being caught). Because it really isn't property for the natural reasons outlined above.
This is equivalent to saying that for the purposes of breathing, the air does not belong to anybody.
I can't see how you taking something that does not belong to you is anything but stealing
The air does not belong to me. I breathe, and yet I am not stealing the air. Because in this case it does not belong to anybody, even despite the air being a physical, tangible thing.
As an intanglible thing that ceases to be scarce once first published, information doesn't belong to anybody, either. It cannot be anyone's property, regardless of any fictional legal constructions. There goes all your logic.
In fact, if anything related to IP *is* similar to theft (or, more precisely, robbery), it is copyright itself. Because it infringes on my physical property rights, preventing me from giving a specific shape to my physical property.
Now you can argue that some kinds of theft or robbery, like copyright or taxes, can be beneficial and world is better off with them than without. That is another question altogether and may be a valid argument of ethical nature. But saying that copyright infringement is theft is an intellectual negligence or dishonesty, regardless of your ethical stance.
...and I still turn all these things off whenever they are turned on by default. Nothing changed :-)
First thing I do on XP machines is enable the "Classic UI". Cant even do that now on win7.
You can - sort of. I did it on my friend's PC. But its "classicness" is even shallower than in Vista.
The same applies to "copyright infringement is theft".
Anyway, copyright itself IS much more similar to theft because it implies infringement on physical property rights.
Did you click "Reply to This" under your opponent's comment but ended up replying to yourself instead? A similar thing happened to me in this thread. The new Slashdot commenting system is buggy as hell.
They are paying for the resources of society that you use. Rich and poor alike use those, but some get more benefit from them and should pay more for that.
What does my benefit has to do with the cost of a resource to the society? For the same cost to the society, my benefit can wildly differ (and is entirely subjective.) Why the heck should I pay for the benefit and not for the cost? It's not like the society is a business and should be allowed to do price discrimination. Yes the cost of shared resources I consume that is not already included in the untaxed price of goods I buy may depend on my income, but in no way is it directly proportional to the income, and for some recources it actually decreases with the income.
I didn't read TFA or the summary, but the heading says he was threatening some Youtube video, not people.
I thought that for stall recovery you go nose down, not nose up.
If they fell straight down out of the sky with no horizontal speed, the wreckages and blackboxes would all be in one place, which wasn't the case here.
Let's say one of your vendor, a freelancer, used a pirated version of some software to produce a result that you use in your products. Then Microsoft finds out about it and sues *you* for a % of your revenue from those products. Now even if the vendor agreed to compensate you for all regulatory and legal expenses due to usage of pirated software, what is the probability that he/she will be *able* to do so before going bankrupt?
And remember, effectively policing vendors for licence compliance, especially foreign ones - rather than just putting the relevant conditions into contracts - is a non-trivial and costly task. Do you really want that additional cost in the price of your products?
To me, the most reasonable solution is for rights holders to sue copyright violators and only copyright violators, and to inform the end customers about sellers whose products involved using pirated software so that they can decide themselves if they want to support these sellers. (If the customers do want to support them - I say tough for the rights holders.) All this presumes that one doesn't intentionally choose a vendor that is known to use pirated software for tasks directly connected to the end product.