Your theory that a number (song, music, movie, app) is just 'a number', and nobody can infringe on your right to do whatever you want with 'a number'. Oh. Not sure how you'd want me to test that, or why. You can look at sites like The Pirate Bay and see thousands of other people testing it every day.
If you're still talking about that bank balance nonsense, go back and read my earlier responses in which I explained why that argument is fatally flawed.
You solicited and procured the product of the artists work. Which is quite different from asking the artist to do the work in the first place. I'm sorry you have so much trouble understanding that.
It's rather rich to pretend you're batting on the same side as the artists after all you've posted so far. Your only concern seems to be your rights, and how to justify screwing the artists so you can get their product for free. Now that's rich - particularly, as you say, after everything I've posted so far. If I were really as cheap and selfish as this phony caricature you've made up, I wouldn't have bothered proposing a business model by which people like me can pay artists for their work while still retaining our rights.
Companies can do that if they choose, but most decide to go with the traditional model. Unfortunately, the "traditional model" depends on seizing everyone else's rights. The model I've described is one that will work even when those rights are returned.
If a million people were using the software and a company like adobe had to support them, the price would quickly go up. Or Adobe would charge for support, which makes sense since many of those people would've gotten the software for free.
Software isn't your property. Software isn't anyone's property. It's a sequence of bits, a pattern, a number. You can't own a number whether it's ten digits or ten million digits.
And saying that sharing numbers is free speech is a bit of a stretch. Not really. If you have a book, sharing the information that's in it is equivalent to describing it in excruciating detail.
That is, when someone asks you to tell them about that book, you might start by telling them what it's called and who wrote it. You might describe the picture on the cover. You might repeat the blurbs on the inside cover. If they still want to know more about it, you might start by telling them what the first word in the story is. Then the second word. Then the third word, and so on.
All you're doing is telling them facts about the book, a physical object that you own. That's speech, unquestionably. And the same applies to discs: there's a certain pattern of bits stamped into that CD, and if you're prohibited from describing it to someone else, that's a restriction on your speech - someone else is forcing you to keep a secret.
I've got a better idea -- why not put your theory to test? You don't have a problem doing it with online downloads, where you essentially face no penalty even though you're in the wrong. Not so righteous now, are you? Not sure which "theory" you're referring to, but it is totally gnarly that you think I'm righteous. Cowabunga, dude!
You solicited the song, which is the result of the work. I asked a random torrent user to send me a copy of the song. But I didn't ask the artist to record that song in the first place; he did that of his own free will, unsolicited. If I owed compensation to either of them, it'd be the torrent user.
Nice work Sherlock. Now read the terms and conditions on that website. I quote: [etc.] You're right, Sellaband isn't a perfect implementation of this business model, although it's closer than anything else I've seen. The basic model of a social networking site that combines artist/user profiles, messaging, audio clips, etc. with financial support and progress updates is what I wanted to point out there.
Sellaband connects artists to fans and lets them raise money directly from lots of small contributions. However, instead of giving that money to the artist, they use it to rent a recording studio and produce an album; then they sell CDs and cheap/free downloads. I'd make a few changes if I could:
Let the artist set their own goal instead of a fixed $50k.
Give artists the option of doing their own recording and production. Hold the money in escrow or release it according to a schedule.
And you, o mighty one, get to decide how that happens (i.e. only before creating, and not by selling units later). Hmm. Does that make me mighty? Who was it that decided how people who mow lawns get paid (i.e. only before mowing, and not by mowing every lawn unsolicited and then demanding money later)? There are a lot more of them than there are artists; I bet that guy is even mightier than I am.
Try taking the same code you create, and hand it over to their competitor. Watch how fast you end up in the slammer. Thanks for the warning, but I'm quite aware of the current state of copyright law. I thought it was understood that we were talking about how things should be, not how they are, especially in the paragraph I was responding to.
How do they get this proposal of work to be done, and payment for said work? Do we all browse proposals for 2 hours a day? The artists seek out customers themselves, or they go to a middleman who connects them to customers (much like a record label does today), or the customers go to a middleman who connects them to artists. Or the customers seek out artists themselves, if they're motivated enough. See sellaband.com for one example of what these middlemen could look like.
The song doesn't store itself on your HDD unsolicited. You wanted that song. Right, but the work was done unsolicited. Like I said, no one else does unsolicited work and then thinks they're entitled to get paid for it after the fact. That delusion only seems to affect people in the handful of industries that have been taken over by copyright.
And about being seen by fewer than 10 people at a time, I assume you're taking a dig at some dumbass DRM restriction. Not quite. I was taking a dig at the "public performance" restrictions of copyright. If I buy a DVD, I can play it at home, but I can't play it on a big screen in front of a few hundred people. I might not even be allowed to play the radio in front of that many people.
But until that point, people like you will make sure that everybody else suffers with stronger and stronger DRM. Luckily, people like me have the most motivation to find new ways around that DRM, because we're the ones who want to make all those unauthorized copies. You're welcome.;)
So every artist must ask if you want to pay for their effort to create their song before they create it, otherwise they have no right to ask for compensation? That's right.
But that doesn't mean they need to have an agreement with "the whole planet". They don't need to get compensation from everyone on earth, or even from everyone who ends up getting a copy of the song. They only need to collect as much money (or agreements to pay, etc.) as they feel their time is worth.
But these people have absolutely no clue what they're signing up for. Maybe you can describe your song to them without actually creating it. Maybe you can hope they understand what you're proposing. Yup. Nothing new there. If you want someone to hire you to do a service for them, you have to describe it well enough for them to make that decision.
Maybe you can hope that nobody else understands your description well enough to create the song before you. If someone hears your proposal and takes it upon himself to record the song you've described before you record it yourself, and his version is good enough that no one wants to hear yours, I can see how that would be frustrating. But I don't think it's worth worrying about in terms of policy. I mean, if he's willing to record all that music for free, that seems like a good thing overall.
This is the seller's transaction -- you're attempting to acquire the seller's property. Just a number, or otherwise. You don't get to define this as someone else's transaction just because you're doing it behind the seller's back. Er, that's precisely the definition of whose transaction it is. If I'm offering you something, that's a transaction between you and me. Not between you, me, and some guy halfway across the world who doesn't even know the transaction is taking place.
You mean artists can never lose money -- because no matter how many people are ripping them off, their situation hasn't changed? If the amount of money they have never gets smaller, then no, they're not losing any money. They can lose time, but only if someone promises them money for work and then refuses to pay when the work is done.
Was there really some explicit agreement not to use a random number generator to decide what your balance is? Did you actually check for that clause, or did you just assume there's no way they would do that? You know, to tell you the truth, I didn't check for that clause. Damn. Well, if there is one, and they end up using it against me, you can say "I told you so".
I guess it is no wonder that congress has managed to somehow attain an even lower approval rating than our current commander-in-chief, seeing as they managed to squirt out something like this Er, no. This was "squirted out" by the Federal Trade Commission, not Congress. You don't even have to RTFA - it's right there in the summary.
Right, that's why you see so much content available from record and movie companies available on Linux. Yes, I hear Amazon and eMusic have plenty of MP3s for sale.
Totally. And there's absolutely no DRM on a DVD player There basically isn't anymore, since CSS is such a joke. But in any case, it's undeniable that a DVD is less encumbered by DRM than an iTunes video.
But surely this was posted by a slashdot-focused eliza program -- no human is this naive. Hmm, maybe. But it looks like your response was written by an Apple investor; no one else would be so eager to make excuses for them.
I think the problem is that the people who do grow food might stand to make more money growing switchgrass so then the land for food will be used anyways. I know if I was a farmer and had a chance to make more money growing a weed I would be all over it. Well, why do you think farmers aren't doing that already? Why don't they all just switch to growing the single most valuable crop their land will manage?
One reason is diversity. There's some risk in putting all your eggs in one basket. If the weather is wrong, or if your crops get hit by disease, planting two crops instead of one means you'll probably have something left instead of nothing.
Another is the market. If a significant number of farmers stopped growing food crops in favor of switchgrass, the price of switchgrass would go down and the price of food crops would go up, and then it'd be profitable to switch back (or start new farms). So even if some farmers do switch, it'll balance out.
Dude, you are so clutching at straws now. Guy agrees to mow your lawn for 50 bucks. Guy mows lawn. You stiff guy. Guy never had the 50 bucks to begin with. Are you saying he didn't lose 50 bucks in this transaction? He didn't lose any money. He did lose time, though, and the value of that time might very well be $50. I'm not going to split hairs there.
But the only reason he can consider that time "lost" is that he gave it to me predicated on a promise I didn't keep. This is why I keep saying "pay (or agree to pay)". If I promise to give you $50 for mowing my lawn, and then I don't pay, I've defrauded you and robbed you of the time you spent working.
On the other hand, if you show up uninvited and mow the lawn without talking to me first, you're giving that time away of your own free will, and I don't owe you anything for it.
Regarding the money never being hers, see the previous debunking of guy mowing lawn And see my re-debunking above. She hasn't lost any money. She spent time recording the album and never got compensated for it, but she gave that time away of her own free will, just like the guy who showed up and mowed the lawn without asking for any money. If she did it because she thought people were going to buy copies, that's a shame, but she can blame it on her own expectations, since no one else made any promises.
How many times have I repeated now, that the seller has terms, and your options are to buy, or to not buy. You cannot just take for free. The seller can't apply his own terms to someone else's transaction. He can ask any price he wants for the things he himself sells, but he can't walk into someone else's business and tell them what to charge or demand a cut of their profits. You only get to do that if you're in the Mafia.
Taking for free means, you now have her product, and she has lost income. Not buying means you do not have her product, and she has not lost any income (just that she didn't receive any from you either). So sometimes it's a loss when you don't give someone money, even though you didn't agree to give them anything, and sometimes it isn't?
And the difference between them losing money or not losing money has nothing to do with what they have, only with what you have?
I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. They're in the same situation either way; either they've "lost" money in both cases or they haven't. Their loss is measured by their situation, not anyone else's.
So you can understand this obligation the bank has to give you cash. Is that a fundamental right, or something etched into law? It's part of the agreement I had with the bank when I opened the account: I wouldn't have deposited any money unless I knew I'd be able to get it back. I suppose it's probably written into some law too, but that's beside the point.
Even if it doesn't require land that grows food, it still requires resources of the farmer to grow it, cut it, and move it. Yes, but that can be paid for with the income they get from selling switchgrass, which is income they weren't getting before because the land was useless for food crops.
Plus, if it makes them more money, why not grow fuel crops instead of food crops? The same reason every farm doesn't just grow the single most expensive crop. Different crops have different vulnerabilities, and you don't want one outbreak of fungus or one season of bad weather to destroy everything.
Plus, if they stopped growing lettuce in order to grow more switchgrass, what would happen? Lettuce prices would go up and the market would correct itself.
So you're only ok, with a business model where continuous/ongoing work needs to be done? A writer can only be paid for writing books, not for the books that actually sold? [etc.] He can sell books, in the same way that anyone can be paid for selling any physical object. What he can't do is stop other people from selling books containing the same sequence of words. And if that means he can't make money by selling books, because he can't sell them at a competitive price, then he should stick to getting paid for writing books instead.
And if everybody were download artists and publishers creations for free, what is the incentive for them to keep creating? Getting paid for the original act of creating. The same incentive everyone has to keep doing their job. If you pay me to write some code, I don't care if you sell it or give it away later - getting paid for writing it was all the incentive I needed.
You downloaded game from bittorrent for free, burned the ISO, and played it to your hearts content. Did you rip the studio off, to the tune of $50 or not? Not. They have as much money as they did before I downloaded it, so they didn't lose money. I didn't break any promise to them, since I never agreed to pay for anything, so there's no fraud either. And I never asked them to create that game in the first place, so I haven't robbed them of any time.
They did the work for you (of creating the game). You did not agree to pay them, but they never agreed to work for free. No, they didn't do that work for me. They've never even met me! They chose to do it on their own. They did it wishing that people would pay them for copies of the completed game, but that doesn't mean anyone is obligated to make that wish come true.
The only terms under which you had access to this work of theirs was if you paid for it. But you just said I downloaded a torrent, so that means someone (or a few dozen people) was willing to give me access under a different set of terms.
The folks who wrote the game can set any terms they want, but those terms can only apply to a transaction which they're a part of. They have no right to dictate the terms of a transaction between two other parties.
Oh, please do forgive them for thinking that they could create something and then sell it. I don't know if I can forgive them that easily. It's a pretty foolish thing for them to do, considering the nature of their "product".
Really? That's what everybody else already does?? REALLY??? Did anybody ask you to pay them for their work, before manufacturing the car you bought? [etc.] Oh, please. You know what I meant: the people who perform a service.
The people who manufacture cars work for a company, and that company agrees to pay them for their work. They don't just come in and sit down at the assembly line, uninvited, and then demand a paycheck at the end of the week for the work they've already done.
Once the car is manufactured, it's then sold like any other physical product, by transferring ownership in exchange for money. But again, ownership isn't transferred until someone has agreed to pay for the car. The dealer doesn't just deliver a car to your doorstep, unsolicited, and then bill you for it.
Nor does he tell you what you can or can't do with the car once you've bought it. He doesn't try to limit you like copyright holders do, for example by saying you can only park it someplace where it can be seen by fewer than 10 people at a time.
You might call it a service or anything, but ultimately you are paying for something without any physical manifestation. [...] You merely recognize that some party had to create it, and deserves to be compensated. Well, you're leaving out an important part: that party has to continually keep creating it and deserves to be compensated for their ongoing work.
If I use 100 kWh, they have to generate 100 kWh. They can't just generate 1 kWh and sell it to me 100 times (or to 100 different customers), and I can't take the electricity I bought last month and reuse it this month. I want them to keep pushing those electrons, and if paying X cents per kWh is what it takes to convince them to keep doing it, then that's that.
By [taping a song off the radio], you are denying compensation to the party that created it. It doesn't matter that they're not doing extra work. You are not paying them, the compensation you owe them, for work they have already done. Er, yes, I'd say it does matter that they're not doing extra work. Doing work on my behalf is the only reason I'd owe them any sort of compensation, so if they aren't doing that, there's nothing to compensate them for. I don't owe them anything for work they freely chose to do in the past, months or years ago, which I never asked them to do and never agreed to pay for.
If everybody in the world were to follow your logic, at no point would anybody be obligated to make payments for the songs we own (we can just get them off the radio, or download for free), and the artists will never get paid for their work. Now we're back to where this all started, I think.
The only way the artists would "never get paid for their work" is if they did that work in the first place even though no one was paying them for it. But why would they do that? Why would someone do a bunch of work for free, without anyone else asking them to do it or agreeing to pay them for it, and then complain that they aren't getting paid? They chose that fate for themselves.
If everyone in the world were to follow my logic, then artists who wanted to get paid for their work would find a paying audience before they did the work. That's what everyone else already does.
Are you really saying you believe downloading, possession and viewing of child porn should not be illegal?
Downloading, possession, and viewing don't harm anyone, so yes, that is what I'm saying. It should be treated the same as downloading, possessing, or viewing evidence of a street fight, a robbery, a murder, or any other harmful act -- the act itself is harmful, and should certainly be illegal, but the recorded evidence isn't.
Now, back on topic...
Let's start by agreeing that money is not just a number -- it represents property, or the potential to acquire it, and therefore the loss of money constitutes tangible harm.
Agreed. But in order to lose money, you have to have the money first; you can't lose money that belongs to someone else.
An artist 'A' releases an album. It is purchased for a price of $15 by just one person (in the whole world). This person makes the album available on limewire. About 10 million people download it. Result: tangible harm to the artist.
Where? He didn't lose any money; he gained $15.
It's true that the artist didn't gain the $150 million that those ten million people could, theoretically, have given him. But that money was never his, so he didn't lose it, and he isn't tangibly harmed by not gaining it.
If you're going to consider the loss of potential-money-that-you-might-possibly-have-gotten a type of harm, then you're going to have to prosecute everyone who declines to buy any particular album, whether or not they download it, as well as every critic who publishes a negative review of any album and thus discourages other people from buying it.
Maybe the artist is indeed unhappy.
If you're going to worry about that, then shouldn't you also worry about the people who want to get the album for free but are unhappy because they can't? There are a lot more of them, so even if they're only a little unhappy, surely that adds up to even more unhappiness. I think it's better to just say hurt feelings aren't a tangible harm.
Or, maybe she would have preferred to have priced the album at 15 cents, and get the exact same total amount of money, but just be fair to everyone and distribute the cost evenly. Worse -- because she feels this way, it means that the people who downloaded the album without paying actually caused the paying customers to spend $14.85 more than they should have.
The pricing of her album is her choice, not the downloaders'. No one forced her to set her goal at $1.5 million. She could have priced the album at 15 cents and settled for a measly $15,000 (well, presumably more, since she'd sell more copies at that price).
But it's hard to call that "harm" anyway, because everyone still willingly chose to spend $15 for the album. If they thought it was only worth 15 cents, they shouldn't have bought it.
I'll skip your next couple paragraphs since they seem to be predicated on the ideas that (1) someone needs to dictate how much is "fair" for the artist to receive, or (2) "losing" money that belongs to someone else counts as tangible harm.
And the importance of the 'number' that represents a game, a song, a movie, or an application, comes from the fact that it represents an actual product that entertains, or performs some function. You just can't pick and choose when to see the big-picture behind this number and when to ignore it.
I'm not ignoring it. I agree that the importance of the number representing a program is that you can feed the number into a computer to make it do something.
But the difference is, that doesn't create an obligation for anyone (except my computer, which seems happy to do whatever I ask of it anyway). No one loses anything when I feed that number into my computer. The bank, however, does lose something when I close my account and they end up having to give me the $1000 I hacked in instead of the $100 I actually depo
It's not the same land or farming resources, though. Switchgrass grows on a wider variety of soil and climate, meaning it can be grown in places where you couldn't grow food crops, and doesn't require much seeding or fertilizer.
Nope. It's called a strawman when I claim that some unnamed third party said something, so that I can refute it. Doesn't have to be an unnamed third party. It can be a party to the argument, like when you said "They have no right to demand anything other than the cost of the physical product according to your logic", attributing a claim to me ("your logic") which I never actually made.
But how can they legally stop you? You offered them 1 cent for the physical product, and they have no right to ask anything else of you. How can they discriminate between you and any other paying customer. On what grounds will they refuse your payment? As I wrote before: "The only way that book can become mine is if they agree to transfer ownership of it to me, and in exchange for that agreement, they can ask for whatever they want."
If I offer one cent, they'll refuse it on the grounds that it isn't what they asked for. They're not obligated to give up ownership of the book at all, so if I want them to do it, I have to convince them by meeting their asking price. (Similarly, if I want someone to mow my lawn, I have to pay him the price he asks in exchange for his time, and if I won't do it, he isn't obligated to do any work for me. I can't come up with my own valuation of his time, pay him that, and then force him to mow the lawn against his will.)
I don't know where you're getting the idea "they have no right to ask anything else of you" in exchange for transferring ownership of their property. I certainly never said it -- in fact, I've said exactly the opposite, multiple times. And somehow I don't think you believe it. So that means it's just a strawman you made up in order to argue against, right?
Why does he get charged more? He paid for a pattern and he got a pattern. No more and no less, before and after you tapped into his lines. As I've repeatedly pointed out, he's paying for the service of pushing electrons through a wire, not the pattern. I can give him the pattern on a piece of graph paper for free. I could give him a battery-operated device that produces that pattern too, or a mathematical description of the wave, or a bit of code that'll draw it on his monitor.
But that's no substitute, because the pattern isn't what he's looking for. He wants someone to push electrons through his wires, which involves an ongoing effort. You can't just tell someone how the electrons are going to move, or do it once so he can see it for himself. You have to keep pushing, 60 times a second. And if he puts more load on the lines, you have to push harder.
Contrast that to writing a book, where the author does a fixed amount of work to produce a sequence of words, regardless of how many people end up reading it. If someone wants to read the story, telling him that sequence of words is sufficient, because the sequence is what he's looking for; the author doesn't have to lift a finger to keep providing that story to everyone who reads it.
You could tap in at some public location too instead of specifically from your neighbor I don't think there's any "public location" where I could mess around with the power lines without violating anyone's private property -- someone owns those wires, and I'm pretty sure it's not me -- but for the sake of argument, let's suppose there is.
Now the problem is that by placing more load on the electric system, I cause extra work for the power company. They have to push harder to move those electrons around, which means they have to either burn more fuel or provide less service to other people. It deprives them and/or their other customers of something.
Contrast that to recording a song off the radio, which doesn't place any extra load on anything or cause any extra work for anyone. That song is going through the air whether I record it or not, and the costs of transmitting it are the same no matter how many people are listening or recording.
No, I'm not claiming that -- I hope the above paragraph cleared that up. Thanks for the clarification.
Nice try -- but that's your argument, not mine. I just applied it in the same blind manner that you did. And you ended up reaching a logical conclusion, just like I have about copyright. Congratulations.
It's only shocking if you believe axiomatically that possession or transmission of such material must be harmful, regardless of whether or not it actually causes any harm to anyone, just like my conclusion about copyright is only shocking if you believe axiomatically that unauthorized copying must be harmful.
How do you define tangible harm? Being deprived of property, life, or limb, mainly. This is why I'm not convinced that releasing private information really does cause harm. It seems to me that the "harm" from the release of private information mostly boils down to hurt feelings. A lot of people do think that private information should be treated specially, though, which is why I mentioned it.
These songs are still copyrighted. But they're not private, which is what we were talking about. If they were private, you'd be horrified at the thought that thousands of strangers are hearing them, not pleased that you're getting airplay.
But the bank's own wealth is just a number. Money, however, is not, and the importance of that number comes from the fact that it represents an obligation to pay out actual money. If my bank balance is $100, that means the bank is obligated to give me $100 cash if I ask for it. If I break into their computer and change that number to $1000, now they're obligated to give me $1000 cash instead. The change creates a liability for them, just like putting fraudulent charges on my credit card creates one for me.
So you admit -- it's not just a number. It's an application that does something. It's a product. I mean, that's why you wanted it in the first place. Well, I guess pi and e are "products" too then, in the sense that they're numbers that can be fed into a process to produce a useful result. If I want to know the area of a circle, I need to know the value of pi, which someone else has taken the time to calculate for me. But obviously that doesn't mean I owe anyone for the use of that number.
But you paid them for the price of the physical product -- so they are not at a loss, according to your logic. They have no right to demand anything other than the cost of the physical product according to your logic. Anything else infringes on your rights to access the 'words' that are belong to nobody, according to your logic. Nope, that's not my logic. You've made up a strawman and falsely attributed it to me.
The book is an object that they own, and they aren't under any obligation to give it to me at all. They can keep it forever and not sell it for a million dollars, if that's what they choose to do. The only way that book can become mine is if they agree to transfer ownership of it to me, and in exchange for that agreement, they can ask for whatever they want.
This derives from the fundamental concept of ownership: someone (called the owner) has to decide where the book is going to be and how it'll be used, since it can only be in one place and some uses interfere with others, and choosing whether or not to let me walk out the door with it is part of deciding where the book will be.
Anything else infringes on your rights to access the 'words' that are belong to nobody, according to your logic. Nope. I can access the words just fine without taking the book home, because I can read it in the store. That is, of course, if they'll let me: they're not under any obligation to let me open their book, just like they're not under any obligation to let me in the front door in the first place.
These same electrons will get pushed around even if you just tap into your neighbor's power supply. Why do you pay your power company for this service? After all, you just took a waveform -- and nobody got deprived of it. It would create a liability for the neighbor (since he's billed for the usage), and I'd have to break into his property to tap the power lines. Of course, if he agrees to let me mess with his wires and to pay for my electric usage, there's no problem.
What's your point? The right to get credit for your creations (or not get credit, if you wish) is a government granted right and not a fundamental right. It is a right nonetheless. After 'x' years (implementation specific) you no longer have that right, so no - it is not being infringed after it expired. But we're not talking about credit, we're talking about this "exclusive right to profit" that you claim people somehow get from somewhere.
Getting credit for your work is just a consequence of the prohibition against fraud, since anyone else who claims to have written it is lying.
Furthermore, since we're talking about the merits of the law itself, you can hardly expect to use the rights granted by that same law as evidence that the law is necessary. If copyright were abolished, then making unauthorized copies wouldn't infringe copyright. I believe you're claiming it would still infringe some nebulous right, but maybe I've misunderstood you.
But it's my property, my computer, and these are just numbers. How can anyone tell me what numbers I can and cannot use? That child porn has already been created. I can't go back into the past and harm that child any further. My use of that number doesn't cause anyone any harm. See how your logic fails? Hmm.. no. What I see is you making a strong argument that possession and trading of child porn shouldn't be illegal.
Why? They are just numbers. According to you, my right to use any number I choose on my own property is absolute. I don't think I've said that right is absolute. You have the right to do it because (as long as) it doesn't harm anyone. It's possible, however, that releasing private information to the public could cause tangible harm in itself. But as I said, I'm not fully convinced of that.
They are not public information. They are copyrighted content. Ah, but they are public. When you broadcast a song over the radio, or sell copies of it to millions of people you've never met and whose identities you don't care about, you're demonstrating that you don't mind if strangers hear it. That is the difference between public and private. Similarly, if you go on CNN and tell the world what your credit card number is, or offer to tell it to anyone who'll give you a few bucks, you'll have a hard time claiming that you meant to keep it private.
But your bank balance is just a number. Why don't you just edit it and put a different (higher) number in it's place? After all, who does that hurt? I'm sure you already know the answer, but I'll humor you.
It harms the bank, in two ways. First, because you'd have to break into their private property in order to make that change. Second, because making that change creates a liability for them: they would be obligated to give me more money than they otherwise would, just like putting a fraudulent charge on my credit card means I'm obligated to pay more than I otherwise would.
I see, so 1 single person would be wiling to pay 10 million dollars for adobe photoshop? No. That was the whole point of bringing up political campaigns: thousands of people pay a small amount, and those small payments add up to millions of dollars. (As you pointed out, political campaign contributions are donations, but then we both agreed it's a "payment" instead when you're guaranteed something in return, which in this case would be the service of writing software.)
Instead of having one person pay $10 million for development, you could have a million people each paying $10, or a hundred thousand each paying $100, or some combination of both: all that matters is that the company eventually collects the $10 million they're looking for.
You never had any rights to the software to begin with. I have the right to communicate (which may involve sharing numbers that represent software) and to use my own property (which may involve feeding one of those numbers into my computer).
Apple, I think, has had a relatively non-evil position on DRM: do what they have to do while gently pushing folks toward free formats. They don't have to do anything to help DRM. Look at Linux: it works just fine without kernel support for DRM, doesn't it?
Further they've created a protection scheme that is as pro forma as you could imagine. There's still no way to play a DRM'd Apple video file outside of iTunes/iPod/AppleTV. That's significantly more restrictive than, say, a DVD.
It's the same way that child porn is just a number. Or a CAD drawing for a nuclear weapon is just a number. Or your SSN is just a number. Or your credit card and other financial information is just a number. Yes, copying those numbers doesn't harm anyone either. It's the creation (in the case of child porn) or application (in the others) that cause harm.
I do think it could make some sense to distinguish between "private" information that only a small, chosen set of people are granted access to (e.g. medical and financial records), the kind of stuff you want as few people to have as possible, and "public" information which is made available to an anonymous mass audience (e.g. music and movies), the kind of stuff you don't mind everyone having as long as they're paying you for it... and then grant special protections to private information, based on the idea that disclosing private information is inherently harmful (which is still arguable). But I don't think it's strictly necessary to make that distinction.
I'm certainly not allowed to say, order $2000 worth of stuff from Amazon and enter your credit card number am I? Won't you sue me if I did that? Or will you uphold my rights to use any 'number' any way that I see fit on my net connection? The objectionable thing there isn't that you have access to a certain 16-digit number, but that you're racking up fraudulent charges which I'll have to pay for (or at least spend my time getting them removed). In fact, plenty of companies know my social security number and credit card numbers already, and I don't mind because they don't do anything fraudulent with them.
Downloading a game or movie, on the other hand, doesn't create any charges or obligations for anyone else.
And what you're paying for, is an application that does something, or a game or song or movie that has entertainment value, not a particular shape. They're one and the same. The shape, the pattern of bits, is the application.
But they can print a new one for 1 cent. Just like the software/game/music/movie people can print infinite copies at negligible cost. Why can't you just pay 1 cent and walk out? Because, as I said, the book is a physical product. If I take it, they don't have it anymore; that's why books have owners, because someone has to decide where the book is going to be at any given time. Therefore, I need their permission to take it, and they can ask whatever price they want for it.
Similarly, a game publisher can ask whatever price they want for a CD, because to take it is to deprive them of it, and they can ask for whatever compensation they want in exchange for giving up ownership of that CD.
And along the same vein -- is power a physical product? For every electron the power company pushed down the line, they took one back. They do this 60 times a second. You still have nothing in your hand that you can hold, that you bought from them. Why do you pay them? For providing the service of pushing those electrons around. The same reason I might pay a landscaper for, essentially, pushing grass and dirt around on my lawn.
The copyright on [Newton's] work would have long expired by now. But surely that implementation detail of a particular copyright law has no impact on the underlying right to exclusive profit that you claim a person has. The fact that copyright terms expire just means this supposed fundamental right can be freely infringed after a certain time, right?
Wrong! Non-commercial sharing is illegal *without the permission of the copyright holder*. Even commercial, but free sharing is possible with the permission of the copyright holder. For examples, refer to the BSD license, Apache Creative Commons license, GPL, etc.
But I'm sure you already knew that. Sharing-with-permission isn't what I was talking about, but I'm sure you already knew that.
I did explain -- you just refuse to see it. Your right to do stuff with your 'net connection is not absolute. You cannot use it in a way that infringes their rights. You're just avoiding the question. They have the "right" to tell me what to do with my internet connection because... certain things I might do with it would infringe another one of their "rights", you say? Well then, where does that supposed "right" come from? Why should anyone believe they have the "right" to dictate who can or can't have access to a certain number?
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If you're still talking about that bank balance nonsense, go back and read my earlier responses in which I explained why that argument is fatally flawed.
That is, when someone asks you to tell them about that book, you might start by telling them what it's called and who wrote it. You might describe the picture on the cover. You might repeat the blurbs on the inside cover. If they still want to know more about it, you might start by telling them what the first word in the story is. Then the second word. Then the third word, and so on.
All you're doing is telling them facts about the book, a physical object that you own. That's speech, unquestionably. And the same applies to discs: there's a certain pattern of bits stamped into that CD, and if you're prohibited from describing it to someone else, that's a restriction on your speech - someone else is forcing you to keep a secret.
Sellaband connects artists to fans and lets them raise money directly from lots of small contributions. However, instead of giving that money to the artist, they use it to rent a recording studio and produce an album; then they sell CDs and cheap/free downloads. I'd make a few changes if I could:
But that doesn't mean they need to have an agreement with "the whole planet". They don't need to get compensation from everyone on earth, or even from everyone who ends up getting a copy of the song. They only need to collect as much money (or agreements to pay, etc.) as they feel their time is worth. But these people have absolutely no clue what they're signing up for. Maybe you can describe your song to them without actually creating it. Maybe you can hope they understand what you're proposing. Yup. Nothing new there. If you want someone to hire you to do a service for them, you have to describe it well enough for them to make that decision. Maybe you can hope that nobody else understands your description well enough to create the song before you. If someone hears your proposal and takes it upon himself to record the song you've described before you record it yourself, and his version is good enough that no one wants to hear yours, I can see how that would be frustrating. But I don't think it's worth worrying about in terms of policy. I mean, if he's willing to record all that music for free, that seems like a good thing overall. This is the seller's transaction -- you're attempting to acquire the seller's property. Just a number, or otherwise. You don't get to define this as someone else's transaction just because you're doing it behind the seller's back. Er, that's precisely the definition of whose transaction it is. If I'm offering you something, that's a transaction between you and me. Not between you, me, and some guy halfway across the world who doesn't even know the transaction is taking place. You mean artists can never lose money -- because no matter how many people are ripping them off, their situation hasn't changed? If the amount of money they have never gets smaller, then no, they're not losing any money. They can lose time, but only if someone promises them money for work and then refuses to pay when the work is done. Was there really some explicit agreement not to use a random number generator to decide what your balance is? Did you actually check for that clause, or did you just assume there's no way they would do that? You know, to tell you the truth, I didn't check for that clause. Damn. Well, if there is one, and they end up using it against me, you can say "I told you so".
One reason is diversity. There's some risk in putting all your eggs in one basket. If the weather is wrong, or if your crops get hit by disease, planting two crops instead of one means you'll probably have something left instead of nothing.
Another is the market. If a significant number of farmers stopped growing food crops in favor of switchgrass, the price of switchgrass would go down and the price of food crops would go up, and then it'd be profitable to switch back (or start new farms). So even if some farmers do switch, it'll balance out.
But the only reason he can consider that time "lost" is that he gave it to me predicated on a promise I didn't keep. This is why I keep saying "pay (or agree to pay)". If I promise to give you $50 for mowing my lawn, and then I don't pay, I've defrauded you and robbed you of the time you spent working.
On the other hand, if you show up uninvited and mow the lawn without talking to me first, you're giving that time away of your own free will, and I don't owe you anything for it. Regarding the money never being hers, see the previous debunking of guy mowing lawn And see my re-debunking above. She hasn't lost any money. She spent time recording the album and never got compensated for it, but she gave that time away of her own free will, just like the guy who showed up and mowed the lawn without asking for any money. If she did it because she thought people were going to buy copies, that's a shame, but she can blame it on her own expectations, since no one else made any promises. How many times have I repeated now, that the seller has terms, and your options are to buy, or to not buy. You cannot just take for free. The seller can't apply his own terms to someone else's transaction. He can ask any price he wants for the things he himself sells, but he can't walk into someone else's business and tell them what to charge or demand a cut of their profits. You only get to do that if you're in the Mafia. Taking for free means, you now have her product, and she has lost income. Not buying means you do not have her product, and she has not lost any income (just that she didn't receive any from you either). So sometimes it's a loss when you don't give someone money, even though you didn't agree to give them anything, and sometimes it isn't?
And the difference between them losing money or not losing money has nothing to do with what they have, only with what you have?
I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. They're in the same situation either way; either they've "lost" money in both cases or they haven't. Their loss is measured by their situation, not anyone else's. So you can understand this obligation the bank has to give you cash. Is that a fundamental right, or something etched into law? It's part of the agreement I had with the bank when I opened the account: I wouldn't have deposited any money unless I knew I'd be able to get it back. I suppose it's probably written into some law too, but that's beside the point.
Plus, if they stopped growing lettuce in order to grow more switchgrass, what would happen? Lettuce prices would go up and the market would correct itself.
The folks who wrote the game can set any terms they want, but those terms can only apply to a transaction which they're a part of. They have no right to dictate the terms of a transaction between two other parties. Oh, please do forgive them for thinking that they could create something and then sell it. I don't know if I can forgive them that easily. It's a pretty foolish thing for them to do, considering the nature of their "product". Really? That's what everybody else already does?? REALLY???
Did anybody ask you to pay them for their work, before manufacturing the car you bought? [etc.] Oh, please. You know what I meant: the people who perform a service.
The people who manufacture cars work for a company, and that company agrees to pay them for their work. They don't just come in and sit down at the assembly line, uninvited, and then demand a paycheck at the end of the week for the work they've already done.
Once the car is manufactured, it's then sold like any other physical product, by transferring ownership in exchange for money. But again, ownership isn't transferred until someone has agreed to pay for the car. The dealer doesn't just deliver a car to your doorstep, unsolicited, and then bill you for it.
Nor does he tell you what you can or can't do with the car once you've bought it. He doesn't try to limit you like copyright holders do, for example by saying you can only park it someplace where it can be seen by fewer than 10 people at a time.
If I use 100 kWh, they have to generate 100 kWh. They can't just generate 1 kWh and sell it to me 100 times (or to 100 different customers), and I can't take the electricity I bought last month and reuse it this month. I want them to keep pushing those electrons, and if paying X cents per kWh is what it takes to convince them to keep doing it, then that's that. By [taping a song off the radio], you are denying compensation to the party that created it. It doesn't matter that they're not doing extra work. You are not paying them, the compensation you owe them, for work they have already done. Er, yes, I'd say it does matter that they're not doing extra work. Doing work on my behalf is the only reason I'd owe them any sort of compensation, so if they aren't doing that, there's nothing to compensate them for. I don't owe them anything for work they freely chose to do in the past, months or years ago, which I never asked them to do and never agreed to pay for. If everybody in the world were to follow your logic, at no point would anybody be obligated to make payments for the songs we own (we can just get them off the radio, or download for free), and the artists will never get paid for their work. Now we're back to where this all started, I think.
The only way the artists would "never get paid for their work" is if they did that work in the first place even though no one was paying them for it. But why would they do that? Why would someone do a bunch of work for free, without anyone else asking them to do it or agreeing to pay them for it, and then complain that they aren't getting paid? They chose that fate for themselves.
If everyone in the world were to follow my logic, then artists who wanted to get paid for their work would find a paying audience before they did the work. That's what everyone else already does.
Are you really saying you believe downloading, possession and viewing of child porn should not be illegal?
Downloading, possession, and viewing don't harm anyone, so yes, that is what I'm saying. It should be treated the same as downloading, possessing, or viewing evidence of a street fight, a robbery, a murder, or any other harmful act -- the act itself is harmful, and should certainly be illegal, but the recorded evidence isn't.
Now, back on topic...
Let's start by agreeing that money is not just a number -- it represents property, or the potential to acquire it, and therefore the loss of money constitutes tangible harm.
Agreed. But in order to lose money, you have to have the money first; you can't lose money that belongs to someone else.
An artist 'A' releases an album. It is purchased for a price of $15 by just one person (in the whole world). This person makes the album available on limewire. About 10 million people download it. Result: tangible harm to the artist.
Where? He didn't lose any money; he gained $15.
It's true that the artist didn't gain the $150 million that those ten million people could, theoretically, have given him. But that money was never his, so he didn't lose it, and he isn't tangibly harmed by not gaining it.
If you're going to consider the loss of potential-money-that-you-might-possibly-have-gotten a type of harm, then you're going to have to prosecute everyone who declines to buy any particular album, whether or not they download it, as well as every critic who publishes a negative review of any album and thus discourages other people from buying it.
Maybe the artist is indeed unhappy.
If you're going to worry about that, then shouldn't you also worry about the people who want to get the album for free but are unhappy because they can't? There are a lot more of them, so even if they're only a little unhappy, surely that adds up to even more unhappiness. I think it's better to just say hurt feelings aren't a tangible harm.
Or, maybe she would have preferred to have priced the album at 15 cents, and get the exact same total amount of money, but just be fair to everyone and distribute the cost evenly. Worse -- because she feels this way, it means that the people who downloaded the album without paying actually caused the paying customers to spend $14.85 more than they should have.
The pricing of her album is her choice, not the downloaders'. No one forced her to set her goal at $1.5 million. She could have priced the album at 15 cents and settled for a measly $15,000 (well, presumably more, since she'd sell more copies at that price).
But it's hard to call that "harm" anyway, because everyone still willingly chose to spend $15 for the album. If they thought it was only worth 15 cents, they shouldn't have bought it.
I'll skip your next couple paragraphs since they seem to be predicated on the ideas that (1) someone needs to dictate how much is "fair" for the artist to receive, or (2) "losing" money that belongs to someone else counts as tangible harm.
And the importance of the 'number' that represents a game, a song, a movie, or an application, comes from the fact that it represents an actual product that entertains, or performs some function. You just can't pick and choose when to see the big-picture behind this number and when to ignore it.
I'm not ignoring it. I agree that the importance of the number representing a program is that you can feed the number into a computer to make it do something.
But the difference is, that doesn't create an obligation for anyone (except my computer, which seems happy to do whatever I ask of it anyway). No one loses anything when I feed that number into my computer. The bank, however, does lose something when I close my account and they end up having to give me the $1000 I hacked in instead of the $100 I actually depo
It's not the same land or farming resources, though. Switchgrass grows on a wider variety of soil and climate, meaning it can be grown in places where you couldn't grow food crops, and doesn't require much seeding or fertilizer.
If I offer one cent, they'll refuse it on the grounds that it isn't what they asked for. They're not obligated to give up ownership of the book at all, so if I want them to do it, I have to convince them by meeting their asking price. (Similarly, if I want someone to mow my lawn, I have to pay him the price he asks in exchange for his time, and if I won't do it, he isn't obligated to do any work for me. I can't come up with my own valuation of his time, pay him that, and then force him to mow the lawn against his will.)
I don't know where you're getting the idea "they have no right to ask anything else of you" in exchange for transferring ownership of their property. I certainly never said it -- in fact, I've said exactly the opposite, multiple times. And somehow I don't think you believe it. So that means it's just a strawman you made up in order to argue against, right? Why does he get charged more? He paid for a pattern and he got a pattern. No more and no less, before and after you tapped into his lines. As I've repeatedly pointed out, he's paying for the service of pushing electrons through a wire, not the pattern. I can give him the pattern on a piece of graph paper for free. I could give him a battery-operated device that produces that pattern too, or a mathematical description of the wave, or a bit of code that'll draw it on his monitor.
But that's no substitute, because the pattern isn't what he's looking for. He wants someone to push electrons through his wires, which involves an ongoing effort. You can't just tell someone how the electrons are going to move, or do it once so he can see it for himself. You have to keep pushing, 60 times a second. And if he puts more load on the lines, you have to push harder.
Contrast that to writing a book, where the author does a fixed amount of work to produce a sequence of words, regardless of how many people end up reading it. If someone wants to read the story, telling him that sequence of words is sufficient, because the sequence is what he's looking for; the author doesn't have to lift a finger to keep providing that story to everyone who reads it. You could tap in at some public location too instead of specifically from your neighbor I don't think there's any "public location" where I could mess around with the power lines without violating anyone's private property -- someone owns those wires, and I'm pretty sure it's not me -- but for the sake of argument, let's suppose there is.
Now the problem is that by placing more load on the electric system, I cause extra work for the power company. They have to push harder to move those electrons around, which means they have to either burn more fuel or provide less service to other people. It deprives them and/or their other customers of something.
Contrast that to recording a song off the radio, which doesn't place any extra load on anything or cause any extra work for anyone. That song is going through the air whether I record it or not, and the costs of transmitting it are the same no matter how many people are listening or recording. No, I'm not claiming that -- I hope the above paragraph cleared that up. Thanks for the clarification.
It's only shocking if you believe axiomatically that possession or transmission of such material must be harmful, regardless of whether or not it actually causes any harm to anyone, just like my conclusion about copyright is only shocking if you believe axiomatically that unauthorized copying must be harmful. How do you define tangible harm? Being deprived of property, life, or limb, mainly. This is why I'm not convinced that releasing private information really does cause harm. It seems to me that the "harm" from the release of private information mostly boils down to hurt feelings. A lot of people do think that private information should be treated specially, though, which is why I mentioned it. These songs are still copyrighted. But they're not private, which is what we were talking about. If they were private, you'd be horrified at the thought that thousands of strangers are hearing them, not pleased that you're getting airplay. But the bank's own wealth is just a number. Money, however, is not, and the importance of that number comes from the fact that it represents an obligation to pay out actual money. If my bank balance is $100, that means the bank is obligated to give me $100 cash if I ask for it. If I break into their computer and change that number to $1000, now they're obligated to give me $1000 cash instead. The change creates a liability for them, just like putting fraudulent charges on my credit card creates one for me.
The book is an object that they own, and they aren't under any obligation to give it to me at all. They can keep it forever and not sell it for a million dollars, if that's what they choose to do. The only way that book can become mine is if they agree to transfer ownership of it to me, and in exchange for that agreement, they can ask for whatever they want.
This derives from the fundamental concept of ownership: someone (called the owner) has to decide where the book is going to be and how it'll be used, since it can only be in one place and some uses interfere with others, and choosing whether or not to let me walk out the door with it is part of deciding where the book will be. Anything else infringes on your rights to access the 'words' that are belong to nobody, according to your logic. Nope. I can access the words just fine without taking the book home, because I can read it in the store. That is, of course, if they'll let me: they're not under any obligation to let me open their book, just like they're not under any obligation to let me in the front door in the first place. These same electrons will get pushed around even if you just tap into your neighbor's power supply. Why do you pay your power company for this service? After all, you just took a waveform -- and nobody got deprived of it. It would create a liability for the neighbor (since he's billed for the usage), and I'd have to break into his property to tap the power lines. Of course, if he agrees to let me mess with his wires and to pay for my electric usage, there's no problem. What's your point? The right to get credit for your creations (or not get credit, if you wish) is a government granted right and not a fundamental right. It is a right nonetheless. After 'x' years (implementation specific) you no longer have that right, so no - it is not being infringed after it expired. But we're not talking about credit, we're talking about this "exclusive right to profit" that you claim people somehow get from somewhere.
Getting credit for your work is just a consequence of the prohibition against fraud, since anyone else who claims to have written it is lying.
Furthermore, since we're talking about the merits of the law itself, you can hardly expect to use the rights granted by that same law as evidence that the law is necessary. If copyright were abolished, then making unauthorized copies wouldn't infringe copyright. I believe you're claiming it would still infringe some nebulous right, but maybe I've misunderstood you.
It harms the bank, in two ways. First, because you'd have to break into their private property in order to make that change. Second, because making that change creates a liability for them: they would be obligated to give me more money than they otherwise would, just like putting a fraudulent charge on my credit card means I'm obligated to pay more than I otherwise would.
Instead of having one person pay $10 million for development, you could have a million people each paying $10, or a hundred thousand each paying $100, or some combination of both: all that matters is that the company eventually collects the $10 million they're looking for. You never had any rights to the software to begin with. I have the right to communicate (which may involve sharing numbers that represent software) and to use my own property (which may involve feeding one of those numbers into my computer).
I do think it could make some sense to distinguish between "private" information that only a small, chosen set of people are granted access to (e.g. medical and financial records), the kind of stuff you want as few people to have as possible, and "public" information which is made available to an anonymous mass audience (e.g. music and movies), the kind of stuff you don't mind everyone having as long as they're paying you for it... and then grant special protections to private information, based on the idea that disclosing private information is inherently harmful (which is still arguable). But I don't think it's strictly necessary to make that distinction. I'm certainly not allowed to say, order $2000 worth of stuff from Amazon and enter your credit card number am I? Won't you sue me if I did that? Or will you uphold my rights to use any 'number' any way that I see fit on my net connection? The objectionable thing there isn't that you have access to a certain 16-digit number, but that you're racking up fraudulent charges which I'll have to pay for (or at least spend my time getting them removed). In fact, plenty of companies know my social security number and credit card numbers already, and I don't mind because they don't do anything fraudulent with them.
Downloading a game or movie, on the other hand, doesn't create any charges or obligations for anyone else.
Similarly, a game publisher can ask whatever price they want for a CD, because to take it is to deprive them of it, and they can ask for whatever compensation they want in exchange for giving up ownership of that CD. And along the same vein -- is power a physical product? For every electron the power company pushed down the line, they took one back. They do this 60 times a second. You still have nothing in your hand that you can hold, that you bought from them. Why do you pay them? For providing the service of pushing those electrons around. The same reason I might pay a landscaper for, essentially, pushing grass and dirt around on my lawn. The copyright on [Newton's] work would have long expired by now. But surely that implementation detail of a particular copyright law has no impact on the underlying right to exclusive profit that you claim a person has. The fact that copyright terms expire just means this supposed fundamental right can be freely infringed after a certain time, right? Wrong! Non-commercial sharing is illegal *without the permission of the copyright holder*. Even commercial, but free sharing is possible with the permission of the copyright holder. For examples, refer to the BSD license, Apache Creative Commons license, GPL, etc.
But I'm sure you already knew that. Sharing-with-permission isn't what I was talking about, but I'm sure you already knew that.