Can I trust you to only break laws that don't harm others in some way? Yes. The law isn't the only check on immoral behavior, and in fact many immoral behaviors are perfectly legal. A moral person will act morally whether those acts are legal or not; it's a mistake to confuse a person's willingness to blindly obey the law with his possession of a conscience.
Victimless "crimes" are something I don't lose a lot of sleep over, but the vast majority of laws - wrong headed or not - don't fall into this category. This particular one does.
There is a good way to deal with stupid laws; agitate, organize, get the law changed. There is also a bad way to deal with stupid laws; break it and be self righteous about it. So, if you found yourself back in the 19th century and slavery were still legal... well, you can guess where I'm going with that. Are you really saying it's always wrong to break the law? Everyone should just keep their heads down and act "within the system" until the law changes -- and if these bad laws are never changed, everyone should just keep obeying them indefinitely?
What I do mind the faux morality. I don't think there's anything faux about it. Most people are able to distinguish between morality and legality, and it's not unreasonable to believe that copying is moral even if it isn't legal.
You can't seriously mean this as an argument in favor of torrenting? He was pointing out that artists already have limited freedom in choosing a distribution model, and therefore it's not out of the question to propose some more limits.
Yes, there is fair use, but yes, they can also lock it with DRM if they please, distribute only on vinyl, distribute it with a restrictive EULA that states that you can only listen to it on a hot summer night when the moon is full (y'know, to experience it as the artist meant it to be experienced) or whatever. Actually, you can't use an EULA like that for music. EULAs only work for software because software has to be copied before you can use it.
Even if [the law granting exclusive rights] is being done incorrectly, does that excuse breaking the law? Well, yes. Why wouldn't it? Are you one of those people who believes every law must be obeyed at all times, no matter how wrong it might be?
This argument is trotted out all the time - "We use P2P to get the music/we/ want. Indie bands, unsigned acts, obscure genres only available on import!"
Yet you go to any top 10 downloads tracker, and what do you find? A near mirror of the appropriate top 10 chart that week. Maybe you meant to reply to a different comment, because although you sound like you're disagreeing with me, you actually seem to be agreeing. Prince and the Village People are not on this week's top 10 chart. Anyone who's downloading "In The Navy" is doing so as a joke, and if legal action prevents them from getting it, there are a million other things on the internet they can laugh at instead.
An artist can choose his distribution model. If he wants to freely distribute it and make his money on concerts, the can go with a creative commons license and be done with it. If he chooses a different scheme, that is his choice. As the creator, he has the freedom of choice and it is not our right to dictate to him how he goes about it. Yes, I agree that he has the right to choose how he distributes his work. But I contend that you have the right to choose how you distribute his work, and I have the right to choose how I distribute his work. I won't dictate to him as long as he doesn't try to dictate to you, me, or anyone else.
Nobody has put a gun to our heads and forced us to listen to Purple Rain. They have, however, put a gun to our heads and attempted to force us not to use our CD burners or internet connections to reproduce certain numbers. That's just as bad.
I also feel that people should be compensated for their work and when I can finally order the season 3 compilation on DVD, I will. I completely agree that people should be compensated for their work. But making copies isn't the work of an artist, it's the work of any trained monkey with a computer, and I have little desire to pay someone for a copy when I can find thousands of people willing to make me a copy for free. Artists should be compensated for the work that they're uniquely qualified to do -- writing, recording, and performing -- by charging directly for it.
A lot of this moral posturing of Pirate Bay and its supporters is simply a cover for "I'm a cheap bastard and don't want to pay for my entertainment". And a lot of it is principled belief that has nothing to do with being cheap and everything to do with human rights, free speech, and frustration at an industry's unsustainable business model being propped up by everyone else's tax dollars.
What happens to an artist who only wants to make a record: who pays for that "performance" and how much? Whoever wants him to make a record and is willing to pay him for it. Most likely, that means a group of his fans pooling their money.
Of course, it's possible that there won't be enough people willing to pay for the record, in which case the artist should find something else to do. An artist who no one wants to pay is in the same boat as a barber, architect, or anyone else who no one wants to pay.
Are you suggesting that only live performance are worthy enough to get paid for? I'm not suggesting anything about worthiness. Anything that you do is "worthy" of being paid for as long as you can find someone who's willing to pay you for it. Fewer and fewer people these days are willing to pay for making copies, but that's not where the real value comes from anyway: it comes from the original act of writing, recording, or performing.
What exactly do you think this "progress" is? The transition from a copyright-based business model, where artists get paid for making copies (and have to expend lots of effort trying to keep everyone else from making their own copies), to a service-based business model, where artists get paid directly for creating and performing artistic works (and don't need to worry about copying, since they've already been paid by the time anyone has access to the work).
Prince is halfway there already, with his Vegas show. Hopefully, after he gets humiliated by the Pirate Bay, he'll go the rest of the way.
That may be true for ABBA and The Village People but Prince is quite well off with his own gig in Vegas. If he's doing so well with his gig in Vegas -- a live performance which cannot be copied and thus is under no threat from file sharing -- then why is he bothering to sue? Either he's just greedy, or he's not doing so well in Vegas after all, neither of which paint him in a very good light.
Regardless of whether you call them has beens or not, people ARE stealing the music and not paying the artist. It's a crime, doesn't matter if they are still popular or not. Yeah, it's illegal. So is driving 32 MPH in a 30 zone, ripping the tag off a mattress, smoking a joint, and playing poker online. No one in their right mind, however, would waste a dime enforcing those laws when there are still real crimes to prosecute.
Or maybe he just wants to be paid for his work. You really think this is going to achieve that goal?
It's Prince and the friggin' Village People we're talking about here. If people can't get that for free, they're not going to rush out to the record store. They're just going to find something else they can laugh at for free - now who does that benefit?
If they get all ignorant-Metallicaish about it, that's another thing, but do we really chastise people for wanting to stop the theft of their work? Your repeated use of the word "theft" indicates that you might be a little "ignorant-Metallicaish about it" yourself.
Nope. It's the TCP connection between two peers that Comcast is attacking, not the connection between the peer and the tracker. Using UDP for the latter doesn't solve anything.
You shouldn't, unless you wish to own a copy. In which case, you are wanting the recording made, and are wanting a "piece" of that action-- it's after the fact, but desired nonetheless. How is that different from making use of a driveway that was shoveled without my consent? I extract a benefit from it, sure, but I never asked for it to be done, and I never agreed to pay for it. Any benefit I receive, therefore, can only be considered a gift.
The shoveling analogy might be appropriate if the artist themselves (or an authorized agent of the artist) just gave you a disc without saying a word otherwise, but by downloading from illegitimate sources, you're simply circumventing the creator's ability to enter into a contract with you. No, the time for that contract has passed. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't retroactively hire them to do something that's already been done.
If you're talking about a contract to buy a plastic disc with a copy of the song on it, then I still haven't circumvented anything. They're free to convince me that their plastic disc is better than one I could burn myself or have a friend burn for me.
Why should the "contract" when wanting an intellectual work be any different than the "contract" when wanting a service? Because it's subdivided into (affordable) reproduced units? Because the process is easier to subvert and harder to catch? Because it's been flipped around 180 degrees. If you do the work first and then shop it around to people, it's not a service anymore, it's a product. And then you run into the difference between physical products and information, and the basic philosophy of scarcity which is why property has owners in the first place. Better to just treat it as a service from the start.
These concerns are a tangent to the real reason people pay to get in. It's access control exerted by the (property) rights holder in order to profit from a unique situation they created. But why does the venue owner have property rights at all? Why does land have an owner? Because it's scarce. You can only fit so many people in so many square feet; you can't let in an infinite number of people. You can't put a potted plant in the same corner where I'm setting up a TV. You can't play hackey sack in the middle of my conga line. Someone has to decide how the space is going to be used and by whom, and we call that person the owner.
The same doesn't apply to information. No one needs to decide who can have a copy and who can't, because copies never run out, and one person's use of one copy can't interfere with another person's use of another copy.
As for the trivial matters of space or HVAC... no one's coming for the great HVAC system or the spacious seating You call them trivial, but they matter. If the space could hold an infinite number of people, and there were no costs for heating or maintenance, then it'd be hard to justify giving anyone ownership of any space - after all, they wouldn't be deprived of anything by each additional visitor.
You could apply the "standing outside" argument if a digital (or even recent-gen analog) copy suffered a degradation of experience akin to that of being outside versus inside an auditorium. The loitering-outside market, however, has neither the appeal nor the impact that the piracy market does. I wasn't trying to make an analogy to piracy. I was just pointing out that the thing being sold at a concert is the right to be on the premises, not the ability to listen to the music. Everyone who doesn't want to pay for entry is still free to get as much enjoyment as they can out of the concert (which cannot be "used up"), as long as they can do it without taking up any space inside the venue (which can).
Short of communism, can you suggest a scheme in which we could eliminate copyrights and patents and still somehow encourage invention and innovation to the same degree that we have today? Sure. All you really need to do is eliminate copyrights and patents, and the market will do the rest. You have one group of people who are hungry for (say) new songs to listen to, and another group of people who have the skill to write new songs but need money. Once these two groups become aware of each other, the transactions will flow naturally.
To clarify, the "scheme" I'm suggesting is one where we treat the formation of art or ideas as a service, rather than treating the art and ideas themselves as an intangible product. The business model for providing a service is simple and familiar: someone says "do X for me and I'll give you $Y", you go do X, and then they pay you $Y. If they refuse to pay, they've broken a contract, and enforcing it is relatively easy because you know who they are.
The only difference between this and the standard model for providing a service is that it's somewhat more likely that the "customer" will be a group of people or companies, instead of just single entity, because of the dollar amounts involved. If it takes you a month working full time to produce a song, then you need to charge at least one month's living expenses for that service, so you'll probably be selling to a group of music fans who pool their money together.
Have you heard of the concept of "billing"? Go to a restaurant, get a subscription to something, have work done, sign up for a service. Quite often, work is done before payment is rendered. It's the concepts of physical property and work for compensation that make skipping out on the commitment wrong (and illegal).
Yes, I have heard of billing, but that's a pretty poor analogy. If you go to a restaurant, whether you pay before you receive the food or after, you're still identifying yourself as the customer ahead of time. They're making that food for you with the expectation that you personally are going to pay for it.
By placing your order, you're entering into an implicit contract; if you don't pay, they can come after you for failing to hold up your end of the deal. That contract is why it's wrong to skip out on the bill for a service.
The production of copyrighted works, on the other hand, has no such deal involved. The artist doesn't bother to identify his customers before he starts working - he just works for free and hopes that someone will come along and pay for it. But if no one pays, he has no ground to stand on because no one ever promised to pay in the first place.
How was the potential revenue never the artist's to begin with? Although the legal rights to control the fruits of intellectual work may be newer and more complex than simple property or work-for-hire concepts, when examining the idea, it still boils down to the same of respect for the value of work.
It was never the artist's to begin with because no one promised it to him.
If I show up at your house while you're asleep, shovel all the snow off your sidewalk and driveway, and then wake you up and demand $50 for my work, do you owe me that money? No. I didn't discuss it with you first, so there is no deal. It has nothing to do with "respect for the value of work"; it's just that I can't force you into a contract retroactively. You never agreed to pay me for my work, and indeed never even asked me to do it at all, so you have zero obligation to pay me for it. That doesn't mean you can't still enjoy the benefit of a shoveled driveway, though - I gave you that for free.
The nature of intellectual practice demands that the method of the transaction be more roundabout than simple hired work, but the principles are the same.
No, there's nothing about the nature of intellectual practice that prevents you from finding customers before you start working, rather than after.
A person is expending effort for our benefit, and at our behest, and as such should be able to command a payment for that effort, should they choose.
But it's not at our behest. I never asked Britney Spears to record "...Baby One More Time"! Why should I have any obligation to pay her for it?
Consider the right to payment* for a conventional service. A person is not deprived of property they own, if I stiff them on the bill for a service they gave me. However, it is generally considered wrong to partake of someone else's work while circumventing their terms for performing it. You might say that the person is deprived of something, albeit intangible: time and effort. However, consider the case of sneaking into a concert or show. Short of some space, no one on the site is deprived of any more effort or property than they would have had the person not sneaked in. Although the method of enforcement is trespassing law, the core issue is less "being where you shouldn't be" than theft of services. The fact that you were not imposing further burden upon the players is irrelevant to the fact that the players have a right to demand a share from every person benifiting from their work.
Well, I agree that these scenarios are wrong, but for completely different reasons.
Stiffing someone on the bill for a service they gave me is wrong because it means breaking a contract. I promised to pay someone to provide the ser
Would you be more comfortable with "Copying music feels wrong"? Does it? I really don't think it does feel wrong to the millions of people who do it every day.
Artists deserve to be compensated for their work. Sure, just like everyone else. But in order to actually be compensated for your work, you need to have a business model that makes sense. Doing all the work up front for free, and then begging/threatening people to pay you for it later, is not a business model that makes sense. Everyone else has figured that out by now, so why haven't the artists?
I agree that illegally copying music isn't always immoral, but you'd have to be pretty convincing to persuade me that it's never immoral Well, some of us believe it's impossible for an act to be immoral if it doesn't harm anyone, and that the potential loss of potential revenue from copying doesn't qualify as harm (since that potential revenue was never really yours to begin with, and since there are many other actions that can cause it to be lost but which no one considers harmful).
If you disagree, that's all right. You don't have to share our morals. Just keep your morals to yourself, instead of trying to impose them on us by codifying them into law, and we'll get along fine.
You have never been involved in a large project or you would have never committed these words to the net. This can never work because the present value of money collected will never keep pace with inflation or the ever rising cost of materials and labor. Gosh, if only there were a way to put that money someplace where it would be immune from this effect. I don't know, maybe some kind of building where you could give them your money and they'd hang onto it, and then later you could take out the money you put in plus a little more. Perhaps they could get that "little more" by letting other people borrow the money while you weren't using it, charging a few percent for the service. Wouldn't that be interesting?
But you're right, such a thing could never exist.
Hmm. Maybe you could use the money to buy something else that would hold its value, and then sell it later? For example, maybe we could come up with a way to divide up ownership of a company, and then people could buy and sell "slices" of it. Of course, there might be some risk, but maybe we could also have other people who aggregate slices of all different companies together to reduce the risk... no, you're right, it's just too crazy. It could never work. It's completely impossible to collect money this year that will be spent next year.
30 million for a major movie production is a tight budget. So break it out, even at 10 bucks a ticket you would have to sell 3 million tickets, in advance. Return of the King sold 160 million tickets. You'd only have to convince one sixteenth of those people to pay $9.40 each (on average) to fund that movie's production - even less if you have other sources of funding like I mentioned. And of course since we're really talking about money, not tickets, the people who value movies more or have more to spend can contribute as much as they want.
Would you plunk down 15 bucks as an "investment" so that you might see a movie 4 years from now ( 3 years raising the money and say 1 year of production to final print) for a subject you might not even give a shit about? If I didn't give a shit about it, then no. As a general rule, I try not to spend money on things I don't give a shit about.
But if I did give a shit about it, then yes, I would.
Get real. This entire notion has no basis in reality in any way shape or form. I can see how you might think that, if you live in a "reality" where there are no banks or investments, and where it's considered a serious question to ask someone if he spends money on things he doesn't give a shit about.
I can only hope that you visit the rest of us here in the real world someday. It's a nice place, and we manage to pay for every other service using a very similar business model to the one I've described here - one where we find people to pay us before we start working, not after.
Songs, yeah I can see that. However I challenge you to provide a business model which would allow big-budget movies to be made in a world without copyright. Can you imagine Peter Jackson pitching the Lord of the Rings? "I want enough money to hire New Zealand for a few years, please don't ask me about the revenue stream." That's that kind of thing you'd say to an investor, but remember, in this model the funding primarily comes from customers. Customers don't care about revenue streams. They're not paying for something that's going to come back and make them money in a few years; they're paying for something that they're going to benefit from directly.
So, here's one way the model I've described could apply to big-budget movies: you, the producer, identify the people who will benefit from the release of your movie, and then you convince them that the benefit they'll receive is worth paying for. The most obvious group is movie fans, the people who will benefit directly by watching the movie when it's finished. If you could collect $9.40 each from ten million people, you'd have enough to make Return of the King (which sold over a million tickets during opening weekend alone, and around 160 million overall). It might take a few months or years to collect the money, but once you have it, you're home free - you can start shooting without worrying about whether your movie will sell enough tickets or dolls or plastic discs or whatever else to cover the cost of production, because you've already covered the cost of production.
But there are often other groups who benefit as well. For example, home electronics manufacturers benefit from the existence of new movies, since no one is going to buy a Blu-Ray player or a 52" TV if there's nothing to watch on it. These companies, therefore, can also contribute to movie production and treat it as just another marketing expense.
You have to admit that your method will mean then end of big-budget movies, computer games etc. - anything that requires a large investment which is traditionally recouped by selling individual licences to consumers. The arts would become the preserve of amateurs and those working under the patronage of the rich. No, there's no inherent reason why those works have to be produced by investing one's own money up front and then hoping to recoup it by selling individual licenses. You can collect the money up front instead, from the very same people who would be buying those individual licenses, and work under the "patronage" of your fans. And once the work is finished, there's no need for any exclusive distribution rights, since you've already been paid.
It might take a little more work up front to coordinate the payments, but (1) middlemen can make it easier, sort of like what Sellaband does now, and (2) the benefits speak for themselves: financial security for artists, who don't have to gamble on the number of copies they might sell, and the freedom to share, enjoy, sample, and remix for the rest of us.
But I don't think that either draconian enforcement or complete abandonment of copyright is likely to be the best solution. There are plenty of artists who want to get paid. There are plenty of people who are willing to pay for art. The basics are there, all that is needed is to figure out how to put them together. I think complete abandonment of copyright will work just fine. As you said, the demand and the supply are both out there. If you have one group of people who are hungry for new songs to listen to, and another group of people who are willing to write songs in exchange for money, all you need to do is step back and let the market work.
But you do have a sales tax. 8% if I am not correct. And those employees buy stuff, they pay property taxes, gas taxes and I bet they are even allowed to vote. That's true, but on the other hand, those employees also make use of roads, parks, courts, police, schools, property inspectors, and other stuff that the state pays for.
Uh, yeah they do. There's no federal tax, but we do our taxes come April like everyone else. Of course Washington residents pay federal income tax like everyone else. What we don't pay is state income tax.
And take their employees with them you twit. Just think of the tax-base loss Washington State would see. Washington has no personal income tax, so that amount is smaller than you think.
The 35k plus employees pay taxes in state and Washington State is certainly aware of that fact. If they make too much of a grumble about the corporate loop hole, they could lose the much larger 35k plus employee tax base. Washington has no personal income tax, so the state would only stand to lose sales and property taxes. If MS is avoiding $76 million in annual corporate taxes, that's $2171 for each of their 35,000 employees. How much sales and property tax are those guys actually paying?
And bye the way, they are not getting XP for free, they can downgrade to it if they buy a Vista license or they can still get OEM XP from places like Dell and HP. Yes, that was my point. If XP weren't under copyright, everyone could get it for free, and they'd have no reason to buy Vista. Therefore, MS will still be "sucking on the [XP] copyright tit" long after they stop selling copies of XP.
Let me put it another way, why should anyone but the person / company who created the work be entitled to benefit from it? Why shouldn't they? I benefit from things like farming and manufacturing and mathematics, but I didn't invent any of those. I get to paint my house blue even though I didn't invent the color blue, or paint, or brushes. Why should I be prohibited from burning certain patterns of bits onto a CD just because I didn't invent them?
I mean what are you saying here, are you saying that after X time, you or anyone else should be able to start pressing Beatles CD's or Disney movies and start selling them? Yes, specifically for X = 0. (Copyright law already says the same thing, but with X = 70+ years, and Congress keeps increasing X every few years to ensure that nothing will ever enter the public domain again.)
If I own a blank CD or DVD, I should be able to burn any music or movie onto it that I want, and either give it away or sell it for whatever price I can get. The contents of that disc is just a string of bits. Why should anyone be able to tell me "you can't burn this string of bits without my permission"? It's my disc and my laser, and I should be the one deciding how they can be used.
Yeah right, trust me if he hadn't have put out versions 2,3,4,5,6 etc. he would be a wage slave at a lab right now. Copyright protects you from being ripped off, plain and simple. I'm sure people in other industries would be shocked to hear that they're being "ripped off" when they only get paid for the time they spend working. How nice it'd be to work for one day and get paid as if you'd been there all week!
Pff. "Wage slave" indeed - do you really have such disdain for people who work for a living?
If you don't put the next version ( of software at least ) out there, then your not gonna suck on the copyright tit for very long pal. Sure you are. Look at Microsoft, for example: they squeezed money out of XP for several years, and the copyright on XP will ensure that they keep selling copies of Vista (because who in their right mind would pay for Vista when they could use XP for free?).
It's even more apparent in other fields. Look at Beatles albums or old Disney movies. How does anyone, except the people making money off of them, benefit from those still being under copyright?
Your argument falls apart in the pharmaceutical industry. If a company spends $3 billion dollars developing a drug and getting it through the FDA and then any old company can immediately go out and manufacture it, no company will invest that kind of money in developing a new drug. Who says a company has to invest it? I mean, if We The People decide that we need drug research, we don't need to do it indirectly by setting up a complicated and restrictive patent system. We can pay for the research directly. Or, if public financing leaves a bad taste in your mouth, the research can be funded by an organization representing the patients who'll ultimately benefit from it.
No argument you can make will change the fact that we need some kind of patent system. Not in the mind of someone who's determined to hang onto the concept that ideas can be owned, I guess.
You honestly don't see the difference between someone undercutting their competitors through creative endeavour and those undercutting their competitors without creating anything new? You mean the difference between giving away a string of bits that does the same thing as yours, but isn't quite the same, and giving away a string of bits that's exactly the same as yours? There's a difference there, yes, but it's an arbitrary and meaningless one.
Can you imagine what kind of society this view would create if shared by everyone? Yes, I can, and it's a beautiful thing to imagine:
Artists and authors take no financial risk when creating new works, because they know up front whether someone is paying them to work. They can choose between working for hire (including being "hired" by several thousand of their fans working together) and working for free, instead of always working for free and then gambling that they'll be able to sell enough copies later to make a living.
Consumers are free to sample, remix, mash-up, and do whatever they want with the works that are available to them.
No more buying an old TV series on DVD only to find that the music has all been replaced. No more waiting and waiting for a sequel or remake of something to come out, only to discover that it'll never be made because someone is sitting on the rights. No more DMCA. No more having to defend against multi-million-dollar lawsuits because some patent troll decided to stake a claim on something that any engineer could come up with in a week.
Slashdot Mirror
Yet you go to any top 10 downloads tracker, and what do you find? A near mirror of the appropriate top 10 chart that week. Maybe you meant to reply to a different comment, because although you sound like you're disagreeing with me, you actually seem to be agreeing. Prince and the Village People are not on this week's top 10 chart. Anyone who's downloading "In The Navy" is doing so as a joke, and if legal action prevents them from getting it, there are a million other things on the internet they can laugh at instead.
Of course, it's possible that there won't be enough people willing to pay for the record, in which case the artist should find something else to do. An artist who no one wants to pay is in the same boat as a barber, architect, or anyone else who no one wants to pay. Are you suggesting that only live performance are worthy enough to get paid for? I'm not suggesting anything about worthiness. Anything that you do is "worthy" of being paid for as long as you can find someone who's willing to pay you for it. Fewer and fewer people these days are willing to pay for making copies, but that's not where the real value comes from anyway: it comes from the original act of writing, recording, or performing.
Prince is halfway there already, with his Vegas show. Hopefully, after he gets humiliated by the Pirate Bay, he'll go the rest of the way.
It's Prince and the friggin' Village People we're talking about here. If people can't get that for free, they're not going to rush out to the record store. They're just going to find something else they can laugh at for free - now who does that benefit? If they get all ignorant-Metallicaish about it, that's another thing, but do we really chastise people for wanting to stop the theft of their work? Your repeated use of the word "theft" indicates that you might be a little "ignorant-Metallicaish about it" yourself.
Nope. It's the TCP connection between two peers that Comcast is attacking, not the connection between the peer and the tracker. Using UDP for the latter doesn't solve anything.
If you're talking about a contract to buy a plastic disc with a copy of the song on it, then I still haven't circumvented anything. They're free to convince me that their plastic disc is better than one I could burn myself or have a friend burn for me. Why should the "contract" when wanting an intellectual work be any different than the "contract" when wanting a service? Because it's subdivided into (affordable) reproduced units? Because the process is easier to subvert and harder to catch? Because it's been flipped around 180 degrees. If you do the work first and then shop it around to people, it's not a service anymore, it's a product. And then you run into the difference between physical products and information, and the basic philosophy of scarcity which is why property has owners in the first place. Better to just treat it as a service from the start. These concerns are a tangent to the real reason people pay to get in. It's access control exerted by the (property) rights holder in order to profit from a unique situation they created. But why does the venue owner have property rights at all? Why does land have an owner? Because it's scarce. You can only fit so many people in so many square feet; you can't let in an infinite number of people. You can't put a potted plant in the same corner where I'm setting up a TV. You can't play hackey sack in the middle of my conga line. Someone has to decide how the space is going to be used and by whom, and we call that person the owner.
The same doesn't apply to information. No one needs to decide who can have a copy and who can't, because copies never run out, and one person's use of one copy can't interfere with another person's use of another copy. As for the trivial matters of space or HVAC... no one's coming for the great HVAC system or the spacious seating You call them trivial, but they matter. If the space could hold an infinite number of people, and there were no costs for heating or maintenance, then it'd be hard to justify giving anyone ownership of any space - after all, they wouldn't be deprived of anything by each additional visitor. You could apply the "standing outside" argument if a digital (or even recent-gen analog) copy suffered a degradation of experience akin to that of being outside versus inside an auditorium. The loitering-outside market, however, has neither the appeal nor the impact that the piracy market does. I wasn't trying to make an analogy to piracy. I was just pointing out that the thing being sold at a concert is the right to be on the premises, not the ability to listen to the music. Everyone who doesn't want to pay for entry is still free to get as much enjoyment as they can out of the concert (which cannot be "used up"), as long as they can do it without taking up any space inside the venue (which can).
To clarify, the "scheme" I'm suggesting is one where we treat the formation of art or ideas as a service, rather than treating the art and ideas themselves as an intangible product. The business model for providing a service is simple and familiar: someone says "do X for me and I'll give you $Y", you go do X, and then they pay you $Y. If they refuse to pay, they've broken a contract, and enforcing it is relatively easy because you know who they are.
The only difference between this and the standard model for providing a service is that it's somewhat more likely that the "customer" will be a group of people or companies, instead of just single entity, because of the dollar amounts involved. If it takes you a month working full time to produce a song, then you need to charge at least one month's living expenses for that service, so you'll probably be selling to a group of music fans who pool their money together.
Have you heard of the concept of "billing"? Go to a restaurant, get a subscription to something, have work done, sign up for a service. Quite often, work is done before payment is rendered. It's the concepts of physical property and work for compensation that make skipping out on the commitment wrong (and illegal).
Yes, I have heard of billing, but that's a pretty poor analogy. If you go to a restaurant, whether you pay before you receive the food or after, you're still identifying yourself as the customer ahead of time. They're making that food for you with the expectation that you personally are going to pay for it.
By placing your order, you're entering into an implicit contract; if you don't pay, they can come after you for failing to hold up your end of the deal. That contract is why it's wrong to skip out on the bill for a service.
The production of copyrighted works, on the other hand, has no such deal involved. The artist doesn't bother to identify his customers before he starts working - he just works for free and hopes that someone will come along and pay for it. But if no one pays, he has no ground to stand on because no one ever promised to pay in the first place.
How was the potential revenue never the artist's to begin with? Although the legal rights to control the fruits of intellectual work may be newer and more complex than simple property or work-for-hire concepts, when examining the idea, it still boils down to the same of respect for the value of work.
It was never the artist's to begin with because no one promised it to him.
If I show up at your house while you're asleep, shovel all the snow off your sidewalk and driveway, and then wake you up and demand $50 for my work, do you owe me that money? No. I didn't discuss it with you first, so there is no deal. It has nothing to do with "respect for the value of work"; it's just that I can't force you into a contract retroactively. You never agreed to pay me for my work, and indeed never even asked me to do it at all, so you have zero obligation to pay me for it. That doesn't mean you can't still enjoy the benefit of a shoveled driveway, though - I gave you that for free.
The nature of intellectual practice demands that the method of the transaction be more roundabout than simple hired work, but the principles are the same.
No, there's nothing about the nature of intellectual practice that prevents you from finding customers before you start working, rather than after.
A person is expending effort for our benefit, and at our behest, and as such should be able to command a payment for that effort, should they choose.
But it's not at our behest. I never asked Britney Spears to record "...Baby One More Time"! Why should I have any obligation to pay her for it?
Consider the right to payment* for a conventional service. A person is not deprived of property they own, if I stiff them on the bill for a service they gave me. However, it is generally considered wrong to partake of someone else's work while circumventing their terms for performing it. You might say that the person is deprived of something, albeit intangible: time and effort. However, consider the case of sneaking into a concert or show. Short of some space, no one on the site is deprived of any more effort or property than they would have had the person not sneaked in. Although the method of enforcement is trespassing law, the core issue is less "being where you shouldn't be" than theft of services. The fact that you were not imposing further burden upon the players is irrelevant to the fact that the players have a right to demand a share from every person benifiting from their work.
Well, I agree that these scenarios are wrong, but for completely different reasons.
Stiffing someone on the bill for a service they gave me is wrong because it means breaking a contract. I promised to pay someone to provide the ser
If you disagree, that's all right. You don't have to share our morals. Just keep your morals to yourself, instead of trying to impose them on us by codifying them into law, and we'll get along fine.
But you're right, such a thing could never exist.
Hmm. Maybe you could use the money to buy something else that would hold its value, and then sell it later? For example, maybe we could come up with a way to divide up ownership of a company, and then people could buy and sell "slices" of it. Of course, there might be some risk, but maybe we could also have other people who aggregate slices of all different companies together to reduce the risk... no, you're right, it's just too crazy. It could never work. It's completely impossible to collect money this year that will be spent next year. 30 million for a major movie production is a tight budget. So break it out, even at 10 bucks a ticket you would have to sell 3 million tickets, in advance. Return of the King sold 160 million tickets. You'd only have to convince one sixteenth of those people to pay $9.40 each (on average) to fund that movie's production - even less if you have other sources of funding like I mentioned. And of course since we're really talking about money, not tickets, the people who value movies more or have more to spend can contribute as much as they want. Would you plunk down 15 bucks as an "investment" so that you might see a movie 4 years from now ( 3 years raising the money and say 1 year of production to final print) for a subject you might not even give a shit about? If I didn't give a shit about it, then no. As a general rule, I try not to spend money on things I don't give a shit about.
But if I did give a shit about it, then yes, I would. Get real. This entire notion has no basis in reality in any way shape or form. I can see how you might think that, if you live in a "reality" where there are no banks or investments, and where it's considered a serious question to ask someone if he spends money on things he doesn't give a shit about.
I can only hope that you visit the rest of us here in the real world someday. It's a nice place, and we manage to pay for every other service using a very similar business model to the one I've described here - one where we find people to pay us before we start working, not after.
So, here's one way the model I've described could apply to big-budget movies: you, the producer, identify the people who will benefit from the release of your movie, and then you convince them that the benefit they'll receive is worth paying for. The most obvious group is movie fans, the people who will benefit directly by watching the movie when it's finished. If you could collect $9.40 each from ten million people, you'd have enough to make Return of the King (which sold over a million tickets during opening weekend alone, and around 160 million overall). It might take a few months or years to collect the money, but once you have it, you're home free - you can start shooting without worrying about whether your movie will sell enough tickets or dolls or plastic discs or whatever else to cover the cost of production, because you've already covered the cost of production.
But there are often other groups who benefit as well. For example, home electronics manufacturers benefit from the existence of new movies, since no one is going to buy a Blu-Ray player or a 52" TV if there's nothing to watch on it. These companies, therefore, can also contribute to movie production and treat it as just another marketing expense.
It might take a little more work up front to coordinate the payments, but (1) middlemen can make it easier, sort of like what Sellaband does now, and (2) the benefits speak for themselves: financial security for artists, who don't have to gamble on the number of copies they might sell, and the freedom to share, enjoy, sample, and remix for the rest of us. But I don't think that either draconian enforcement or complete abandonment of copyright is likely to be the best solution. There are plenty of artists who want to get paid. There are plenty of people who are willing to pay for art. The basics are there, all that is needed is to figure out how to put them together. I think complete abandonment of copyright will work just fine. As you said, the demand and the supply are both out there. If you have one group of people who are hungry for new songs to listen to, and another group of people who are willing to write songs in exchange for money, all you need to do is step back and let the market work.
I had the same problem. That Game Boy sure was fun... for the few months it was playable.
If I own a blank CD or DVD, I should be able to burn any music or movie onto it that I want, and either give it away or sell it for whatever price I can get. The contents of that disc is just a string of bits. Why should anyone be able to tell me "you can't burn this string of bits without my permission"? It's my disc and my laser, and I should be the one deciding how they can be used.
Pff. "Wage slave" indeed - do you really have such disdain for people who work for a living? If you don't put the next version ( of software at least ) out there, then your not gonna suck on the copyright tit for very long pal. Sure you are. Look at Microsoft, for example: they squeezed money out of XP for several years, and the copyright on XP will ensure that they keep selling copies of Vista (because who in their right mind would pay for Vista when they could use XP for free?).
It's even more apparent in other fields. Look at Beatles albums or old Disney movies. How does anyone, except the people making money off of them, benefit from those still being under copyright?