The problem is that the U.S. system winnows it down to one person representing all those factions. Every system winnows it down to one person.
The virtue of a parliamentary system is that factions retain their relative power after the election, and a continual process of compromising with them is required. Well, for starters, you're conflating parliamentary and proportional systems, and even allowing that for the moment, a "continual process of compromise" isn't necessary in majority governments, and coalition governments of more than two parties rarely last more than six months, if that.
The US system requires compromise, too. Reps are technically free to vote as they like. There are frequent bipartisan votes, and winning any major issue often requires at least a few members of the other party, particularly if the president is opposed. If enough of the party base disagrees with the leadership, not much will get done in the US system. The reality of course is that you satisfy your caucuses by compromise in general, whether it's within your party or across to your coalition partner.
The visible result of this dilemma is that Christian Coalition now gets zero representation in their president. They had their chance, and they lost. They were represented by their participation. We could certainly go STV for primaries, but the virtue of SMDP is that it's simple, decisive, and effective. At some point, the voters of unpopular candidates are going to wind up voting for someone else. The number of satisfied voters works out to be the same, though a different system would sometimes elect a different candidate.
As the Republicans have demonstrated repeatedly since Reagan with respect to the Christian Coalition, that threat carries very little weight. Because it's an empty threat. If the people had actually ever summoned the strength to spend the five minutes carrying it out, it would be taken more seriously.
then those factions would be overrepresented. The winners are overrepresented in every system. Take a government coalition of 55% in a parliamentary and proportional system: that 55% runs the show. The other 45% have zero input. In our system, the minority can still make plays and win sometimes.
There's only one chair, and more than two candidates. A vote for one candidate is a vote against every other candidate, even in SMDM (or are Westminster system democracies "two party systems" as well?).
Maybe you're forgetting that there aren't two candidates. There are four candidates for president right now, and there were many more when voters first started voting. And I don't know about you, but I've had at least six choices for Congress as far back as I can remember.
Plagiarism is not an infringement if it's from a public domain work. 1. Academic plagiarism isn't an infringement at all. It's just stealing.
2. Public domain works are entrusted to society and all within it. No one retains control of public domain works. You can't steal what is given to you freely by someone authorized to give it.
Earlier, you said, "Anytime you end up with something you didn't pay for, it's theft." I said no such thing.
You made a big deal of taking the moral high ground and screw all of us for seeing shades of grey. Calling a spade a spade has nothing to do with morality.
And now you're backpedalling, as expected. No, I'm not. You're just lacking in the subtleties, digging in the periphery of meaning instead of focusing on what the issue clearly is: appropriation of something you're not entitled to have without paying.
I don't expect you to understand that, because you can't even grasp basic facts like who you're replying to.
We've already got that. We don't have a two-party system. We've got a 100-party system. California Democrats and Wyoming Democrats couldn't even ideologically be considered part of the same party, to say nothing of New York Republicans and Alabama Republicans. The factional politics ARE inside the party itself. There is no "national" party since we don't elect national candidates, with the exception of presidents and vice presidents. The national leadership is the faction within the party that can wield the hammer best at a given time. Parties for Congress are run at the state level. Once they all get to Washington, they figure something out as a pool of a couple hundred individuals.
Are you saying that Ronald Reagan is a Republican in the mold crafted by the current leadership? Is Ron Paul? Hell, is John McCain? Is Eisenhower?
Is Harry Reid the same kind of Democrat as Nancy Pelosi? As FDR? As Wilson?
Each party has a fully realized set of factions, but only one gets to lead at any given time. There's no problem with the "number of parties" in the United States. There's a strong party line dictated by the leadership, and whips keep Reps and Senators on short leashes. All that needs to happen is for the caucuses within the parties to start banding together and voting on the issues, but there's always going to be someone in charge, and that means they've got the loudest voice. The basic problem is that the voters are too lazy to elect people based on their values and ideals. Getting rid of the neocons and Jesus people would be easy if the people wanted it.
music-industry-supported musicians are paid for by the music-industry The musicians in your scenario aren't the ones selling the CDs. The labels are.
You're not taking something that the musician is selling, True, because the musician isn't selling anything. So let's redefine it for the real world instead:
'You're not taking something the distributor is selling, unless you're making yourself a distributor and inserting your own terms without negotiating them. Then you'd be stealing.'...Oh wait. That's exactly what's happening. So I guess you are stealing.
If this is a launching-board for a tirade against the labels and their exploitation of musicians, it's not the place. I agree with you, but it doesn't change anything.
You're taking something the label is selling without paying for it. The sale of CDs and digital downloads isn't the same as web advertising. Your analogy simply doesn't hold.
f I don't install Flash, am I "stealing" from sites that have Flash-based ads? No.
If I choose not to display/any/ images, am I "stealing" from all the sites with banner ads? No. Like above, you're not taking something that you're supposed to pay for. Advertising-supported sites are paid for by advertisers, who understand that they're not going to get everyone. You're not taking something that the site host is selling, unless you're an advertiser and you're inserting your own ads into his pages without paying. Then you'd be stealing.
Alternatively, if your web host offers you a discounted rate in exchange for an ad frame and you disable that ad frame, then you're stealing because you're enjoying both the benefit of the lower rate and the benefit of the non-advertising.
What if I display the images and just choose to ignore them? What of it? Advertisers pay per impression, not per read.
Do you ever borrow a book, CD, or movie from a friend or the library? THIEF! Wrong! The library doesn't charge for its services, and borrowing isn't permanent possession. You're not taking what's being sold, unless of course, you take from the library and start your own collection with it.
Do you ever skip the previews (aka commercials) on a DVD? THIEF! Wrong! If the advertisers decide it's no longer effective and pull the ads, the DVD price goes up and life goes on. You're not taking something being sold by the seller.
Do you ever pay your credit card bill in full, thereby depriving the CC company of any interest for their loan? THIEF! Idiot! If they didn't offer in their terms that provision, you'd be in collections. Because they specifically gave that to you, they're not entitled to charge you that interest.
Have you ever walked by a street musician without dropping money in the case? THIEF! They're not charging as a prerequisite for listening. There's no obligation to pay.
Have you ever written a research paper in which you cited material you did not personally own? THIEF! Not unless by 'cite' you mean 'insert another work beyond a critical excerpt' or 'plagiarize'.
Have you ever sung "Happy Birthday" and forgotten to pay the royalties? THIEF! Urban legend! Unless, of course, you're a film studio or professional musician performing in public.
Linus Torvalds has stolen millions of dollars from Microsoft for all the lost customers. Really? What did he take from Microsoft that Microsoft was selling?
And GM better watch out before they get arrested for stealing from Ford! They've certainly paid each other handsomely for it over the years.
I bet you think you're so clever. Nice try, though.
Yeah, I don't think anyone will be taking English language notes from a person who can't distinguish between "its" and "it's".
If you want to say that it's not theft in the traditional sense, you're right. If you want to say that it's not larceny in any sense, you're right. But you can't object to the term "stealing" on any categoric ground. There are just too many definitions where 'steal' is valid for the situation to complain; at the very best, if you handpick your definition from the words, and the definition of words in that definition, you can craft one that copyright infringement doesn't satisfy. Here's the rub: for that one definition that you made that doesn't work, there are eight that do.
Theft is larceny and also stealing and sometimes burglary. Copying is neither theft nor larceny nor burglary, but it is stealing. Whether larceny or copyright infringement is "wrong" is a matter of individual opinion, but as far as collective will is concerned, it's a settled matter for both.
the law does care about the value of what you stole. Stealing one dollar is a treated far differently than stealing 10,000 dollars. No, it absolutely does not, for the purpose of culpability, which is the issue here.
The value of the thing you stole is a factor in sentencing (or in calculation of damages to be awarded), but has exactly zero part in the finding of commission of the act.
Well, by that logic, the fact that the first word of "Yesterday" is "yesterday" isn't the Beatles' labor, right?
No. You're pushing a vacuous definition of 'fact' that has no place in the discussion. A fact is separate from the collected expression of thoughts, facts, and information.
So then, since those are all just facts and not anyone's labor,
They're not facts. The act of choosing the word is the labor, and so the "fact" that the first word of Yesterday is 'yesterday' is only a "fact" because of that labor. Thus, it is not a fact. It's not an independent piece of information underlying the work that would have any value when separated from the expression. Of course you know this, because you're stupid but you're not stupid, you know?
People had to work to discover that stuff, and you've told me that people own the fruits of their labor, so I don't know why you still insist on taking their work away from them without their consent.
That's horseshit, and it's been dealt with decisively. They still have the work that is theirs exclusively; their expressions. Nothing has been taken from them. Your discovery of fact is not an expression; it's not a work.
We can't just state facts?
That's an intellectually dishonest question stemming from a disingenuous person engaged in trolling for the sheer benefit of preaching to a choir of imbeciles. Stating facts isn't an issue. When you take a collection of facts and state them in precise duplication of an original work of expression, you're not stating facts. You're coopting expression.
You can state facts if you like. The "fact" that a published expression is what it says is not a fact at all. A collection of facts and observations, expressed in original prose, isn't a fact, either. "The speed of light is c" is not an original expression. A book on the practical applications or the history of the calculation of c isn't a fact in and of itself. It's an expression. Repeating it exactly isn't a recitation of fact; it's a cheap and intellectually dishonest attempt to subvert original expression.
The printing press enriched society, not by making it possible to express things that couldn't be expressed before, but by making it possible for those things to reach a wider audience. File sharing does the same thing.
The printing press enriched society because it opened access to a new class of individuals who could not afford it. Copyright did the same thing, by lowering the cost of acquisition and allowing for the masses to have access to artwork they could not otherwise afford. The printing press' lowered costs made it economical to spread knowledge.
File sharing does no such thing. Human knowledge is not broadened by your free access to a copy of Britney Spears' latest crap. Your access to knowledge is not improved by file sharing, because you already have access to knowledge for free. File sharing does nothing more than wrest self-determination and control over one's own expressions from the person to which it is organically and legally vested. There's nothing wrong with the legalization of casual sharing; but doing so doesn't have anything to do with spreading knowledge...it simply has to do with limiting commercial exploitation by record labels. It is not a crusade.
Show me one instance of knowledge being locked up by copyright that isn't some bullshit "fact" like "this is the text of the latest Tom Clancy:".
I must say, you're putting on quite an impressive dance to avoid admitting that copyright makes it illegal to share information. I mean, I can still see right through it, but kudos for trying.
You can't see much of anything at all. Copyright doesn't protect information. It says so right in the Copyright Act. It says so in all the contemporary commentary on the development of the system. An original expression, a work of intellectual labor, is not infor
t's pretty obvious that they don't: just look at how popular file sharing is Yet another in a long line of vacuous arguments.
People do things they would objectively consider wrong in another person all the time. A shocking 80% of employees would embezzle company money if they knew they could get away with it. That's neglecting the survey respondents who lied because they didn't want to admit they'd do the same.
It's clearly and objectively wrong. People doing it anyway simply reflects that the benefits outweigh the costs. Of course you can move the goalposts around all you like, but it's not going to make you right.
I'm saying the opposite: the work that goes into creating a new program, song, movie, etc. is exactly where the value is -- not in the resulting copies. And the value of the work is realized in the selling of copies. You don't have to do it that way if you don't want to, but when it's not your work, it's not your decision. It's not your substantive work to control.
Dell is still selling this model, so you might be charged with the crime of... Uhh... "Acquisition Without Payment of Something that is Legitimately and Legally For Sale". Irrelevant. You have title to the computer and you are capable of legitimately and legally offering it for free. If you have a CD that's still for sale, you can give that away, too. You don't have the authority to make a determination for another party who has that right any more than I can give away the new computer you ARE using.
The same is not true of many other things in life, such as your employer's office computer (even though you have possession of it).
It's a nice try, but if intentional manipulation is all you've got, it shows how desperate your case is.
The American workforce can get paid for working rather than for making copies Because they can't make copies, and so they have to work. That intellectual work has value extends beyond copyright, and it absolutely is the basis of the American economy.
Any attempt to say otherwise is terribly misguided. There's no value to the labor of typing and filling out forms; the dealing in services and information depends entirely on those services maintaining a level of volume.
Not a programmer on earth would get paid if intellectual work had no value. An information economy must still be managed as an economy. Most people wouldn't have jobs under your scenario.
You're the one saying everyone deserves to own their work; are you now saying they only deserve to own their work if that work falls into the narrow categories protected by today's copyright laws? No, I'm saying that facts aren't work; words aren't work. Okrand absolutely can claim ownership over that which he created. He's free to control that distribution how he likes. He can't control the application of elements, because the fact that some Klingon word means 'potato' isn't his labor. His discussion of how that word came to mean 'potato' is, as is his explanation of how to use it grammatically. His expression is his work, and his to own.
According to your logic, no, because that information is Marc Okrand's work and he gets to control it. Right? No. For fuck's sake, INFORMATION IS NOT AN EXPRESSIVE WORK. FACTS ARE NOT WORK.
Why do you want to take Newton and Edison's work away from them without their consent? Gravity isn't an intellectual work. The speed of light isn't an intellectual work. Their expressions, their conclusions, their explanations are intellectual work.
At some point, someone will decide that I've shared too many facts about the lyrics of that song, and they'll sue me for infringement. Lyrics aren't facts. You're pushing an empty definition which results in nothing more than trolling. There's a clear delineation between fact and an expressive work. If you don't have that working distinction, you're not qualified to be discussing it.
I guess I've just found a loophole in copyright law, eh? Just hack your file sharing program to send each byte separately as a sentence like "The 1st byte of this file is 'd5'" There's no intellectual work in that product. It's just a bald-faced attempt to repeat an expression. There's no independent value in doing so. What exactly do you stand to gain from duplicating existing knowledge? How does that enrich culture, expand understanding, or push society forward? It doesn't.
If I can't use the same words, then I can't say the same thing - I can only say something else that happens to be about the same subject. You can say the same thing; but if you're not investing any intellectual labor into doing so, you're not saying anything. You're just repeating what someone else has said. Being prohibited from repeating a substantial work verbatim doesn't impinge any free speech right you can claim--your ability to speak your thoughts freely is preserved in its entirety. Exact duplication of a substantial intellectual work isn't speech, and it's certainly not yours.
Well, in most people's minds, there is. Based on what? Certainly not based on the dictionary, certainly not based on semantics, and certainly not based in legal operation.
And if you use that word, knowing full well that they'll interpret it in a way that isn't quite true, then you're taking advantage of your audience. Idiocy of the audience isn't anyone's responsibility. If you're saying that people don't believe that coming into possession of something that isn't yours to take isn't wrong, you're off the map.
The whole debate only exists because people like you want to "educate" an ignorant public. Here's the rub, though: your "education" is no less misleading than the people who call it larceny (which is, well, no one, but it makes for a good straw man).
Coming into possession of something for free, being given to you by someone who doesn't have a right to give it to you, is wrong. If it weren't, you wouldn't need to be debating.
I think most people would disagree. Most people are irrelevant. Most people think that hard drives are "memory". That doesn't make it true in any practical, technical sense.
To take is to acquire. Period. Full stop. You can take something from a shelf, you can take an idea from observing an event, you can take a picture, you can take an award. There is no negative element to the verb take requiring that anyone give something up in order for you to acquire it.
Most people aren't linguists, aren't trained in semantics, and aren't sharpened legal minds. If you want to show me a bracketed display of lexemes and make a sense/reference case, do it. If I don't see anything in response involving a -role, I'll assume you're not versed in semantics, either.
If you cannot separate legal protections from moral or ethical considerations, you should at leat realize that others can and do. The separation buys you nothing. There's not a moral or ethical consideration here.
There's a social one, there's a legal one, and there's a functional one. The social and legal ones are grounds on which you can't win, and the functional argument is at best a draw (as to who has a basic entitlement). Trying to drive it into a "but it's not immoral" ground doesn't do you any good. I agree that it's not immoral to some because they've created a complex rationalization and based it on a functional entitlement outside reality. I don't believe it matters, because the basic premise of society stands: intellectual works have value, and that value is protectable. It is essential to the continued employment of most of the American workforce, and it is not in conflict with any organic right. It's not any more or less artificial than any other kind of standard.
Without completely upending society, your argument simply cannot stand. That's fine; you're free to create your own society if you'd like, but I'll again point out that there's a reason no such society exists in the post-industrial world, and it's because it creates huge social and economic problems that are insurmountable by a large, modern society.
If he were to do that, then would you consider it "stealing" to translate Klingon words for someone without Mr. Okrand's permission? After all, that would be giving his work away for free, right? No, because you don't have a copyright on words. If he publishes the book, people can use the information in that book. They can't simply reproduce the book. People are free to translate public domain works into Klingon and publish that--in fact, they've done so, I believe.
You're running in an endless circle.
People worked to produce that stuff, and as you said, "a person's work is his own and it is not for others to take without consent". Or do you only value the work of Britney and Bono, and to hell with Newton and Edison? That's flatly untrue. Newton and Edison didn't create facts, and any books they wrote would have enjoyed legal protection commensurate with their historical perspective. If there is information in a Britney Spears song, you're allowed to use it--you won't find any, though. The mere shuffling of words is not information; it's expression.
If you're going to keep dishonestly conflating the two, there's little wonder your arguments are so unbalanced.
For example, it's a fact that the first line of the song "Yesterday" is "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away". There are millions of physical objects out there in the world where those words are represented, and telling someone about those words is fundamentally no different from telling them "the yellow button on an Xbox 360 controller is labeled Y". You're really bad at this. A fact is not an expression; yes, you can convey an expression as fact, but that is not the same as merely duplicating the expression. What fact in that language can you glean and use somewhere else? If you're making a reference to the song, you're allowed to refer to excerpts of lyrics to make your point. You're not conveying the expression of the work, nor is anyone prohibiting information of fact that enriches culture. You can't copyright the speed of light.
telling someone about those words is fundamentally no different from telling them "the yellow button on an Xbox 360 controller is labeled Y". Neither one is a recitation of an expression of a significant work. A single phrase or a single sentence is not the product of one's intellectual work. If you expand that into a whole book on the Xbox or a single lyric to an entire song, you'll see that the same protection applies to both. The fact of the yellow button's label isn't protected. The repetition of that fact isn't barred. The repetition of the expressive work is barred, because it's not your speech, it's not sharing of fact, and it has no impact on the spread of knowledge. You can write your own book on those facts and release it how you see fit.
If it's coming out of my mouth, or my pen, then it's my speech. No, it's not. If it's not the product of your intellect, it's not yours in any meaningful sense of the word.
It's like claiming that your right to practice your religion includes the right to be the only man on earth who practices it Well, apart from being a terrible but unexpected misapplication of logic, here's the thing: you CAN practice a religion to the exclusion of everyone else if you choose to. But once again,
If by "controlling the means of that expression" you mean preventing others from saying the same thing, is irrelevant. You're not prevented from saying the same thing. You're prevented from saying the same thing, in the same way, using the exact same words. That's not a bar at all; in fact it encourages independent and continuing work. It requires originality in order to be rewarded.
I think there is a question (in the public mind, though not the current law) whether making a copy is a "taking". If I make a copy of data in your possession, you still possess that data, so it seems odd to say that I have "taken" something from you. If you're going to engage in semantics, then be clear and consistent. 'Taking' is not the same as 'taken from'--taking is an act of acquisition. Making a copy is clearly and unequivocally taking. While there may be all the "public" debate in the world about it, there is no linguistic debate and no legal debate there.
The act of taking does not itself require a corresponding act of removal; it's not a zero-sum definition.
There can be. The Klingon language, for example, was (mostly? completely?) made up by Marc Okrand.
And if someone reprinted the Klingon dictionary, Okrand would be on top of it. The only reason to release a dictionary and grammatical guide is to spread that information. That's a precise case in point for copyright, since you're clearly showing how knowledge spreads without interference while still providing a fruitful grounds for protecting an author's rights.
You see, all languages are fundamentally open source; that's just the way it works. If someone isolates some portion, it is no longer part of the language and it is replaced by something else that is more freely accessible. From those elements, people build proprietary expressions that are protected. It's not a language if it's not distributed with consent to use freely. But a creator has that choice.
Likewise, an artist has a choice on how to release his or her expressions. There's nothing that says a writer or a painter or a musician can't give away all the rights s/he wants but neither does there need to be a forced surrender of all rights we vest in creators. There's no compelling need to encroach on that autonomy, that freedom to release as much or as little as the author chooses. There's no requirement that you consume from artists.
Such as calculus, the speed of light, the way to fold a paper airplane, the way to build a house, etc... not to mention everything that was written, drawn, sculpted, or recorded before the 1900s. These are all things that we freely use without anyone's permission, and no one bats an eye.
You just named facts, observations, and information. None of that is copyrightable. Information isn't covered; expression is. My prose instructions and illustrations depicting how to fold that airplane are protected. No one bats an eye because we're not using their work. I'll ask again: what work do we use without permission? Say it with me: facts are not copyrightable.
Copyright says that if I have a book, I can't tell you what sequence of words is in it without getting someone else's permission, and if I have a song file on my hard drive, I can't tell you what sequence of bytes is in it without getting someone else's permission. That's a restriction on sharing information.
It is not. Repeating the expressive work of others verbatim is NOT sharing information. You're not talking about what you learned. You're not using it to enrich culture. You're just repeating expressions. A restriction on your ability to copy someone else's work in no way limits your ability to share the information gleaned from that work.
You can indeed divide information into that which is public and that which is private, and treat them differently.
Not if you insist on your ridiculous "natural rights" position. There's no such distinction. If you have a natural right to repeat anything you've seen/heard, you can't have a natural right to privacy, because there is no way from stopping someone from spreading that information. If your response is, "never let it out of your head," you're no longer talking about a right.
You've failed to make the opposing case, so I guess we're even.
Hardly. You're the one advocating a change from the status quo; you've failed to meet your burden as the affirmative. Equipoise tips to the negative.
That's a manner in which it may be recouped.
That's exactly what I said. It's the one we as a society have chosen. As for a more sensible one, you'll find none. It's not a coincidence that every post-industrial country adopted it. No other system balances access, provides such a low barrier of entry, and preserves value at the same time.
You have deprived me of the use of that land.
No. If I cross your field, I'm not occupying space that you're using. Your
The validity of the law's premise is exactly what's in question. Clearly a large segment of the population does not accept that premise (whether rightly or wrongly). No, it's not. The premise under discussion is whether unauthorized taking is a transgression. It absolutely is. There is also no question that making a copy, even of an infinite resource, is 'taking'--an intransitive, active verb whose patient is the doer.
The issue at law is at a higher level: whether that taking should be authorized. It currently is not, and while I believe it should be, that's a fertile ground for debate.
Otherwise we wouldn't have articles in the LA Times about whether to consider it "file sharing" or "theft" or something in-between. Sure we would. It's a matter of great debate at a functional level. In order for either "theft" or "file sharing" to take hold, the law would have to change. The debate currently exists because the law as it stands doesn't distinguish 'casual piracy' from the kind actually deserving of those harsh punishments. It's unquestionable that casual file sharing is currently piracy; it's distribution, which is one of the exclusive reserved rights of the owner. The question is whether we should redefine or place limits on those definitions at law.
I believe we should, but I also believe that making that case is infinitely harder when people make broad, sweeping statements about their entitlement to the work of others. It scares the crap out of people, for good reason. Laws are moderated by the practice of their enforcement, and there's an argument to be made that the burdens of the legal system place a de facto floor on what's worth litigating. If particularly vocal minorities broadcast their intent to flaunt any compromise, it doesn't really incentivize anyone to bother with changing it.
I'm not arguing the earlier post was right, but the argument he's making is not simply "vacuous". Of course it is. It divorces reality from the process, grotesquely distorting and oversimplifying the nature in an attempt to wriggle out of unauthorized copying being a transgression. In society as it exists, that's an argument that does not stand. The question isn't whether casual piracy is a transgression, but rather whether it should be a permissible one, i.e. an affirmative defense to a claim of copyright infringement. This is a subtle, but critical distinction.
So, who gave you consent to use the English language? Did you make up words like "transgression" and "work" all by yourself, or did you take them from someone else without his consent? Again, a nonsensical safari into irrelevancy. The English language was created collaboratively by a broad group with the intent of mutual communication and without reservation. There is no creator of a language, and no one would add to a language for their own internal purposes. It simply isn't possible.
The principle that "a person's work is his own and it is not for others to take without consent" is pure fiction, at least when applied to works which are composed of information. We use other people's work all the time, without obtaining their permission first, and no one bats an eye except when those works happen to be the kind that are sold on shiny plastic discs. Such as? Information isn't what is protected; it isn't what is original.
But it is theirs to give; it's right there on their hard drive. So let's say I'm living in this house. It's (hypothetically) not my house. I can physically give away the house; it's in my possession. Clearly, however, I don't have the authority to give away the house. Your model is inadequate in the face of reality.
Of course it's possible, and in fact it's quite reasonable to argue that everyone has a right to share information. Non sequitur. You're on a roll! Sharing of information is not at issue.
Privacy doesn't even enter into it, Sure it does. You cannot simultaneously have a natural right to control the distribution of the intellectual works of others while claiming a natural right to restrict access of the same.
The true value is in the labor that went into producing the works in the first place. Absolutely. And the manner in which that value is recouped is in small doses spread over many years. That is the system which lowers the bar most, but it requires rigorous enforcement to maintain value. There are alternatives, but they each present some inherent problem or proclivity toward some form of abuse or another.
This is all, however, a distraction from the original case which you've failed to make, which is to show that, taking all factors into consideration, you have any sort of entitlement or that the other party does not.
There is no extralegal right to bar trespassing, and there is no direct harm, but it is a clearly defined societal transgression against one's recognized autonomy. Where there is clearly a party which retains a functional right to exercise some degree of dominion, and where that right is violated, there is clearly a transgression. This is not antithetical to any fundamental right. It is not a silencing of voices. It's simply a protection of something society values. It is not without some cost, but that is true of anything. As long as the basic fact of commercial value exists, some form of protection is an organic development of society, as "natural" as anything else.
...that changing the part of speech doesn't change the word stem or take a word and make it a term of art. A stealing is that which is stolen, which gets you right back to the verb.
Congratulations on making it to distinction without a difference land, though. I'm sure they're happy to have you.
Well, it's illegal, but if that's what you meant, you should've just written "you're being punished because you broke the law" and avoided getting into the reasoning behind the law. The reasoning behind the law is quite clearly established. It is also quite clear that you disagree with it, so there's no point in discussing it with you.
The transgression, if you want to separate it from the law, is that a person's work is his own and it is not for others to take without consent. You don't accept that premise, but the law does, so your argument is not organic, it's purely academic and hypothetical.
Quit dishonestly accusing people of trolling just because they disagree with you. You're trolling because your entire point turns on changing the terms and scope of the discussion and disingenuously employing bad logic, not because you disagree philosophically.
You didn't make a case for why you think accepted wisdom is wrong, you're just trying to change the conclusion because you don't like it.
The Pirate Bay is a web site where individuals are offering to transfer files to me for an equally low price. Once again, you're dropping the issue entirely. Individuals on Pirate Bay don't have any right to offer the work of others to you. You don't have a free speech right to the verbatim work of others.
But that's true of the microwave too! Sears certainly didn't give me permission to get a free microwave somewhere else instead of buying one from them, and neither did any of the people selling free microwaves on eBay. Of course, their permission doesn't matter; they don't get to veto my craigslist transaction just because they'd like to sell me a microwave. Complete non sequitur. You're free to do the same with recordings and licenses (except non-transferable licenses) as well. You can pass that which is yours to give away. You don't have a right to co-opt someone else's work, waiting until their labor has produced it, and then take it as your own.
I contend that the copyright holder's permission doesn't matter either: they shouldn't get to veto my Pirate Bay transaction just because they'd like to sell me a copy. If I can find someone else who's willing to give me the product for free, whether it's a song or a microwave, I should be able to take them up on that offer. Hogwash. It's not the Pirate Bay's (or any member thereof) to give away. If someone on Craigslist wants to give you a CD, they're welcome to do so. If they want to assign an assignable license to you, they're free to do so. Some random person can't agree to give you something that isn't theirs to give, whether it's a microwave or a movie.
It's simply not possible in a society valuing individual autonomy and privacy to argue that one has a right of any kind to the work or thoughts of others. It would be possible if such works were without value, but because they unquestionably have value, there are boundaries to it. A clever, but ultimately vacuous, attempt to divorce the evolution of law and society from the issue doesn't gain you any ground.
Slashdot Mirror
The US system requires compromise, too. Reps are technically free to vote as they like. There are frequent bipartisan votes, and winning any major issue often requires at least a few members of the other party, particularly if the president is opposed. If enough of the party base disagrees with the leadership, not much will get done in the US system. The reality of course is that you satisfy your caucuses by compromise in general, whether it's within your party or across to your coalition partner. The visible result of this dilemma is that Christian Coalition now gets zero representation in their president. They had their chance, and they lost. They were represented by their participation. We could certainly go STV for primaries, but the virtue of SMDP is that it's simple, decisive, and effective. At some point, the voters of unpopular candidates are going to wind up voting for someone else. The number of satisfied voters works out to be the same, though a different system would sometimes elect a different candidate. As the Republicans have demonstrated repeatedly since Reagan with respect to the Christian Coalition, that threat carries very little weight. Because it's an empty threat. If the people had actually ever summoned the strength to spend the five minutes carrying it out, it would be taken more seriously. then those factions would be overrepresented. The winners are overrepresented in every system. Take a government coalition of 55% in a parliamentary and proportional system: that 55% runs the show. The other 45% have zero input. In our system, the minority can still make plays and win sometimes.
There's only one chair, and more than two candidates. A vote for one candidate is a vote against every other candidate, even in SMDM (or are Westminster system democracies "two party systems" as well?).
Maybe you're forgetting that there aren't two candidates. There are four candidates for president right now, and there were many more when voters first started voting. And I don't know about you, but I've had at least six choices for Congress as far back as I can remember.
Next, indeed, you sanctimonious tool.
2. Public domain works are entrusted to society and all within it. No one retains control of public domain works. You can't steal what is given to you freely by someone authorized to give it.
I don't expect you to understand that, because you can't even grasp basic facts like who you're replying to.
We've already got that. We don't have a two-party system. We've got a 100-party system. California Democrats and Wyoming Democrats couldn't even ideologically be considered part of the same party, to say nothing of New York Republicans and Alabama Republicans. The factional politics ARE inside the party itself. There is no "national" party since we don't elect national candidates, with the exception of presidents and vice presidents. The national leadership is the faction within the party that can wield the hammer best at a given time. Parties for Congress are run at the state level. Once they all get to Washington, they figure something out as a pool of a couple hundred individuals.
Are you saying that Ronald Reagan is a Republican in the mold crafted by the current leadership? Is Ron Paul? Hell, is John McCain? Is Eisenhower?
Is Harry Reid the same kind of Democrat as Nancy Pelosi? As FDR? As Wilson?
Each party has a fully realized set of factions, but only one gets to lead at any given time. There's no problem with the "number of parties" in the United States. There's a strong party line dictated by the leadership, and whips keep Reps and Senators on short leashes. All that needs to happen is for the caucuses within the parties to start banding together and voting on the issues, but there's always going to be someone in charge, and that means they've got the loudest voice. The basic problem is that the voters are too lazy to elect people based on their values and ideals. Getting rid of the neocons and Jesus people would be easy if the people wanted it.
'You're not taking something the distributor is selling, unless you're making yourself a distributor and inserting your own terms without negotiating them. Then you'd be stealing.'
If this is a launching-board for a tirade against the labels and their exploitation of musicians, it's not the place. I agree with you, but it doesn't change anything.
You're taking something the label is selling without paying for it. The sale of CDs and digital downloads isn't the same as web advertising. Your analogy simply doesn't hold.
Alternatively, if your web host offers you a discounted rate in exchange for an ad frame and you disable that ad frame, then you're stealing because you're enjoying both the benefit of the lower rate and the benefit of the non-advertising. What if I display the images and just choose to ignore them? What of it? Advertisers pay per impression, not per read. Do you ever borrow a book, CD, or movie from a friend or the library? THIEF! Wrong! The library doesn't charge for its services, and borrowing isn't permanent possession. You're not taking what's being sold, unless of course, you take from the library and start your own collection with it. Do you ever skip the previews (aka commercials) on a DVD? THIEF! Wrong! If the advertisers decide it's no longer effective and pull the ads, the DVD price goes up and life goes on. You're not taking something being sold by the seller. Do you ever pay your credit card bill in full, thereby depriving the CC company of any interest for their loan? THIEF! Idiot! If they didn't offer in their terms that provision, you'd be in collections. Because they specifically gave that to you, they're not entitled to charge you that interest. Have you ever walked by a street musician without dropping money in the case? THIEF! They're not charging as a prerequisite for listening. There's no obligation to pay. Have you ever written a research paper in which you cited material you did not personally own? THIEF! Not unless by 'cite' you mean 'insert another work beyond a critical excerpt' or 'plagiarize'. Have you ever sung "Happy Birthday" and forgotten to pay the royalties? THIEF! Urban legend! Unless, of course, you're a film studio or professional musician performing in public. Linus Torvalds has stolen millions of dollars from Microsoft for all the lost customers. Really? What did he take from Microsoft that Microsoft was selling? And GM better watch out before they get arrested for stealing from Ford! They've certainly paid each other handsomely for it over the years.
I bet you think you're so clever. Nice try, though.
Yeah, I don't think anyone will be taking English language notes from a person who can't distinguish between "its" and "it's".
If you want to say that it's not theft in the traditional sense, you're right. If you want to say that it's not larceny in any sense, you're right. But you can't object to the term "stealing" on any categoric ground. There are just too many definitions where 'steal' is valid for the situation to complain; at the very best, if you handpick your definition from the words, and the definition of words in that definition, you can craft one that copyright infringement doesn't satisfy. Here's the rub: for that one definition that you made that doesn't work, there are eight that do.
Theft is larceny and also stealing and sometimes burglary. Copying is neither theft nor larceny nor burglary, but it is stealing. Whether larceny or copyright infringement is "wrong" is a matter of individual opinion, but as far as collective will is concerned, it's a settled matter for both.
The value of the thing you stole is a factor in sentencing (or in calculation of damages to be awarded), but has exactly zero part in the finding of commission of the act.
Well, by that logic, the fact that the first word of "Yesterday" is "yesterday" isn't the Beatles' labor, right?
No. You're pushing a vacuous definition of 'fact' that has no place in the discussion. A fact is separate from the collected expression of thoughts, facts, and information.
So then, since those are all just facts and not anyone's labor,
They're not facts. The act of choosing the word is the labor, and so the "fact" that the first word of Yesterday is 'yesterday' is only a "fact" because of that labor. Thus, it is not a fact. It's not an independent piece of information underlying the work that would have any value when separated from the expression. Of course you know this, because you're stupid but you're not stupid, you know?
People had to work to discover that stuff, and you've told me that people own the fruits of their labor, so I don't know why you still insist on taking their work away from them without their consent.
That's horseshit, and it's been dealt with decisively. They still have the work that is theirs exclusively; their expressions. Nothing has been taken from them. Your discovery of fact is not an expression; it's not a work.
We can't just state facts?
That's an intellectually dishonest question stemming from a disingenuous person engaged in trolling for the sheer benefit of preaching to a choir of imbeciles. Stating facts isn't an issue. When you take a collection of facts and state them in precise duplication of an original work of expression, you're not stating facts. You're coopting expression.
You can state facts if you like. The "fact" that a published expression is what it says is not a fact at all. A collection of facts and observations, expressed in original prose, isn't a fact, either. "The speed of light is c" is not an original expression. A book on the practical applications or the history of the calculation of c isn't a fact in and of itself. It's an expression. Repeating it exactly isn't a recitation of fact; it's a cheap and intellectually dishonest attempt to subvert original expression.
The printing press enriched society, not by making it possible to express things that couldn't be expressed before, but by making it possible for those things to reach a wider audience. File sharing does the same thing.
The printing press enriched society because it opened access to a new class of individuals who could not afford it. Copyright did the same thing, by lowering the cost of acquisition and allowing for the masses to have access to artwork they could not otherwise afford. The printing press' lowered costs made it economical to spread knowledge.
File sharing does no such thing. Human knowledge is not broadened by your free access to a copy of Britney Spears' latest crap. Your access to knowledge is not improved by file sharing, because you already have access to knowledge for free. File sharing does nothing more than wrest self-determination and control over one's own expressions from the person to which it is organically and legally vested. There's nothing wrong with the legalization of casual sharing; but doing so doesn't have anything to do with spreading knowledge...it simply has to do with limiting commercial exploitation by record labels. It is not a crusade.
Show me one instance of knowledge being locked up by copyright that isn't some bullshit "fact" like "this is the text of the latest Tom Clancy:".
I must say, you're putting on quite an impressive dance to avoid admitting that copyright makes it illegal to share information. I mean, I can still see right through it, but kudos for trying.
You can't see much of anything at all. Copyright doesn't protect information. It says so right in the Copyright Act. It says so in all the contemporary commentary on the development of the system. An original expression, a work of intellectual labor, is not infor
People do things they would objectively consider wrong in another person all the time. A shocking 80% of employees would embezzle company money if they knew they could get away with it. That's neglecting the survey respondents who lied because they didn't want to admit they'd do the same.
It's clearly and objectively wrong. People doing it anyway simply reflects that the benefits outweigh the costs. Of course you can move the goalposts around all you like, but it's not going to make you right.
The same is not true of many other things in life, such as your employer's office computer (even though you have possession of it).
It's a nice try, but if intentional manipulation is all you've got, it shows how desperate your case is.
Any attempt to say otherwise is terribly misguided. There's no value to the labor of typing and filling out forms; the dealing in services and information depends entirely on those services maintaining a level of volume.
Not a programmer on earth would get paid if intellectual work had no value. An information economy must still be managed as an economy. Most people wouldn't have jobs under your scenario.
The whole debate only exists because people like you want to "educate" an ignorant public. Here's the rub, though: your "education" is no less misleading than the people who call it larceny (which is, well, no one, but it makes for a good straw man).
Coming into possession of something for free, being given to you by someone who doesn't have a right to give it to you, is wrong. If it weren't, you wouldn't need to be debating.
To take is to acquire. Period. Full stop. You can take something from a shelf, you can take an idea from observing an event, you can take a picture, you can take an award. There is no negative element to the verb take requiring that anyone give something up in order for you to acquire it.
Most people aren't linguists, aren't trained in semantics, and aren't sharpened legal minds. If you want to show me a bracketed display of lexemes and make a sense/reference case, do it. If I don't see anything in response involving a -role, I'll assume you're not versed in semantics, either.
There's a social one, there's a legal one, and there's a functional one. The social and legal ones are grounds on which you can't win, and the functional argument is at best a draw (as to who has a basic entitlement). Trying to drive it into a "but it's not immoral" ground doesn't do you any good. I agree that it's not immoral to some because they've created a complex rationalization and based it on a functional entitlement outside reality. I don't believe it matters, because the basic premise of society stands: intellectual works have value, and that value is protectable. It is essential to the continued employment of most of the American workforce, and it is not in conflict with any organic right. It's not any more or less artificial than any other kind of standard.
Without completely upending society, your argument simply cannot stand. That's fine; you're free to create your own society if you'd like, but I'll again point out that there's a reason no such society exists in the post-industrial world, and it's because it creates huge social and economic problems that are insurmountable by a large, modern society.
You're running in an endless circle. People worked to produce that stuff, and as you said, "a person's work is his own and it is not for others to take without consent". Or do you only value the work of Britney and Bono, and to hell with Newton and Edison? That's flatly untrue. Newton and Edison didn't create facts, and any books they wrote would have enjoyed legal protection commensurate with their historical perspective. If there is information in a Britney Spears song, you're allowed to use it--you won't find any, though. The mere shuffling of words is not information; it's expression.
If you're going to keep dishonestly conflating the two, there's little wonder your arguments are so unbalanced. For example, it's a fact that the first line of the song "Yesterday" is "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away". There are millions of physical objects out there in the world where those words are represented, and telling someone about those words is fundamentally no different from telling them "the yellow button on an Xbox 360 controller is labeled Y". You're really bad at this. A fact is not an expression; yes, you can convey an expression as fact, but that is not the same as merely duplicating the expression. What fact in that language can you glean and use somewhere else? If you're making a reference to the song, you're allowed to refer to excerpts of lyrics to make your point. You're not conveying the expression of the work, nor is anyone prohibiting information of fact that enriches culture. You can't copyright the speed of light. telling someone about those words is fundamentally no different from telling them "the yellow button on an Xbox 360 controller is labeled Y". Neither one is a recitation of an expression of a significant work. A single phrase or a single sentence is not the product of one's intellectual work. If you expand that into a whole book on the Xbox or a single lyric to an entire song, you'll see that the same protection applies to both. The fact of the yellow button's label isn't protected. The repetition of that fact isn't barred. The repetition of the expressive work is barred, because it's not your speech, it's not sharing of fact, and it has no impact on the spread of knowledge. You can write your own book on those facts and release it how you see fit. If it's coming out of my mouth, or my pen, then it's my speech. No, it's not. If it's not the product of your intellect, it's not yours in any meaningful sense of the word. It's like claiming that your right to practice your religion includes the right to be the only man on earth who practices it Well, apart from being a terrible but unexpected misapplication of logic, here's the thing: you CAN practice a religion to the exclusion of everyone else if you choose to. But once again, If by "controlling the means of that expression" you mean preventing others from saying the same thing, is irrelevant. You're not prevented from saying the same thing. You're prevented from saying the same thing, in the same way, using the exact same words. That's not a bar at all; in fact it encourages independent and continuing work. It requires originality in order to be rewarded.
The act of taking does not itself require a corresponding act of removal; it's not a zero-sum definition.
There can be. The Klingon language, for example, was (mostly? completely?) made up by Marc Okrand.
And if someone reprinted the Klingon dictionary, Okrand would be on top of it. The only reason to release a dictionary and grammatical guide is to spread that information. That's a precise case in point for copyright, since you're clearly showing how knowledge spreads without interference while still providing a fruitful grounds for protecting an author's rights.
You see, all languages are fundamentally open source; that's just the way it works. If someone isolates some portion, it is no longer part of the language and it is replaced by something else that is more freely accessible. From those elements, people build proprietary expressions that are protected. It's not a language if it's not distributed with consent to use freely. But a creator has that choice.
Likewise, an artist has a choice on how to release his or her expressions. There's nothing that says a writer or a painter or a musician can't give away all the rights s/he wants but neither does there need to be a forced surrender of all rights we vest in creators. There's no compelling need to encroach on that autonomy, that freedom to release as much or as little as the author chooses. There's no requirement that you consume from artists.
Such as calculus, the speed of light, the way to fold a paper airplane, the way to build a house, etc... not to mention everything that was written, drawn, sculpted, or recorded before the 1900s. These are all things that we freely use without anyone's permission, and no one bats an eye.
You just named facts, observations, and information. None of that is copyrightable. Information isn't covered; expression is. My prose instructions and illustrations depicting how to fold that airplane are protected. No one bats an eye because we're not using their work. I'll ask again: what work do we use without permission? Say it with me: facts are not copyrightable.
Copyright says that if I have a book, I can't tell you what sequence of words is in it without getting someone else's permission, and if I have a song file on my hard drive, I can't tell you what sequence of bytes is in it without getting someone else's permission. That's a restriction on sharing information.
It is not. Repeating the expressive work of others verbatim is NOT sharing information. You're not talking about what you learned. You're not using it to enrich culture. You're just repeating expressions. A restriction on your ability to copy someone else's work in no way limits your ability to share the information gleaned from that work.
You can indeed divide information into that which is public and that which is private, and treat them differently.
Not if you insist on your ridiculous "natural rights" position. There's no such distinction. If you have a natural right to repeat anything you've seen/heard, you can't have a natural right to privacy, because there is no way from stopping someone from spreading that information. If your response is, "never let it out of your head," you're no longer talking about a right.
You've failed to make the opposing case, so I guess we're even.
Hardly. You're the one advocating a change from the status quo; you've failed to meet your burden as the affirmative. Equipoise tips to the negative.
That's a manner in which it may be recouped.
That's exactly what I said. It's the one we as a society have chosen. As for a more sensible one, you'll find none. It's not a coincidence that every post-industrial country adopted it. No other system balances access, provides such a low barrier of entry, and preserves value at the same time.
You have deprived me of the use of that land.
No. If I cross your field, I'm not occupying space that you're using. Your
The issue at law is at a higher level: whether that taking should be authorized. It currently is not, and while I believe it should be, that's a fertile ground for debate. Otherwise we wouldn't have articles in the LA Times about whether to consider it "file sharing" or "theft" or something in-between. Sure we would. It's a matter of great debate at a functional level. In order for either "theft" or "file sharing" to take hold, the law would have to change. The debate currently exists because the law as it stands doesn't distinguish 'casual piracy' from the kind actually deserving of those harsh punishments. It's unquestionable that casual file sharing is currently piracy; it's distribution, which is one of the exclusive reserved rights of the owner. The question is whether we should redefine or place limits on those definitions at law.
I believe we should, but I also believe that making that case is infinitely harder when people make broad, sweeping statements about their entitlement to the work of others. It scares the crap out of people, for good reason. Laws are moderated by the practice of their enforcement, and there's an argument to be made that the burdens of the legal system place a de facto floor on what's worth litigating. If particularly vocal minorities broadcast their intent to flaunt any compromise, it doesn't really incentivize anyone to bother with changing it. I'm not arguing the earlier post was right, but the argument he's making is not simply "vacuous". Of course it is. It divorces reality from the process, grotesquely distorting and oversimplifying the nature in an attempt to wriggle out of unauthorized copying being a transgression. In society as it exists, that's an argument that does not stand. The question isn't whether casual piracy is a transgression, but rather whether it should be a permissible one, i.e. an affirmative defense to a claim of copyright infringement. This is a subtle, but critical distinction.
This is all, however, a distraction from the original case which you've failed to make, which is to show that, taking all factors into consideration, you have any sort of entitlement or that the other party does not.
There is no extralegal right to bar trespassing, and there is no direct harm, but it is a clearly defined societal transgression against one's recognized autonomy. Where there is clearly a party which retains a functional right to exercise some degree of dominion, and where that right is violated, there is clearly a transgression. This is not antithetical to any fundamental right. It is not a silencing of voices. It's simply a protection of something society values. It is not without some cost, but that is true of anything. As long as the basic fact of commercial value exists, some form of protection is an organic development of society, as "natural" as anything else.
...that changing the part of speech doesn't change the word stem or take a word and make it a term of art. A stealing is that which is stolen, which gets you right back to the verb.
Congratulations on making it to distinction without a difference land, though. I'm sure they're happy to have you.
The transgression, if you want to separate it from the law, is that a person's work is his own and it is not for others to take without consent. You don't accept that premise, but the law does, so your argument is not organic, it's purely academic and hypothetical. Quit dishonestly accusing people of trolling just because they disagree with you. You're trolling because your entire point turns on changing the terms and scope of the discussion and disingenuously employing bad logic, not because you disagree philosophically.
You didn't make a case for why you think accepted wisdom is wrong, you're just trying to change the conclusion because you don't like it. The Pirate Bay is a web site where individuals are offering to transfer files to me for an equally low price. Once again, you're dropping the issue entirely. Individuals on Pirate Bay don't have any right to offer the work of others to you. You don't have a free speech right to the verbatim work of others. But that's true of the microwave too! Sears certainly didn't give me permission to get a free microwave somewhere else instead of buying one from them, and neither did any of the people selling free microwaves on eBay. Of course, their permission doesn't matter; they don't get to veto my craigslist transaction just because they'd like to sell me a microwave. Complete non sequitur. You're free to do the same with recordings and licenses (except non-transferable licenses) as well. You can pass that which is yours to give away. You don't have a right to co-opt someone else's work, waiting until their labor has produced it, and then take it as your own. I contend that the copyright holder's permission doesn't matter either: they shouldn't get to veto my Pirate Bay transaction just because they'd like to sell me a copy. If I can find someone else who's willing to give me the product for free, whether it's a song or a microwave, I should be able to take them up on that offer. Hogwash. It's not the Pirate Bay's (or any member thereof) to give away. If someone on Craigslist wants to give you a CD, they're welcome to do so. If they want to assign an assignable license to you, they're free to do so. Some random person can't agree to give you something that isn't theirs to give, whether it's a microwave or a movie.
It's simply not possible in a society valuing individual autonomy and privacy to argue that one has a right of any kind to the work or thoughts of others. It would be possible if such works were without value, but because they unquestionably have value, there are boundaries to it. A clever, but ultimately vacuous, attempt to divorce the evolution of law and society from the issue doesn't gain you any ground.