It is a silly system because the copyright laws are made for the 19th century.
"Made for the 19th century" is different from "made in the 19th century". Copyright was created in the 19 century, in order to combat the foreseen side-effects of duplication technologies becoming cheaper and more accessible. Now, we have the internet, and those side-effects are worse than ever. Copyright is more relevant today now than it ever has been, and probably as it ever will be until we get matter duplicators.
The industry is using their monopoly to raise their margins instead of lowering the prices.
Yeah, are we exactly sure that the industry is doing better? From the first result of a Google search, it seems that the US music industry has had a bit of a decline, adjusted to inflation and population. Again, it's only the first result pulled from a Google search, but then again, it demonstrates the sheer flexibility of truth when faced with the possibility that what brings you so much joy can actually be wrong.
...and this makes everything better how? I can point to your post and say "self-delusions of a profoundly anxious man", but that doesn't mean I've addressed your point.
Wait, does that mean I've been wasting the 20-30% of my budget that I spend on food? I sure am going to miss it. Oh well, at least my pastime of throwing dollar coins at drains only costs me about 2% of my income and is therefore not wasteful.
That's one solution, but I feel that its power to prevent lawsuits is derived from the disempowering of artists to defend themselves. If artists could maintain the power to chase down as many alleged pirates as the companies, that is, if they still had the power to defend themselves, would such measures still be effective?
I disagree on both counts. The fact that Zazzle was intimidated out of court is definitely an issue with the courts. If frivolous lawsuits were impossible, then the threats would mean nothing. To quote a great and wise man:
You see, that's the cause of this effect. You didn't realize that on your own because you're looking at the surface only. You need to look about 1mm beneath the surface to appreciate why this is happening.
I also disagree that the law is enabling such behaviour. The intention of the law is certainly not to allow people to threatened into not using a given name. The law does not sanction this behaviour. Like all such loopholes, I attribute the problem to the courts, specifically for not setting precedent, or setting the right precedent. To draw an analogy, I think that blaming intellectual property laws for such abuse is like blaming murder laws for people who frame others of murder, or blaming the frivolous lawsuits from people slipping on puddles, on the general principle that people are responsible for the property they open to the public. Intellectual property law does not allow such abuse, but people do abuse it, just like so many other laws.
Most companies have long ago realized that this is a massive, massive boon to their profits.
...which is why there is no problem. Legislating good business practice is rarely a good idea, because such laws are almost always redundant (since companies almost always gravitate to good business practices naturally) and/or myopic (since good business practices tend to change fairly quickly).
But for now, you just keep believing it's a coincidence that a guy who hadn't had a single criminal offense in 39 years (aside from some minor hacking stuff) suddenly turned into a rapist a few weeks after embarrassing the most powerful government in the world. You keep believing that it was just chance that two women willing to press charges against him for unrelated crimes both met him within 24 hours of each other. You keep believing that Daniel Domscheit-Berg isn't a plant who's part of a larger effort to discredit Assange by any means necessary, or that these bullshit charges aren't a part of that effort either. You keep believing that some of us didn't see this discrediting campaign coming even as Assange was stepping off that plane in Sweden.
That, or I will maintain a healthy scepticism, and won't draw conclusions until I seem some evidence.
Oh wait, never mind. I temporarily forgot where I was.
There's no point in a company attempting not to be evil, when everyone will assume they're evil anyway. If they do anything that's not evil, then either people will fail to notice it, or if they do notice it, then they'll claim it's a purposeful distraction from how evil they secretly are (thus making them more evil)! Or if they do do something evil, then never mind those earlier publicity stunts, it proves they were evil all along!
I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong about Google, or that scepticism isn't healthy, but there is a line between scepticism and prejudice/dogma. Even if that prejudice has proven itself justified in most situations, holding dogmatically to it will damage any possibility for reform.
No, it means that no other Sarah Palins can enter politics without changing their names. Trademarks cannot prevent people from talking about the subject of the trademark, only preventing people to promote themselves with the subject's name in the same field.
You're right, that is retarded logic. However, that isn't the logic that's used in the suit.
It's kind of interesting actually. Cammarata is claiming that Redtube is using predatory pricing practices, specifically the loss leader technique. While Redtube doesn't charge upfront for any of its services, it receives a commission for all subscriptions from people who were linked to the respective sites by Redtube, and also offers a premium service, including downloading the videos. Cammarata claims that they are selling their wares below a sustainable price in order to hook their customers, which is illegal under the Unfair Practices Act. The law AFAICT is designed to stop large businesses setting their prices temporarily and unsustainably low in order to muscle out a small business, but if the same problems arise with big businesses competing with each other, then I see no reason why we should exclude them.
On the other hand, I do agree with the decision for a number of reasons, including that Redtube is not really competing with Cammarata. They provide a promotional service, and if Cammarata can't compete with Redtube and their clients, then they either need to join Redtube, or a similar service. If they want to target anybody, I would have expected they would target some porn producer that offers some porn for free, but also has a paid-for service, not a propagator like Redtube. Another reason I agree is that the business model is completely sustainable. One of the key elements of the loss leader technique is that the business model is temporary, designed to be thrown away as soon as the competition is inevitably destroyed. If the business can sustain its model, then it simply becomes a superior model, which furthers public interest, rather than harming it.
It's funny. Ars Technica is as biased as they come, and make no qualms about ridiculing Cammarata, but unlike slashdot summaries and most "insightful" slashdot posts, it actually explains somewhat accurately the viewpoint of the other side. It is possible to editorialise without breeding ignorance.
Sorry for the late reply. I've been a little busy lately. I thought I might do this a little differently to the classic string of rebuttals, since a lot of the strands run together, and a lot of them are, in my opinion, irrelevant. If there's anything specifically you want me to respond to, point it out next time.
Essentially, my problem here is that I do not know your definition of harm. Most of my efforts have been to spur you into telling me exactly what you mean by the word "harm". Explain it to me like a dictionary would. If you make some mistakes/omissions, that's fine, but I would like to see some kind of outline. At least then we could have something to work with, and I could actually evaluate both our arguments. To kick off, allow me to provide you with a definition of harm that I agree with:
I hope you can see how piracy fits the definition of harm I've provided.
Until you provide me with a complete definition of harm, I'd like to ask some more about your most illuminating position on investments:
Did they ever have the money? If not, then no, you haven't harmed them.
What if the chance was bumped up to 100%? Yes, if you invested, you were 100% guaranteed to get a million dollars at the end of tomorrow. If I sabotaged it, would I still not be harming you? I mean, the money technically isn't yours yet, but it is guaranteed.
As another scenario, let's suppose that the probability of gaining $1,000,000,000 is 99.999999% or something else ridiculously close to 100%. Let's also suppose that you live in a smallish town, where everyone invests, and everyone manages to get a $1,000,000,000. Everyone, that is, except you, because I sabotaged your investment. Then, due to the suddenly rich neighbourhood, people renovate their houses, buy more expensive food, clothing, and other essentials. In fact, no store catering to the middle or lower classes can even remain competitive, and all change to something more up-market, or pack up shop and move somewhere else. As the only person without $1,000,000,000, you can no longer survive in this town, and are forced to move just so you have access to a grocery store and hold down a job. Finding a place is difficult, takes time, and you can only find a crappy little apartment that is a 10th of the size of your old place. Essentially, you're suffering. Have I harmed you? By sabotaging your investment, I have indirectly lost you your house and way of life, and these are only future losses, so that might factor into your decision as well.
Actually, I think I disagree. It's hackers like these which actually exacerbate the DRM problem. Every person who didn't want Sony's DRM, but bought a PS3 anyway, is simply encouraging Sony, and funding their rein of terror. Geohotz may have meant well, but by accommodating such spineless Sony customers, he contributes to making the situation worse, with repercussions that spread beyond PS3 owners. I genuinely think that it would be better if PS3 customers were left in the cages they walked into, especially for the people themselves. They need to acquire the strength to say "no".
It doesn't help to pull punches here. The only thing that will stop DRM is if people stop buying the good stuff with DRM as well. And yes, there will be good stuff, so don't expect it to be easy.
Do I or do I not have money that is mine (even though it is represented by data) that is being stored by the bank? They exchange this for real money, and therefore it carries as much value as real money. If the bank were to lose this data, its value that it carries would also be lost. This sense of loss is immediate, and it is something that I actually possessed (even if it wasn't being held in my hands).
OK, now we're talking! I would say that we do not have the money that is stored in the bank. We do not have unfettered access to it, as we are still limited to the many ways we get access to it (e.g. withdrawing from an ATM or in person, credit/debit cards, electronic transfers, etc). If you meet a guy in the street, you want to buy his watch, you have 0 cash on you at that moment, but more than enough in the bank, then you're going to meet some difficulty buying that watch. Like I said, it's not that accessing it is hard, it's just that you don't actually have it.
I agree that the sense of loss follows immediately from discovering that you've lost money. However, I would actually say that this is more from the loss of potential, i.e. the loss of all the possible things that that money could buy. That is what we truly miss when we lose money, in the bank or not in the bank. So, in fact, loss of money, whether in the bank or not, is a loss of potential in itself. It is in that potential that money has any value whatsoever. Anyway, I'm digressing slightly, but I wanted to point out that money can be a sticky situation.
Unless they have something already, no harm was done.
You keep saying that, but you provide no arguments in favour of such a ludicrous view. I've already given multiple examples where society says that it's false. If, every time you/your wife gets pregnant, I kill the unborn child, does that harm you? I guess not; the unborn children were pretty much all pure "potential". I mean, you never "actually had" the child, so really you didn't lose anything, right?
By whom? Not by me. I believe that in order to be harmed (by 'theft'), you must have the object in the first place. Otherwise, you are left exactly as you were before in terms of physical (or perhaps digital) possessions. The only thing that might change is your state of mind.
You sound like the kind of person who would trade his friends and family for [insert cheap material thrill]. Surely there must be something in your life that you value more than your things?
The harm you inflicted upon my body was immediate.
Say what? Isn't that now just a circular argument? I'm trying to divine your definition of harm, and you simply answer by saying there was harm! Why is there harm? What have I deprived you of? Say I killed you literally instantly, and you never saw what was coming. Then there is no "sense of immediate loss", as there was in other cases. Perhaps I have deprived you of life, but why does losing life count, but losing potential does not? I can't see why financial potential is being singled out as the one thing that you can't be deprived of!
Oh, and since we're on the subject of the recurring theme of "immediate sense of loss", exactly how important is that to your definition of harm? What if an artist feels an immediate sense of loss (for the potential sale) when someone pirates their work? If I skim the interest of your bank account in a way that you never notice, have I harmed you?
Also, I would appreciate it if you would respond to the rest of the scenarios I posed. It would really help me figure out exactly what "harm" means to you. For example, me destroying your reputation. Would that be harmful for you? Is your reputation something you can be deprived of? Or is it simply a loss of your potential? What about investments? The value of most things have contributing factors from both their immediate use and their potential use, but investmen
I'm tired of Bureaucracy being blamed for good 'ole fashion political corruption.
Oh? You have evidence of political corruption? Nah, of course you don't. Who needs it anyway? There are so many other cases supported large bodies of evidence that nobody is going to notice if we jump to conclusions about one or two cases, right? I'm sure such certainty came from a careful consideration of the facts.
I'm fairly certain there's at least a few laws in place that protects up to around $100,000 for you if the bank that stores your money actually does go under.
OK, but what if you had more than $100,000? Can you access the money immediately? What would it take to prove to you that you don't "actually have" the money you've given to the bank?
According to society and the bank you do. It doesn't exist in the future. It exists now.
According to society, artists are entitled to their potential sales. My point is that this is not based on anything concrete; it's a law that says this. Without such a law, putting money into a bank would become a pointlessly risky venture, and would definitely not be like "actually having" your money.
Also, I'd like to know what you mean by the money "existing now". Yes, the notes are somewhere, perhaps stored by the bank, or more probably in the hands of someone else in the form of a loan or other investment. When you ask for your money back, it's not the same notes anyway, so the issue of individual notes is not actually so important. What is important is your balance, which the bank stores. Anything that could be described as "your cash", cash being the physical representation of money, does not exist. It's only when you withdraw money that it becomes your cash. Your money stored at the bank is only potentially your cash.
I guess for an artist, their money also exists right now, but it may be currently in the hands of someone else. That's why stealing electronic funds (Ha! How ludicrous is it to call changing a few bits "stealing"?) is a bit like piracy. Both deprive people of potential money that they may "actually have" in the future.
I happen to notice that you're not sounding particularly convinced with the bank example. How about another example? I touched on this before, but investments is another good analogue. With investments, it's very possible that the investment may crash and burn a couple of weeks in, perhaps before they pay any dividends. On the other hand, it's very possible that they could be massively lucrative for people who stick with it long enough. One way to look at it would be, the investors never really had any dividends to start off with, so by destroying the investment, the situation would "remain unchanged". Another far more meaningful way of looking at this is to acknowledge that you have destroyed something of value, not because of what was guaranteed to put out, but because of what it could have put out, taking into account the likelihood of what it could have put out. Society tends to look at it from the latter perspective, since this actually gels with people's perception of value. It doesn't matter if it's not a sure thing, just if there is some significant chance of significant gain.
That's why the argument that "But they never had the money in the first place, so they remain unchanged" seems so fatuous to me. It makes no account of what actually happens in real life, or what actually runs through people's minds when they make an investment, like releasing a copyrighted work commercially. The fact is, despite the many places that such fatuous arguments could be applied, copyright is the only topic with which such arguments are taken at all seriously by anybody. Society, by and large, recognises the value of potential, and so robbing people of that potential is an act of harm.
The better situation for person A is irrelevant because they don't actually remove anything from person B to be in that better situation. Person B isn't in a worse situation because they have everything they had previously. They lost nothing.
Well, yes, I actually agree that the better situation for person A is not relevant, but I included it anyway as a rhetorical device (some people find benefit at the expense of others misfortunes more distasteful than the others misfortunes by themselves). What is relevant is that p
The same could be said if the bank merely stored your physical money. Whether or not it's physical is irrelevant. It isn't potential money. It is money that you currently, according to the bank, have.
Potential money is exactly what it is. There is actually a distinction between having money, and the bank being forced to give you the money they store. Try using the money if the bank goes under! No, you truly do not "actually have" the money. It's simply some law which forces the bank to act like you do.
Obviously, the banking laws have been around long enough that we don't generally even think in terms of not "actually having" our money anymore. With the commonplace electronic transferring of funds, the line is starting to blur. Sure, there's still a physical distinction, but its relevance is rapidly decreasing. We place a hell of a lot of value in these little exchanges of bits, just like we always have with physical notes, or gold bars, etc. Many artists and publishers know already the value of potential sales, because without them, they would have nothing.
Face it: intangible potential can have significant value. Just because we can't predict to 100% certainty exactly how much will pay out from such potential, does not mean that it isn't valuable. Many investments have some kind of risks involved, but that doesn't mean that nobody ever partakes, right?
Actually, I merely meant to imply that maybe it is true that they would have less of a chance of making money that they don't currently have, not that that equates to harm.
How is it not harm? If person A pirates the works of person B, they are stripping person B of their legally-granted rights, causing a worse situation for person B, and more often than not, a better situation for person A. You see that piracy causes artists to be worse off financially, due to the (illegal) choices of others. I simply can't understand how you could possibly find pirates blameless in this situation.
I was speaking of the suffering of the artists if copyright law was merely removed and the rest of the system was left in place due to the existence of currency that everyone must have to participate in this society.
I don't quite understand. Are you disagreeing with society's use of money? Well, if so, I certainly admire your ambition!
That one law isn't being blamed. The entire system is to blame. All copyright law does is patch the problem through the use of artificial scarcity.
So, what exactly is the problem with copyright? You say "patched", I would say "fixed". What problems with copyright are you referring to? What exactly does artificial scarcity not solve?
(Actually, I'm a little confused over what your contention is, generally.)
I don't know what you're talking about. All of the data on my computer is mine.
Well, I agree that all the data storage on your computer is yours, but whether the data itself is all yours, well, that's a different debate. However, the bits I'm referring to are actually stored on the bank's computers. You know, the ones that store your bank balance. You don't "actually have" them, the bank does. They only give you very limited ability to influence the value stored by these bits, specifically, you can only increase the amount by paying money, and decrease the amount by receiving money. If they were bits you "actually had", there would be no way of stopping you giving yourself an extra million dollars. You would be able to simply add a million to the value stored.
But you can't. You don't "actually have" your bank balance. It is an intangible object, valuable only because of the law enforces people to treat it in a certain way. Sort of like a copyright.
taking
Doesn't happen.
Don't be thick. You know what I meant.
Maybe. It really depends on if the people who received the free copies were able to (especially this) and were going to buy the product in the first place.
Maybe is enough. Since we can't really judge whether we really would never buy something or not, given the possibility of unforeseen circumstances, price cuts, or other ways to sweeten the deal, there is a significant opportunity cost incurred. More than enough to justify the law's existence.
On top of that, there's the extremely significant possibility that people will pirate, even if they know that they could buy it. I know of examples where this is obviously true. My brother was planning to buy a game called Victoria on Steam, but after it failing to buy (from some temporary situation), he contacted a friend, who offered to give him a copy for free, which he was willing to take. Fortunately, it didn't take much to convince him that it was wrong. That's one example that I can verify myself. There was a strong possibility that he was going to buy this game, but he would still have pirated anyway. I'm certain he is not the only one.
Yes. I suppose it currently does. Due to the existence of artificial currency and no fault of the copyright infringers, stripping away copyright law and leaving the rest of society like it is now would merely shift the suffering to the artists. A drastic change would be needed to fix all of these problems that things such as copyright are only able to patch up at best.
What suffering? Do you mean the suffering of pirates being forced underground by their choices in life? Or the suffering of everyone under the **AA's loose legal practices and lobbying? If it's the former, then to the pirates, I suggest that they end their suffering and simply stop pirating. If it's the latter, then it's not really a problem with copyright, it's a problem with the legal system, not copyright, and even if we destroy the **AA by destroying copyright, this doesn't fix the fundamental problem with the legal system. Also, a market solution would be better suited to getting rid of the bathwater while keeping the baby. Frankly, I cannot see how one law could be blamed so much for the choices of others.
Not really. My data is worth as much as I say it is (how much value I place in it). It doesn't have to mean anything to the rest of society.
Like I said, it's not your data that I'm talking about.
What do you mean, you "actually have" the bits storing your bank account? Describe to me what it feels like to hold it. Can you manually change the bits? How come I don't see too many bank bits in the windows of pawn shops?
The bits represent a promise by the bank to reimburse you with actual cash. You can't actually possess these bits, and they have no intrinsic value, in that without people treating them like they're valuable, they have no use (beyond the long-term storage of a number to finite precision). Their value comes from the laws that back them up. Should the bank treat them like all the other bits on their hard drives, and set them to whatever they like, they risk some, er, tangible punishment.
Compare this to copyright. When selling art, the natural tendency is for the identical free version to be more enticing on average than the non-free version (Whodathunkit?), causing the artist to make less money. Copyright counters this effect, and goes a long way to help the market operate as it does in other markets; i.e. where sales actually reflect demand. If an artist creates a popular work, then he will, in theory, obtain considerably more money with copyright than without, because everyone who wants a copy and who is prepared to pay the price on offer, will actually buy a copy. If people start taking and distributing free copies, they undermine this effect. Any chance that they, or the people who they gave copies to, will buy a copy is effectively completely out the window. The law says that the artist is entitled to this not happening to them, and punishes any such undermining.
This is a lot like the bank, if you think about it. Copyright is an agreement between the people and artists, much like the relevant law in banking (whatever it's called) is an agreement between the banks and the people. In both cases, if one party dishonours the agreement (without necessarily pointing fingers here), the other party is worse off. The objects we're dealing with in both cases are completely intangible, and have no value or use other than what can be derived from the corresponding law. Granted, I'd much rather lose a few sales of a copyrighted work than lose my life savings, but the relative proportion of the wrongdoing is not the point.
If you're still not convinced about the bank example, I can come up with other long-accepted examples of "artificial" value attributed to intangible objects.
Slashdot Mirror
"Made for the 19th century" is different from "made in the 19th century". Copyright was created in the 19 century, in order to combat the foreseen side-effects of duplication technologies becoming cheaper and more accessible. Now, we have the internet, and those side-effects are worse than ever. Copyright is more relevant today now than it ever has been, and probably as it ever will be until we get matter duplicators.
Yeah, are we exactly sure that the industry is doing better? From the first result of a Google search, it seems that the US music industry has had a bit of a decline, adjusted to inflation and population. Again, it's only the first result pulled from a Google search, but then again, it demonstrates the sheer flexibility of truth when faced with the possibility that what brings you so much joy can actually be wrong.
...and this makes everything better how? I can point to your post and say "self-delusions of a profoundly anxious man", but that doesn't mean I've addressed your point.
Wait, does that mean I've been wasting the 20-30% of my budget that I spend on food? I sure am going to miss it. Oh well, at least my pastime of throwing dollar coins at drains only costs me about 2% of my income and is therefore not wasteful.
That's one solution, but I feel that its power to prevent lawsuits is derived from the disempowering of artists to defend themselves. If artists could maintain the power to chase down as many alleged pirates as the companies, that is, if they still had the power to defend themselves, would such measures still be effective?
I disagree on both counts. The fact that Zazzle was intimidated out of court is definitely an issue with the courts. If frivolous lawsuits were impossible, then the threats would mean nothing. To quote a great and wise man:
I also disagree that the law is enabling such behaviour. The intention of the law is certainly not to allow people to threatened into not using a given name. The law does not sanction this behaviour. Like all such loopholes, I attribute the problem to the courts, specifically for not setting precedent, or setting the right precedent. To draw an analogy, I think that blaming intellectual property laws for such abuse is like blaming murder laws for people who frame others of murder, or blaming the frivolous lawsuits from people slipping on puddles, on the general principle that people are responsible for the property they open to the public. Intellectual property law does not allow such abuse, but people do abuse it, just like so many other laws.
If there was no law, then the Tolkien estate couldn't expect justice when they actually do deserve it.
So the behaviour that intellectual property enables is frivolous lawsuits? Isn't that more of an issue with the courts in general?
...which is why there is no problem. Legislating good business practice is rarely a good idea, because such laws are almost always redundant (since companies almost always gravitate to good business practices naturally) and/or myopic (since good business practices tend to change fairly quickly).
What law? There is no law enabling such behaviour.
Is this how intellectual property gleans so many negative myths?
That, or I will maintain a healthy scepticism, and won't draw conclusions until I seem some evidence.
Oh wait, never mind. I temporarily forgot where I was.
There's no point in a company attempting not to be evil, when everyone will assume they're evil anyway. If they do anything that's not evil, then either people will fail to notice it, or if they do notice it, then they'll claim it's a purposeful distraction from how evil they secretly are (thus making them more evil)! Or if they do do something evil, then never mind those earlier publicity stunts, it proves they were evil all along!
I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong about Google, or that scepticism isn't healthy, but there is a line between scepticism and prejudice/dogma. Even if that prejudice has proven itself justified in most situations, holding dogmatically to it will damage any possibility for reform.
Ah, so the problem is your reading. Gotcha. Tell me, do you also read the book before title as well?
A: Because the breaking of flow is not what's irritating; it's the fact that you're posting it out of order.
Oh, and PS, we get it already!
Ha! That cornered you!
No, it means that no other Sarah Palins can enter politics without changing their names. Trademarks cannot prevent people from talking about the subject of the trademark, only preventing people to promote themselves with the subject's name in the same field.
You're right, that is retarded logic. However, that isn't the logic that's used in the suit.
It's kind of interesting actually. Cammarata is claiming that Redtube is using predatory pricing practices, specifically the loss leader technique. While Redtube doesn't charge upfront for any of its services, it receives a commission for all subscriptions from people who were linked to the respective sites by Redtube, and also offers a premium service, including downloading the videos. Cammarata claims that they are selling their wares below a sustainable price in order to hook their customers, which is illegal under the Unfair Practices Act. The law AFAICT is designed to stop large businesses setting their prices temporarily and unsustainably low in order to muscle out a small business, but if the same problems arise with big businesses competing with each other, then I see no reason why we should exclude them.
On the other hand, I do agree with the decision for a number of reasons, including that Redtube is not really competing with Cammarata. They provide a promotional service, and if Cammarata can't compete with Redtube and their clients, then they either need to join Redtube, or a similar service. If they want to target anybody, I would have expected they would target some porn producer that offers some porn for free, but also has a paid-for service, not a propagator like Redtube. Another reason I agree is that the business model is completely sustainable. One of the key elements of the loss leader technique is that the business model is temporary, designed to be thrown away as soon as the competition is inevitably destroyed. If the business can sustain its model, then it simply becomes a superior model, which furthers public interest, rather than harming it.
It's funny. Ars Technica is as biased as they come, and make no qualms about ridiculing Cammarata, but unlike slashdot summaries and most "insightful" slashdot posts, it actually explains somewhat accurately the viewpoint of the other side. It is possible to editorialise without breeding ignorance.
Sorry for the late reply. I've been a little busy lately. I thought I might do this a little differently to the classic string of rebuttals, since a lot of the strands run together, and a lot of them are, in my opinion, irrelevant. If there's anything specifically you want me to respond to, point it out next time.
Essentially, my problem here is that I do not know your definition of harm. Most of my efforts have been to spur you into telling me exactly what you mean by the word "harm". Explain it to me like a dictionary would. If you make some mistakes/omissions, that's fine, but I would like to see some kind of outline. At least then we could have something to work with, and I could actually evaluate both our arguments. To kick off, allow me to provide you with a definition of harm that I agree with:
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/harm
I hope you can see how piracy fits the definition of harm I've provided.
Until you provide me with a complete definition of harm, I'd like to ask some more about your most illuminating position on investments:
What if the chance was bumped up to 100%? Yes, if you invested, you were 100% guaranteed to get a million dollars at the end of tomorrow. If I sabotaged it, would I still not be harming you? I mean, the money technically isn't yours yet, but it is guaranteed.
As another scenario, let's suppose that the probability of gaining $1,000,000,000 is 99.999999% or something else ridiculously close to 100%. Let's also suppose that you live in a smallish town, where everyone invests, and everyone manages to get a $1,000,000,000. Everyone, that is, except you, because I sabotaged your investment. Then, due to the suddenly rich neighbourhood, people renovate their houses, buy more expensive food, clothing, and other essentials. In fact, no store catering to the middle or lower classes can even remain competitive, and all change to something more up-market, or pack up shop and move somewhere else. As the only person without $1,000,000,000, you can no longer survive in this town, and are forced to move just so you have access to a grocery store and hold down a job. Finding a place is difficult, takes time, and you can only find a crappy little apartment that is a 10th of the size of your old place. Essentially, you're suffering. Have I harmed you? By sabotaging your investment, I have indirectly lost you your house and way of life, and these are only future losses, so that might factor into your decision as well.
Actually, I think I disagree. It's hackers like these which actually exacerbate the DRM problem. Every person who didn't want Sony's DRM, but bought a PS3 anyway, is simply encouraging Sony, and funding their rein of terror. Geohotz may have meant well, but by accommodating such spineless Sony customers, he contributes to making the situation worse, with repercussions that spread beyond PS3 owners. I genuinely think that it would be better if PS3 customers were left in the cages they walked into, especially for the people themselves. They need to acquire the strength to say "no".
It doesn't help to pull punches here. The only thing that will stop DRM is if people stop buying the good stuff with DRM as well. And yes, there will be good stuff, so don't expect it to be easy.
OK, now we're talking! I would say that we do not have the money that is stored in the bank. We do not have unfettered access to it, as we are still limited to the many ways we get access to it (e.g. withdrawing from an ATM or in person, credit/debit cards, electronic transfers, etc). If you meet a guy in the street, you want to buy his watch, you have 0 cash on you at that moment, but more than enough in the bank, then you're going to meet some difficulty buying that watch. Like I said, it's not that accessing it is hard, it's just that you don't actually have it.
I agree that the sense of loss follows immediately from discovering that you've lost money. However, I would actually say that this is more from the loss of potential, i.e. the loss of all the possible things that that money could buy. That is what we truly miss when we lose money, in the bank or not in the bank. So, in fact, loss of money, whether in the bank or not, is a loss of potential in itself. It is in that potential that money has any value whatsoever. Anyway, I'm digressing slightly, but I wanted to point out that money can be a sticky situation.
You keep saying that, but you provide no arguments in favour of such a ludicrous view. I've already given multiple examples where society says that it's false. If, every time you/your wife gets pregnant, I kill the unborn child, does that harm you? I guess not; the unborn children were pretty much all pure "potential". I mean, you never "actually had" the child, so really you didn't lose anything, right?
You sound like the kind of person who would trade his friends and family for [insert cheap material thrill]. Surely there must be something in your life that you value more than your things?
Say what? Isn't that now just a circular argument? I'm trying to divine your definition of harm, and you simply answer by saying there was harm! Why is there harm? What have I deprived you of? Say I killed you literally instantly, and you never saw what was coming. Then there is no "sense of immediate loss", as there was in other cases. Perhaps I have deprived you of life, but why does losing life count, but losing potential does not? I can't see why financial potential is being singled out as the one thing that you can't be deprived of!
Oh, and since we're on the subject of the recurring theme of "immediate sense of loss", exactly how important is that to your definition of harm? What if an artist feels an immediate sense of loss (for the potential sale) when someone pirates their work? If I skim the interest of your bank account in a way that you never notice, have I harmed you?
Also, I would appreciate it if you would respond to the rest of the scenarios I posed. It would really help me figure out exactly what "harm" means to you. For example, me destroying your reputation. Would that be harmful for you? Is your reputation something you can be deprived of? Or is it simply a loss of your potential? What about investments? The value of most things have contributing factors from both their immediate use and their potential use, but investmen
Oh? You have evidence of political corruption? Nah, of course you don't. Who needs it anyway? There are so many other cases supported large bodies of evidence that nobody is going to notice if we jump to conclusions about one or two cases, right? I'm sure such certainty came from a careful consideration of the facts.
OK, but what if you had more than $100,000? Can you access the money immediately? What would it take to prove to you that you don't "actually have" the money you've given to the bank?
According to society, artists are entitled to their potential sales. My point is that this is not based on anything concrete; it's a law that says this. Without such a law, putting money into a bank would become a pointlessly risky venture, and would definitely not be like "actually having" your money.
Also, I'd like to know what you mean by the money "existing now". Yes, the notes are somewhere, perhaps stored by the bank, or more probably in the hands of someone else in the form of a loan or other investment. When you ask for your money back, it's not the same notes anyway, so the issue of individual notes is not actually so important. What is important is your balance, which the bank stores. Anything that could be described as "your cash", cash being the physical representation of money, does not exist. It's only when you withdraw money that it becomes your cash. Your money stored at the bank is only potentially your cash.
I guess for an artist, their money also exists right now, but it may be currently in the hands of someone else. That's why stealing electronic funds (Ha! How ludicrous is it to call changing a few bits "stealing"?) is a bit like piracy. Both deprive people of potential money that they may "actually have" in the future.
I happen to notice that you're not sounding particularly convinced with the bank example. How about another example? I touched on this before, but investments is another good analogue. With investments, it's very possible that the investment may crash and burn a couple of weeks in, perhaps before they pay any dividends. On the other hand, it's very possible that they could be massively lucrative for people who stick with it long enough. One way to look at it would be, the investors never really had any dividends to start off with, so by destroying the investment, the situation would "remain unchanged". Another far more meaningful way of looking at this is to acknowledge that you have destroyed something of value, not because of what was guaranteed to put out, but because of what it could have put out, taking into account the likelihood of what it could have put out. Society tends to look at it from the latter perspective, since this actually gels with people's perception of value. It doesn't matter if it's not a sure thing, just if there is some significant chance of significant gain.
That's why the argument that "But they never had the money in the first place, so they remain unchanged" seems so fatuous to me. It makes no account of what actually happens in real life, or what actually runs through people's minds when they make an investment, like releasing a copyrighted work commercially. The fact is, despite the many places that such fatuous arguments could be applied, copyright is the only topic with which such arguments are taken at all seriously by anybody. Society, by and large, recognises the value of potential, and so robbing people of that potential is an act of harm.
Well, yes, I actually agree that the better situation for person A is not relevant, but I included it anyway as a rhetorical device (some people find benefit at the expense of others misfortunes more distasteful than the others misfortunes by themselves). What is relevant is that p
Potential money is exactly what it is. There is actually a distinction between having money, and the bank being forced to give you the money they store. Try using the money if the bank goes under! No, you truly do not "actually have" the money. It's simply some law which forces the bank to act like you do.
Obviously, the banking laws have been around long enough that we don't generally even think in terms of not "actually having" our money anymore. With the commonplace electronic transferring of funds, the line is starting to blur. Sure, there's still a physical distinction, but its relevance is rapidly decreasing. We place a hell of a lot of value in these little exchanges of bits, just like we always have with physical notes, or gold bars, etc. Many artists and publishers know already the value of potential sales, because without them, they would have nothing.
Face it: intangible potential can have significant value. Just because we can't predict to 100% certainty exactly how much will pay out from such potential, does not mean that it isn't valuable. Many investments have some kind of risks involved, but that doesn't mean that nobody ever partakes, right?
How is it not harm? If person A pirates the works of person B, they are stripping person B of their legally-granted rights, causing a worse situation for person B, and more often than not, a better situation for person A. You see that piracy causes artists to be worse off financially, due to the (illegal) choices of others. I simply can't understand how you could possibly find pirates blameless in this situation.
I don't quite understand. Are you disagreeing with society's use of money? Well, if so, I certainly admire your ambition!
So, what exactly is the problem with copyright? You say "patched", I would say "fixed". What problems with copyright are you referring to? What exactly does artificial scarcity not solve?
(Actually, I'm a little confused over what your contention is, generally.)
Well, I agree that all the data storage on your computer is yours, but whether the data itself is all yours, well, that's a different debate. However, the bits I'm referring to are actually stored on the bank's computers. You know, the ones that store your bank balance. You don't "actually have" them, the bank does. They only give you very limited ability to influence the value stored by these bits, specifically, you can only increase the amount by paying money, and decrease the amount by receiving money. If they were bits you "actually had", there would be no way of stopping you giving yourself an extra million dollars. You would be able to simply add a million to the value stored.
But you can't. You don't "actually have" your bank balance. It is an intangible object, valuable only because of the law enforces people to treat it in a certain way. Sort of like a copyright.
Don't be thick. You know what I meant.
Maybe is enough. Since we can't really judge whether we really would never buy something or not, given the possibility of unforeseen circumstances, price cuts, or other ways to sweeten the deal, there is a significant opportunity cost incurred. More than enough to justify the law's existence.
On top of that, there's the extremely significant possibility that people will pirate, even if they know that they could buy it. I know of examples where this is obviously true. My brother was planning to buy a game called Victoria on Steam, but after it failing to buy (from some temporary situation), he contacted a friend, who offered to give him a copy for free, which he was willing to take. Fortunately, it didn't take much to convince him that it was wrong. That's one example that I can verify myself. There was a strong possibility that he was going to buy this game, but he would still have pirated anyway. I'm certain he is not the only one.
What suffering? Do you mean the suffering of pirates being forced underground by their choices in life? Or the suffering of everyone under the **AA's loose legal practices and lobbying? If it's the former, then to the pirates, I suggest that they end their suffering and simply stop pirating. If it's the latter, then it's not really a problem with copyright, it's a problem with the legal system, not copyright, and even if we destroy the **AA by destroying copyright, this doesn't fix the fundamental problem with the legal system. Also, a market solution would be better suited to getting rid of the bathwater while keeping the baby. Frankly, I cannot see how one law could be blamed so much for the choices of others.
Like I said, it's not your data that I'm talking about.
What do you mean, you "actually have" the bits storing your bank account? Describe to me what it feels like to hold it. Can you manually change the bits? How come I don't see too many bank bits in the windows of pawn shops?
The bits represent a promise by the bank to reimburse you with actual cash. You can't actually possess these bits, and they have no intrinsic value, in that without people treating them like they're valuable, they have no use (beyond the long-term storage of a number to finite precision). Their value comes from the laws that back them up. Should the bank treat them like all the other bits on their hard drives, and set them to whatever they like, they risk some, er, tangible punishment.
Compare this to copyright. When selling art, the natural tendency is for the identical free version to be more enticing on average than the non-free version (Whodathunkit?), causing the artist to make less money. Copyright counters this effect, and goes a long way to help the market operate as it does in other markets; i.e. where sales actually reflect demand. If an artist creates a popular work, then he will, in theory, obtain considerably more money with copyright than without, because everyone who wants a copy and who is prepared to pay the price on offer, will actually buy a copy. If people start taking and distributing free copies, they undermine this effect. Any chance that they, or the people who they gave copies to, will buy a copy is effectively completely out the window. The law says that the artist is entitled to this not happening to them, and punishes any such undermining.
This is a lot like the bank, if you think about it. Copyright is an agreement between the people and artists, much like the relevant law in banking (whatever it's called) is an agreement between the banks and the people. In both cases, if one party dishonours the agreement (without necessarily pointing fingers here), the other party is worse off. The objects we're dealing with in both cases are completely intangible, and have no value or use other than what can be derived from the corresponding law. Granted, I'd much rather lose a few sales of a copyrighted work than lose my life savings, but the relative proportion of the wrongdoing is not the point.
If you're still not convinced about the bank example, I can come up with other long-accepted examples of "artificial" value attributed to intangible objects.