Filtering opposition party websites is undeniably undemocratic, but at the same time, so is denying a filter to a population that is in favour of it. What do you do for a population who votes against democracy?
But... but... but... How else can we pigeonhole people who support censorship? Next thing you know, you'll be telling us that pinning the rest of our political problems on religion is also wrong!
The biggest and most important achievements in science and art happened before the existence of copyright and patent laws
It's a little specious to imply that it was the lack of copyright and patent laws that caused this, no? I would contend that what really caused the greatest achievements in science and art is the ignorance/narrow culture preceding its creation.
Hmm, gee, that's a tough one. Maybe it's because they believe in privacy in some areas, and not others? Maybe they don't see a dichotomy between complete privacy in every area and willingly sharing your most pragmatically necessary secrets with strangers on the internet?
I noticed a negative review of Orwell's 1984. Clearly this is a governmental conspiracy to sink this book and enslave us. It's part of their fiendish plan:
1) Post negative reviews of 1984 on popular sites 2) ??? 3) World domination!
This is interesting. If I own a physical copy, and it's starting to get too beat up or oxidized, then do you believe I have an "entitlement" to photocopy my old physical copy to produce a nice new one? Somehow, I would guess you'd say no. So if I have a digital copy, do you believe, analogously, that I have no entitlement to copy it to multiple devices?
It is indeed interesting. I suppose someone who calls himself "Mathinker" would have an eye for details.
I will start by saying this is not a "belief". This is what I think the courts would decide, had you been brought before them for doing exactly what you say you're doing. We are currently not delving into my personal opinions on the matter.
If I own a physical copy, and it's starting to get too beat up or oxidized, then do you believe I have an "entitlement" to photocopy my old physical copy to produce a nice new one?
Yes. As in, yes, you are entitled to the option to do that.
So if I have a digital copy, do you believe, analogously, that I have no entitlement to copy it to multiple devices?
Sure, for private use, you can copy among your devices until your heart's content. Hell, you can even crack the DRM if you wish, but you can't distribute the cracking "tool" (typically a piece of software) to others.
You can even transition between digital and physical copies as much as you please.
What you can't do is obtain externally a copy of someone else's copy, even if you legitimately own a copy of the work itself. The copying has to be applied to your own copy.
Why? It's a good question. There's the concept of selling different versions of a product to different people for different prices. So, for example, if you bought a PC game with some kind of copy protection mechanism, and you downloaded a copy without copy protection, you could argue that you are treating yourself to a superior product for the same price. It is conceivable that the artist was planning to release such a version for a premium cost. You have no entitlement to this superior product, since you paid for only the inferior one.
I guess, beyond everything, it doesn't fit with copyright law. The copyright holder has the right to determine, for whatever private reasons of his own, who distributes his works and who doesn't. If you download copies of works you own from the pirate bay, then you may be (probably are) violating the copyright holder's wishes, specifically ones that copyright law demands you follow.
You might want to check out this post by tinkerghost, this article with comments by the Eagles' agent, and you must have missed the 2002 interview of Janis Ian on Slashdot.
Three different articles, three different themes. The post by tinkerghost was one such example that I was talking about: an artist not being paid his royalties. It's unfortunate that it's come to falling back onto his own means, thanks to a very belated payout of royalties. However, it's going to take more than a single example to prove to me that the RIAA is evil enough to be rigidly boycotted. It may well be one of a few isolated cases, especially since they have a lot of people to pay. The article was light on details, so there maybe further issues which are glossed over in the article, but are hindering Tate's for a successful lawsuit.
As for the second article, this is about distributing money over infringement cases, which I would imagine would be a contractual issue. It would be part of the package of signing with a label.
As for Janis Ian, yes I had missed that interview, and her account tells us essentially what we already know: life in the RIAA is no rosegarden. Again, it's part of the package. There is plenty of information out there with which artists can educate themselves about the contract they're considering signing. Ultimately, we should be asking how income as an unsigned unknown compares to
Religion tries to explain everything from above. Science tries to explain everything like a couple of blind people touching an elephant. Sometimes they will be close to the truth sometimes they are completely off.
Science is about observing phenomena (at least, the ones that can be observed). If we seem like blind people touching an elephant, that's because that's all we can see, and that's all we can truly know. Beyond that, we really can't take anything else for granted. Especially not based on the words of other blind elephant-feelers.
So if you would have lived in Indiana, and the Indiana Pi Bill had passed, you would have used the value of 3.2 for pi?
No. I typically restrict myself to sensible laws. Besides, it wasn't passed, exactly because it wasn't sensible.
But yes, in general, if you live in a city/state/country, you have a responsibility to abide by its laws, or at least stand up and face the consequences.
Ebook publishers haven't started to sue yet. Even if they had, the probability of being sued is so small that only very cowardly people don't download for this reason.
"Cowardly"? Seriously? It's a perfectly reasonable response to avoid such penalties. If eBook publishers start suing (which they will once their business grows larger, if people keep pirating their work), then these kinds of penalties could destroy your life.
Not everyone who downloads an ebook is using it for free. I personally only download ebooks which I have bought in physical form.
How heroically brave of you. However, you didn't buy an electronic copy, and thus you have no entitlement to an electronic copy. You could always scan and use OCR for private use, if you wanted to.
But, I have to admit, there are some who abuse this.
A lot of people abuse this! A lot of people abuse this even without knowing they are abusing it. As a former pirate myself, I know how easy it is to deceive yourself about what you would and wouldn't have bought.
Not to mention, it's probably true that most pirates wouldn't buy a work in isolation, but if they had no other pirated works as backup, there's no telling how much they would buy. Probably a significant amount, since they clearly enjoy what they download on some level.
You also avoid music from the Big Labels, then? Well, OK, that's unfair. There are a few artists who do get paid some of what the labels owe them.
Exactly. In fact, it's more than a few. I haven't heard too many sob stories from artists going broke after their label refused to pay them the money owed to them under contract. And besides, it is a contract, voluntarily signed by both parties. Show me one voluntarily signed contract between a pirate and an artist.
So if you like the ebook you downloaded, buy the physical one.
As I know all too well, that is a deceptively slippery slope.
We're not talking about a prized manuscript which the author keeps locked up in his safe because the world isn't worthy of it. Authors want people to be interested in their books. Some of them even understand that having their book downloaded for free is often the foot in the door for a reader to pay for that work later, or to pay for future works by the same author.
So... the moral of the story is to download then pay the authors who explicitly allow their books to be shared for free, and to simply pay those who don't? That's what I was going to say!
You're right: ideally, we want unencrypted works for our public domain, but from a legal perspective, it may not be the best vector of attack.
For one, artists/publishers, as it stands, have the right to pump out whatever they like into the market. It would be a chilling precedent, if they began to rule on actual content requirements for copyright. Most probably, it would have to be added to copyright law as an explicit change.
For two, their side of the bargain of this social contract is not to "release" their work (the work is released automatically; they have no control over it), but to... um...
Actually, I don't know what they're supposed to do. Produce more, I guess, but that's not a strict requirement. I guess they just reap the benefit of a healthy market, and we hope they produce more. It's not really so much of a social contract as it is an incentive scheme.
For three, on these issues, the courts are currently more likely to side with the artists/publishers, since so many people are treating these encrypted works as though they're in public domain anyway. Right now, piracy is the larger problem on the agenda, especially since DRMed works won't hit the public domain in most of our lifetimes.:-/
If you consider works that were made 70 years ago new, that's a problem.
If the purpose is to protect the artist, why are artworks from dead artists still under copyright? Who are we protecting? Are those artists, dead for 20, 40, 60 years going to produce new works?
This wasn't a discussion about the term lengths, nor was I defending them. Actually, I was talking about a legal document written 200 years ago, which said nothing of 75 years after death.
Also, you're brushing over a lot of issues here. The idea here is that protecting copyrights for that length is extra incentive for an artist to create. Even after death, it still goes to their estate. So, yeah, the 70-year-old works are not new, but their protection serves to further protect new works.
That said, they're way too long. I think 30 years after creation would be about fair.
That legal document was produced to protect artist from producers.
I think your sentence is only half finished. It should be "... from producers who would distribute without royalties", or something along those lines. Otherwise, it sounds like the artists should be "protected" from their right to choose whether or not to distribute via a publisher, which I assume was not the intended meaning.
These days, everyone with a computer, and an internet connection (or even with a thumb drive and a whole lot of friends) is now such a producer. Remember, back in the day, a producer was a meaningful term, because they were the small subset of the population who owned and ran printing companies. That was the cheapest, most accessible way to copy. Now, that subset is almost the entire population.
Now, it's helping the producers subdue others. See the title? "Amazon Caves To Publishers On eBook Pricing". That was not their intentions when they wrote it.
Of course. That's because they are the artists' chosen representatives. They signed a contract to allow the producers to do their job for them, and that's exactly what they are doing now. And the healthier the publisher, the healthier the artists it represents. The publishers are doing their job: protecting their profits, and handing a share to the artists, according to their contracts. And, they are doing so with copyright, using it to have some much-needed leverage in these negotiations. This is exactly in the spirit of copyright law.
No, this also works for artists. It works for any copyright holder. An artist, with or without a publisher, needs a way to make sure the demand for their work translates into actual sales. That's how they make money.
I would also argue that copyright is not so much propping artists/publishers up, as it is actually fixing an otherwise inevitably broken market. It allows them a chance to compete, something they would not have had without it.
In fact, it would be the publishers who would maintain the advantage without copyright. At least they would have the marketing power to draw in what little sales are left, so your propping argument more aptly applies to indie artists.
The law Risk of heavy financial penalty Morals and ethics Refusal on principle to support those leeches who run the place, making millions off the backs of artists who don't receive a penny Desire for the artists I like to keep working An absence of a sense of entitlement over the work in question
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you cannot help but face your accuser, especially since the accuser is "the people".
Well, unless the judge hauls you off to solitary confinement.
... sends out an alert on the 1st April? Seriously?
OK, maybe it's technically an all male orgy, but I still maintain that an orgy needs more than one participant.
Filtering opposition party websites is undeniably undemocratic, but at the same time, so is denying a filter to a population that is in favour of it. What do you do for a population who votes against democracy?
But... but... but... How else can we pigeonhole people who support censorship? Next thing you know, you'll be telling us that pinning the rest of our political problems on religion is also wrong!
Always! ;-)
I think you permanently wounded my brain with that one.
It's a little specious to imply that it was the lack of copyright and patent laws that caused this, no? I would contend that what really caused the greatest achievements in science and art is the ignorance/narrow culture preceding its creation.
Spam is an annoyance. Piracy is actually damaging.
Hmm, gee, that's a tough one. Maybe it's because they believe in privacy in some areas, and not others? Maybe they don't see a dichotomy between complete privacy in every area and willingly sharing your most pragmatically necessary secrets with strangers on the internet?
Hmm. Maybe it technically is a force that attracts, although anyone who's experienced it would hardly call it attractive...
As a mathematician, I have only one thing to say:
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Exactly. And don't be a pussy either. They're both already in great abundance on the internet.
I'm not sure that your life would last a day or two after such a procedure.
I noticed a negative review of Orwell's 1984. Clearly this is a governmental conspiracy to sink this book and enslave us. It's part of their fiendish plan:
1) Post negative reviews of 1984 on popular sites
2) ???
3) World domination!
My favourite:
"This [object/place/person/entertainment] wasn't bad, but I don't see why it's rated so highly. 1 star."
(Come to think of it, it would be funny if someone modded me -1 overrated for this post. :-)
It is indeed interesting. I suppose someone who calls himself "Mathinker" would have an eye for details.
I will start by saying this is not a "belief". This is what I think the courts would decide, had you been brought before them for doing exactly what you say you're doing. We are currently not delving into my personal opinions on the matter.
Yes. As in, yes, you are entitled to the option to do that.
Sure, for private use, you can copy among your devices until your heart's content. Hell, you can even crack the DRM if you wish, but you can't distribute the cracking "tool" (typically a piece of software) to others.
You can even transition between digital and physical copies as much as you please.
What you can't do is obtain externally a copy of someone else's copy, even if you legitimately own a copy of the work itself. The copying has to be applied to your own copy.
Why? It's a good question. There's the concept of selling different versions of a product to different people for different prices. So, for example, if you bought a PC game with some kind of copy protection mechanism, and you downloaded a copy without copy protection, you could argue that you are treating yourself to a superior product for the same price. It is conceivable that the artist was planning to release such a version for a premium cost. You have no entitlement to this superior product, since you paid for only the inferior one.
I guess, beyond everything, it doesn't fit with copyright law. The copyright holder has the right to determine, for whatever private reasons of his own, who distributes his works and who doesn't. If you download copies of works you own from the pirate bay, then you may be (probably are) violating the copyright holder's wishes, specifically ones that copyright law demands you follow.
Three different articles, three different themes. The post by tinkerghost was one such example that I was talking about: an artist not being paid his royalties. It's unfortunate that it's come to falling back onto his own means, thanks to a very belated payout of royalties. However, it's going to take more than a single example to prove to me that the RIAA is evil enough to be rigidly boycotted. It may well be one of a few isolated cases, especially since they have a lot of people to pay. The article was light on details, so there maybe further issues which are glossed over in the article, but are hindering Tate's for a successful lawsuit.
As for the second article, this is about distributing money over infringement cases, which I would imagine would be a contractual issue. It would be part of the package of signing with a label.
As for Janis Ian, yes I had missed that interview, and her account tells us essentially what we already know: life in the RIAA is no rosegarden. Again, it's part of the package. There is plenty of information out there with which artists can educate themselves about the contract they're considering signing. Ultimately, we should be asking how income as an unsigned unknown compares to
I found your post completely, grossly, unrepentantly offensive.
Mod parent up.
And yet, you still give us more!
Science is about observing phenomena (at least, the ones that can be observed). If we seem like blind people touching an elephant, that's because that's all we can see, and that's all we can truly know. Beyond that, we really can't take anything else for granted. Especially not based on the words of other blind elephant-feelers.
No. I typically restrict myself to sensible laws. Besides, it wasn't passed, exactly because it wasn't sensible.
But yes, in general, if you live in a city/state/country, you have a responsibility to abide by its laws, or at least stand up and face the consequences.
"Cowardly"? Seriously? It's a perfectly reasonable response to avoid such penalties. If eBook publishers start suing (which they will once their business grows larger, if people keep pirating their work), then these kinds of penalties could destroy your life.
How heroically brave of you. However, you didn't buy an electronic copy, and thus you have no entitlement to an electronic copy. You could always scan and use OCR for private use, if you wanted to.
A lot of people abuse this! A lot of people abuse this even without knowing they are abusing it. As a former pirate myself, I know how easy it is to deceive yourself about what you would and wouldn't have bought.
Not to mention, it's probably true that most pirates wouldn't buy a work in isolation, but if they had no other pirated works as backup, there's no telling how much they would buy. Probably a significant amount, since they clearly enjoy what they download on some level.
Exactly. In fact, it's more than a few. I haven't heard too many sob stories from artists going broke after their label refused to pay them the money owed to them under contract. And besides, it is a contract, voluntarily signed by both parties. Show me one voluntarily signed contract between a pirate and an artist.
As I know all too well, that is a deceptively slippery slope.
So... the moral of the story is to download then pay the authors who explicitly allow their books to be shared for free, and to simply pay those who don't? That's what I was going to say!
You're right: ideally, we want unencrypted works for our public domain, but from a legal perspective, it may not be the best vector of attack.
For one, artists/publishers, as it stands, have the right to pump out whatever they like into the market. It would be a chilling precedent, if they began to rule on actual content requirements for copyright. Most probably, it would have to be added to copyright law as an explicit change.
For two, their side of the bargain of this social contract is not to "release" their work (the work is released automatically; they have no control over it), but to... um...
Actually, I don't know what they're supposed to do. Produce more, I guess, but that's not a strict requirement. I guess they just reap the benefit of a healthy market, and we hope they produce more. It's not really so much of a social contract as it is an incentive scheme.
For three, on these issues, the courts are currently more likely to side with the artists/publishers, since so many people are treating these encrypted works as though they're in public domain anyway. Right now, piracy is the larger problem on the agenda, especially since DRMed works won't hit the public domain in most of our lifetimes. :-/
This wasn't a discussion about the term lengths, nor was I defending them. Actually, I was talking about a legal document written 200 years ago, which said nothing of 75 years after death.
Also, you're brushing over a lot of issues here. The idea here is that protecting copyrights for that length is extra incentive for an artist to create. Even after death, it still goes to their estate. So, yeah, the 70-year-old works are not new, but their protection serves to further protect new works.
That said, they're way too long. I think 30 years after creation would be about fair.
I think your sentence is only half finished. It should be "... from producers who would distribute without royalties", or something along those lines. Otherwise, it sounds like the artists should be "protected" from their right to choose whether or not to distribute via a publisher, which I assume was not the intended meaning.
These days, everyone with a computer, and an internet connection (or even with a thumb drive and a whole lot of friends) is now such a producer. Remember, back in the day, a producer was a meaningful term, because they were the small subset of the population who owned and ran printing companies. That was the cheapest, most accessible way to copy. Now, that subset is almost the entire population.
Of course. That's because they are the artists' chosen representatives. They signed a contract to allow the producers to do their job for them, and that's exactly what they are doing now. And the healthier the publisher, the healthier the artists it represents. The publishers are doing their job: protecting their profits, and handing a share to the artists, according to their contracts. And, they are doing so with copyright, using it to have some much-needed leverage in these negotiations. This is exactly in the spirit of copyright law.
No, this also works for artists. It works for any copyright holder. An artist, with or without a publisher, needs a way to make sure the demand for their work translates into actual sales. That's how they make money.
I would also argue that copyright is not so much propping artists/publishers up, as it is actually fixing an otherwise inevitably broken market. It allows them a chance to compete, something they would not have had without it.
In fact, it would be the publishers who would maintain the advantage without copyright. At least they would have the marketing power to draw in what little sales are left, so your propping argument more aptly applies to indie artists.
The law
Risk of heavy financial penalty
Morals and ethics
Refusal on principle to support those leeches who run the place, making millions off the backs of artists who don't receive a penny
Desire for the artists I like to keep working
An absence of a sense of entitlement over the work in question
Take your pick.