Copyright was never intended to prevent private copying for noncommercial uses. Please don't try to argue that "copying = not buying = commercial loss = commercial use" because it's a horribly disingenuous and intellectually dishonest argument.
ARGH! STRAWMAN!! No-one makes that argument! The problem is that copying = no chance of you buying (whereas statistically you had some chance of buying before) = loss, in the sense that without gluttonous quantities free entertainment you, or at least other people in the same boat, would have bought some stuff. (Who can really live without some entertainment? Who would want to?)
No-one actually believes that every copy would have resulted in a sale, but you would have to be equally stupid to believe that it doesn't cause any financial harm to media companies. Copying is an alternative to buying. One gives the media company the money that they charge for their product, and the other doesn't. How many people really copy and buy all their media? It competes with genuine copies, while not actually managing to replace them, since copying relies entirely on there being originals!
Stealing is depriving someone else of their property. Even if copying is depriving someone of a potential sale, there is no vested property right in potential sales. If so capitalism would not work, as competition would be equivalent to stealing.
Copyright is an exception to that rule. In every other business, competition comes in the form of another business that does the same job as you, but (supposedly) better. In copyright, competition comes in the form of something that leeches of you, absorbs all your profits, but doesn't actually replace you or contribute anything back (like regular competition). It's more like stealing than competition in this respect, because stealing something gives it to you for free, relies on someone else making the product for you, and contributes nothing back to the market. Surely, because media companies face such a unique challenge from copying, they can have an exception to the rule?
The notion that without monopolies, creative people would not create has long been disproved.
Uh, for one, no it hasn't. When in our entire history have we had anything to the equivalent of today (or tomorrow) without copyright? Never. Never have we had machines to reproduce instantly the works of others so readily, and at the same time, no copyright. Oh sure, there are plenty of reasonable-sounding arguments why people would create none-the-less, but to say that it's been "proved"... well, that's quite a stretch.
For two, it isn't an issue of that (remember your old friend the strawman?). Less people will create works. Surely you can't deny that? There are people out there (many of them really talented) who do it for, or who can only afford to do it for, the money. Many artists are surviving on the razor's edge, and any significant drop in sales will significantly affect them. We could also say goodbye to certain art forms, the most prominent example of which would be the Hollywood blockbuster, since there isn't the money to nurture such projects.
Essentially you would end up relying on people to create for the sheer enjoyment of art, but this seems ludicrous after a little critical thinking. Who will really continue to create and distribute? People would have to do it in their spare time, they'd have to pour their savings into it, and they'd have to be prepared to distribute their works with no expectation of return, other than applause and adulation. Sure, you could argue that distribution is cheap, but advertising is not. They would have to be content with either distributing to an anonymous swarm of file-sharers, on a personal website, which is more expensive, but still only reaches those who already know about it (i.e. a small number of the population), or they'd have to pay for some ludicrously expensive ad
Because the metaphor of property was allowed to run rampant, unquestioned.
Agreed, but there's actually a similar situation on the other side of copyrights, where copyrights are considered so far divorced from property, that breaking copyright isn't considered stealing, despite the good reasons to do so. (I will go into them if anyone wants to know)
He is defending fair use, but, if you scroll to the second half of TFA, he's also defending file sharing. He thinks we should change copyright law to "decriminalise generation X". He also seems to believe that copyright law is a good concept that could be salvaged. I don't see how it would be copyright law after you allow unlimited, rapid reproduction and distribution of works. That kinda punches a big hole and renders copyright useless.
Remakes often offer something new, varied, different, or at least modern context to an old idea. I don't see you complaining about, for example, plays? Many plays have been in many, many productions, each with the same words being spoken by different people. Surely, if the remake is not "science and useful arts", then plays too are not? Sometimes, we just want a modern crack at an old concept. Also, kids today are more likely to see a modern movie than hunt down older ones, so the feasible only opportunity for them to see Gone in 60 Seconds is to see the later version.
I'd also like to point out that trying to finding copyrighted works that don't fit the highly flexible definition of "science and useful arts" is pointless. What you really should be doing is proving that practically all copyrighted works are not "science and the useful arts". That's the only way to show that the law isn't doing the job that the constitution demands it to do. Currently, every single artwork with a fanbase, no matter how god-awful certain other people believe it to be, is "useful art" from the perspective of people enjoying it. It's use is entertainment. Basically, you have an uphill battle ahead of you.
Yes, that's true, but thanks to moderation, you don't have to wade through them all, making up your own mind and forming complex, balanced opinions. The moderators have your thinking for you! You will only have to view the top one or two most popular types of opinions on any given topic!
Do you have any proof that the whole population as a whole would be less intelligent without religion?
Nope. (What a weird non-sequitur...)
You know, there are plenty of psychopaths, schizophrenics, paranoids and God complex sufferers (though I'm not totally sure if they feel they're suffering) who are also quite intelligent.
Have you actually spoken to a religious person before? I have. I know some very intelligent religious people. I know one person who joined a church, and who is intelligent enough to beat 99% of her peers in her final exams and go on to study medicine. She also enjoys games of logic, by the way. To say that religious people are against reason is a gross generalisation and utterly, completely wrong.
Besides, God supposedly exists beyond logic and reasoning, pulling the strings from outside the universe. Naturally, if he wants no evidence to be found of himself, and evidence of other supporting theories to be found instead, he can do that. There's nothing disproving the existence of God. It's not science, but it's not necessarily untrue either.
Which makes it better than your argument from the get-go.
Problem with that logic is that it typically implies that every instance of copying equals an instance of lost sales
Uh no, it implies that a certain percentage of copyrighted work sales are cannibalised, like you said in my next quote.
What really is being claimed is that copyright infringement cannibalizes a percentage of sales that otherwise *may* have come to the copyright holder. For digital works, the marginal cost of a copy is essentially zero so while the copyright holder may lose a sale, he/she/it doesn't lose any cash since they have not lost an asset they owned.
It's the copyright holder's work. They built their business on the promise we made them that their works won't be copied. Now that we broke our promise (as a society), they won't get as many sales. That difference in sales forms losses to piracy. Deliberately blinding yourself to all but physical value is all well and good for spin, but it doesn't hold much on morality or legality.
It also implies that unauthorized copying never results in purchases of authorized merchandise.
Wrong again! I could rob your store, and buy a candy bar, but that wouldn't justify my action. The merchandise has its own price and profit margins. When you pay for merchandise, that's all you are paying for. You still owe all the media you stole. Yes stole. I stick by what I said and I can defend it if need be.
You make the fallacy of equating every pirated instance to a lost sale.
Uh, no he isn't, he's saying that you're losing sales. By not enforcing piracy, you will lose sales that you otherwise would get. It's a completely separate fallacy (that's equally ridiculous) to assume that just because individual instances of piracy may or may not be counted as lost sales, that sales haven't been lost.
What part of "open" don't you understand? Shouting "I'm a pirate!" is all well and good while you're behind some online nom du plume is all well and good, but it isn't exactly open, is it?
Now here is some true civil disobedience! In a tyrannical moderation scheme, where pirates censor the speech of decent individuals, few have the courage to speak out against them. This person here is willing to stand up and take the karma hit in order to rally against this oppressive regime, and not hide behind a pseudo-anonymous AC persona.
Of course, I realise that this is jut slashdot, and the scale is silly, but the same principles apply. Piracy has higher stakes but higher rewards too. Why aren't anyone standing up to the RIAA and saying "I am a pirate! This is what I pirated!" instead of lurking on P2P networks behind practical anonymity?
Civil disobedience requires you to accept the responsibilities of your actions. That's what separates the brave and noble act of civil disobedience and the cowardly and selfish act of illegal activity. I will be impressed when pirates send their personal details to the RIAA, and say that they pirated and are proud of it. Or when they repeatedly download lots of popular stuff, and not watch/listen to any of it, thus outweighing any personal gain with risk.
Let's examine the worst feasible case scenario for buying entertainment: the poor arts student. They may download entertainment thousands of dollars in value every month, far more than their means to own. Naturally, no-one expects them to buy all their media, since it's not possible without multiple unrepayable loans coupled with stupid banks. Also, naturally, because of their big influx of media, a few more or less pieces of entertainment here or there obviously won't phase them too much.
However, think about what would happen if they didn't have access to any media, retroactively. Would they still be unphased? Is the value naturally that low, or is it just from gross oversupply? Would they miss it? Would they just think, "eh, it's just a few hundred gigs of crap per month. I'm sure I can entertain myself with MS hearts, or something like that."?
Pirates tend to underestimate just how much they are addicted to their habits, and how much the "crap" they download is worth to them cumulatively. Hence the (false) evaluation of "Value: ~zero".
Hmm. Allowing government to be the sole guardian of protesting basically hands them the ability to approve or reject protests. Their views would ring out loudly, and everyone else's would be silenced. In a world with no public, loud, protests, at least every ideology would be on the same level. Information would be severely inhibited, but it doesn't funnel absolute power over information straight to the government, which most would consider a plus (even me, who is deeply sceptical about the alleged present dangers of totalitarianism).
If you read to the end of my comment, you'll see that I was never saying it was good.
However, I think it is better for the police to be our protest-stopper than exclusively the government's protest stopper. You must admit that the latter is far more "soviet" than the former.
Y'know, referring to "1984" and "mind-controlling" in the same post could give some people the wrong idea. Personally, I'm just glad you said "Atari", and not "Microsoft".
It's not the an isolated error, but at the same time, it's the general rule either. There are a lot of use of decidedly bad policing procedures in the US, but there are also plenty of good cops who generally do the right thing.
Also, it's the police's job to keep the peace. What they should do in case of a protest is supervise it to make sure it doesn't get too obnoxious or violent. That's keeping the peace, while allowing for protest. What they do instead is see a protest as a breach of peace itself, even if it isn't overly obnoxious, or at all violent. The government can call on them to break up protests they don't like, but then again, you could also call on them to break up protesters outside your home or work.
I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that the US isn't as fascist as you might think. You just have an overworked and overcharged police force who keep the peace over some basic free speech rights.
That leads me to think that maybe the primary function of government is to pretend to fail.
The one flaw in your otherwise flawless logic is that government don't work directly for money or power. They are (generally) souless organisations of pragmatic individuals who all want to further their political career. Gains in power short of a total coup of democracy are useless, since voters can deprive you of that power very easily. Gains in money are useful for fulfilling public wishes, but useless beyond that.
"Yet" is the operative word. The commercial internet is currently working without subscriptions only because relatively people are using adblock. The fact that the internet hasn't collapsed yet is in accordance with Professor Farnsworth's idea of good news (everybody).
Slashdot Mirror
ARGH! STRAWMAN!! No-one makes that argument! The problem is that copying = no chance of you buying (whereas statistically you had some chance of buying before) = loss, in the sense that without gluttonous quantities free entertainment you, or at least other people in the same boat, would have bought some stuff. (Who can really live without some entertainment? Who would want to?)
No-one actually believes that every copy would have resulted in a sale, but you would have to be equally stupid to believe that it doesn't cause any financial harm to media companies. Copying is an alternative to buying. One gives the media company the money that they charge for their product, and the other doesn't. How many people really copy and buy all their media? It competes with genuine copies, while not actually managing to replace them, since copying relies entirely on there being originals!
Copyright is an exception to that rule. In every other business, competition comes in the form of another business that does the same job as you, but (supposedly) better. In copyright, competition comes in the form of something that leeches of you, absorbs all your profits, but doesn't actually replace you or contribute anything back (like regular competition). It's more like stealing than competition in this respect, because stealing something gives it to you for free, relies on someone else making the product for you, and contributes nothing back to the market. Surely, because media companies face such a unique challenge from copying, they can have an exception to the rule?
Uh, for one, no it hasn't. When in our entire history have we had anything to the equivalent of today (or tomorrow) without copyright? Never. Never have we had machines to reproduce instantly the works of others so readily, and at the same time, no copyright. Oh sure, there are plenty of reasonable-sounding arguments why people would create none-the-less, but to say that it's been "proved"... well, that's quite a stretch.
For two, it isn't an issue of that (remember your old friend the strawman?). Less people will create works. Surely you can't deny that? There are people out there (many of them really talented) who do it for, or who can only afford to do it for, the money. Many artists are surviving on the razor's edge, and any significant drop in sales will significantly affect them. We could also say goodbye to certain art forms, the most prominent example of which would be the Hollywood blockbuster, since there isn't the money to nurture such projects.
Essentially you would end up relying on people to create for the sheer enjoyment of art, but this seems ludicrous after a little critical thinking. Who will really continue to create and distribute? People would have to do it in their spare time, they'd have to pour their savings into it, and they'd have to be prepared to distribute their works with no expectation of return, other than applause and adulation. Sure, you could argue that distribution is cheap, but advertising is not. They would have to be content with either distributing to an anonymous swarm of file-sharers, on a personal website, which is more expensive, but still only reaches those who already know about it (i.e. a small number of the population), or they'd have to pay for some ludicrously expensive ad
Agreed, but there's actually a similar situation on the other side of copyrights, where copyrights are considered so far divorced from property, that breaking copyright isn't considered stealing, despite the good reasons to do so. (I will go into them if anyone wants to know)
He is defending fair use, but, if you scroll to the second half of TFA, he's also defending file sharing. He thinks we should change copyright law to "decriminalise generation X". He also seems to believe that copyright law is a good concept that could be salvaged. I don't see how it would be copyright law after you allow unlimited, rapid reproduction and distribution of works. That kinda punches a big hole and renders copyright useless.
Remakes often offer something new, varied, different, or at least modern context to an old idea. I don't see you complaining about, for example, plays? Many plays have been in many, many productions, each with the same words being spoken by different people. Surely, if the remake is not "science and useful arts", then plays too are not? Sometimes, we just want a modern crack at an old concept. Also, kids today are more likely to see a modern movie than hunt down older ones, so the feasible only opportunity for them to see Gone in 60 Seconds is to see the later version.
I'd also like to point out that trying to finding copyrighted works that don't fit the highly flexible definition of "science and useful arts" is pointless. What you really should be doing is proving that practically all copyrighted works are not "science and the useful arts". That's the only way to show that the law isn't doing the job that the constitution demands it to do. Currently, every single artwork with a fanbase, no matter how god-awful certain other people believe it to be, is "useful art" from the perspective of people enjoying it. It's use is entertainment. Basically, you have an uphill battle ahead of you.
Yes, that's true, but thanks to moderation, you don't have to wade through them all, making up your own mind and forming complex, balanced opinions. The moderators have your thinking for you! You will only have to view the top one or two most popular types of opinions on any given topic!
Ha! Ahahahaha!
Nope. (What a weird non-sequitur...)
Very true. (What's this guy's point?)
Have you actually spoken to a religious person before? I have. I know some very intelligent religious people. I know one person who joined a church, and who is intelligent enough to beat 99% of her peers in her final exams and go on to study medicine. She also enjoys games of logic, by the way. To say that religious people are against reason is a gross generalisation and utterly, completely wrong.
Besides, God supposedly exists beyond logic and reasoning, pulling the strings from outside the universe. Naturally, if he wants no evidence to be found of himself, and evidence of other supporting theories to be found instead, he can do that. There's nothing disproving the existence of God. It's not science, but it's not necessarily untrue either.
Fuckable, you say?
Very true. Ask yourself though, can the new way replace the old way?
With buggies and cars, the answer is a resounding yes.
With P2P and legitimate media, the answer is no. P2P can only leech off and devalue other people's creations.
And no, indie artists aren't an integral part of the P2P system, because they can exist perfectly happily on the current system.
Which makes it better than your argument from the get-go.
Uh no, it implies that a certain percentage of copyrighted work sales are cannibalised, like you said in my next quote.
It's the copyright holder's work. They built their business on the promise we made them that their works won't be copied. Now that we broke our promise (as a society), they won't get as many sales. That difference in sales forms losses to piracy. Deliberately blinding yourself to all but physical value is all well and good for spin, but it doesn't hold much on morality or legality.
Wrong again! I could rob your store, and buy a candy bar, but that wouldn't justify my action. The merchandise has its own price and profit margins. When you pay for merchandise, that's all you are paying for. You still owe all the media you stole. Yes stole. I stick by what I said and I can defend it if need be.
Uh, no he isn't, he's saying that you're losing sales. By not enforcing piracy, you will lose sales that you otherwise would get. It's a completely separate fallacy (that's equally ridiculous) to assume that just because individual instances of piracy may or may not be counted as lost sales, that sales haven't been lost.
What part of "open" don't you understand? Shouting "I'm a pirate!" is all well and good while you're behind some online nom du plume is all well and good, but it isn't exactly open, is it?
Now here is some true civil disobedience! In a tyrannical moderation scheme, where pirates censor the speech of decent individuals, few have the courage to speak out against them. This person here is willing to stand up and take the karma hit in order to rally against this oppressive regime, and not hide behind a pseudo-anonymous AC persona.
Of course, I realise that this is jut slashdot, and the scale is silly, but the same principles apply. Piracy has higher stakes but higher rewards too. Why aren't anyone standing up to the RIAA and saying "I am a pirate! This is what I pirated!" instead of lurking on P2P networks behind practical anonymity?
Civil disobedience requires you to accept the responsibilities of your actions. That's what separates the brave and noble act of civil disobedience and the cowardly and selfish act of illegal activity. I will be impressed when pirates send their personal details to the RIAA, and say that they pirated and are proud of it. Or when they repeatedly download lots of popular stuff, and not watch/listen to any of it, thus outweighing any personal gain with risk.
Let's examine the worst feasible case scenario for buying entertainment: the poor arts student. They may download entertainment thousands of dollars in value every month, far more than their means to own. Naturally, no-one expects them to buy all their media, since it's not possible without multiple unrepayable loans coupled with stupid banks. Also, naturally, because of their big influx of media, a few more or less pieces of entertainment here or there obviously won't phase them too much.
However, think about what would happen if they didn't have access to any media, retroactively. Would they still be unphased? Is the value naturally that low, or is it just from gross oversupply? Would they miss it? Would they just think, "eh, it's just a few hundred gigs of crap per month. I'm sure I can entertain myself with MS hearts, or something like that."?
Pirates tend to underestimate just how much they are addicted to their habits, and how much the "crap" they download is worth to them cumulatively. Hence the (false) evaluation of "Value: ~zero".
Hmm. Allowing government to be the sole guardian of protesting basically hands them the ability to approve or reject protests. Their views would ring out loudly, and everyone else's would be silenced. In a world with no public, loud, protests, at least every ideology would be on the same level. Information would be severely inhibited, but it doesn't funnel absolute power over information straight to the government, which most would consider a plus (even me, who is deeply sceptical about the alleged present dangers of totalitarianism).
If you read to the end of my comment, you'll see that I was never saying it was good.
However, I think it is better for the police to be our protest-stopper than exclusively the government's protest stopper. You must admit that the latter is far more "soviet" than the former.
Y'know, referring to "1984" and "mind-controlling" in the same post could give some people the wrong idea. Personally, I'm just glad you said "Atari", and not "Microsoft".
I don't remember.
Sweet! An excuse to bring out the old sombrero!
It's not the an isolated error, but at the same time, it's the general rule either. There are a lot of use of decidedly bad policing procedures in the US, but there are also plenty of good cops who generally do the right thing.
Also, it's the police's job to keep the peace. What they should do in case of a protest is supervise it to make sure it doesn't get too obnoxious or violent. That's keeping the peace, while allowing for protest. What they do instead is see a protest as a breach of peace itself, even if it isn't overly obnoxious, or at all violent. The government can call on them to break up protests they don't like, but then again, you could also call on them to break up protesters outside your home or work.
I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that the US isn't as fascist as you might think. You just have an overworked and overcharged police force who keep the peace over some basic free speech rights.
The one flaw in your otherwise flawless logic is that government don't work directly for money or power. They are (generally) souless organisations of pragmatic individuals who all want to further their political career. Gains in power short of a total coup of democracy are useless, since voters can deprive you of that power very easily. Gains in money are useful for fulfilling public wishes, but useless beyond that.
With your sig, I would expect you to understand very little.
"Yet" is the operative word. The commercial internet is currently working without subscriptions only because relatively people are using adblock. The fact that the internet hasn't collapsed yet is in accordance with Professor Farnsworth's idea of good news (everybody).