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EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

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Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#171

Post by enriquto »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #168
enriquto wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not making that comparison. I'm not even saying that I disagree with your view on copyright. I'm just setting up this correspondence to show that the argumentation that you use is not valid.

Fine, but there is nothing at all invalid about my argument, because all I argued is that infringing copyrights is defined as stealing property under US law. That's not even an argument; it's simply a statement of fact. Unless you're talking about my statement that musings about how it shouldn't be considered stealing are irrelevant to the fact that it is , which is also not an argument, just a statement of fact. (Th…

Your rhetoric tricks are a bit tiring. The question is not settled by saying that something is illegal. Of course book sharing is illegal under the current law, that's the whole point. The law in question is stupid. People who respect the concept of law and the importance of laws are outraged by this, and want to use the legal system to change this stupid law. Repeating that "book sharing is illegal" as you do leads nowhere.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#172

Post by swayvil »

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

The only relevant question here is, "which benefits society more?"

The ip serves the author by paying his rent

The ip serves society by informing and empowering its members.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#173

Post by bergstromm466 »

“1. The current political economy is based on a false idea of material abundance. We call it pseudo-abundance. It is based on a commitment to permanent growth, the infinite accumulation of capital and debt-driven dynamics through compound interest. This is unsustainable, of course, because infinite growth is logically and physically impossible in any physically constrained, finite system.

2. The current political economy is based on a false idea of “immaterial scarcity.” It believes that an exaggerated set of intellectual property monopolies—for copyrights, trademarks and patents—should restrain the sharing of scientific, social and economic innovations. Hence the system discourages human cooperation, excludes many people from benefiting from innovation and slows the collective learning of humanity. In an age of grave global challenges, the political economy keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate profits. 14

These structural contradictions have always made for reduced efficiency and irrationality. But in recent decades they have resulted in increasingly chronic crisis tendencies, which amount to a terminal crisis of capitalism as a system.”

- Kevin Carson, Exodus: General Idea of the Revolution in the XXI Century

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#174

Post by basch »

dctoedt wrote: post #107
Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

You're channeling Thomas Jefferson, who himself channeled a Zoroastrian idea. Jefferson said: "... no one possesses the less because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me receives [it] without lessening [me], as he who lights his [candle] at mine receives light without darkening me." [0] The flaw in this concept is the free-rider problem: 1. Not all new IP can be created as a side projec…

The initial conclusion your parent presents is the exact ruling in Dowling v. United States.

>Interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use. Infringement implicates a more complex set of property interests than does run-of-the-mill theft, conversion, or fraud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(1985...

.....

I do think grouping all IP into a bucket muddies the conversation. Trademark infringement, where one assumes the name of another product, possibly selling a counterfeit is closer to theft. It involves defrauding the consumer, and displaces a legitimate sale with a copy.

Copying a product, and selling it or giving it away free is one type of problem, but assuming someone elses trademark to mislead is a different magnitude of problem.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#175

Post by pdonis »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #130
Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

"If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged." you are so wrong in this mentality. the bottom line is, that someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid. wit…

> someone took the time and energy to write and publish that book to make money, so that person should be paid

How much of what you pay for a book actually goes to the person who wrote it? How much of what you pay for music goes to the person who wrote it? How much of what you pay for a movie goes to the people who actually made the movie?

The answer in all of those cases is "not very much". And the reason that's the answer has nothing at all to do with people's unwillingness to pay creators for creating, and everything to do with a huge amount of money being skimmed off the top by companies who do not want to update their business models to the 21st century, and who are using copyright and patent law as an excuse to protect their outdated business structures.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#176

Post by basch »

ALittleLight wrote: post #167
uluyol wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because potential sales are not sales. You never had the XY dollars to begin with. This is what separates IP theft from physical property theft.

I never said they were sales. I explicitly differentiated them from sales. They are potential sales, valued at YX and potential sales are what you lose. A sale has a value of X dollars.

That's what makes it not theft. Theft deprives the person of the original. If I have two books and you take one I have one book. If you buy one of my books and give it out, I did not have any of the books I had stolen from me.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#177

Post by ALittleLight »

basch wrote: post #176
ALittleLight wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said they were sales. I explicitly differentiated them from sales. They are potential sales, valued at YX and potential sales are what you lose. A sale has a value of X dollars.

That's what makes it not theft. Theft deprives the person of the original. If I have two books and you take one I have one book. If you buy one of my books and give it out, I did not have any of the books I had stolen from me.

Theft does deprive the victim of something. As I've written above, piracy is theft as it deprives the victim of potential sales.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#178

Post by teawrecks »

gpm wrote: post #133
jjcon wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as I said - EFF isn’t acting as blind legal council - they are tying themselves to IA even saying they are proud to stand with them and pledging financial support for them. This is totally different from a public defender being elected for a citizen. I didn’t say it was illegal for EFF to do this or that they were breaking the law, I said they were on the wrong side of the law.

I'm beginning to think you actually just don't know what "the wrong side of the law" means. Here is the definition https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/on%20the%20wrong%... Exercising their first amendment rights to support an organization that broke the law is unequivocally legal, a healthy part of society, and not on the wrong side of the law.

Fwiw I think everything you're saying makes perfect sense. Regardless of the plaintiff and defendant's cases, the lawyers are there to ensure the judicial system is fair to the best of their ability. IA might be wrong, but EFF and their legal team are there to make sure they are fairly represented.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#179

Post by iamstupidsimple »

jjcon wrote: post #131
izacus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what does that world look like? Quite frankly, I'm not sure. Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of this work somehow. Why can't we? Wouldn't even that state be better than the current one, where publishers outright steal (in true meaning of the world) revenue from YouTube content creators because there might be a sound that's similar t…

> where publishers outright steal (in true meaning of the world) revenue from YouTube content creators because there might be a sound that's similar to some song written 30+ years ago? Conversely for every one of these there are easily 1000 YouTube videos that shamelessly steal IP outside the bounds of fair use and nobody does anything. If pewdiepie posts a 30 second meme clip from the latest avengers people think it…

Copyright _does_ treat them differently. It's why fair use exists. Is Disney entitled to fair use inside a paid/sold product, with no criticism or enhancement?

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#180

Post by smichel17 »

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

One thing I've thought about is a sort of "crowdfunded patronage" model, where the creator of a work declares upfront how much money they want to make off of it, and releases it into the public domain once they've received that much money.

That's a ransom model. It's one of several [existing mechanisms] for funding free/libre/open (FLO) works… none of which appreciably move the needle on making a living off them.

I've spent a lot of time talking about Snowdrift.coop on HN recently so I'll skip the pitch this time and just link our [wiki], which has a suggested reading order front-and-center; I'm happy to join in follow-up discussion.

[existing mechanisms]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/about/existing-mechanisms#fn2

[wiki]: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/

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