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Why I'm a Pirate

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Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#241

Post by gnaritas »

biot wrote: post #231
cturner wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it correct that your premise is that if you don't pay for something then you don't have the right to enjoy it? Do you also apply this principle to sex? What about borrowed books, good views, jokes, ideas, intelligent conversation, exercise?

You have a right to eat food. You don't have a right to walk into a restaurant and eat without paying. I don't have the right to take your food. You have a right to exercise. You don't have the right to walk into Gold's Gym and use their facilities without paying. I don't have the right to enter your home and use the equipment in the basement. You have a right to have mutually consensual sex with someone else without…

You've confused physical property with intellectual property. Depriving someone of the physical immediately victimizes them, copying their intellectual property doesn't, it's not the same thing.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#242

Post by eropple »

route66 wrote: post #232
wwwtyro wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work. I could not disagree more. If someone creates a work of art, they only own the physical manifestation of that creatio…

So, I'm a musician. What "physical manifestation" are you talking about? Compressed air? Because as soon as I make a record I have to "guard that physical manifestation" ... how? with SOPA? preventing CD'd from being sold? And in short you deny artists of ownership of anything else than the physical representation (unethical!) But in the next sentence you make the creation "other people's property". If I think of som…

Well put. Ditto, say, a game developer. "Find another way" is great and all for games, if you want a bunch of Facebook monstrosities welded into an always-online authentication framework (or equivalent systems). "But you can sell a version with physical stuff that people want" is similarly silly - I'm not a model-maker or a map-maker, I write software and I'm not going to write software if the only way to make a living off of it is to sell tchotchkes. (And, without meaningful copyright, it's easy to duplicate whatever that thing is and sell it as if it were 'official' anyway.)

I'm trying very hard to avoid an ad-hominem, but I wonder how many people who espouse this "everything should be free" mindset actually create stuff and hurt themselves with this argument. Even software developers who strictly write software for other people benefit from copyright in a work-for-hire arrangement.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#243

Post by burgerbrain »

route66 wrote: post #232
wwwtyro wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work. I could not disagree more. If someone creates a work of art, they only own the physical manifestation of that creatio…

So, I'm a musician. What "physical manifestation" are you talking about? Compressed air? Because as soon as I make a record I have to "guard that physical manifestation" ... how? with SOPA? preventing CD'd from being sold? And in short you deny artists of ownership of anything else than the physical representation (unethical!) But in the next sentence you make the creation "other people's property". If I think of som…

Shows. Performances.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#244

Post by wwwtyro »

route66 wrote: post #232
wwwtyro wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work. I could not disagree more. If someone creates a work of art, they only own the physical manifestation of that creatio…

So, I'm a musician. What "physical manifestation" are you talking about? Compressed air? Because as soon as I make a record I have to "guard that physical manifestation" ... how? with SOPA? preventing CD'd from being sold? And in short you deny artists of ownership of anything else than the physical representation (unethical!) But in the next sentence you make the creation "other people's property". If I think of som…

> What "physical manifestation" are you talking about?

However your creation manifests itself. A live performance or the physical media of a recording, for example.

> Because as soon as I make a record I have to "guard that physical manifestation" ... how?

The same way you guard your other possessions: with a lock and a door.

> you make the creation "other people's property"

The physical manifestation. The matter, as it were.

> If I think of something you did not this robs me of rights and automatically gives entitlement to you?

If you come up with an idea, it is yours to guard. If you communicate this idea, then you cannot ethically use force to prevent others from acting upon it. I do not believe I am robbing you of any right, because I do not believe that information can be property - only the physical manifestation of information (the media) can be property.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#245

Post by billswift »

wglb wrote: post #230
ensignavenger wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I have sole control over what is done with that which I create." Actually, the US Constitution only allows for limited control, not unlimited control. The Constitution requires Fair Use exceptions to your control of your created works.

While your conclusion is correct, isn't it other later case law that permitted Fair Use? I don't think that is actually in the constitution.

Actually, it is the freedom of speech clause in the First Amendment that gives fair use rights, as interpreted by the courts. It could even be argued by a future court that the First Amendment invalidates copyright altogether; it wouldn't be the first time a court had changed direction like that.

That is a less extreme change than that from Plessy vs Ferguson to Brown vs the Board of Education, for example. And a good case can be made for freedom of speech trumping copyright; the Constitutional argument for copyright is a practical one for "encouraging" the advance of arts and sciences; eternal copyright has already undercut that argument.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#246

Post by ernesth »

tomp wrote: post #92
hendrik-xdest wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept is a bit different, at the moment. Creating copies of copyrighted material _could_ be possible with scanners, printers, CD and DVD burners ... The fee you pay on those and other devices is rather to pay for illegal copies that are created of copyrighted material you own. Not for creating hardcopies of illegally acquired content. At least that is what is supposed to do. In reality ... well you might want t…

Isn't it you fair use right to create copies of things you already own? E.g. for backup, or for your own music compilations, ...

Duplicating CDs (or DVDs or books) for private use is indeed legal in France (even if the original comes from a library). The "taxe sur la copie privée" is intended to compensate for the fact that fewer copies are sold because of such private copy. It has nothing to do with piracy.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#247

Post by bmelton »

mikeash wrote: post #237
dandrick wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sort of argument just comes off as a word game to me, I don't really know what to say to it. It is similar to saying no one dies when they jump out of a window, it is the impact that kills them.

Well, let's look at the various outcomes. There are, I think, three possible actions to consider: A) taking and paying B) taking and not paying C) not taking. For a restaurant, we get: A) restaurant benefits B) restaurant loses C) restaurant suffers no effect either way. For piracy, we get: A) creator benefits B) creator suffers no effect either way C) creator suffers no effect either way. Consider what happens if I…

If piracy takes root as something that people 'should' do, then B) in your piracy example leads to the same outcome as B) in your restaurant example.

It deprives them of any income, and removes the incentive and ability for them to produce further content as a means of living in the future.

That deprives all of their future contributions and damages the commons. In summation, at scale, the outcome for both B) scenarios IS the same, and if it is at scale, then there must be an effect not at scale, whether or not you refuse to accept it.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#248

Post by ravloony »

I'm not going to set my own behaviour up as an example here, which is something that I think invalidates the OP's point, at least partially, and certainly obscures it, but I have a couple of points:

- It is unreasonable on the whole to expect people to refrain from piracy when it's just so easy. It's kind of like putting candy in front of a child and not expecting him to eat it, compounded by the fact that there is at least the illusion of anonymity on the internet. - It is unreasonable to expect artists to use the internet by themselves to distribute their content, although some do. Most of them are probably not that technically inclined. There needs to be someone there to take that pain away from them. - It is just that people who create content get paid for doing so.

So it's really a market problem. We need a system that allows people to just download as easily as pirating, but allows the content creators to live off their creation. If the traditional content distributors (who are not the creators) cannot supply a service which does this, then I cannot see why they should be pitied.

I think something along the lines of Deezer et al is ok : a service that would allow you to consume music, no questions asked. The problem is that deezer is getting all its content from the distributors, so in effect there is a double middle man. But a subscription-based "deezer" which paid artists directly according to how much their tracks were listened to would work, IMHO. I believe such services already exist, in fact.

Also, you'd only need the big distributors to realize this, and build their own versions, and suddenly there's a proper market for tunes, films, etc. These new distributors would each have a catalogue of films and music on download, but they could also open the catalogue to cinemas, tv channels and so on. The only thing they couldn't do is restrict access, under pain of piracy.

I'm just hypothesising here, but as far as I can see the content distributors are being the artisans of their own downfall by not doing this themselves.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#249

Post by eropple »

Spoom wrote: post #240
wwwtyro wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work. I could not disagree more. If someone creates a work of art, they only own the physical manifestation of that creatio…

While I realize that it can't happen any time soon due to the current businesses that rely on copyright protection, there have been alternatives proposed that work without it, like The Digital Art Auction ( http://tdaa.digitalproductions.co.uk/history/essay.htm ) and Street Performer Protocol ( http://www.schneier.com/paper-street-performer.html , blacked out due to SOPA as of writing). Vastly simplified, they descri…

I've read both of the links you provide at various times, and I remain skeptical. It seems like an awesome way to put a hard ceiling on what creative works actually get made, because the likelihood of anyone actually funding a project of magnitude is extremely small. I look at it from a game development point of view, and I have to ask--who's going to pony up the cash for the next Half-Life (not the next Valve game, but the next product on that level) up-front when dealing with nobodies? And there's no reason for somebody to sink their own money into such a project because of the lack of payoff.

Today, I can self-bootstrap by making smaller games and building up cash reserves, if I want. Or I can put away some money in my day job, like I am now, to actually build what I want to build and what I think will be well-received and make more value back for me than the money and time I'll need to sink into it to create it. Why would I risk my own money, and that much time, in a system where I'll get nothing back for it? (Subscription services are not a solution; not every game is World of Warcraft, and I'd argue that none should be.)

"I'm going to need $100,000 (or, for something where you'd actually have to hire multiple people, $X,000,000) to make a video game."

"Yeah, right. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."

While I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, every rebuttal to this I've ever seen requires a lot of handwaving and an assumption of active and knowledgeable participation on the part of end consumers. To be honest, I don't expect investor-level behavior out of consumers; I expect a lot of yelling about how something is X when they "already paid for" something very slightly but to them critically different than X, but not much in the way of useful, constructive development-centric criticism. It's not their bag.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#250

Post by burgerbrain »

nirvdrum wrote: post #224
drcube wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if one person buys a digital work due to piracy who otherwise would not have even known the artist existed, there is a benefit. Do you have any evidence that the costs outweigh the benefits?

Who is pirating works from artists they've never heard of? Everyone I know who pirates stuff is actively looking for something.

Everybody I know... They download in bulk and sift through it looking for things they like.

And without exception, all of those "pirates" that I know have much larger legal bluray and record collections than I do.

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