Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shows. Performances.
In many cases the writer is not the performer. What for them?
Work for hire can exist without copyright you know.
Why I'm a Pirate
291–300 of 527 posts
Re: Why I'm a Pirate
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
> > The point is that this is my decision. > Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do? Because, the creative work would not exist if not for the creator. If you take away the creator's right (and I am not arguing that it should be infinite and indefinite), you take away the i…
This is not true. Artist will always make art and always have.
As long as the artist can afford it.
There ain't such thing as free art.
Re: Why I'm a Pirate
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you're stealing something of value that someone worked hard to produce. How is it stealing if they can still have that something? You compose a song. I copy that song. You still have that song. If I'd taken away a recorder with your only master copy of it, then I would have stolen it.
I completely agree - technically. If we invent a technology that allows us to read thoughts, should you be allowed to read them without the thinkers permission? The thinker still has their thoughts. What about disseminate them via torrents? Would that be "fair"? Is that the society we want? What about monitoring conversations via surveillance means? The speakers still have their conversation. Should we be allowed to…
Truly broken analogy. If you want to go with the 'reading thoughts' (whats wrong with cars!?) then with copyright infringement (which is what we are discussing here) it would be like someone selling the right to listen to their thoughts, and someone who paid for it choosing to relay those thoughts to others for free.
Certainly relaying those thoughts for free can possibly limit potential opportunities to futher sell the right to 'listen to those thoughts' (assuming that anyone of those listening in for free would be prepared to pay for it). But this 'intellectual rape' thing you are trying to paint here just doesn't hold water since they are already granting permission to 'read their thoughts' for money.
These files containing ip that are being illegally copied all across the web are things which were already being distributed in various forms, albeit with artificial scarcity mechanisms in place to force payment per copy.
Re: Why I'm a Pirate
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not true. Artist will always make art and always have.
As long as the artist can afford it. There ain't such thing as free art.
There is no such thing as free anything. But there is plenty of great music out there that never made a single dime.
Re: Why I'm a Pirate
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you work for free? It's pretty essential to all of society that work and/or value is generally paid for. You demanding that content be available for free simply because you want it is no different from your boss deciding to not pay you because he doesn't want to. Yes people can choose to make their work available for free, and that's great. But that choice again lies in the person who created the work, not the per…
The value of said work lies in the consumer, not the producer. If consumers by in large don't want to pay for something, then it simply isn't valuable and producing something in that segment and then complaining about piracy is rather pointless. You know going in consumers don't value that because they're accustomed to getting it for free. You had better expect piracy.
Your point about value lying in the consumer is a good response to the parent. The parent implies that society should invent business models to protect people who do things (but then even fails to make the point through use of word "generally").
However, I don't think the rest of your points are strong. People might not want to pay for apples, but that doesn't give them the justification to steal them. That's not because they don't value them - clearly they do. Or else they wouldn't want them.
Copying is different to stealing because in copying you don't deprive the creating from anything apart from completely arbitrary rights that the law grants to them.
It may also be worth raising that there's room for a difference between protection of 1. privacy (this photo is of me and I don't want it released because that would be invasive to a reasonable definition of privacy); 2. first release (I created something but it's personal, I haven't released it to anyone, and don't want people redistributing it - this is an anti-right, but more reasonable than the next one); 3. Protection of publishers (I create something, and the government gives me a monopoly over all copies and derivatives of it to such an extent that government invades people's civil liberties to protect my business models).
Re: Why I'm a Pirate
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the artists don't have a god given right to produce it once and sell it many times.
Yes they do because they created it. As much as they have ownership over their music, you have the god given right not to buy it.
> Yes they do because
Who gave it to them? I dont think that we ever, as a society, ever fundamentally _agreed_ to the existence of such exclusivity rights. Yes they are in the constitution, yes they are in the lawbooks, but the people at large never fundamentally agreed that such rights should be in there. The decision process was always top-down, never bottom-up. They are not a result of peoples morality, but of a interest-driven, behind-closed-doors development process. Those laws dont map the will of the people, of your fellow citizens, but of a few, but influential stake holders. Such rights are not democratically backed. If you would ever have a referendum on copyright policy, you would probably lose them.
Re: Why I'm a Pirate
#297Creative effort - or at at least any that is truly worthy of the name - takes tears, and sweat, and blood. We can marvel at the output of an artist, or a writer, or a composer, or a film maker and yet fail to focus on the years of toil that often preceded that work. And I am not here speaking of some isolated genius. I still remember the days when I was so dissatisfied with my lack of writing skills that I decided to…
We both agree the idea that 65 years after your death your estate will still own the copyright to that post is insane. However, you defend the basic concept that copyright protects artists which enables them to produce more content. Yet, Shakespeare had no copyright protection so he produced more not less content. He still profited from his work, just not as much. But, let's look at it from another direction. Simplif…
Your comment seems to hinge on this idea that "the overwhelming majority of truly interesting works are not for profit", which seemed dubious, but interesting. Then you end with a disclaimer noting that you are an extreme outlier in your opinion and consumption of interesting works. Your comment could have been edited down to "I don't like for-profit works so if everyone liked the same things as I do, we wouldn't need copyright." It's an intriguing thought, and I'm fascinated by your rejection of our society's usual entertainments - is it a principled stand? do you really just dislike that stuff and like other things more? how and when did this start? - but it's not very germane to solving the wider society's issues with copyright because a lot of the rest of us are pretty into some of the books, music, and movies that are made for profit.
Re: Why I'm a Pirate
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sharing an original work against the express wishes of the creator? Nope, you are dishonouring their hard work in creating the content and their intentions in making it available to the public. I supposes breaching the terms of the GPL would be 'honourable' too.
How can sharing something be wrong? Especially when it is essentially a bunch of 0s and 1s that you could write down by hand if you had the patience to? Sharing a number is wrong? I don't understand what that has to do with GPL at all.
Just like the GPL, copyright puts conditions on the disposal of a work. There are no physical restrictions in either case, just the idea that you honour these terms.
Would you feel comfortable walking past an artist trying to graft a living selling paintings/prints in a street stall, then against his wishes take a picture of them and tell him you're going to share these with your friends so they don't have to buy his work? Does that seem honourable to you?
Also consider a situation whereby two parties had a contract dictating the terms of how some artistic work could be used. There's obviously nothing wrong with this since both parties have agreed to the contract. Then say some third party illegally acquires the work and makes it available elsewhere. Seems fair that at this point we can rely upon copyright to protect the work of citizens. Just like you have privacy rights and defamation rights and so on.
Re: Why I'm a Pirate
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point is that a work that is just information , no matter how high quality, will be copied. There is no scarcity. Throughout history, work has always been either about making physical objects, food, or services rendered to either a person or a group interactively. Those are scarce. That's still the case. Yes, the market for cookie-cutter experiences "make once, sell zillion times" will become smaller (or at least,…
OK, I think I understand where you're coming from now. Unfortunately, if we take your idea to its natural conclusion, a lot of industries that create and distribute valuable works are going to change direction or possibly split several ways. Those projects that can be run without ever giving the underlying data to customers, such as interactive software that can be turned into SaaS where the code never leaves a serve…
You wrote:
"Unfortunately, if we take your idea to its natural conclusion, a lot of industries that create and distribute valuable works are going to change direction or possibly split several ways."
This is not a strong argument. I could equally look at the time of the enlightenment and say "if people weren't forced to give their money to the Catholic church, think of all the lovely buildings and choral music we'd be denied. Therefore - people should be forced to give money to the church!"
In the case of copyright, you need to consider this opportunity cost. i.e. things we don't have because copyright has made them impossible. As with the church example, there is also a significant cost of freedom.
There is no demonstration that an economy with copyright is superior to an economy without copyright, and plenty of current and historical annecdotal evidence to suggest that copyright is strongly detrimental to economic success.
Re: Why I'm a Pirate
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It might make you feel better about it, but it really > doesn't change the fact that you're stealing something > of value Copyright infringement is not stealing. Separately, the person who worked hard to produce whatever you're buying is reaping a fraction of a percentage point of whatever you're spending, and that's only if the distributor hasn't found a way to screw them out of that entirely (or else they've been…
It's not stealing, it's counterfeiting, which is much worse. Here is why: When you steal a car, that one car is stolen. No big deal. If piracy goes unchecked, over time, the perceived value of that item will go down. This is because most people will quickly and easily be able to get it for free. Revenue will go down as a result of this and instead of having the loss of an individual copy of that product, the entire p…
>If piracy goes unchecked, over time, the perceived value of that item will go down
Do you have any evidence to support this? Both the movie [0] and gaming [1] industries are making record profits.
>Many newspapers are going out of business because you can get the exact same info for free from many other sources.
Well, not exactly. I assume you're referring to consuming news online, which is supported by advertising -- it's not "free". The decline of the newspaper has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with the advantages of online distribution.
[0] -- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/piracy-once-...
[1] -- http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/06/gaming-expected-t...