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Why I'm a Pirate

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Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#301

Post by vph »

cturner wrote: post #39
gavinballard wrote: post #16

This is a series of pretty poor arguments. The author seems to be looking for reasons to justify their own piracy and conflates anger at the approach of the "copyright industry" with infringement upon peoples' rights. One of the final lines of the article, in particular, is jarring: "If I'm a pirate, it's not to have some cheap music. It is because the time has come for you to fuck off." It's fine to be angry about t…

> 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…

I don't buy this argument. Instead of buying a piece of music or a movie, you download it without paying, then you are in some small or large way, you are stealing it.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#302

Post by j-kidd »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #175
alextgordon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then, what if I am willing to pay for it? I would very much like to watch US TV shows. Preferably on a computer, since I don't have a TV (but on TV would be a good effort too!) Unfortunately, somebody has decided that I am not allowed to. If try to buy Hulu Plus, I am greeted with a nice message telling me to fuck off back to where I came from. Same with Netflix. Hell, I can't even watch a 2 minute clip of the Dai…

To me this - the market is not meeting the demand - is the single best argument. If something is available legally and at a reasonable price (by which I mean not only available second hand for £100 as a collectable, rather than "99p for an MP3, that's outrageous" etc...) I either buy it or accept I won't have it. If it's not available I have no real issue with getting it illegally. Frankly if the media companies adop…

> If something is available legally and at a reasonable price (by which I mean not only available second hand for £100 as a collectable, rather than "99p for an MP3, that's outrageous" etc...) I either buy it or accept I won't have it.

You are assuming the world is full of honorable people like yourself. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in. In the words of Scott Adams:

"The least effective system ever invented is something called the honor system. The theory guiding this system is that people are not huge weasels."

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#303

Post by Timothee »

cturner wrote: post #160
city41 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are not willing to pay for it, then they have no right to enjoy it. In the end, it always boils down to pirates being spoiled. People never pirate to make ends meet. There is no digital content that is essential to anyone's life. People pirate because they want to be entertained but they don't want to pay for it.

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?

Now you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

city41 wrote "If they are not willing to pay for it, then they have no right to enjoy it." in the context that "it" is copyrighted work that is offered for sale, not just anything. You know it as well as everyone here.

But I do believe that if somebody has something you want and they only offer to you for a price (be it money or otherwise), you don't have a right to it for free, pretty much whatever "it" is. (assuming they have the right to that control in the first place obviously) See biot's comment for eloquent point-by-point explanation.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#304

Post by sunir »

angersock wrote: post #279
grellas wrote: post #212

Creative 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…

Under a society in which copyright is protected, I can freely choose to do that if I like. I can place my work in the public domain and relinquish any right to compensation for it. As you can do in a society without copyright--that is your personal decision. Copyright is not required for you to do what you will with your stuff. Or I can let others use it freely but only on if they meet some condition that I impose on…

I don't understand your argument or what you are saying is wrong.

Rights are a legal limitation on the actions of others, not a physical limitation. They exist to limit people from doing what they otherwise "can" do to you in the physical world.

You have physical property rights so people cannot enter your home when you are at work and take your television. That is enforced through the law not the Fort Knox security that you might have.

If you have travelled to countries without rule of law you will understand what it means in practice when this right is not strong. Fences, security guards, and metal cages inside your house in every middle class home.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#305

Post by sequoia »

ThomPete wrote: post #282
sequoia wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me first state that I'm in basically total agreement with OP and mostly agree with parent, but one point sticks in my craw: >> 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? http://thegatheringplacehome.myfastforum.org/archive/life-le...…

The second an artist is trying to mass produce they are businessmen not artists anymore. The artist didn't make the ability to produce in large numbers and distribute at zero cost, that is what technology did. A technology that served the labels and musicians for one hundred years. Now it is turning on them and they start to complain. Bo freaking ho. People make music without making a single dime on it. Great music i…

And I suppose charging for a concert makes them a filthy businessman as well. Should I get to choose whether or not I must pay to see them play live?

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#307

Post by tjr »

dchest wrote: post #269
Tycho wrote: post #152

Earlier 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.

GPL is about sharing the source code of the original or derivative work. Which is pretty honorable. Breaching the terms of GPL means refusing to share. Regarding your first point, yes, since we're speaking about ethics here, it's morally acceptable to disregard wishes of authors to restrict your freedom of handling copies of their published work, as long as doing this is good for people and makes no harm to authors.…

But the point, I believe, is that the concept of breaching the GPL is nonsensical if you do not respect the GPL or the copyright law on which it rests. Whether if you share something against its creator's will, or if you refuse to share something against its creator's will, in both cases you are ignoring the creator's wishes and violating copyright law.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#308

Post by erikpukinskis »

nadam wrote: post #288
hxa7241 wrote: post #234

Earlier 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? > In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process. This is a common approach, bu…

"But it is also short-sighted. You are not only a 'creator', you are a user too" The question is: To what extent? If we measure how much income a person have from intellectual property and how much money they spend on intellectual property (if they not steal) then you will see the following: Most people are only consumers. A fraction of people create things as a hobby, so their consumption is not much smaller than th…

That's why I think that the no-copyright movement is unfortunatelly partly an anti-intellectual, populist, 'anti-civilisational', (ok, maybe anti elitist too) movement

When combined with a pro-capitalism platform, you might be right. If writers need copyright to be able to eat and pay rent, then you are right.

But anti-copyright, combined with an anti-property ("anarchist") platform isn't necessarily anti-civilisation, or anti-intellectual. Other structures, like syndicates, architecture, designed artifacts, and other forms of culture, can provide "civilisation".

In such a society, writers (and everyone else) would be born with the right to a fair share of the living space and food around them. They would be expected to contribute a fair share. As they got better at writing, people might start to agree that their time was better spent writing than in the fields, and would petition their work syndicate to post them as a writer.

(Of course, this is anarchism, so they could just go write the books anyway, they would just lose social standing if people felt they weren't contributing their fair share.)

You might say that creators wouldn't create if there wasn't a carrot of Wealth dangling out in front of them somewhere.

We can debate that point. I'm interested to hear your thoughts. But in my experience the great creators of culture who I know well do it despite the monetary consequences, not because of them. They write themselves into poverty... orchestrate music into the middle class... paint on a teacher's salary.

And yeah, some of them become insanely wealthy. But I don't think the majority of them do it for the wealth. If they do, that would be very stupid, no matter what system you're in.

Give everyone the basic necessities in fair trade for contributing to the syndicates that make their food, housing, and health possible, and I think you'd see an explosion in creativity, not the opposite.

Re: Why I'm a Pirate

#310

Post by khafra »

grellas wrote: post #212

Creative 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…

> If I write something, I control what is done with it.

You're a good writer, both in the technical and moral sense; and I respect your experience, ability, and goals. However, there is no creation ex nihilo. I can't remember who said this, so I use it without attribution: would the world of music be richer today if, in 1900, one could copyright a bassline?

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