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Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

wired.co.uk

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Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#361

Post by Retra »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #301
Retra wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think I have a fundamental right to access or own things created by other people. You do have such a right, because it is intimately related to the fact that you are human -- a social creature who essentially _requires_ things created by other people for your very survival. You may not agree that you should have immediate or non-negotiable access, but the mere fact that you are a producer of content and info…

Gimme all your shit

You can have my thoughts for free. They're far more useful and valuable than anything else I have.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#362

Post by rhino369 »

the8472 wrote: post #27
lorddoig wrote: post #22

When did stealing other peoples' life work segue from a guilty necessity to a noble cause? I missed that.

Stealing? Do we really need to rehash the old theft vs. copyright infringement argument?

The idea that theft can only happen to physical stuff is part semantics and part myth. Things like theft of service don't include physical goods.

Stealing: to take another person's property without permission or legal right

Intellectual property is property in every sense of the word.

The argument, "BUT I'm copying not taking!" is treating the property as the digital file, but that file merely represents the intellectual property.

So is the argument that the person isn't harmed because its merely a copy. First, stealing doesn't have to the mean the person suffered real harm. You can steal something I forgot I own, it won't hurt me but it is theft. But the major issue is that copyright infringement does in the aggregate hurt content creators.

Shoplifting and copyright infringement are essentially the same level of harm to businesses.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#363

Post by arfar »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #267
sigzero wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was a lot different from Reddit or HN. Please stop trying to support the "pirating is okay". It's not. It's theft. You do not need or have to see those shows. You want to watch them and you fulfill that want by pirating. That pirating may cause purchases later is a horrible argument for theft.

First, I never said "pirating is okay". Please stop putting words in my mouth. I support the idea that content creators paid for their work. Sometimes, in the context of F/OSS for instance, the creators choose to forgo that directly and often indirectly (e.g. donations). Secondly, downloading a work under a non-permissive copyright is not theft, and may not even be illegal. Content shifting is a legal thing to do. If…

>Content shifting is a legal thing to do

Small point, but it actually depends on the country's laws. In New Zealand, it's illegal to do that. It's even illegal to rip a CD you own. It's stupid and would never be enforecd, but it is the law.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#364

Post by SamReidHughes »

humanrebar wrote: post #338
SamReidHughes wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making money from producing entertainment isn't a human right. I don't know why you claim this is some sort of absolute fact. Whether "human rights" are made up or inherent, it seems plausible to me that being able to take ownership of creative works could be a natural right the same as having ownership of physical property would be.

I've explained it elsewhere, but a business model is a projection of future results, it's not actual property. I think the burden of proof is on the claimant when someone says that protecting business models is more important than protecting freedom of speech (sharing documents), freedom of privacy (no combing through my documents), or the freedom of movement (not being in prison). As far as a critique on whether hum…

I didn't say a business model was property. I said that intellectual property is plausibly property or something that people could have a right to. In fact, since copyright as intellectual property is a virtually infinite, highly-dimensional landscape, it should arguably have more absolutist protection than physical property, because monopolizing a unit of intellectual property won't prevent other people from getting their own.

And real property ownership interferes with freedom to travel the same way that copyright property interferes with freedom to send arbitrary bit sequences, only moreso. All of that was claimed and defended by violence too, so if you're going to make an argument along those lines you're going to have to find something that distinguishes copyright property from real property. From what I can see copyright seems like a much more benign form of ownership.

> But I'll say that it's hard to have any morality without some concept of human rights, whether that term is used or not.

No it isn't. You could just go pure utilitarian, or you could say people have no intrinsic rights but we should be nice to them anyways.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#365

Post by gambiting »

clarry wrote: post #348
pestaa wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, your family could be starving because you could sell exactly zero copies...

I can't blame people for not wanting to buy my stuff. I'm not entitled to any sales. They don't have to. So if I'm starving, it's not the fault of the people who aren't interested in buying my stuff. Calling them thieves solves nothing.

They don't have to buy it, but it doesn't change the fact that they are using your work without paying you. It's the same as if you were a street painter selling your work, and someone comes around and takes a picture of what you painted and says "naaah, I'll just print it at home, rather than giving you $50 for it". You are not entitled to any sales. But that person took your work without paying. You have no right to demand that he pays for it, but he had no right to take it without paying.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#366

Post by lmm »

afro88 wrote: post #305
lmm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend in the US has bought and paid for a show, and wants to send me a copy. Why shouldn't they be able to? The one who wants to prevent that is the one who's entitled.

Because it's a copy. They should be allowed to gift you their copy of the show, sure. Just like if I bought a DVD only available in Australia and gifted it to a friend in France for example.

Well, you're already arguing for something more liberal than current law. The movie companies put a technological mechanism in place to make that not work (in violation of EU regulations, but nothing seems to have happened about that), and got laws passed to make it illegal to circumvent that mechanism. And while sending a DVD from Australia to France as a private individual is legal, doing it as a commercial operation is not.

But making the real argument, if it's my DVD, I should be able to copy it.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#367

Post by patzerhacker »

scrollaway wrote: post #346
patzerhacker wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let's forget for a moment that, as you tell all those people your sorrows, you will in fact figure out that your product failed not because of piracy but because the product was not giving adequate value for its price. That may be, but that doesn't mean that people have the right to unilaterally decide that the price should be zero against the wishes of the seller. They may have the technical ability to do so, but t…

>> Let's forget for a moment that ... Good thing I said "let's forget that", huh? > How do you make that logical jump? Please keep reading? > The small shops in the middle get it the worst. Those small shops you keep mentioning, they don't exist anymore. There was a very small decade during which they did exist... shareware shops. Those were really crap. Boy I'm glad they're gone. You know what replaced them? Web app…

>Web apps shops (online-only, no piracy there) and mobile apps shops (where piracy has a much, much higher barrier of entry and is comparatively non-existant).

Well thank goodness you're here to solve all the world's ills! Believe it or not, there are still significant numbers of people that either aren't connected or use software in a situation where they're not connected to the net. That totally screws the usefulness of webapps.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#368

Post by afro88 »

lmm wrote: post #366
afro88 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a copy. They should be allowed to gift you their copy of the show, sure. Just like if I bought a DVD only available in Australia and gifted it to a friend in France for example.

Well, you're already arguing for something more liberal than current law. The movie companies put a technological mechanism in place to make that not work (in violation of EU regulations, but nothing seems to have happened about that), and got laws passed to make it illegal to circumvent that mechanism. And while sending a DVD from Australia to France as a private individual is legal, doing it as a commercial operati…

> Well, you're already arguing for something more liberal than current law.

Sure, but my point still stands :) Your friend shouldn't be allowed to copy their purchase and send it to you. They should be allowed to send you their purchase as a gift. People need to understand that just because something is digital it's not suddenly ok to endlessly copy and distribute it for free. What gives you the right? It may be unfortunate that the copyright owner of the show you like hasn't secured publishing/distribution rights in your country yet, but that doesn't give you the right to copy it for free because you really want to watch it.

> The movie companies put a technological mechanism in place to make that not work (in violation of EU regulations, but nothing seems to have happened about that), and got laws passed to make it illegal to circumvent that mechanism.

Yes, and I agree on this point. Region blocking sucks and it kills the gifting to an international friend scenario.

> But making the real argument, if it's my DVD, I should be able to copy it.

For your own personal use, yes.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#369

Post by scrollaway »

patzerhacker wrote: post #367
scrollaway wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Let's forget for a moment that ... Good thing I said "let's forget that", huh? > How do you make that logical jump? Please keep reading? > The small shops in the middle get it the worst. Those small shops you keep mentioning, they don't exist anymore. There was a very small decade during which they did exist... shareware shops. Those were really crap. Boy I'm glad they're gone. You know what replaced them? Web app…

>Web apps shops (online-only, no piracy there) and mobile apps shops (where piracy has a much, much higher barrier of entry and is comparatively non-existant). Well thank goodness you're here to solve all the world's ills! Believe it or not, there are still significant numbers of people that either aren't connected or use software in a situation where they're not connected to the net. That totally screws the usefulne…

Nice cynicism, but this is about companies and the effect piracy has on them... not about whether or not web apps are useful for people without internet.

Re: Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'

#370

Post by lmm »

afro88 wrote: post #368
lmm wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you're already arguing for something more liberal than current law. The movie companies put a technological mechanism in place to make that not work (in violation of EU regulations, but nothing seems to have happened about that), and got laws passed to make it illegal to circumvent that mechanism. And while sending a DVD from Australia to France as a private individual is legal, doing it as a commercial operati…

> Well, you're already arguing for something more liberal than current law. Sure, but my point still stands :) Your friend shouldn't be allowed to copy their purchase and send it to you. They should be allowed to send you their purchase as a gift. People need to understand that just because something is digital it's not suddenly ok to endlessly copy and distribute it for free. What gives you the right? It may be unfo…

> People need to understand that just because something is digital it's not suddenly ok to endlessly copy and distribute it for free.

I think you've inverted this. When things weren't digital, it was perfectly ok to e.g. buy a nice table, make a copy, and give that copy to a friend.

The argument for copyright is a balance of positives and negatives, the idea that the benefit to society of incentivising creators outweighs the cost to society of disallowing copying. It's very difficult to argue that this adds up in cases where the creator isn't selling something in a particular region.

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