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Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

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Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#121

Post by JackC »

sophacles wrote: post #92
JackC wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular trained lawyer wishes that we could never talk about whether copyright infringement is stealing, ever again. It's 100% legally irrelevant. There are laws against stealing physical property. Copyright infringement doesn't violate them. There are laws against copyright infringement. Copyright infringement does violate them. The question of whether "stealing" is good shorthand for "copyright infringement…

Thanks for the technical writeup. Amusingly it really has embedded in it the very basis of the argument people are making when they say copyright isn't stealing. For example, no one would try to start an anti-trespassing campaign on grounds that it is stealing, they would be laughed at mercilessly. No one would try to start an anti-vandalism campaign on grounds of it being stealing. No one would start an anti-noise c…

> lets get the emotional word "steal" out of the picture. Instead lets call it what it is, and make a note of why these are different and why the rights granted and defended are perhaps outmoded and out-dated.

I totally agree. That's the real conversation to have.

The only thing I would add is to be careful not to adopt the indefensible position that infringement is nothing like stealing. Some of the reasons we protect physical property do apply to copyright. We frequently defend physical property not because stealing deprives the owner of anything or even costs them money, but because stealing interferes with the economic model where you invest in creating something and charge for transferring your rights over it.

For example, consider stealing a newspaper from one of those coin-op machines. The paper was going to be pulped anyway, and you weren't going to buy it anyway. So you actually saved the publisher money. But it would sound absurd to most people to suggest that laws against stealing from newspaper vending machines should be abolished. Because the point isn't that you're depriving the publisher of the ability to read that particular copy of the paper themselves. The point is that our economic model depends on their ability to meter access to copies of the stuff they produce.

I hate these metaphors cause there's always a hundred reasons they don't line up. So don't look for the distinctions, just take it for the point that sometimes theft laws and copyright are protecting approximately similar interests. That doesn't mean copyright laws are a good idea -- it can be totally rational to protect papers in vending machines without protecting their online equivalent. It just means that you have to not trip yourself up at the start of the debate by suggesting that infringement and theft are nothing alike, or that copyright serves no purpose. It serves a purpose. It accomplishes useful stuff. It also costs our society a lot. The burden's on us to convince people we have a better plan to accomplish useful stuff with less cost.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#122

Post by ThomPete »

drostie wrote: post #120
ThomPete wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a definition of copyright and the question is whether that definition can be said to apply to digital.

I'm not sure you understand the context -- for that matter, your terse replies make it hard to know what you think you're saying. But to respond anyways: there is a legal definition of the idea of copyright and the question is pretty well-settled whether that definition applies to digital works. There is no philosophical definition of copyright, for the reasons that I said above -- it's hard to regard it as an issue…

I understand the context perfectly.

To claim that the idea of copyright is pretty well-settled when it comes to digital works just illustrate the problem here.

It's not well-settled cause there isn't anything to settle as such. This is not a discussion about right or wrong but about whether it should apply to digital work.

Even a discussion of property on physical things aren't a settled discussion. There are no conclusion only a decision.

There are a number of indicators hinting that it's far from settled when it comes to digital. Among other things the very fact that we are debating it and the very fact that many people don't seem to have a problem downloading things and don't consider it wrong.

And not just because they are cheap. But because the very fundamental idea of demand and supply, the idea of owning ideas that are themselves byproducts of others ideas is way way way too complex to just say. Done deal. There is something more fundamental in play here.

Perhaps for you, but not for me and many others.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#123

Post by JackC »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #68
JackC wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular trained lawyer wishes that we could never talk about whether copyright infringement is stealing, ever again. It's 100% legally irrelevant. There are laws against stealing physical property. Copyright infringement doesn't violate them. There are laws against copyright infringement. Copyright infringement does violate them. The question of whether "stealing" is good shorthand for "copyright infringement…

There's an important distinction in the categorisation of theft as [primarily] criminal and copyright infringement as [primarily] tortuous which I feel you've simply ignored. The category distinction is vital IMO as it is right that there is greater protection under the law against someone who steals your belongings vs someone who merely duplicates them. If one considers that right to free enjoyment of ones personal…

To be clear: the fact that theft and copyright infringement both relate to interference with alienable rights does not mean that they should be treated the same way. A good legal system takes into account that different kinds of infringement on different kinds of rights should be handled differently.

Here's a cool example that includes both civil law and criminal law: in America, if you trespass on someone's property without being told not to, that's a civil violation, and the only thing the owner can do is sue you for any actual damage you caused. But if you trespass after they tell you not to, it's also a criminal violation and they can ask the state to prosecute you. That's why you see warning signs saying "no trespassing - violators will be prosecuted." It skips the first step.

Point being, sometimes the legal system even treats infringement of the same alienable right under entirely separate branches of law, depending how many times you've done it. And with trespass, it's calibrated pretty well.

Copyright in America is calibrated terribly. It's mostly civil rather than criminal (you can tell because it's "RIAA vs." instead of "United States vs."). But unlike most civil suits where you're basically compensated in rough proportion to the harm you suffered, there's this incredibly punitive fine of up to $150,000 for each mp3, which is collected by the civil party suing rather than the government. So it looks a lot like criminal enforcement. It's grievously weird.

(Actually, there is an analogous law I can think of, the Clean Water Act. Under that law any citizen who lives in a polluted area can sue a polluter and recover a large bounty for winning the case, even if the actual damages that citizen suffered are trivial. This basically offloads the work of enforcing pollution laws from the government to private citizens, which presumably made the Clean Water Act cheap enough to pass. And that Act has been incredibly successful -- we've gone from like 2/3 of America's waterways being impaired to 1/3. So maybe the copyright laws are just the right tool for the wrong job?)

Anyway! What's going on is: (1) copyright laws are all screwed up because only one side is at the bargaining table, and that side is panicking; (2) the internet makes copyright laws impossible to enforce, while also (3) greatly increasing the societal cost of copyright laws in terms of lost value to consumers. So we need a new deal. The better you understand the nuts and bolts, the better you can take part in crafting it.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#125

Post by crymer11 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #60
jstalin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright is a form of rent seeking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking It's not a tax per se, but a cost imposed by the state solely for the benefit of a private party. The original US copyright act allowed for 14 years of protection. Of course, a portion of the rent-seeking copyright cartel's revenue goes to lobby the congress for ever longer copyright terms, making the original intent of the constitution m…

> a cost imposed by the state solely for the benefit of a private party // Copyright is a [not so] limited-time state sponsored monopoly. It is not rent-seeking. Whilst copyright in the jurisdictions I know about is pretty much broken by over-extended time periods given to the monopoly rights holder at the [highly undemocratic IMO] detriment to the public domain it is nonetheless still given for creating new works. B…

Agreed. Moreover, the benefit is not solely derived by the private party. Assuming that a portion of the revenue goes to lobbying, then already the benefit is for more than just the private party. This doesn't even account for any tax revenue generated by the copyrighted work.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#126

Post by JackC »

drostie wrote: post #104
ThomPete wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem of course is that this is fundamentally not a legal discussion but a philosophical one. It doesn't really matter wether it's 100% legally irrelevant. It's 100% philosophically relevant.

No. Copyright is always fundamentally a legal discussion. Everyday copying doesn't have deep ethical ramifications, because the most everyday copying we do is called 'memory' and remembering something is almost never unethical. And ethics is the only branch of philosophy which really has a voice in the matter -- copyright is not epistemic or ontological, etc. I would go so far as to say that the utter absence of a mo…

Part of why I love the law is that every legal discussion is also a philosophical discussion. Should killing someone be legal sometimes? Should pornography be illegal sometimes? Where does my right to privacy win out over society's right to protect itself from crime? When is it OK to back out of a contract? Should my quality of life suffer after the divorce, if you were making the money while I took care of the kids? Is there a right for a child-rape defendant to sit across from the child while she testifies and stare her in the face? Can we outlaw gay marriage just because some people don't like the idea, or do those people have to prove some kind of actual harm?

In all kinds of stupid little cases, every day, lawyers hammer out what kind of people we want to be -- how our society wants to instantiate our morality. It's glorious.

Anyway, the copyright question is partly the legal question of what people should be allowed to do, and partly the moral question of what laws it's OK to break when there's no real prospect of enforcement. But it's all about laws.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#127

Post by Folcon »

DanBC wrote: post #98
nextparadigms wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should it be recovered? If you buy a product that you wish you didn't buy, wouldn't you normally return it? I see no reason for businesses to get money by basically tricking their customers into buying something they later find out it's not what they expected.

> If you buy a product that you wish you didn't buy, wouldn't you normally return it? Consumer law in England doesn't let you do this. Many, but not all, shops do allow returns as a good-will measure. (Unless you buy online, where the Distance Selling Regulations give the customer remarkable rights.) Doesn't "Buyer Beware" mean anything anymore?

We can't just return it, but The Sale of Goods Act 1979 makes it an implied term of the contract that goods be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality. That does give you some measure of leeway. Otherwise Buyer Beware indeed!

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#128

Post by Folcon »

indiecore wrote: post #28
nextparadigms wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should it be recovered? If you buy a product that you wish you didn't buy, wouldn't you normally return it? I see no reason for businesses to get money by basically tricking their customers into buying something they later find out it's not what they expected.

No return on opened DVDs/Games usually.

Depends on why your returning it right? I've successfully argued that games that do not run on my machine, because frankly someone was dreaming when they wrote out those minimum requirements are not "as described".

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#129

Post by warmfuzzykitten »

MiWHackerNews wrote: post #102

this violates us laws and international treaties on currency controls. It's conspiracy to commit counterfeitng and inciting others to commit wire fraud Remember they used to hang people over this. Newton watched with glee as coin shavers he had caught were executed. Mmmm move on. Not quite right. See EUrion

Second that. Copying currency is counterfeiting. This demented idea will achieve nothing but bring the Secret Service to your door with a warrant.
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