221–230 of 242 posts
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Yes, that's the justification for taxes, for instance.
Everybody pays taxes that are invested in products and services for all to share, not one person.
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If you only reward amateurs then amateur content is all you will get. Some skills take decades to master. The world you describe will never produce a Mozart.
This is quite ironic, considering that Mozart made most of his (relatively little) money by touring and composing for wealthy patrons. Somebody else made much more money out of him: sheet printers, who also ended up being the real force behind original legislation on copyright. Plus ça change...
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And people will keep finding ways of financing their love (playing music). In fact, I don't know many of my favorite musicians today who make a living from their music. They all work day jobs. I think this new cultural line of thought of "in this day and age with the tools we have why would you need a full day job support for ..." (replace ... with making music, running a blog, developing games, etc) is pure arrogant…
I don't see where I said that I endorsed this state of affairs. I would love it if people who make music could make a living off it with less of a struggle. I'm just pointing out the fact that they don't, today. Somehow, there's still music being made. I just don't see a realistic turn of events where suddenly everyone is paying for CDs again. I also don't think creativity will stop because the money does. Also, I th…
Lots of people pay for Spotify.[1] CDs are dead, but because of the medium, not the concept of paying for something.
[1] http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/02/09/spotify-second-large...
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They don't care if you want to buy their products. They simply care that, if you do not, you do not also take those products without paying for them. If people were not taking for free things that cost significant money to produce, and did not keep ignoring the light-handed laws that already exist, there would be no need for more draconian measures. But most importantly, what does any of this have to do with whether…
Since you're speaking in terms of entitlements, let's make this clear: the natural state of any idea (including large numbers such as the sequence of bits that make up an mp3) is to be free. Every human is naturally entitled through his consciousness to be able to copy and reproduce any idea he comes across. Any restrictions imposed on them through legal or technical means are artificial and have to be justified when…
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Operative word: 'fully'. Down-voted for replying without reading.
Oh, I most certainly read it. Your identity is still fully at your own disposal, even if someone has abused some parts of it.
People like Mr. Flores are a hazard. Seriously, they have no problem defining piracy as wrong, but make no mention of what would actually be required in terms of surveillance and policing for that moral convention to be reliably maintained. Beyond his insensitivity to reality, Mr. Flores appears to have no understanding that copyrights are not rights at all. There's noting inalienable about them. To the contrary, the…
Why does someone need to propose an effective solution to policing immorality in order to state that he believes something to be immoral? Simply conveying a story intended to create empathy for hard working individuals making a contribution to society is hazardous? Get off your high horse. Saying that you believe people have rights that should not be infringed does not mean you haphazardly support the enforcement of…
And you're absolutely correct to observe that hard drives are material, and that the atoms they contain constitute the 'fixed medium' that provides the bright and shining line between ungovernable ideas, and the restricted world of copyright protection. But you're mistaken if you think you have any inviolable rights in your work. Copyright is a right in name only. In absolutely every other regard it's a privilege.
If you lived in France, things would be different. French jurisprudence includes "le droit d'auteur". That is to say, they recognize a moral right of the author to control the dissemination and development of his work by others. When the French say "I have a right" they're entirely correct.
Things are different in America, where lawmakers rejected that concept flatly. Regardless of the way you feel about it, Le droit d'auteur has never been recognized in this country, and at this point, it's safe to say it never will be.
So it's not that I 'believe' you have no rights. I KNOW you have no rights. Because you don't. What you have is a privilege that 's increasingly archaic, based - as it is - on a rapidly fading ability to produce more development than it retards in the "Useful Arts & Sciences". In case you didn't know, that's the Constitutional language giving Congress the power to issue the limited monopolies known as patents and copyrights in the first place.
In contrast with France, America (like England, which is the source of much American civil law) views copyright not as an exalted moral right, but as a necessary evil tolerable only to the extent that it clearly benefits society as a whole.
That's a big difference.
Wrap your head around the idea that you're defending a privilege - not a right - and I suspect that the whole tenor of your argument will change dramatically.
I know this is only thinly related but I thought I'd post something that I heard from an investor that I met with a few months ago that we decided not to pursue a career with regarding app development for enterprise blackberry stuff... Disclaimer: I'm just posting his point of view and don't necessarily agree with it despite seeing his side of the argument. My partner (at the time) and I met with him regarding an app…
When I write an app, it's my right to choose how it is distributed in the world. If I want to sell it for 0.99, then it's my choice and I have to live with the risk of it not selling.
It is just as wrong for someone to take my work without paying for it as it is for me to take your work and sell it. In both cases, our right to choose for ourselves is being taken away.
Since you obviously don't value the effort that I put into creating my thing, then you must not value the effort that you put into doing your thing.
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People who make music are not dependent on the music industry - they are the music industry. Moronic is the person who thinks that nothing can be done to foster a society where the creation of art is respected. Throwing your hands up and saying it's too late is just pathetic. Thankfully there are enough people out there who respect the value of recorded music that it's still a $9 Billion industry, and in fact, the "t…
" People who make music are not dependent on the music industry - they are the music industry. " Be realistic - a lot of people in the music industry do not make music. -- The problem is; people need to be compensated, but the way they've traditionally been compensated in the past is no longer tenable. This is where innovative ideas are required. Conceptually, copying an MP3 is no more theft than quoting someone with…
Ideas are easy and cheap. So cheap that they are functionally free. Turning those ideas into something concrete is neither cheap nor easy. Creating a song, a story, a painting, a sculpture, or an app takes a tremendous amount of effort. When a songwriter has an idea, it doesn't just magically appear on the page. The songwriter has to work to put it there. When I get an idea for an app, it takes a lot of effort to turn it into something that can be released.
The value in an mp3 is not in the bits themselves. Bits are cheap. The value is in the novel arrangement of those bits into something that is desired. When you copy an MP3 without paying for it (where applicable), you are conceptually walking into an art gallery and walking off with a lithograph without paying for it. It doesn't matter how many lithographs are available, you still walked off without paying for it against the wishes of the creator of that lithograph (after all, there would be no lithograph to steal if someone didn't come up with the source material.)
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In a future with rampant piracy, what I see is a whole lot less music and software. We won't even notice. It's not like we'll wake up and suddenly apps will be gone. We probably won't even be able to measure a decrease year-over-year in app production. What we'll never notice is that twice as many apps or ten times as many apps would have been created, or would have had much better quality, if the creators had been p…
I think you are absolutely wrong about this. You might be correct when it comes to mid- to low level professional music/software. But the threshold to producing and releasing music and software is getting lower all the time. These days, kids can go online and find tons and tons of instructional material and peer support for learning to play musical instruments or make software. They can noodle around at home with ama…