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economist.com

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Re: Access denied

#71
post #8

To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument for justification of piracy. If the copyright industry side can just replace the social agreement (protection of works in exchange for them going public after a reasonable amount of time) with one they like more, why would it be immoral for the content consumers to to the same? I'm talking about the ethical side, not legalities. The fact that said consumers…

a good argument for justification of piracy Which, by the way, is indistinguishable from rationalizing the sentiment of "I want stuff without having to pay for it"

I have had a lot of stuff without paying for it (directly). Education, medical care, air even. What now?

Re: Access denied

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. Perhaps DHH was right... We're heading OT, but perhaps that I didn't make obvious that my comparison was relative is what caused your confusion. Relative to new stuff, there is very little pirating of stuff over 20 years old (probably even over 1 year old since content is ephemeral). While I don't have the numbers to hand, I'm willing to assert that the amount of pirating of Elvis, The Beatles, etc is tiny relati…

Gangnam Style is available on Youtube for free. You don't know what you are talking about. You just don't, having missed all this internet stuff. According to Last.Fm statistics it does not seem that any musical band is listened to more than The Beatles. And virtually everything by The Beatles in the circulation is "pirated". And this stuff should be damn near public domain if you ask me.

>You don't know what you are talking about. You just don't

Totally. I don't. I just don't.

>Gangnam Style is available on Youtube for free.

Oh shit. I didn't know that [OK, I did. And it's not free, but you seem not to have read the last billion "you're the product" posts.].

Oh wait, 10 seconds of research on TPB says:

    Gangnam Style [one song] - 8k Seeds
    Beatles [lots of stuff]  - 3-4k seeds
And that's just one modern hit versus the entire catalog of one of the greatest bands ever. Sort "audio" by seeds or leeches and it's pretty much new stuff all the way down.

>having missed all this internet stuff.

I assume the ironic bit where I used this internet stuff to disprove your point is lost on you...

Re: Access denied

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gangnam Style is available on Youtube for free. You don't know what you are talking about. You just don't, having missed all this internet stuff. According to Last.Fm statistics it does not seem that any musical band is listened to more than The Beatles. And virtually everything by The Beatles in the circulation is "pirated". And this stuff should be damn near public domain if you ask me.

>You don't know what you are talking about. You just don't Totally. I don't. I just don't. >Gangnam Style is available on Youtube for free. Oh shit. I didn't know that [OK, I did. And it's not free, but you seem not to have read the last billion "you're the product" posts.]. Oh wait, 10 seconds of research on TPB says: Gangnam Style [one song] - 8k Seeds Beatles [lots of stuff] - 3-4k seeds And that's just one modern…

It is free (as in beer) so pirating it is a kind of pointless activity. Combatting this type of piracy is pointless too: try to prove that pirates stole 0$ from Psy by not watching Gangnam Style for free.

The trick is: you have to integrate the numbers over time. Once you multiply the Beatles number by ten [years of active file sharing versus one for Gangnam Style] you'll unsurprisingly find out that Beatles are the king.

You're not the only one person confused by "pretty much new stuff" at the top. This stuff falls as readily as it climbed. That's why I quoted Last.Fm. Beatles seem to be the most popular band ever up to this day, integrally. Do you have something to say about this? Because you claimed otherwise.

Re: Access denied

#74
post #8

To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument for justification of piracy. If the copyright industry side can just replace the social agreement (protection of works in exchange for them going public after a reasonable amount of time) with one they like more, why would it be immoral for the content consumers to to the same? I'm talking about the ethical side, not legalities. The fact that said consumers…

Well first I would argue that modern copyright law is Unconstitutional and eventually it will go to the Supreme Court and will be struck down. Then we'll be back to the original copyright laws. As for the justification of piracy, I suppose it is some form of protest? Instead of paying for copyrighted materials, just pirate them in protest of unfair and Unconstitutional copyright laws? Wouldn't it just be better to do…

> Well first I would argue that modern copyright law is Unconstitutional and eventually it will go to the Supreme Court and will be struck down. Then we'll be back to the original copyright laws.

It has gone to the supreme court and was upheld: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft

Re: Access denied

#75
post #5

There are two competing interests here. First, Disney wants to keep control of Mickey Mouse cartoons, and it doesn't feel unreasonable at all that they should. Second, the rest of the stuff that is of little commercial value but of potential cultural value should be freed from uncertain or uninterested ownership. The answer feels trivial to me, which means I'm probably missing something. Fixed term for a few decades…

I would be fine with a provision to extend copyright by paying fees, but only if the fee went up each time, like say 2^x * 100 dollars each x year over the base.

They're already paying fees for this in the form of lobbying. The money from your fees would go to the same people the lobby money is going to now. How does that fix anything?

Re: Access denied

#76
post #8

To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument for justification of piracy. If the copyright industry side can just replace the social agreement (protection of works in exchange for them going public after a reasonable amount of time) with one they like more, why would it be immoral for the content consumers to to the same? I'm talking about the ethical side, not legalities. The fact that said consumers…

>To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument >for justification of piracy. There's very little pirating of content that is over 20 years old, so I'm not sure how the copyright extension thing would justify piracy...

Maybe not as much when compared to piracy of new releases, but very little? That's simply not true.

How do you explain the majority of modern independent music being heavily inspired by 80s pop and 90s hip-hop, especially when most of the producers are too young to have remembered listening to it over the air? What do you say when you look up an old music video on Youtube, and 70% of the time, the top comment is from a teenager? "Today's music sucks I'm 12 and none of the kids in my class listen to this but I think it's awesome like this if you're watching this in 2012!!!" has even become something of a cliche or a running joke at this point.

How do you explain What.cd, probably the largest private torrent tracker in existence, being largely dedicated to preserving and distributing out of print music? Anyone can find the latest Skrillex album on The Pirate Bay, but the true music lovers come to sites like What.cd to discover and trace the lineage of what they'll never hear on the radio.

How do you explain the ROM piracy scene, loved both by nostalgic 30-somethings and kids who never owned a Nintendo? How do you explain the people that spend months or even years painstakingly reverse engineering old, obscure games and translating tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of text, just to give them the treatment they wish had been available to them on a store shelf as children? What about the ones that do it completely anonymously, never receiving real credit for their contributions to history, in fear of legal repercussions or being socially stigmatized based on the subject matter of the works they translate?

Ditto for the anime/manga scene, where there is a seemingly endless supply of interesting old works in need of a translation?

How do you explain the continued love for classic films, from everything Disney's put out, to the original Star Wars trilogy, to Blade Runner, and so on?

There is a lot of cultural value in media that isn't exactly fresh. Private collections have allowed us to preserve the physical artifacts of human creation over the centuries, but a manuscript sealed in the tomb of a museum quickly fades from the public consciousness. The magic of internet-enabled piracy is that it has allowed us to keep mankind's creations culturally significant long past their expiration date, on an unprecedented scale. Today, we don't just remember the most standout works from previous decades that our parents passed down to us (or the ones their parents passed down to them). We discover things that few cared about when they were actually created, and give them a new life that their creators could never have predicted.

I suppose it may be hard to understand if you aren't in the thick of it, but so much of our modern culture is about appreciating and drawing inspiration from the past that an assertion like there's very little pirating of content that is over 20 years old completely baffles me.

Re: Access denied

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why does someone have to give me rights over it? They don't have to give you rights over it. You already get all of the natural rights associated with it. What you don't get is the additional right to prevent other people from using it or copying it until a government gives you that right. Restricting other people is an artificial construct and that is enforced by the government. This is artificial scarcity unlike…

"What you don't get is the additional right to prevent other people from using it or copying it until a government gives you that right." If you can copy my code /book or whatnot what rights do I have? Almost none. If there was no government, I could kill you for it to maybe scare others. > "This is artificial scarcity unlike property rights where ownership naturally deprives someone else of the property." Can I use…

> Can I use your house while you are away? On the nightstand, I'll leave $5 or whatever the wear and tear might be for the night.

Ah, see?--"while i am away". Possession of tangible items deprives someone else the use of it. There is no such natural limitation on ideas or expression of ideas. It requires additional government "interference" before ideas and expression are made to be scarce.

> If you can copy my code /book or whatnot what rights do I have?

Exactly! Additional rights are granted by the government, not taken away. You possess the original copy. Why would you assume to have an additional rights? If you don't want people to copy it, don't let them see it.

Re: Access denied

#78
post #8

To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument for justification of piracy. If the copyright industry side can just replace the social agreement (protection of works in exchange for them going public after a reasonable amount of time) with one they like more, why would it be immoral for the content consumers to to the same? I'm talking about the ethical side, not legalities. The fact that said consumers…

>To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument >for justification of piracy. There's very little pirating of content that is over 20 years old, so I'm not sure how the copyright extension thing would justify piracy...

There is the justification that no content will ever be put back into the public domain.

If copyright is never going to expire, what does it matter how old the content is that is getting pirated?

(i'm not saying there is a justification, but i can understand the OP's logic)

Re: Access denied

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean because there were no good music artists like Elvis and the Beatles 20 years ago? Or even Michael Jackson for that matter?

Ah. Perhaps DHH was right... We're heading OT, but perhaps that I didn't make obvious that my comparison was relative is what caused your confusion. Relative to new stuff, there is very little pirating of stuff over 20 years old (probably even over 1 year old since content is ephemeral). While I don't have the numbers to hand, I'm willing to assert that the amount of pirating of Elvis, The Beatles, etc is tiny relati…

I will say that, in the mid nineties, a lot of my friends had cassette tapes of the beatles or pink floyd. If people pirate music today the same way they copied tapes back then, I don't think your assumption is very good.

Certainly, you need actual numbers rather than handwaving arguments.

Re: Access denied

#80
post #5

There are two competing interests here. First, Disney wants to keep control of Mickey Mouse cartoons, and it doesn't feel unreasonable at all that they should. Second, the rest of the stuff that is of little commercial value but of potential cultural value should be freed from uncertain or uninterested ownership. The answer feels trivial to me, which means I'm probably missing something. Fixed term for a few decades…

> pay a nominal fee, and you get a 5 year extension. Take as many of those as you want.

Absolutely not! Why let them get unlimited extensions? How does that give back to the people?

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