Today's Piracy report

[Event_Horizon]

*sigh* Personal property laws have jack squat to do with it; if you look it up in the law books -- which someone did in either this thread or the other one that was active today -- you'll find that personal property and intellectual property are not even legally related, intellectual property is just a convenient term that gives a rough idea of a complex issue.

Okay granted I am unfamiliar with the terminology.

Look up Kohlberg's stages of moral development.

Well first it isn't very contributing to the discussion when you claim that I cannot argue with you since I don't understand morals at a stage five moral reasoning. Immediately you shut off the discussion by claiming an intellectual high ground. I don't argue in favor of the law because the law is simply the law.

My overall point is that if an individual person creates something, their rights of ownership extend to that thing. People cannot simply override the rights of others on a whim. So taking a work someone has created, and using it beyond the scope of what the creator wanted, tramples on their rights, and in a society such as ours, infringement of rights is a crime. Surely the specifics of the laws can be argued, but in the instance of piracy, it should be fairly clear cut as to morality of such an action. If the creator of a work doesn't want their work to be used in a certain way, and a person uses that work in that way, that person is infringing on the creators rights, which happens to be a crime. To say that I argue at a level 4 moral reasoning is missing the greater point. I could be arguing from a level 5 or 6, in which our social contract requires our human rights to be maintained, or the universal ethical principle is that it is wrong to infringe on someone's human rights.

The law then becomes wrong if the law infringes on those rights, but as far as copyrights go, until I am presented with evidence that copyright law infringes on human rights*, then I can only reasonably assert that they protect the authors rights as they are intended to do.

*One could argue that the rights of the buyer are infringed by preventing them from distributing their purchase as they please. However if the buyer does such an action, the creators rights are infringed. This conflict has to be resolved some way, and to me it seems to be a logical impossibility to both keep the buyers rights and the creators rights intact at the same time. My personal belief, at the moment, is that the creators rights should triumph because they themselves created the piece, where as the buyer put nothing towards the piece other than to acquire it, holding no responsibility for the content, distribution, or the success and failure of the piece.

 

[omicron1]

Postulate:

An unchecked pirate market will eventually subsume the industry. If it is not wrong nor disadvantageous to pirate, almost no one will purchase games and therefore no one will make games for sale. Freeware/artware will become the only available type of game.

If it is simply wrong to pirate, the industry will survive. The unscrupulous will pirate and those with a strong moral compass will buy. The industry will not be as strong as otherwise, but it will exist.

If piracy is impossible or heavily policed, there will be an upturn in game purchases. It is foolish to believe that a group of people who game as a hobby would stop gaming if they could not do it for free. It is also foolish to believe that they would buy every game they had previously pirated - they will buy less than or equal to the same amount of games as the average legitimate gamer, and if they buy less than others (due to monetary reasons, perhaps), they will make up the time by playing freeware games.

If piracy of a particular small subset of games is made impossible, those games will not see a sales increase - the pirates will simply pirate something else.

If piracy of an entire genre, platform, or type of game is made impossible, that element will see a sales upswing - however, it will be less than if piracy were impossible across the board.

...

Any questions?

 

[2fish]

snip
Any questions?

Why do I see this thread every week? Are pirates the new downtrodden group looking to the people for aid or something?

Personally I don't pirate because I see it as wrong. Copy right law and downloading old games that are not sold anymore well that needs to be worked on. I take my stance based on morals and off the idea that money talks spend money on good games get more good games.

Money=Votes vote for what you like in your capitalist world.

(yes I know you didn't mean for me to ask you that question but hey it was a good intro.)

 

[SenseOfTumour]

It's never going to be resolved, the piracy issue, and especially not here, where we'll always be in the shadow of the looming banhammer every time the word appears.

However, I would say that anything that's using only part of someone else's work to make something new, that isn't for sale, and therefore being creatively used as a nod to the quality of the original shouldn't be shot down in flames by lawsuits.

Many mashups are great, and in fact can introduce people to new music. I'm not sure about the gaming uses, but I imagine some people who, for instance, played the flash based 2d versions of Half Life and Portal went on to buy the full games, because they found the ideas behind them interesting enough. I also very much DOUBT that anyone who wanted to buy Portal didn't bother because the flash version was enough.

There's a guy who goes by the name of Go Home Productions who's done full albums of mashups of pretty damn good quality, I'm sure you can find him on that tubey thing, I'd hate to think he wasn't allowed to play around with the vast library of existing music to create what he does.

EDIT: found one - an interesting take on early Jackson Five and Nirvana, Kurt's kinda cheerful

Piracy however, doesn't need any creative input, and as far as I can see does negative impact artists and the creative people who make the entertainment we like, I know the level of damage is exaggerated by the industries, and downplayed by the pirates, but there's some level of damage, and it's very hard to argue that it is a good thing.

I'd also suggest that the advance of technology has made things worse, back 20 years and sure, people could copy tapes and videos to give to friends at school or work, but essentially, there'd be a fair number of copies sold, and a few of those might be copied a few times.

Now it's so simple for one person to get one copy, and distribute it across the entire world with no difficulty to thousands of people with no loss of quality. Home taping never killed music and was a silly idea, in fact I believe it just spread the stuff around thru schools, and got kids more interested, but now it's too easy, and many people probably don't even consider it to be morally wrong.

 

[Gindil]

I don't "miss" it, I just think it's irrelevant, as a broken construct from a broken law. I don't deny that copyright should exist, or that intellectual property holds some value, but I do deny that the current laws regarding it are in any way reasonable. Under the original copyright law, copyright lasted 15 years after the IP was created. Under the current law, it lasts 75 years after the creator dies.

How does that justify anything the pirate does? Laws may need reformation, sure, but the basics of personal property rights, not copyright laws, are what all the arguments seem to miss. Just because they are extensive (maybe too extensive) doesn't give anyone the right to override them. There are possibly reasons why those laws are like that. If I wrote a story and I died just after it was published, I cannot give consent to others to change the original text. So the 75 years sounds like a decent amount of time for my intellectual property to remain as I desired it.

That is BS on most fronts. We have a problem where Ernest Hemingway's work should be free to use (ie public domain). But because of copyright laws in the US, it's extended. The detriment is the very fact that you can't see any new compilations of his work, nor can you see others use his work and extend it in different ways. And why is it that pirates need justification for what they do?

If you look at any industry, none of them have gone out of business because of piracy. If anything, artists of all types have found new ways to make money.

If you can't see what's wrong with that, there's something wrong with you.

Not appropriate. Since I could just as easily say if you disagree with me then there's something wrong with you. Way to completely tune out someone else's perspective.

But notice the argument presented. Enforcing copyright law really has never been in the interest of an artist. There truly is something wrong with copyright law when your heirs don't have to do anything but piggyback off your work and do nothing for themselves.

I also believe that copyright infringement should only apply to people who try to sell unauthorized copies of someone's IP for profit, or to claim it as something they made, without giving the creator credit for his or her work.

If I publish something for free on the internet, and I say specifically that it must stay on my site, it doesn't matter whether someone profits/gets credit from it or not; if they copy it somewhere else, and I say not to, they are infringing on my property rights. You cannot go and use someone's creation and justify it as for their own good. If indeed it was for their own good, they would agree to it, but until they do, you cannot touch their creation. This same process ensures that whatever you create will have the same privileges.

Again, how is this infringing a bad thing? If anything, so long as you continue to create, you're providing people with a reason to like your work. Look at something like xkcd. It has people quoting it all over the place and if someone wants to support him, he has all of his drawings in books.

If people actually responded by saying "don't touch" that's more of a perverse incentive. Maybe they like it and can reach a different audience than you can. If anything, artists should be glad for the exposure and find new ways to sell and differentiate themselves.

As for the car thing, you do realize that, under your analogy, I would need to get permission from the maker of the car, not its current owner, right? Because they are the ones who would hold copyright, not the owner of the individual car.

How does that change the scenario? The manufacturer has copyright over the car's blueprints, and if they don't want a third party replicating it, that party can't.

... So if I want to change the brakes, I need to go to the manufacturer and all third parties are automatically shut out?

That's kinda bad for the economy overall...

Actually, under your analogy as worded, piracy is perfectly okay, because at some point, someone had to buy the product before it could be put up on a torrent site, and therefore the owner of that copy -- the equivalent to the whole "car copying" thing -- gave express permission by putting it out there to be copied.

Not quite. Does the person who purchased a copy of the song suddenly own the rights to the song, or do they just own that particular copy? I'd say they own the copy, and are not the creator of the song, and as such do not have exclusive rights to that song. A line has to be drawn somewhere. You own the copy, but do you have the right to give away copies of the copy? No, despite arguments against, the law is clear on this. It would be as if you wrote a book and sold to to someone who then started making copies of it and giving them out for free. Is that book suddenly not yours anymore because he purchased it, even though the words in the pages are yours and the copyright belongs to you?

The law really isn't clear and there's a lot of arguments for and against. I'll just state that the law will remain behind the technology, trying to support an old fashioned view while technology gets better at finding workarounds to the law.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I would however suggest piracy has levels.

Would music companies really want to put people in jail because (I'm gonna rewind 20 or so years here) they put together a mix tape of favourite new stuff for a friend or a set of special tunes for someone they fancied?

I would suggest that back then I'd have been a lot more likely to listen to, and if I liked them, go and buy albums by a band that a friend had given me a copy of, admittedly not that single or album probably, but more stuff by them. As I said above, the problem is the ease of doing it now, no-one's swapping a few selective tracks, there's entire discographies packed up into a torrent and flying back n forth, negating any need to go out and buy the stuff you hadn't heard yet. It's the difference between pinching a candy bar from the store and hacking their bank account to bankrupt em really.

However, we're going backwards in some ways too, remember VHS? being able to wind past the piracy warnings and copyright screens? Not with DVD. I wouldn't put it past music companies to make you listen to a piracy warning and force you to listen to the album in it's original order if they didn't know it'd just push more people to the 'free' version with no limits.

We don't take that kinda crap with music and movies...I wonder why we accept it in gaming?

 

[EHKOS]

Ok I am just soooooooo sick of this. This IS what news is now. Find large, yet undeadly problem, Hype it up and MENTION IT EVERY OTHER THREAD/SECOND, and use it to either distract us from the large, deadly problem or distract us from our boring lives. I am so sick of hearing about piracy, iraq/middleastern wars, politics, and deadly problems that we will face if we don't straighten up and BEHAVE.

I apologize but...can we talk about something new?

What would you like to talk about than? How bad the final fantasy franchise is?

How about something like what rare furniture we had in Animal Crossing? Or how cool our strongest weapon in Borderlands looked like.

 

[Event_Horizon]

That is BS on most fronts. We have a problem where Ernest Hemingway's work should be free to use (ie public domain). But because of copyright laws in the US, it's extended. The detriment is the very fact that you can't see any new compilations of his work, nor can you see others use his work and extend it in different ways. And why is it that pirates need justification for what they do?

It's not BS, and calling it BS is your opinion, not a point of fact. Earnest Hemingway is dead, so he cannot give consent on how his works are to be used and edited. End of discussion. The 75 years of copyright protection to keep his work "pure", for lack of a better term, and at least allows for his work to be presented as it was when he was alive. Would you agree to someone taking your work out of context if you just happened to die? Of course not.

If you look at any industry, none of them have gone out of business because of piracy. If anything, artists of all types have found new ways to make money.

How can you say that? You cannot say there has been a benefit to piracy because you have nothing to compare it to, no control group, no baseline to examine.

But notice the argument presented. Enforcing copyright law really has never been in the interest of an artist. There truly is something wrong with copyright law when your heirs don't have to do anything but piggyback off your work and do nothing for themselves.

First, how can you say copyright law has never been in the interest of the artist? I am a writer, and every piece I make automatically comes with copyright protection. If I send a piece of my work to a journal, I keep my property rights unless I make a deal to sell them those rights. I don't need to file for copyright protection, nor do I need to explicitly state that it's copywritten. The very action of creating a piece of literature grants its own copyright protection. Look it up if you don't believe me.

Secondly, every person has the right to create something for profit, and everyone has the right to give their children money, so why is it wrong to you when the two are used together? Why is it wrong for a parent to make something, profit form it, and support their descendants with it? The whole notion of "piggybacking" is simply your own (wrong) opinion.

Again, how is this infringing a bad thing? If anything, so long as you continue to create, you're providing people with a reason to like your work.... If people actually responded by saying "don't touch" that's more of a perverse incentive. Maybe they like it and can reach a different audience than you can. If anything, artists should be glad for the exposure and find new ways to sell and differentiate themselves.

It's not someone else's work to distribute, it's the creators work, and they have sole authority on how their work is used. If I write a very personal story, which can force a stigma onto me, or reveals something incredibly personal about my life, I might not want to have it spread around the internet. If someone were to release my story to the internet, then it would be against my wishes. Just because YOU think it's okay, doesn't mean it is. You're not the writer. You don't have ownership. You can't decide what's best for other people.

... So if I want to change the brakes, I need to go to the manufacturer and all third parties are automatically shut out?

That's kinda bad for the economy overall...

Straw man. You can fix a car you buy for yourself, just as you can make notes in a book that you purchased. There are many things that copyrights allow, and personal use is fairly wide ranging. I'm not arguing that one should be unable to use or modify the things they buy, but I'm saying that if the creator says you cannot, then you cannot.

The law really isn't clear and there's a lot of arguments for and against. I'll just state that the law will remain behind the technology, trying to support an old fashioned view while technology gets better at finding workarounds to the law.

The law should remain behind human rights, as most laws are. Have you ever created anything? Do you know the process an artist goes through to ensure that their work remains their work? As a writer, I know it's especially important for us because ideas can be plagiarized incredibly easily, and the copyright laws protect writers from losing their intellectual property. If I post a story on my website, I don't want people spreading it around, YES EVEN FOR FREE, because if I want to get it published I have to take it down from the internet, and if I don't know where it's been leaked to, publishers will not publish my story. Or even more importantly, perhaps I don't want my story spread around the internet because it increases the chance of plagiarism. Also, I might not want people to alter my writings without my permission because there could be a message I want to keep intact. It all comes down to consent. Anything that someone does without my permission breaks my right of intellectual property. Pirates do just that, by breaking the wishes of the creator without their permission.

 

[Gindil]

That is BS on most fronts. We have a problem where Ernest Hemingway's work should be free to use (ie public domain). But because of copyright laws in the US, it's extended. The detriment is the very fact that you can't see any new compilations of his work, nor can you see others use his work and extend it in different ways. And why is it that pirates need justification for what they do?

It's not BS, and calling it BS is your opinion, not a point of fact. Earnest Hemingway is dead, so he cannot give consent on how his works are to be used and edited. End of discussion. The 75 years of copyright protection to keep his work "pure", for lack of a better term, and at least allows for his work to be presented as it was when he was alive. Would you agree to someone taking your work out of context if you just happened to die? Of course not.

That's just one point of contention in the copyright debate. How is extended terms, terms made to be longer than humanly possible progressing the "Arts and Sciences?"

We don't need to keep his work pure. We know who the author is. Me having to ask permission from his estate on his work? That's the load of BS right there. Hemingway took a number of concepts from various areas of his own interest and mixed them to make his stories. He told where he got the influences from. But having to ask "his permission" to use his words and arrangements in new ways seems quite backwards. See also Curse of the Greedy Copyright holders [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704608104575220551906611796.html]. Or if we really want to see some BS, how about unauthorized book sequels? [http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=593056000000001404]

These are books that are remade as homages but using different versions of the same story. Should they be "banned" because of copyright law? In my view, I don't think so. And so long as people can expand on my work, I don't care what they do. Fanfiction.net is still around, people do it anyway, and I'm pretty sure that fans of my work can recognize the difference between what I write and what someone else does.

If you look at any industry, none of them have gone out of business because of piracy. If anything, artists of all types have found new ways to make money.

How can you say that? You cannot say there has been a benefit to piracy because you have nothing to compare it to, no control group, no baseline to examine.

...

If you want me to pull out all the links, I could. I'll be lazy and link you [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.261934-BioWare-Lifts-the-Lid-on-Dragon-Age-2-DRM?page=5#9878614] to my other post. For convenience, look at "other articles of reference" for actual factual data regarding piracy.

But notice the argument presented. Enforcing copyright law really has never been in the interest of an artist. There truly is something wrong with copyright law when your heirs don't have to do anything but piggyback off your work and do nothing for themselves.

First, how can you say copyright law has never been in the interest of the artist? I am a writer, and every piece I make automatically comes with copyright protection. If I send a piece of my work to a journal, I keep my property rights unless I make a deal to sell them those rights. I don't need to file for copyright protection, nor do I need to explicitly state that it's copywritten. The very action of creating a piece of literature grants its own copyright protection. Look it up if you don't believe me.

... No? Are you registering your work with the Copyright office? If you've looked at all of the paperwork, you'll notice that in order to protect on the higher levels, you have to register your work with the Copyright Office. Phillips vs BMI [http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/phillips.html], that's mainly how you're protected. This all changed after the Berne Convention, which the US signed up for later on. Don't remember the year, but there's a lot you need to do to be protected, even though you have a copyright claim. Seriously, how is the copyright office supposed to look at your claim when you don't tell them anything? That would be quite embarrassing if you wanted to go to court about the arrangement of a poem used in alternative expression...

Now, notice who did all of the suing against people in 2008. Metallica may have acted against filesharing, but it was mainly a trade industry, representing music labels that did most of the suing. This did nothing to change demand, and some artists took advantage by adjusting concert prices, where they've made more money.

Secondly, every person has the right to create something for profit, and everyone has the right to give their children money, so why is it wrong to you when the two are used together? Why is it wrong for a parent to make something, profit form it, and support their descendants with it? The whole notion of "piggybacking" is simply your own (wrong) opinion.

Why is it that the Constitution only asked for 14 years of copyright law on the original books? In all actuality, copyright is the antithesis to a free market system. Let's take the Tolkien estate. Now, I'm not against Tolkien giving his kid some money to try to make it on his own. What I AM against is the rules coming after me on Youtube, Veoh, etc because I want to make a fan-made film of the hobbit with my own money and my time. Basically, copyright has become this huge... THING that allows Chris Tolkien to piggyback off his father's hard work in creating and stops him from having any of his own success in possibly the same or different field.

Again, how is this infringing a bad thing? If anything, so long as you continue to create, you're providing people with a reason to like your work.... If people actually responded by saying "don't touch" that's more of a perverse incentive. Maybe they like it and can reach a different audience than you can. If anything, artists should be glad for the exposure and find new ways to sell and differentiate themselves.

It's not someone else's work to distribute, it's the creators work, and they have sole authority on how their work is used. If I write a very personal story, which can force a stigma onto me, or reveals something incredibly personal about my life, I might not want to have it spread around the internet. If someone were to release my story to the internet, then it would be against my wishes. Just because YOU think it's okay, doesn't mean it is. You're not the writer. You don't have ownership. You can't decide what's best for other people.

Nope, but once you write a personal story and share it digitally, it's pretty hard to get it back. It's hard not to share [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect]. So choose carefully what you put on the net or ignore it once it's on there. Look, I understand the "they shouldn't do this" view. But it will happen. Nothing stops a pdf being made and turned into a torrent for download. I can't stop it once the process is started. Again, morality is a poor argument in economic issues. People have digital tools in front of them to share as they see fit. You might not agree with it all but it happens. Kinda like a book being circulated in the libraries across the nation. I can pick up another copy but it is difficult to find the original once it's "out in the wild" so to speak.

... So if I want to change the brakes, I need to go to the manufacturer and all third parties are automatically shut out?

That's kinda bad for the economy overall...

Straw man. You can fix a car you buy for yourself, just as you can make notes in a book that you purchased. There are many things that copyrights allow, and personal use is fairly wide ranging. I'm not arguing that one should be unable to use or modify the things they buy, but I'm saying that if the creator says you cannot, then you cannot.

So basically, you're trying to justify Digital Rights Management, which really takes away fair use and disallows what people can do with their legally owned media... That's not really a strawman because if the creator is trying to lock down content, it's taking consumer rights away such as the First Sale Doctrine or fair use in order to seek permission from the copyright owner. That would make no sense in any other industry. It would actually be you only asking Toyota for brake service or only people that were exactly 60 years old using the fastlane during rush hour.

The law really isn't clear and there's a lot of arguments for and against. I'll just state that the law will remain behind the technology, trying to support an old fashioned view while technology gets better at finding workarounds to the law.

The law should remain behind human rights, as most laws are. Have you ever created anything? Do you know the process an artist goes through to ensure that their work remains their work? As a writer, I know it's especially important for us because ideas can be plagiarized incredibly easily, and the copyright laws protect writers from losing their intellectual property. If I post a story on my website, I don't want people spreading it around, YES EVEN FOR FREE, because if I want to get it published I have to take it down from the internet, and if I don't know where it's been leaked to, publishers will not publish my story. Or even more importantly, perhaps I don't want my story spread around the internet because it increases the chance of plagiarism. Also, I might not want people to alter my writings without my permission because there could be a message I want to keep intact. It all comes down to consent. Anything that someone does without my permission breaks my right of intellectual property. Pirates do just that, by breaking the wishes of the creator without their permission.[/quote]

I actually write my reviews here plus writing chapters of a book for a small audience online. Anyone's free to use my work as they see fit. I write some pretty good characters, who look and feel a certain way and I do it because it's what I love to do. Some people agree and donate every now and then. Otherwise, I'm focusing on other pursuits. Ex. I know Japanese and I'm looking to set up a website to teach. Again, the resources are free to use anywhere be it Livemocha or Japaneseguide.com.

So when I say that I look at the copyright laws, I've been studying the DMCA, its affects along with copyright history and how the US went from free (during ~ Mark Twain's area) to the current protectionist regime (which has lead to some truly disastrous results).

Now technically, we have a dichotomy that is supposed to work in the US (I don't agree but meh...) You don't copyright an idea. You are free to express it, which allows you to copyright it. The idea was that ideas come and go but making an idea work and expressing it would be unique to you. So how the Wright Brothers made an airplane would be far different from Leonardo's, etc. So yes, that seems to be a flawed concept that you can lock an idea away. Why would I when I can do so much more with it outside of my head than in?

In regards to taking your published work down, there is Scribd. There are options. I actually read about a lady that put her book online, helping her get published [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100713/09452010191.shtml]. The book is no longer there, because she took it down as part of an agreement. I'm sure if you look hard enough, you could find a copy online. But then again, why would you when you can support her through other means? Maybe a fan wants the early draft, but to each their own. It's an option.

Publishers - Go nuts [http://www.writersmarket.com/]. If ONE doesn't do what you like, there are 500 more where that came from. The scarcity mentality doesn't scare me. When I publish my book, I take control of the pdf and assign it a low value (most e-books are more expensive than the regular book right now) of say... $1 and tell people, "if you like this, you'll love the printed edition with even MORE material. I pay nothing but storage space with a pdf, why would I want to price it outside of consumer's wishes? That makes no sense.

Plagiarism - I would strongly recommend putting your work online. It's amazing how much people have found cases of plagiarism and been exposed for taking something that was used 5, 10, 40 or 50 years ago from speeches of older times. If anything Google Books is one of the greatest plagiarism catchers ever. I put in a phrase, it tells me where it came from. How awesome is that?

Permission culture - In the end, this is what I have a problem with and what you seem to ask for our culture to be surrounded with. The VCR was used to record movies. Should I ask the movie directors for permission to record? Why should I ask them for permission in a digital era? Because they've lost money? Doubtful. Truth is, if those in charge give me what I wanted, I might gladly part with a buck or two, but sometimes it's more convenient to pirate. That's the shortend of it. Remember when Spore came out and EVERYONE downloaded it off of TPB instead of buying from EA? Why would they do that? Basically has to do with bad DRM that everyone wanted to avoid. They didn't ask for permission, but once everyone saw that EA had made it more convenient to pirate the game rather than buy it legally, people went with the former rather than the latter. Of course, EA fixed the problem, but it should tell us that if you give customers what they want, they won't HAVE to pirate.

 

[Event_Horizon]

That's just one point of contention in the copyright debate. How is extended terms, terms made to be longer than humanly possible progressing the "Arts and Sciences?"

The words I put on this page I can copyright, but the idea that I am putting forward I cannot, and anyone can use my idea as they please. However if someone were to cut my words here and use them, they would have to attach my name to it or it would be plagiarism. In a scientific journal you can lose your career if you don't cite, and as a writer you can be fined or denied publication by using someone else's words.

Your entire argument about using Hemingway's works comes down to your idea that you know how other people's property should be used, and I vehemently disagree with that. You have no right to declare that you should use Hemingway's works in whatever vision you please; you cannot ask for permission, and you cannot know how he would have wanted it. Even if something is beneficial to him, or gets his works out, and there is no cost or downside at all whatsoever, you still have to ask permission because the work doesn't belong to you.

As much as you say piracy is a good thing, as much sales as you claim it generates, it is still against the wishes of the creator, and going against that is an infringement of their creative property rights. The ends do NOT justify the means.

These are books that are remade as homages but using different versions of the same story. Should they be "banned" because of copyright law? In my view, I don't think so. And so long as people can expand on my work, I don't care what they do.

Your opinion of use only matters when it is your work you are going to decide on. If you have no problem with your fans writing fan fiction, then there is no problem with them doing it. However if someone else has a problem with fan expanding on their story, universe, characters, whatever, they can prevent those fans from writing fan fiction about it. Whether or not you think that's a good thing for them to do is irrelevant. They are expressing their ownership of their copyright. The motivations they have are completely up the them.

If you want me to pull out all the links, I could. I'll be lazy and link you [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.261934-BioWare-Lifts-the-Lid-on-Dragon-Age-2-DRM?page=5#9878614] to my other post. For convenience, look at "other articles of reference" for actual factual data regarding piracy.

So you have a handful of self selected, non-scholarly articles that you use to support your idea. You justify your position that there are other ways to make money, yet once again, who are you to decide that others should go those routes? The fact that movies, music, and literature have to use alternative routes in the first place means that pirates are causing problems in the market. People are innovating, yes, but it's not out of the sake of innovation, but because they are forced to recoup their cost in other ways. How can you say that's a good thing?

Are you registering your work with the Copyright office? If you've looked at all of the paperwork, you'll notice that in order to protect on the higher levels, you have to register your work with the Copyright Office.

Literature you create is automatically copywritten when you write it. Other forms of media can be different, but I don't know where you get the idea that you have to go through the copyright office for everything. If you have your name of a piece of writing, and you have the original file, or time stamp, then you can win in court by showing you had the material first.

Now, notice who did all of the suing against people in 2008. Metallica may have acted against filesharing, but it was mainly a trade industry, representing music labels that did most of the suing. This did nothing to change demand, and some artists took advantage by adjusting concert prices, where they've made more money.

If you're saying that music labels do things that are not in the best interest of their signed artists then we're in agreement there. While I don't agree with what they do, record labels own the property, and can therefore do what they want. For the system to work you have to allow things you like, and things you don't like.

Why is it that the Constitution only asked for 14 years of copyright law on the original books? In all actuality, copyright is the antithesis to a free market system.

Times change. We can nitpick the arbitrary length of time something is copywritten, but the fundamentals are that someone who creates something has ownership of that thing. The basics of copyright law are consistent with a free market because it allows personal ownership of produced goods. I have ownership of a book I write, and I can do as I please with that. If people don't like the restrictions, they can go somewhere else. I am incentivized to make my product accessible, but I don't have to. Absence of copyright law is against free market and the concept of liberty, since without it you do not own the property you create. To say the government shouldn't protect my book through copyright is like saying the government shouldn't protect my house with policemen. Private ownership is the cornerstone of the free market, and without copyright we would have no such ownership of the art we create.

What I AM against is the rules coming after me on Youtube, Veoh, etc because I want to make a fan-made film of the hobbit with my own money and my time. Basically, copyright has become this huge... THING that allows Chris Tolkien to piggyback off his father's hard work in creating and stops him from having any of his own success in possibly the same or different field.

What your argument comes down to is "I don't like what they do with their property, so I disagree with the idea that they can control it." If the Tolkien estate wants to be tyrants with the things they own, they CAN BE. It's their right.

Again, morality is a poor argument in economic issues. People have digital tools in front of them to share as they see fit. You might not agree with it all but it happens.

The existence of such a tool doesn?t necessitate any ethical use. A gun is a tool, but only under certain conditions are you allowed to infringe on the right to life of another person by using it.

So basically, you're trying to justify Digital Rights Management, which really takes away fair use and disallows what people can do with their legally owned media... That's not really a strawman because if the creator is trying to lock down content, it's taking consumer rights away such as the First Sale Doctrine or fair use in order to seek permission from the copyright owner.

I said in another response I addressed whose rights should triumph: the people who create X and have the copyright, or the person who purchased X? Here you have a case of two infringements of human rights. So you have to pick who will win because it is impossible to keep both intact. So if I buy something form you, am I able to use it against your wishes? If you sell me your writing, and you don't want me to spread it for free, and yet I do that, is that wrong? Do your rights override mine, or do mine override yours?

I actually write my reviews here plus writing chapters of a book for a small audience online. Anyone's free to use my work as they see fit. I write some pretty good characters, who look and feel a certain way and I do it because it's what I love to do. Some people agree and donate every now and then.

I'm actually really happy to see writers doing well.

So when I say that I look at the copyright laws, I've been studying the DMCA, its affects along with copyright history and how the US went from free (during ~ Mark Twain's area) to the current protectionist regime (which has lead to some truly disastrous results).

I'm inclined to agree that some parts of copyright protection extend too far, but the way I see it, a few mistakes do not ruin what is essentially property protection.

As for you paragraphs regarding Scribd, publishing, and plagiarism, you make very good points, and thank you for the wonderful information. My point however was that I can limit the use of the things I create, whether they're good for me or not as much as I please. I can essentially shoot myself in the foot by making specific demands of my readers, but they are my choices to make, and overriding them is going against my rights are a creator. That's the crux of the issue. If the creators of Spore want to put DRM into their product, then they have the right to do so, even if it means sabotaging their success. If the creators do not want to release their product for free, and if they don't want people sharing it for free over the internet, people do NOT have the right to do so. I cannot accept the actions of pirates when the essentially act against property rights. Even if the creators are tyrannical, and even if the pirates do something positive, the ends do not justify the means.

 

[jawakiller]

Ok I am just soooooooo sick of this. This IS what news is now. Find large, yet undeadly problem, Hype it up and MENTION IT EVERY OTHER THREAD/SECOND, and use it to either distract us from the large, deadly problem or distract us from our boring lives. I am so sick of hearing about piracy, iraq/middleastern wars, politics, and deadly problems that we will face if we don't straighten up and BEHAVE.

I apologize but...can we talk about something new?

What would you like to talk about than? How bad the final fantasy franchise is?

How about something like what rare furniture we had in Animal Crossing? Or how cool our strongest weapon in Borderlands looked like.

Borderlands, now theres some well-done gameplay. I couldn't say the same for Animal Crossing as I generally avoid that genre. But I guess this is a better topic than shitty japanesse turn-based RPGs starring gender-confused males and emo chicks (who are all in their teens). But seriously, i agree people are making too big a deal out of a relatively small problem.

 

[Gindil]

That's just one point of contention in the copyright debate. How is extended terms, terms made to be longer than humanly possible progressing the "Arts and Sciences?"

The words I put on this page I can copyright, but the idea that I am putting forward I cannot, and anyone can use my idea as they please. However if someone were to cut my words here and use them, they would have to attach my name to it or it would be plagiarism. In a scientific journal you can lose your career if you don't cite, and as a writer you can be fined or denied publication by using someone else's words.

Your entire argument about using Hemingway's works comes down to your idea that you know how other people's property should be used, and I vehemently disagree with that. You have no right to declare that you should use Hemingway's works in whatever vision you please; you cannot ask for permission, and you cannot know how he would have wanted it. Even if something is beneficial to him, or gets his works out, and there is no cost or downside at all whatsoever, you still have to ask permission because the work doesn't belong to you.

As much as you say piracy is a good thing, as much sales as you claim it generates, it is still against the wishes of the creator, and going against that is an infringement of their creative property rights. The ends do NOT justify the means.

The author is dead... How in the world can anyone speak to the author and find out what his wishes are? That truly makes no sense. We have his estate and essentially his children living off the proceeds of the father, which again is pretty close to a welfare system. What could those kids have done by themselves? As I've said before, it wasn't about the children taking money from dad. When the Statute of Anne was created in 1710, it was to give a temporary monopoly to certain people and control the amount of works when books (tangible good)were the rage. It was a control thing, true. But it wasn't an ongoing monopoly like now, where four big labels seem to dominate the world (by the way, GE supports them all, so technically it IS one big corporate world where the competition is pretty light).

These are books that are remade as homages but using different versions of the same story. Should they be "banned" because of copyright law? In my view, I don't think so. And so long as people can expand on my work, I don't care what they do.

Your opinion of use only matters when it is your work you are going to decide on. If you have no problem with your fans writing fan fiction, then there is no problem with them doing it. However if someone else has a problem with fan expanding on their story, universe, characters, whatever, they can prevent those fans from writing fan fiction about it. Whether or not you think that's a good thing for them to do is irrelevant. They are expressing their ownership of their copyright. The motivations they have are completely up the them.[/quote]

You seem not to even consider fair use or public domain into the equation. Sharing is caring.

If you want me to pull out all the links, I could. I'll be lazy and link you [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.261934-BioWare-Lifts-the-Lid-on-Dragon-Age-2-DRM?page=5#9878614] to my other post. For convenience, look at "other articles of reference" for actual factual data regarding piracy.

So you have a handful of self selected, non-scholarly articles that you use to support your idea. You justify your position that there are other ways to make money, yet once again, who are you to decide that others should go those routes? The fact that movies, music, and literature have to use alternative routes in the first place means that pirates are causing problems in the market. People are innovating, yes, but it's not out of the sake of innovation, but because they are forced to recoup their cost in other ways. How can you say that's a good thing?[/quote]

The Government Accountability Report? Did you click on that? It's the federal government's good office saying that people use counterfeit bags as substitute goods and the methodology of the MPAA and RIAA is incredibly flawed. They make numbers up. And when they don't, it's Hollywood's own damn fault [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2011/02/nbc_universal-commissioned_stu.html]. What you're arguing is for an ongoing monopoly and I'm strongly against monopolistic means of doing business. Yes, it worked for Microsoft, but I would rather have options on how I get my media.

And yes, Hollywood, BMI, Universal, etc. have to compete with free. It can be done. Bottled water does it all the time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottled_water#Bottled_water_versus_tap_water]

And other, younger or more creative directors are doing it. Oldboy director makes movie with iPhone [http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/oldboy-director-uses-iphones-to-film-latest-horror-project-20110112/]
Sintel, to show their open movie project @ Durian [http://www.sintel.org/]

There's more things out there that are showing that copyright is largely irrelevant. The world is shifting away from copyright fairly slowly because it limits what people can do.

Are you registering your work with the Copyright office? If you've looked at all of the paperwork, you'll notice that in order to protect on the higher levels, you have to register your work with the Copyright Office.

Literature you create is automatically copywritten when you write it. Other forms of media can be different, but I don't know where you get the idea that you have to go through the copyright office for everything. If you have your name of a piece of writing, and you have the original file, or time stamp, then you can win in court by showing you had the material first.

Righthaven exploits loophole on fair use [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loophole/]

You also have to register to be able to sue someone for damages. Source [http://sk-sk.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=115437084288]

As you hopefully know, you don't need to register to get a copyright these days (and haven't since 1976), but you can still register, and need to do so if you want to sue someone else for damages. So, professional creators still register copyright on pretty much everything they do -- though the process is still a bit unclear even to the experts.

I would find more but the US copyright office is pretty complex with their website, in the way you can do it. It's mainly tailored to larger writers of media (the Steven Spielbergs and Michael Connollys') versus the small fanfiction writer.

Now, notice who did all of the suing against people in 2008. Metallica may have acted against filesharing, but it was mainly a trade industry, representing music labels that did most of the suing. This did nothing to change demand, and some artists took advantage by adjusting concert prices, where they've made more money.

If you're saying that music labels do things that are not in the best interest of their signed artists then we're in agreement there. While I don't agree with what they do, record labels own the property, and can therefore do what they want. For the system to work you have to allow things you like, and things you don't like.

Remember, even if they do what they want with it, my best option is not to give them money until they change their ways. I've found plenty of alternatives such as NIN and their massive website or free music on jamendo.com. So if you want to lock up your media, feel free. I can get what I want elsewhere be it a music download from a certain genre of music, or finding movies that don't care if I download them because Hollywood wants to micromonetize everything.

And I'm against the idea of "Intellectual property". It's mainly a buzzword to take away someone's legal right to media essentially. If I had to ask for permission to hear a song on my ipod, I'd be pissed off to the point of not having it. When I make a pdf of my own work and I have DRM on it, I would sure as shooting take that DRM OFF my computer.

Why is it that the Constitution only asked for 14 years of copyright law on the original books? In all actuality, copyright is the antithesis to a free market system.

Times change. We can nitpick the arbitrary length of time something is copywritten, but the fundamentals are that someone who creates something has ownership of that thing. The basics of copyright law are consistent with a free market because it allows personal ownership of produced goods. I have ownership of a book I write, and I can do as I please with that. If people don't like the restrictions, they can go somewhere else. I am incentivized to make my product accessible, but I don't have to. Absence of copyright law is against free market and the concept of liberty, since without it you do not own the property you create. To say the government shouldn't protect my book through copyright is like saying the government shouldn't protect my house with policemen. Private ownership is the cornerstone of the free market, and without copyright we would have no such ownership of the art we create.

Again, books are tangible goods. How you express an idea is by putting it in tangible form. You're confusing digital goods and tangible goods so as to blur them together.

If I have a book, I can burn it, read it, throw it in the trash, donate to the library or whatever I want. But the book adds value to society in general if I donate to the library because it can be shared with others. The author can do NOTHING to stop me from exercising those rights.

In the digital arena, if I were to get DRM on my media, I still have the option of removing it. That is fair use. I can still read it, possibly give a copy of that to someone else to see if they like it or delete it. The digital is an intangible form, but you can use it to provide tangible goods. Yes, some people only want pdfs. But they're few and far between. It's easily copied. So what? Do you realize that some people prefer books to e-books? [http://www.standard.net/topics/features/2011/01/16/print-people-prefer-sensory-pleasure-books-e-book-fans-power-quick-upload]

Ownership is the cornerstone of the free market, but sharing ideas makes our society grow. In all that you say, I've heard nothing of fair use or public domain or anything else regarding the ability to make media accessible for all. Again, if you want to create something and keep it to yourself, you're free to do so. Shakespeare didn't need copyright. We've only had the concept for ~200-300 years. Hell, how did Beowulf become such an epic without people adding to it? Christoper Marlow still wrote plays that rivaled Shakespeare. Their works are still valid to this day and still being shared. They found new ways to make money rather than be locked into the older ways. They innovated and took from others to make epics themselves. That's competition. As I've seen copyright used and through the examples I've given, it's abused to allow people to settle. They don't innovate, they don't find new ways to engage an audience, they merely sit down and coast. This is why copyright was for limited times.

What I AM against is the rules coming after me on Youtube, Veoh, etc because I want to make a fan-made film of the hobbit with my own money and my time. Basically, copyright has become this huge... THING that allows Chris Tolkien to piggyback off his father's hard work in creating and stops him from having any of his own success in possibly the same or different field.

What your argument comes down to is "I don't like what they do with their property, so I disagree with the idea that they can control it." If the Tolkien estate wants to be tyrants with the things they own, they CAN BE. It's their right.

That's pretty misguided. What I'm saying is that the strong enforcement of copyright has dire consequences to all industries, as proven by my belief that weaker copyright laws lead to more economic diversity. That's all been proven by the other post I linked, which it seems you've ignored to a certain degree.

Again, morality is a poor argument in economic issues. People have digital tools in front of them to share as they see fit. You might not agree with it all but it happens.

The existence of such a tool doesn?t necessitate any ethical use. A gun is a tool, but only under certain conditions are you allowed to infringe on the right to life of another person by using it.

So let's get this straight... You mean to say that Napster didn't give the world more diversity because it should ask for the permission of the old gateway holders (ie the recording industry) so that its customers, who have a demand for new music, is allowed to control their legality? There's so much wrong here...

First, before Napster was lobbied against, people had to get their music from the recording industry. The industry is interested in one main thing: reselling the same music to people over, and over, and over, making the same amount of profit. It was inefficient in a lot of ways. First, the industry controlled the mechanisms to success. High debt kept most artists touring constantly (where they made most of their money) but they'd have to go back to the industry for another advance. This worked for a LOOONG time. From the 70s to the 90s, it was all about upgrading locked media. When Napster came to disrupt this money train, it did so by showing the world that the internet could be used to distribute files. It set up a lot of artists to go with indie labels and it was a helluva lot more efficient and economical to get songs from others and see if I liked them. But again, it's a tool. Same as any other downloading software. If you notice, the numbers for new artists has increased a lot since filesharing hit the picture. There's more artists making a living off their music because they don't have to go to the recording industry for EVERYTHING. And again, obscurity is worse to an artist than piracy ever will be. You just have to tap into that demand in different ways.

So basically, you're trying to justify Digital Rights Management, which really takes away fair use and disallows what people can do with their legally owned media... That's not really a strawman because if the creator is trying to lock down content, it's taking consumer rights away such as the First Sale Doctrine or fair use in order to seek permission from the copyright owner.

I said in another response I addressed whose rights should triumph: the people who create X and have the copyright, or the person who purchased X? Here you have a case of two infringements of human rights. So you have to pick who will win because it is impossible to keep both intact. So if I buy something form you, am I able to use it against your wishes? If you sell me your writing, and you don't want me to spread it for free, and yet I do that, is that wrong? Do your rights override mine, or do mine override yours?

You bought it, do what you want with it. If you want to make a pdf of it and share it online, go nuts. Here, I'll help:
Nina Paley [http://questioncopyright.org/minute_memes/copying_is_not_theft] - copyleft movement

Nuklear Power [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2001/03/02/episode-001-were-going-where/] - Used sprites of FF to tell a story

xkcd [http://xkcd.com/] - makes work, doesn't even worry about people using it for exposure.

Penny Arcade [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/2/4/] - Again, free stuff online. They sell the book and PAX to fans.

Order of the stick [http://www.giantitp.com/Comics.html] - though I don't agree with The Giant's method partially, he still puts the digital copies up for free. People translate it with no problems. When they sell it, he does go after them (though if they're in another country, that's hard to do). And yet he makes a comfortable living off of his work and has a dedicated fanbase with his work being spread and transformed in other areas.

So when I say that I look at the copyright laws, I've been studying the DMCA, its affects along with copyright history and how the US went from free (during ~ Mark Twain's area) to the current protectionist regime (which has lead to some truly disastrous results).

I'm inclined to agree that some parts of copyright protection extend too far, but the way I see it, a few mistakes do not ruin what is essentially property protection.

Disagree on this one... We're getting back to the idea/expression thing. Property is a tangible good, ideas are intangible. The protection of the idea is a false dichotomy that doesn't move the arguments forward. It just can't happen.

As for you paragraphs regarding Scribd, publishing, and plagiarism, you make very good points, and thank you for the wonderful information. My point however was that I can limit the use of the things I create, whether they're good for me or not as much as I please. I can essentially shoot myself in the foot by making specific demands of my readers, but they are my choices to make, and overriding them is going against my rights are a creator. That's the crux of the issue. If the creators of Spore want to put DRM into their product, then they have the right to do so, even if it means sabotaging their success. If the creators do not want to release their product for free, and if they don't want people sharing it for free over the internet, people do NOT have the right to do so. I cannot accept the actions of pirates when the essentially act against property rights. Even if the creators are tyrannical, and even if the pirates do something positive, the ends do not justify the means.

I can't disagree with an opinion. You're free to say the ends don't justify the means. All I can say is that authors can make monetary incentives to do things differently. Regardless of piracy, people want to see others succeed. We've had at least 10 years of the DMCA... In all of those years, it's been a hellish nightmare for others to really express new ideas in songs or anything else.

I have said that piracy is basically word of mouth. I've shown that some game do quite well from being free, to the point that it makes money for the creator (Cave Story) and others will never see the light of day because of our inane system that is beholden to corporate interests (Mother 3).

The fact remains (which we agree on) is that people create. I view it that people don't create into a vacuum, which copyright assumes. You take inspiration for work from various sources. I got mine from half Life 2 who got theirs from Doom, Quake, Resident Evil (Zombies ---> George Romero and Voodoo), Stephen King's The Mist, and an episode of The Outer Limits called "The Borderland". I'm sure every other writer in the world has done the same thing and given praise to Isaac Asimov (three laws ---> Megaman) or some other form of media.

We transform it as we see fit. Perhaps the author doesn't see all of the connections themselves but they're there. My issue is mainly when the author has so much control as to limit what's done when his/her work is changed to make something entirely different. That's not a bad thing at all.

IIRC, Finding Forrester (Connery) was all about taking something and making it your own. If someone wants to distribute my work and do it where I can't, more power to em. Makes it that much easier to focus on the things I love to do rather than the things that limit their expression of that idea.

 

[Event_Horizon]

The author is dead... How in the world can anyone speak to the author and find out what his wishes are?

That is exactly my point. Who is to say the author wants their piece locked up (not very likely) in one sense or free to be altered in another? For literature it is a fairly clear case, and granted for other media like film, or especially music it's a different story. One cannot "own" a chord, or a set of notes, or a particular camera angle. One shouldn't have to pay the descendants of the inventor of the wheel every time they drive their car. That is where copyright protection is limited to works and not ideas. You call it a monopoly, and if taken to an extent, you'd be right. But without that monopoly, creators would not own the things they create. Is it wrong for you to have a monopoly on your house?

These are books that are remade as homages but using different versions of the same story. Should they be "banned" because of copyright law? In my view, I don't think so. And so long as people can expand on my work, I don't care what they do.

Should those stories be banned? Not if the creator allows them. If the creator has incentive to release their works as far as they can get them, then all power to them; that's not a problem. The problem comes from works being used against the wishes of their creator. There will be stingy people who want their works pure, and as much as we dislike it, I believe they should have that right. It prevents leeches from grabbing hold of the newest popular thing and reselling it as their own work.

You seem not to even consider fair use or public domain into the equation. Sharing is caring.

Sharing is awesome, and I think Creative Commons licenses are a step in the right direction. But one size does not fit all.

What you're arguing is for an ongoing monopoly and I'm strongly against monopolistic means of doing business. Yes, it worked for Microsoft, but I would rather have options on how I get my media.

I'm also strongly against monopolistic businesses as well. But by claiming that it is a bad thing that I have a monopoly over the song that I create implies that the song does not belong to me, and belongs to others to copy and distribute as they please. There is something wrong with that. That's not to say I'm against file sharing as a means of spreading the word of ones creation, but it should be voluntary. I am completely against the use of force, and taking something and using it without or against expressed permission is force.

File sharing is a wonderful tool that allows a garage band to compete with the heavy hitters of mainstream music. Everyone is on the same playing field, and that's what I like. It's also true that file sharing increases revenue, there's no way I can deny facts, but the players involved should be volunteers in that process. If Hollywood and the media corporations want to F*** themselves over, then by all means they can suppress their own media on a free distribution network. It's not your responsibility to look out for them. They are absolutely hard headed, and I'll agree with you on our mutual distaste of the multimedia corporations, but it's not your property to call the shots with.

I would find more but the US copyright office is pretty complex with their website, in the way you can do it. It's mainly tailored to larger writers of media (the Steven Spielbergs and Michael Connollys') versus the small fanfiction writer.

But copyright protection protects everyone. Now granted copyright law isn't as fluid as a creative commons license, but it still protects the little fan-fiction writer to Stephen King.

Remember, even if they do what they want with it, my best option is not to give them money until they change their ways.

And I absolutely 100% agree. If I don't like what they do, I won't support them. Alternatives are great for artists who don't want to sign onto a label. But the key difference between an artist putting their work up for free, and someone buying a CD and putting the music up for free is that in the former the creator has control, and in the latter the creator's work is distributed involuntarily.

And I'm against the idea of "Intellectual property". It's mainly a buzzword to take away someone's legal right to media essentially.

You're right that there is an issue between the consumer rights and property rights. If I don't want my music to be listened to for free, and someone buys that music and releases it to everyone for free, do I suddenly have no control over my property? Is it tough s***? What if I bought the music; do I have the right to do whatever I please with it? How do you explain the discrepancy?

If I have a book, I can burn it, read it, throw it in the trash, donate to the library or whatever I want. But the book adds value to society in general if I donate to the library because it can be shared with others. The author can do NOTHING to stop me from exercising those rights.

And if you have a file, you can alter it however you want. You can delete it. The problem with data is that it can be copied over and over. Does the creator have no say in that? So my choice if I want to publish a piece of fiction is to publish it as a book, or allow anyone to distribute my creation however they see fit? Or there's a third option of many of adding DRM to the file. I've lost all control then; what I create is not mine anymore.

Ownership is the cornerstone of the free market, but sharing ideas makes our society grow.

So what is the middle ground which allows the creator to share their ideas in the method they desire? Public domain is a good thing, and personally I think waiting decades is fairly too long. Fair use is important too, but it doesn't seem to cover distribution, which is the main point of the topic. Who gets to choose how to distribute a work? And why should my work be distributed for free if I wish to make income off of it?

Also, saying that Shakespeare didn't need copyright so we don't need it either is an argument from tradition. The context in which he created is far different from the world we live in today. Information moves much faster now, and saying we don't need protection because he didn't is a logical fallacy.

That's pretty misguided. What I'm saying is that the strong enforcement of copyright has dire consequences to all industries, as proven by my belief that weaker copyright laws lead to more economic diversity. That's all been proven by the other post I linked, which it seems you've ignored to a certain degree.

I looked through your posts, and I see many journalistic articles. Also you say proof, twice, and upon immediately hearing that word I am increasingly skeptical of what you say. Economics or not, the core of the issue is the ownership of ones property. You have not stated a weak copyright law that you approve of, so I am left wondering why your points seem to lean against copyright in its entirety. I don't remember you saying we should have copyright in a limited form. You seem to be going after copyright as a whole, and not specific aspects that are harmful. In essence, you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As I said before, I will agree that some copyright laws are too strict. I am also willing to agree that it is wrong for those to manipulate the system to their advantage. However using economic justification for the intrusion of one's rights is not a position I would take.

So let's get this straight... You mean to say that Napster didn't give the world more diversity because it should ask for the permission of the old gateway holders (ie the recording industry) so that its customers, who have a demand for new music, is allowed to control their legality? There's so much wrong here...

Are you willing to take someone's things without permission in the name of diversity? I could also say there is so much wrong there.

First, before Napster was lobbied against, people had to get their music from the recording industry. The industry is interested in one main thing: reselling the same music to people over, and over, and over, making the same amount of profit. It was inefficient in a lot of ways....

The music industry was a monopoly, but that monopoly was not created by copyright laws. In no other industries did we see a monopoly from copyright laws. Movie companies still competed with each other. Literature seemed to be untouched. Not a peep from the game's industry. The innovations you claim could have come from the internet in legal ways. There could have certainly been legal file sharing, but that was not the case. Attributing that innovation to Napster is first only correlation, and second you are saying, again, that the ends justify the means.

Disagree on this one... We're getting back to the idea/expression thing. Property is a tangible good, ideas are intangible. The protection of the idea is a false dichotomy that doesn't move the arguments forward. It just can't happen.

A writer puts their idea down on paper by arranging letters together to form sentences, and sentences into paragraphs. It is not the abstract idea that is owned, but the words themselves on the paper. It is why someone can take my idea and spread it as far as they want, but as soon as someone takes my words without my permission, or changes them without my permission, or extrapolates on them without my permission, it becomes a problem. Even more so than that, if someone takes my general narrative of whatever I write, not even the exact words and uses it for their own purposes without permission, they are essentially stealing.

We've had at least 10 years of the DMCA... In all of those years, it's been a hellish nightmare for others to really express new ideas in songs or anything else.

But if those ideas are NEW ideas, then copyright wouldn't stop them from creation, and instead protect those ideas from theft. You can't just say it's been a hellish nightmare because people are creating just as much, if not more, as they did 10 years ago.

I have said that piracy is basically word of mouth. I've shown that some game do quite well from being free, to the point that it makes money for the creator (Cave Story) and others will never see the light of day because of our inane system that is beholden to corporate interests (Mother 3).

The detail I try to make clear is that word of mouth is all well and good, and free expression is great and all, but if you take someone's work without their knowing, or permission, then you are forcing their property to do something the owner does not want. Every aspect of the free market is voluntary, and THAT is one of the pillars of capitalism. You cannot force someone to buy something, just as you cannot force a creator into a situation they do not want, EVEN if it's good for them. It just isn't your call. Free expression works for some people, and for others it doesn't. I have the right to choose if my stories are free, or if I want to go through a publisher, but nobody has the right to decide FOR me. The reason why Mother 3 works as well as it does, and the reason why it hasn't been taken down, is because the people who made it specifically asked for Nintendo's permission, and made it clear to Nintendo that if they didn't want the project to continue, it wouldn't. Nintendo remained silent, and so far the project continues. You see, they at least asked permission, and even though technically it wasn't granted, Nintendo still keeps the right to pull the plug on their property. Yes is sucks that Mother 3 isn't out in the English speaking world, but Mother 3 doesn't belong to us.

I have an individualistic philosophy, and when I see people take other's work, and justify their actions for the "greater good", I see it as an attack on basic human rights; the right to own, and therefore control property.

I understand and agree with a lot of the points you make. Copyright law is in somewhat if a clusterf*** at the moment because big business wants control. I understand that the law could use reformation. File sharing is a great tool to help a lot of people. Giving stuff away for free is a great way to get yourself out there. Yes, there are tons of other methods to gain income from a person's creation than the classic models. However with all of the problems the law has, the basics of copyright law is intended to protect the property of the individual person. If you really want to look at innovation, look at how copyright law allows people to release their information with confidence that it won't be stolen, compared to previously when works of art, music, and literature were held in secret for fear of plagiarism.

 

[Gindil]

The author is dead... How in the world can anyone speak to the author and find out what his wishes are?

That is exactly my point. Who is to say the author wants their piece locked up (not very likely) in one sense or free to be altered in another? For literature it is a fairly clear case, and granted for other media like film, or especially music it's a different story. One cannot "own" a chord, or a set of notes, or a particular camera angle. One shouldn't have to pay the descendants of the inventor of the wheel every time they drive their car. That is where copyright protection is limited to works and not ideas. You call it a monopoly, and if taken to an extent, you'd be right. But without that monopoly, creators would not own the things they create. Is it wrong for you to have a monopoly on your house?

Problem comes that copyright issues are creeping more and more into society and stagnating a lot of it. The monopoly on your house is FAR different from the monopoly on literature or a song. But really, on the basic side of things. If I want to enjoy media any way I want, that conflicts with the supposed need to produce a profit on making everything I do about how much money you can bilch from me. Seriously, if pdfs are more expensive than hardcovers, there's a problem in delivery. If I have to pay for a digital file and I have no choice in the price, there's an anticompetitive issue. I'll get more into that later but a monopoly on intellectual property (an idea) really can't hold to owning property with tangible value.

Should those stories be banned? Not if the creator allows them. If the creator has incentive to release their works as far as they can get them, then all power to them; that's not a problem. The problem comes from works being used against the wishes of their creator. There will be stingy people who want their works pure, and as much as we dislike it, I believe they should have that right. It prevents leeches from grabbing hold of the newest popular thing and reselling it as their own work.

But now, you're asking for leeches to grab hold and squat on a story because of copyright issues. It's just familial leeches and not those darned pirates that are competing with one publisher and author.

That's basically one set for another, especially with how copyright is being used nowadays against people for fair use.

You seem not to even consider fair use or public domain into the equation. Sharing is caring.

Sharing is awesome, and I think Creative Commons licenses are a step in the right direction. But one size does not fit all.[/quote]

True... More later...

What you're arguing is for an ongoing monopoly and I'm strongly against monopolistic means of doing business. Yes, it worked for Microsoft, but I would rather have options on how I get my media.

I'm also strongly against monopolistic businesses as well. But by claiming that it is a bad thing that I have a monopoly over the song that I create implies that the song does not belong to me, and belongs to others to copy and distribute as they please. There is something wrong with that. That's not to say I'm against file sharing as a means of spreading the word of ones creation, but it should be voluntary. I am completely against the use of force, and taking something and using it without or against expressed permission is force.

Okay, let's work with this one... How is copyright not being used forcefully?

It's actually a false value arbitrarily given to intangible goods. That's what I struggle with. When I write, I can't copyright language, merely how it's put to paper. When I copyright a song, I can sing it as many times as I want but if it's done in public I owe the artist a quarter. And that quarter doesn't come from the government, it comes from higher taxes and telling other people that if they perform that song, they owe a quarter as well.

Then, if I watch a movie and record it at home, magically, I owe Hollywood money too. The laws for copyright are truly byzantine in this regard, because they are CONSTANTLY changing against people using it in their daily lives. At this point in time, the people that lean on copyright have a scarcity mindset and fail to take advantage of other opportunities in front of them. When you have 50 Cent [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/32749464#32749464] coming out to say that piracy is part of the marketing, you know that somehow, it can't be as hyped up as people say. So the question is, how do you want to use the technology involved? We can't have a bias against digital files, the computer is dumb in that arena. It will only do what you allow it to do. So in all honesty, the genie can't be put back in the bottle.

File sharing is a wonderful tool that allows a garage band to compete with the heavy hitters of mainstream music. Everyone is on the same playing field, and that's what I like. It's also true that file sharing increases revenue, there's no way I can deny facts, but the players involved should be volunteers in that process. If Hollywood and the media corporations want to F*** themselves over, then by all means they can suppress their own media on a free distribution network. It's not your responsibility to look out for them. They are absolutely hard headed, and I'll agree with you on our mutual distaste of the multimedia corporations, but it's not your property to call the shots with.

Ok... If they want to put out the media they can. But so help me, if I miss my episode of Firefly because of a baseball game, I would hurt someone. If we take the concept of fair use and shift it to the digital era, I'm sure that this wouldn't be a big deal. Like my example, I hear about people that can't watch an episode of Dexter because Showtime is too much for their budget. So they "time shift" it to a time convenient for them and talk about the episodes. Remember, there's a small subset of people that work for Hollywood. They want my money on the DVD, I'd better hear about the media involved. BTW, Spartacus. Great series.

But copyright protection protects everyone. Now granted copyright law isn't as fluid as a creative commons license, but it still protects the little fan-fiction writer to Stephen King.

What we were arguing is that you have to register for that protection. Unless you're getting an advance from the industry involved, smaller artists are less likely to rely on copyright, especially with it being centered towards larger businesses. True, larger businesses need a DMCA agent as well as pay a fee per year ($105?), I just highly doubt the smaller artists even bother with even that for their site or work unless they look for a large commercial print.

Remember, even if they do what they want with it, my best option is not to give them money until they change their ways.

And I absolutely 100% agree. If I don't like what they do, I won't support them. Alternatives are great for artists who don't want to sign onto a label. But the key difference between an artist putting their work up for free, and someone buying a CD and putting the music up for free is that in the former the creator has control, and in the latter the creator's work is distributed involuntarily.

I think society benefits from the latter far more... But that's getting it complicated in this copypasta so...

And I'm against the idea of "Intellectual property". It's mainly a buzzword to take away someone's legal right to media essentially.

You're right that there is an issue between the consumer rights and property rights. If I don't want my music to be listened to for free, and someone buys that music and releases it to everyone for free, do I suddenly have no control over my property? Is it tough s***? What if I bought the music; do I have the right to do whatever I please with it? How do you explain the discrepancy?

True story, Yoko Ono JUST allowed Apple to release The Beatles on mp3 on iTunes. I mean, seriously... Just last year. Also, JK Rowling JUST allowed pdfs of the Harry Potter series... ~ 6 years after the digital age took off. They still sell.

What fans did was make the mp3s available (or pdfs) illegally until everyone got their stuff together to realize fans will buy regardless of control of something. Moral of the story, piracy will continue regardless of the legality, you just want to profit from it. That's why it's an economic issue.

If I have a book, I can burn it, read it, throw it in the trash, donate to the library or whatever I want. But the book adds value to society in general if I donate to the library because it can be shared with others. The author can do NOTHING to stop me from exercising those rights.

And if you have a file, you can alter it however you want. You can delete it. The problem with data is that it can be copied over and over. Does the creator have no say in that? So my choice if I want to publish a piece of fiction is to publish it as a book, or allow anyone to distribute my creation however they see fit? Or there's a third option of many of adding DRM to the file. I've lost all control then; what I create is not mine anymore.

Uhm... DRM will not help at all... You're basically sending a signal that you are looking to be as evil as Ubisoft. We don't want that for you. Besides, why is control so important? Let go, let it flow, then the money will show.

Ownership is the cornerstone of the free market, but sharing ideas makes our society grow.

So what is the middle ground which allows the creator to share their ideas in the method they desire? Public domain is a good thing, and personally I think waiting decades is fairly too long. Fair use is important too, but it doesn't seem to cover distribution, which is the main point of the topic. Who gets to choose how to distribute a work? And why should my work be distributed for free if I wish to make income off of it?

Isn't is said that the best laid plans are meaningless after their first test? Not sure if you've looked at EC's Piracy ep [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy] but they do discuss that if you allow the pirates to have the superior product, less people will come to you. How you make income is an important question. You can choose how it gets distributed to a certain extent, but you're dealing with various people with various motivations to do what they do. You just have to have a clear direction in the goal you want to pursue and how to achieve it with what you have. That's the main thing, not how many people you step on to make a buck.

Also, saying that Shakespeare didn't need copyright so we don't need it either is an argument from tradition. The context in which he created is far different from the world we live in today. Information moves much faster now, and saying we don't need protection because he didn't is a logical fallacy.

I'll beg to differ on a number of levels. First, Romeo and Juliet is still being copied and acted in this day and age. Hamlet is still lauded for being one of the greatest works of Shakespeare, and King Leer was actually given a happy ending because it was so depressing in Shakespeare's age. The context by which he worked is he still faced the same piracy issues where someone shared his works in various countries. Hell, his idea for Othello came from a Moor visiting England from Spain. Piracy was still an issue in those times with people complaining about the illegal copying of their work (although society benefited from it). (Just for fun, the first copyright trial was in the 6th century [http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/gikii/docs2/corrigan.pdf] pdf)

In order to know where we're going, we have to know our past. Shakespeare always created, taking bits from others to form his masterpieces. Christopher Marlowe (Dr Faustus) may have been a brawler, but he did the same. If anything, it was this pulling of various inspirations that allowed the English to flourish in the Renaissance era. He had the same issues, just the technology was a little different.

That's pretty misguided. What I'm saying is that the strong enforcement of copyright has dire consequences to all industries, as proven by my belief that weaker copyright laws lead to more economic diversity. That's all been proven by the other post I linked, which it seems you've ignored to a certain degree.

I looked through your posts, and I see many journalistic articles. Also you say proof, twice, and upon immediately hearing that word I am increasingly skeptical of what you say. Economics or not, the core of the issue is the ownership of ones property. You have not stated a weak copyright law that you approve of, so I am left wondering why your points seem to lean against copyright in its entirety. I don't remember you saying we should have copyright in a limited form. You seem to be going after copyright as a whole, and not specific aspects that are harmful. In essence, you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As I said before, I will agree that some copyright laws are too strict. I am also willing to agree that it is wrong for those to manipulate the system to their advantage. However using economic justification for the intrusion of one's rights is not a position I would take.[/quote]

Guilty as charged.

Copyright is a limiting factor in the creative process. You've built all this time around registering for copyright protection, enforcing copyright, making sure you're paid a nickel for everything that includes the name, that you spend less time actually creating. You employ people in the enforcement, that your time could be spent making new songs for people. We won't go into how the system has been hijacked to be less about consumers and more about what a corporation wants. The entire process is damn harmful, especially with how the US is employing copyright laws currently. The recent US domain takedowns [http://www.zeropaid.com/news/92478/senator-wyden-demands-feds-justify-domain-seizures/] is one egregious example of copyright law gone wrong. The porn subpoenas [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/big-cable-getting-fed-up-with-endless-p2p-porn-subpoenas.ars] (Ars Technica SFW) are another problem. It's not that I'm throwing the baby out. I just haven't found a good justification from anyone on why it's needed. It's currently being abused because of the statutory damages clause:

Link [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyright_infringement]

In the United States, statutory damages are set out in Title 17, Section 504 of the U.S. Code. The basic level of damages is between $750 and $30,000 per work, at the discretion of the court.
Plaintiffs who can show willful infringement may be entitled to damages up to $150,000 per work. Defendants who can show that they were "not aware and had no reason to believe" they were infringing copyright may have the damages reduced to $200 per work.

And yes, the court cases are ridiculous:

Tenenbaum vs RIAA - Riaa "wins" $675,000, or $22,500 per song [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/o-tenenbaum-riaa-wins-675000-or-22500-per-song.ars]

Jammie Thomas hit with $1.5 million [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20021735-93.html]

Oh, and one that is real interesting...

Whitney Harper's Case not heard by Supreme Court [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/innocent/] - Final verdict? $22K+ ... For 37 songs.

If such is the power of suing for copyright damages, the system needs a lot more than a change, it needs an overhaul. After looking at everything, it's one reason why I can't get around copyright laws. Such egregious abuse of it doesn't sit well with me for any reason.

So let's get this straight... You mean to say that Napster didn't give the world more diversity because it should ask for the permission of the old gateway holders (ie the recording industry) so that its customers, who have a demand for new music, is allowed to control their legality? There's so much wrong here...

Are you willing to take someone's things without permission in the name of diversity? I could also say there is so much wrong there.

Please do. I took from a few Spanish artists I had never heard of. I have friends who are djs, looking for the next club hit. I watched music connoisseurs who had large collections of classical music that they couldn't find anywhere else. I found people online and new music and new artists because no one controlled the media gateway anymore. I will say the pros outweighed the cons to an nth degree.

The music industry was a monopoly, but that monopoly was not created by copyright laws. In no other industries did we see a monopoly from copyright laws. Movie companies still competed with each other. Literature seemed to be untouched. Not a peep from the game's industry. The innovations you claim could have come from the internet in legal ways. There could have certainly been legal file sharing, but that was not the case. Attributing that innovation to Napster is first only correlation, and second you are saying, again, that the ends justify the means.

The movie industry has monopolistic competition. You had four main competitors (Universal, Disney, MGA, and I forget the last one... Arista?) who controlled the retail distribution channel. If it was in Walmart, it was one of those brands. Indie companies complained for YEARS about easier access, but they didn't have it. It's why the Sundance has actually gained such significance. If you're an up and comer, you have a film at Sundance. Blockbuster dominated the movie world and TV was controlled to an extent by these four. Jack Valenti lobbied and lost against the VCR and DVD so it created a new stream of revenue for the MPAA cronies. Just as an example, look up Dan Bluth who made awesome indie movies that were really similar to Disney in terms of quality. That's about the main time that they competed. Otherwise, the quality of the stories from Hollywood sucked but that's an opinion.

Just think about all the problems that the industry has in terms of cultivating young talent or finding the right people for good movies.

Now, I know at least three Youtube channels where the people do nothing but post short clips of entertainment and get paid for it. I've shown you Sintel, and younger artists are leery to go to Hollywood for movie making because A) they can do it themselves and B) there's better alternatives to reach or create an audience.

Literature didn't have as many publishers as it currently does, but their rules are a little different. After 5 years, the copyrights of a book go back to the author. Something that the RIAA/MPAA are strongly against. Putting out DVDs continues to be profitable, it's just that who they represent aren't interested in the future. They're interested in the short term profit of DVDs. Will streaming take over? With all of the different laws coming down the pipe, I don't know... But it's worth looking into.

The games industry complains about used game sales. But they're stabbing themselves in the foot. If they'd drop the price, piracy might not be as big. Other thing is, now they're competing with Free 2 play games along with gaming sites (Kongregate, Armor Games, etc...)

Disagree on this one... We're getting back to the idea/expression thing. Property is a tangible good, ideas are intangible. The protection of the idea is a false dichotomy that doesn't move the arguments forward. It just can't happen.

A writer puts their idea down on paper by arranging letters together to form sentences, and sentences into paragraphs. It is not the abstract idea that is owned, but the words themselves on the paper. It is why someone can take my idea and spread it as far as they want

Ok... See right about...

but as soon as someone takes my words without my permission, or changes them without my permission, or extrapolates on them without my permission, it becomes a problem.

Here...

Even more so than that, if someone takes my general narrative of whatever I write, not even the exact words and uses it for their own purposes without permission, they are essentially stealing.

Ok, let's see what's going on... They infringed on an arrangement. That much is certain. Now how did they do economic harm to you by using that arrangement? If it's fairly used, then there's really not a problem is there? You want people to discuss your work. But what you're asking for is someone to give you money for an infringement, which I think is a bigger problem. That's actually pretty greedy for limited gain. I know we, the people are selfish, but if you want a quarter for everyone's infringement, you might want to take a look at how you do it. You might make a few people mad [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100928/16212911200/eff-comes-out-guns-blazing-in-countersuit-against-righthaven-stepens-media.shtml]

We've had at least 10 years of the DMCA... In all of those years, it's been a hellish nightmare for others to really express new ideas in songs or anything else.

But if those ideas are NEW ideas, then copyright wouldn't stop them from creation, and instead protect those ideas from theft. You can't just say it's been a hellish nightmare because people are creating just as much, if not more, as they did 10 years ago.

I have said that piracy is basically word of mouth. I've shown that some game do quite well from being free, to the point that it makes money for the creator (Cave Story) and others will never see the light of day because of our inane system that is beholden to corporate interests (Mother 3).

The detail I try to make clear is that word of mouth is all well and good, and free expression is great and all, but if you take someone's work without their knowing, or permission, then you are forcing their property to do something the owner does not want. Every aspect of the free market is voluntary, and THAT is one of the pillars of capitalism. You cannot force someone to buy something, just as you cannot force a creator into a situation they do not want, EVEN if it's good for them. It just isn't your call. Free expression works for some people, and for others it doesn't. I have the right to choose if my stories are free, or if I want to go through a publisher, but nobody has the right to decide FOR me. The reason why Mother 3 works as well as it does, and the reason why it hasn't been taken down, is because the people who made it specifically asked for Nintendo's permission, and made it clear to Nintendo that if they didn't want the project to continue, it wouldn't. Nintendo remained silent, and so far the project continues. You see, they at least asked permission, and even though technically it wasn't granted, Nintendo still keeps the right to pull the plug on their property. Yes is sucks that Mother 3 isn't out in the English speaking world, but Mother 3 doesn't belong to us.

True, but good luck in them taking my copy away.

And now they're working on a fan made Mother 4. That should be awesome.

I have an individualistic philosophy, and when I see people take other's work, and justify their actions for the "greater good", I see it as an attack on basic human rights; the right to own, and therefore control property.

*sigh* Public domain and societal issues are the greater good. But trying to hold onto a song and being selfish with it aren't conducive to a great societal benefit. No one's taking away your right to claim the song as your own. What I have issue with is how people think that copying takes away from a property claim. I download and listen to a song, I know who the artist is. Talented or not, nowadays, the song is just one part of the entire experience. Can the artist still perform the song? Does it matter that I got the song from Pirates R Us or from a CD? In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't. I now have more ways to support the artist than buy a CD. I can give her a direct Pay Pal deposit. I can raise funds to have him/her come to my house and perform at my daughter's bar mitzvah. I can use Flattr to give micropayments. None of that requires controlling and micromonetizing the fact that I can show support in various ways.

But imagine if I tried to start a digital library of one song from each artist that has lived in the last 20 years... Seriously, would I have to ask for each and every one's permission to put their songs on one site? That's the kind of issue copyright law makes when it's just dumb to support. It's why I show through economic data that copyright law isn't an incentive to create... People create for various reasons. Look at Wikileaks or Youtube where people do things for free. Here, two examples:

No Speak Americano -

That song has 33million views. It was taken from a sample from an old Spanish song from a long long time ago.

Now, look at this...


Yes, he has a copyright on that arrangement. But what's the point? People KNOW it's him without the copyright. And if someone were to take it, there's other things in place that prevent others laying claim to it. But it does look great with this:


It's a derivative work, yes. But imagine the takedown notice and all for it. If anything, I would ask that our laws give for fair use by no takedowns, and a notice for all involved. So the question here is, what's the property that needs protection? The song? The arrangement? The fact that they should ask first? Kind of a mountain vs molehill issue on that one. And just to show how the laws have changed around copyright:

However with all of the problems the law has, the basics of copyright law is intended to protect the property of the individual person. If you really want to look at innovation, look at how copyright law allows people to release their information with confidence that it won't be stolen, compared to previously when works of art, music, and literature were held in secret for fear of plagiarism.

Look at that excerpt from Remix Manifesto. Then go watch Remix Manifesto. The fear of plagiarism is the least of the worries of those who are in the artistic realm.

 

[Event_Horizon]

I'll get more into that later but a monopoly on intellectual property (an idea) really can't hold to owning property with tangible value.

You cannot copyright an idea, so I have no idea why you keep saying that.

But now, you're asking for leeches to grab hold and squat on a story because of copyright issues. It's just familial leeches and not those darned pirates that are competing with one publisher and author.

And are you saying children should not own what their parents give them? You might not like it, but that's how it works. If you were in their position, the rights would extend to you.

Okay, let's work with this one... How is copyright not being used forcefully?

The basic function of government, in which government is the least powerful, is to prevent people from infringement of human rights by force. Creating something grants you property rights to that thing. Anyone who tries to take away that property is infringing on your human rights, to which the government's primary purpose is to protect. Now this is where consumer rights come in, because the only thing the consumer cannot do is distribute the media that they purchase. Well why is that? The reason is that distribution can cause success or failure of any creative work, depending on the method of distribution. The creator (or copyright holder) is the primary recipient of that success or failure. Therefore, because their livelihood is contingent on how they distribute their work, the creator or copyright holder is the only person allowed to choose how their work is distributed. Once someone else begins to distribute that work without permission, the creator's success is then taken from them without permission, and given to a third party, who is unaffected by the benefit or harm of their own actions. Copyright then serves as to protect the creator's rights of ownership, as well as the means to secure their livelihood.

Now if that artist wants to be incredibly strict about it, they can be. If you have a problem with it, find another artist and spend your dollar with them. That is how the free market should handle the problem, by giving incentives to the artist to be as open as they want. But just as in every aspect of the free market system, the decision has to be voluntary by the creator. If the creator fails to take advantage of the methods in front of them, it's their fault, and not your responsibility.

The only aspect of this debate where technology comes in is to allow the creator another avenue of distribution. You are taking the technology, and justifying its use in the infringement of human rights. Only the creator can judge the technology for themselves, and decide voluntarily to use it. Nobody should be allowed to force them to use it.

What we were arguing is that you have to register for that protection. Unless you're getting an advance from the industry involved, smaller artists are less likely to rely on copyright, especially with it being centered towards larger businesses.

My perspective is that copyright law should protect everyone equally, and at its root it does. What others have built upon it I cannot condone, since it can cater to large business. However with its shortcomings, and need for reformation, I cannot disregard copyright law in its entirety because it serves to protect human rights.

True story, Yoko Ono JUST allowed Apple to release The Beatles on mp3 on iTunes. I mean, seriously... Just last year. Also, JK Rowling JUST allowed pdfs of the Harry Potter series... ~ 6 years after the digital age took off. They still sell.

What fans did was make the mp3s available (or pdfs) illegally until everyone got their stuff together to realize fans will buy regardless of control of something. Moral of the story, piracy will continue regardless of the legality, you just want to profit from it. That's why it's an economic issue.

Calling it an economic issue doesn't make it so. If someone steals my car, is it an economic issue? Heck, you could define any theft as simply an economic issue. Regardless of calling it economic issue, it is still a criminal issue, and a moral issue. Once. Again. You're saying that the ends justify the means. The fans of J.K. Rowling could have incentivized pdf's in legal ways. Just because you want something, doesn't mean you can just take it.

Let go, let it flow, then the money will show.

That's my choice to make, not yours. Pirates are making that choice for someone else.

How you make income is an important question. You can choose how it gets distributed to a certain extent, but you're dealing with various people with various motivations to do what they do. You just have to have a clear direction in the goal you want to pursue and how to achieve it with what you have. That's the main thing, not how many people you step on to make a buck.

But that choice is left up to the person who stands to benefit of loss from it, NOT the people who don't.

In order to know where we're going, we have to know our past. Shakespeare always created, taking bits from others to form his masterpieces. Christopher Marlowe (Dr Faustus) may have been a brawler, but he did the same. If anything, it was this pulling of various inspirations that allowed the English to flourish in the Renaissance era. He had the same issues, just the technology was a little different.

There is a difference between taking an idea, which is again not protected, and taking someone's exact work. A character archetype is not protected, but the specific character is. He also did not have the same issues as we do today, very far from it.

Copyright is a limiting factor in the creative process.

That is just simply wrong.

It's not that I'm throwing the baby out. I just haven't found a good justification from anyone on why it's needed.

I've given you ample examples as to why it's needed. As for corporate abuse, the problem rests with the corporation and not copyright. Had the government been unwavering from making special laws to protect corporate interests in the first place, we wouldn't have a problem with it. Copyright worked for a long time before, and the only reason you dislike it now is because you dislike corporate interests. I agree with you on that. But copyright protects a creator's property, and that is needed to foster confidence and therefore incentive to create. If anything, copyright allows for innovation because it gives creator's a profit motive to create.

After looking at everything, it's one reason why I can't get around copyright laws. Such egregious abuse of it doesn't sit well with me for any reason.

But you haven't looked at everything. You've looked at pieces of information that support your view. Are you aware of confirmation bias?

I took from a few Spanish artists I had never heard of. I have friends who are djs, looking for the next club hit. I watched music connoisseurs who had large collections of classical music that they couldn't find anywhere else. I found people online and new music and new artists because no one controlled the media gateway anymore. I will say the pros outweighed the cons to an nth degree.

And that's all great if they're willing to give it away, but not if you simply take it. The pros and cons of a system where a creator has no ownership of their work is very harmful to society and creative potential. I can release my work with confidence that it won't be stolen, or someone will not profit from it at my expense. Many other authors/musicians/filmmakers are allowed to do that, and the result is a greater artistic culture.

Just think about all the problems that the industry has in terms of cultivating young talent or finding the right people for good movies.

And that's their problem. Competition will take care of that. As you said, free is better than cheap, and if artists and directors want to release their movie for free to compete with Hollywood, that's awesome! If games companies want direct download, or free games, or pay as you play, that's good too. But they must, MUST, do it voluntarily. I cannot condone force of any kind, and taking someone's work and distributing as YOU see fit and not them is an act of force. You are forcing someone to do something they don't want.

But what you're asking for is someone to give you money for an infringement, which I think is a bigger problem. That's actually pretty greedy for limited gain. I know we, the people are selfish, but if you want a quarter for everyone's infringement, you might want to take a look at how you do it. You might make a few people mad [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100928/16212911200/eff-comes-out-guns-blazing-in-countersuit-against-righthaven-stepens-media.shtml]

In a free society you have to allow the good with the bad. I don't like the use of heavy drugs, but I won't stop anyone from doing them because it's their body, and therefore their property. If an artist wants to take a cut from everyone who wants to write a sequel or spin-off, I have to give them the freedom to do that. The checks and balances of the system are the incentive for creators to be forgiving with their work. That I don't have a problem with. What I do have a problem with is other people, 3rd parties, trying to usurp the creator's wishes, yes, even if they're being assholes.

True, but good luck in them taking my copy away.

And now they're working on a fan made Mother 4. That should be awesome.

So that's your response? "Good luck"? I'm sure the discussion could use a little more substance than that. The Mother 3 scenario is exactly what I mean when it comes to permission. Once the copies are out, there is no physical way they can be collected. So don't worry, you'll get to keep your copy, and I'll get to keep mine.

(Mother 4 WILL be awesome)

But trying to hold onto a song and being selfish with it aren't conducive to a great societal benefit.

Who gets to decide what is and isn't for the benefit of society? This is starting to sound like communism...

What I have issue with is how people think that copying takes away from a property claim.

I'm sorry but it comes down to consent. If they don't want their works copied, then who are you to copy them? You cannot justify technology as your answer, since technology itself doesn't DO anything other than exist. Humans use that technology, and they can use it for both positive and negative effects. If your lawn is your property, I don't have the right to go and cut it without your permission. I cannot justify my actions because of the technology of the lawnmower. I cannot justify my claim that a good looking yard is for the greater good of society. If it's your yard, and it isn't harming anyone else, then it's your property and not my responsibility.

But imagine if I tried to start a digital library of one song from each artist that has lived in the last 20 years... Seriously, would I have to ask for each and every one's permission to put their songs on one site?

If the site was instead your own hard drive - your own personal collection - then no you wouldn't have to ask permission at all. Your music library is your own, for personal use. Distribution however is in the hands of someone who stands to benefit or loss from their creation.

People create for various reasons. Look at Wikileaks or Youtube where people do things for free.

Stop. "People" are individuals, and they create things for various reasons. SOME people want to give away information and art for free. SOME people don't. Not everyone is the same here, and what you're trying to do is shove everyone through this one vision of how you think it should be. You cannot impose your will onto anyone else, even if you think it's good for them. That is not how a free society works. If you think that some people can decide what's best for others, then you are incredibly wrong in this issue.

So the question here is, what's the property that needs protection? The song? The arrangement? The fact that they should ask first? Kind of a mountain vs molehill issue on that one.

Yes you would need to ask for permission, unless it was in the public domain or being used under fair use. But here's the thing, if the media is under creative commons, or the person creating it explicitly said to use it, then the free or open media would be used and distributed first, giving the creator an advantage over the competition. This creates incentive for creators to release their work openly. However the creator always has the option to not do that (free society, remember).You cannot impose that onto the creator, just as you wouldn't want someone imposing their strategy into you. If you have a problem with the creator's standards, then go somewhere else, and vote with your feet. Once a creator sees the damage that their own authority causes, they will reconsider, but if they see people taking it anyways, it shifts the blame from themselves onto other people, and it makes them even more justified in their tyrannical position. What you're doing isn't helping, it's actually making things worse.

 

[Wolfram23]

I read a book recently called What the Dog Saw, and it's a bunch of articles/stories written by a journalist. So, the book talks about a lot of different subjects. One in particular that I found interesting deals with copyright. Basically I felt it was trying to make a point more specifically targetting written copyright. Allow me to elaborate a little.

If you think about it, anytime at school that you've had to write an essay or something along those lines, you've been told not to plagarise. People have been expelled for a mere sentence within a 2000 word essay. Think about that. Now consider music. There's only so many notes, much less than there are words. And cohesively they can only get arranged so many ways. Now, historically there have been many songs that sound quite similar - if not throughout, at least in sections. I wish I could come up with some of the names right now, but there was a case where one composer tried to sue another for plagarising a section of his song - an intro I believe (in classical music btw). But upon further investigation, the exact same intro had been used in a song written before either of these composers were born! There's also examples floating around of much more modern songs with almost identical notes and rythms - I think a lot of love songs follow almost the same exact template.

So why would we be so harsh about it in writting, but in music we can realise that it's actually not only OK but necessary to the medium? Well, how about in video games? I'm not saying it's ok for one publisher to make a copy cat game mind you, but what about stealing some ideas? What if we get another game with a theme almost exactly like BioShock, only tweaked? Would that be bad? Is that plagarism/copyright infringement? Or is that something that can and should be done to help try and further the medium?

 

[Gindil]

Could the pirates just give up their attempts to claim the moral high ground already?

You can list every piece of horrible DRM every invented and how some companies screw over their customers but at the end of the day most of that shit exists because of you, so I don't sympathize.

BS. And just because I don't like don't buy their software doesn't automatically make it so I'm a pirate. Also, Steam, and the Free 2 Play games such as Vindictus? They disagree with you in that DRM is not needed to make people spend money.

-e- yes, it's there for Steam, but they add more value to their games than putting up walls to legitimate use.

I'll get more into that later but a monopoly on intellectual property (an idea) really can't hold to owning property with tangible value.

You cannot copyright an idea, so I have no idea why you keep saying that.

That's been my point all along. You keep wanting to throw in a monopoly on a house as a monopoly on a song as two similar things of equal value which really doesn't do justice to either and their own economic worth.

But now, you're asking for leeches to grab hold and squat on a story because of copyright issues. It's just familial leeches and not those darned pirates that are competing with one publisher and author.

And are you saying children should not own what their parents give them? You might not like it, but that's how it works. If you were in their position, the rights would extend to you.[/quote]

Uhm... I would love to see the will on that one... To my oldest daughter, I give the deed to my house and car. To my youngest, I give the copyright to my story I had written and forgotten to publish 25 years ago. To my middle one, I give the family estate in the hopes that all three find equal value in their possessions.

I still think my youngest got screwed on the deal. The problems I state for copyright of works for such a period continue to plague us. There's more proof against it actually incentivizing for such a long period. And no, I would not really want that for my children at all. It's far better to do their own thing and work towards it than to live off my own success. I made my fortune on the work I did and the people I met along the way. I can help my children get to their own modicum of success with the money gained from that work (licensing, advertising, etc.) but did copyright help me achieve my work? I still created the work regardless of the copyright.

So how exactly is this making my family go out to achieve their own success rather than work to make my success irrelevant?

Better question, how many people remember my stories rather than the estate who wants to lock up and monetize my name? Essentially, Tolkien's estate along with Hemingway's has done just that. You can't write about his books without paying some fee. If you do, and they find out, they sue for damages. That's truly not incentive to create. It's gaming the system created by copyright.

Okay, let's work with this one... How is copyright not being used forcefully?

The basic function of government, in which government is the least powerful, is to prevent people from infringement of human rights by force. Creating something grants you property rights to that thing. Anyone who tries to take away that property is infringing on your human rights, to which the government's primary purpose is to protect. Now this is where consumer rights come in, because the only thing the consumer cannot do is distribute the media that they purchase. Well why is that? The reason is that distribution can cause success or failure of any creative work, depending on the method of distribution. The creator (or copyright holder) is the primary recipient of that success or failure. Therefore, because their livelihood is contingent on how they distribute their work, the creator or copyright holder is the only person allowed to choose how their work is distributed. Once someone else begins to distribute that work without permission, the creator's success is then taken from them without permission, and given to a third party, who is unaffected by the benefit or harm of their own actions. Copyright then serves as to protect the creator's rights of ownership, as well as the means to secure their livelihood.

Ok... Let's take this a step further. Show me a person that failed because their book was pirated. Show me a movie that failed because someone else distributed it. Show me music that has gained no attraction because of the advent of a digital age.

If you look at everything that has happened in the last decade we are much better off regardless of copyright law. Each market is competing for our time. There are still great TV shows being brought to a new audience. I don't need to spend $5 to watch a movie on Pay per View or $10 on a movie ticket. That money can go to other things such as groceries at the end of the month or saved. The consumer has more options and ways to spend money. BUT, producers now have more options in their movie delivery options. Pioneer One is only distributed through Bittorrent. Foreign movies can ONLY be distributed through Bittorrent or downloads, without being beholden to Hollywood for distribution in Walmart channels. And more books are being made as pdfs as we speak.

What I've failed to see is creators being protected along with securing livelihoods. The main pursuers of copyright law happens to be the ones in legacy industries. The younger artists in the industries ARE finding new ways to express themselves without destroying their fanbase (which copyright enforcement tends to do). So rather than look at copyright as it should be, what is happening? More or less, I've read the stories how it's used to censor (that book banning), destroy the 4th amendment (remember the RIAA looking up your IP address, then suing you if you don't pay up?), and all around very anti consumer actions that really aren't about protecting anyone except the way that business has been done. The market doesn't care about morals [http://www.thestalwart.com/the_stalwart/2006/07/the_market_does.html].

The only aspect of this debate where technology comes in is to allow the creator another avenue of distribution. You are taking the technology, and justifying its use in the infringement of human rights. Only the creator can judge the technology for themselves, and decide voluntarily to use it. Nobody should be allowed to force them to use it.

The Betamax case [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.] disagrees with you.

What we were arguing is that you have to register for that protection. Unless you're getting an advance from the industry involved, smaller artists are less likely to rely on copyright, especially with it being centered towards larger businesses.

My perspective is that copyright law should protect everyone equally, and at its root it does. What others have built upon it I cannot condone, since it can cater to large business. However with its shortcomings, and need for reformation, I cannot disregard copyright law in its entirety because it serves to protect human rights.

The egregious abuses tells me that it's less about protecting rights and is a huge joke, when the abuses are 10x over the limit of the offense. Further proof that smaller artists barely copyright --> Link [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110207/02222612989/if-artists-dont-value-copyright-their-works-why-do-we-force-it-them.shtml]

True story, Yoko Ono JUST allowed Apple to release The Beatles on mp3 on iTunes. I mean, seriously... Just last year. Also, JK Rowling JUST allowed pdfs of the Harry Potter series... ~ 6 years after the digital age took off. They still sell.

What fans did was make the mp3s available (or pdfs) illegally until everyone got their stuff together to realize fans will buy regardless of control of something. Moral of the story, piracy will continue regardless of the legality, you just want to profit from it. That's why it's an economic issue.

Calling it an economic issue doesn't make it so. If someone steals my car, is it an economic issue? Heck, you could define any theft as simply an economic issue. Regardless of calling it economic issue, it is still a criminal issue, and a moral issue. Once. Again. You're saying that the ends justify the means. The fans of J.K. Rowling could have incentivized pdf's in legal ways. Just because you want something, doesn't mean you can just take it.[/quote]

*sigh* This and:

In order to know where we're going, we have to know our past. Shakespeare always created, taking bits from others to form his masterpieces. Christopher Marlowe (Dr Faustus) may have been a brawler, but he did the same. If anything, it was this pulling of various inspirations that allowed the English to flourish in the Renaissance era. He had the same issues, just the technology was a little different.

There is a difference between taking an idea, which is again not protected, and taking someone's exact work. A character archetype is not protected, but the specific character is. He also did not have the same issues as we do today, very far from it.

This...

Copyright is supposed to be about creating incentives to create. Yet, you say Shakespeare creating his work is an example of tradition, when he had no incentive to do it other than getting his name out there. Hell, if copyright was so important to people, why is Beowulf still a celebrated epic poem from the 8-11th century? It has no author and it's a story that was expanded upon for years (centuries?) before it was written down. For goodness sake, the Bible was created and has been shared for 2000+ years with no copyright claim from the Catholic church! It's not convoluting the issue to tell you that no, the issue of an incentive to create before the Statute of Anne was made is not an argument of tradition. If I wanted, I could rewrite the entire play of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and perform it in anyway I desire. This is exactly what Hollywood [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165929/] does every [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117509/] few years [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063518/] to make a few dollars on it. I'm not beholden to the estate of Shakespeare to perform his plays. If I get enough actors, I could do it on the street (wardrobe and license for street performing sold separately).

All this time, I have been saying that the moral issues in copyright law are the wrong issue. You keep wanting to put the two together when I've done no physical harm to anyone through piracy. Further, the pitch top absolute legal way to do things is to do everything with respect to the author's wishes, and yet here's two examples of the author waiting to do things. Apple had been pining for the Beatles deal for years. The true fans didn't care. They made the music available until Yoko agreed. Now, Yoko benefits (although the irony of her negotiating on John Lennon's music copyrights is not lost on me...)

Rowling, same issue. She was afraid that if she allowed her work online, it would cause more piracy (Really, REALLY dumb argument...). Her fans did it anyway to support the people that either couldn't buy the book or some other reason. It wasn't until much later in the process that Rowling had an official pdf for people to buy. So not only did she waste time with a dumb argument, but may have lost money. Regardless, people are still buying the things.

But because you said I would steal a car:

Let go, let it flow, then the money will show.

That's my choice to make, not yours. Pirates are making that choice for someone else.

And society benefits but that's answered more up top.

How you make income is an important question. You can choose how it gets distributed to a certain extent, but you're dealing with various people with various motivations to do what they do. You just have to have a clear direction in the goal you want to pursue and how to achieve it with what you have. That's the main thing, not how many people you step on to make a buck.

But that choice is left up to the person who stands to benefit of loss from it, NOT the people who don't.

You're dealing with a marketplace just like anyone else. The results may be volatile. I've seen piracy used more as a scapegoat to absolve the artist of all wrongdoing rather than finding new ways to make money. The choice you have is to innovate and compete by offering something that pirates don't. That's a far better incentive than the litigation route that our US government is choosing to take at the behest of the failing business models.

Copyright is a limiting factor in the creative process.

That is just simply wrong.

Nope, [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110208/00095113002/ip-czar-report-hits-all-lobbyist-talking-points-warns-more-draconian-copyright-laws-to-come.shtml] if you're dealing all your time in enforcement, that's less time in putting your nose to the grind stone and working to make better products in general.

It's not that I'm throwing the baby out. I just haven't found a good justification from anyone on why it's needed.

I've given you ample examples as to why it's needed. As for corporate abuse, the problem rests with the corporation and not copyright. Had the government been unwavering from making special laws to protect corporate interests in the first place, we wouldn't have a problem with it. Copyright worked for a long time before, and the only reason you dislike it now is because you dislike corporate interests. I agree with you on that. But copyright protects a creator's property, and that is needed to foster confidence and therefore incentive to create. If anything, copyright allows for innovation because it gives creator's a profit motive to create.

What examples? I've shown more or less how the corporate abuse is destroying the entire system. Having an author able to sue for $150,000 per copyright infringement is truly mind boggling. You say that copyright works for all, and yet, it wasn't until 1976 that it became truly egregious. Then, when Eldred vs Ashcroft happened, it allowed Congress to continue extending copyright at the behest of the obvious consequences.

Further, having Grokster vs MGM end with liability for song downloads on the side of the filesharing service has shown how technology really has outpaced the law. The people moved away from P2P and began using different means. The net result is that as the Recording industry fought to protect their old business model of everyone buying CDs en masse, they lost money and revenue from not licensing or working with the newest deals out there. Other result has been NO one really wants to work with them. Bittorrent has done a lot to create their own ways of doing business that are non infringing (check out vodo.net), and the newest websites that pop up are doubtful to work with someone that sues them.

On the individual side, we have JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye book) banning a sequel for nothing more than the fact that it takes the story and expands it in a new direction...

What George Lucas (Star Wars) did with Akira Kurosawa's work (Seven Samurai)...

What Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride, Prejudice and Zombies) did with Jane Austen's book...

We actually have on the law a censorship. And something tells me you aren't looking at what the government is doing in regards to special interests.

I've already linked how our government is seizing domain names from requests from the entertainment industry. This is how copyright should be enforced? By simply taking a website without judicial process and a look at prior restraint? I would find that to be a terribly oppressive system that is not flexible, all things considered.

After looking at everything, it's one reason why I can't get around copyright laws. Such egregious abuse of it doesn't sit well with me for any reason.

But you haven't looked at everything. You've looked at pieces of information that support your view. Are you aware of confirmation bias?

Aware of it, but I've found that we're better off with the options given than we are with copyright law. I've just found that there are a number of better ways than copyright to make money. True, if Hollywood doesn't want to take advantage of the options available to them, I can't stop them. But neither can I ever stop piracy of their goods. All I've tried to do is point out that all of the evidence points to piracy being as big of a deal as it is. There's games that haven't been distributed to my area. Nintendo believes that regionalization will win more money from their fanbase (instead of pissing them off and causing them to find ways to crack a 3DS). Most, if not all of these issues date to laws that people can't do what they want with their legally owned media.

How I view copyright, it's to make the environment easy. But we're talking 200 years of different copyright law... Every time the wind changed, someone made a complaint that they weren't getting their fair share and tacked on something else to copyright law. Hell man... Have you seen [http://photos.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/rights-loyalties-slide.jpg] all of the issues with copyright law just for music? I tried to make a chart for movies and games one day... Look at that chart and tell me that's an efficient way for an artist and consumer to do business together. I'll be on my way to your house with a bottle of snake oil in the morning.

Granted, Creative Commons alleviates some of this by making it clear what type of license you want. But there's more value in sharing with everyone than people care to admit. But I digress on this.

I took from a few Spanish artists I had never heard of. I have friends who are djs, looking for the next club hit. I watched music connoisseurs who had large collections of classical music that they couldn't find anywhere else. I found people online and new music and new artists because no one controlled the media gateway anymore. I will say the pros outweighed the cons to an nth degree.

And that's all great if they're willing to give it away, but not if you simply take it. The pros and cons of a system where a creator has no ownership of their work is very harmful to society and creative potential. I can release my work with confidence that it won't be stolen, or someone will not profit from it at my expense. Many other authors/musicians/filmmakers are allowed to do that, and the result is a greater artistic culture.

I explained better up top, and this is getting kinda long...

Just think about all the problems that the industry has in terms of cultivating young talent or finding the right people for good movies.

And that's their problem. Competition will take care of that. As you said, free is better than cheap, and if artists and directors want to release their movie for free to compete with Hollywood, that's awesome! If games companies want direct download, or free games, or pay as you play, that's good too. But they must, MUST, do it voluntarily. I cannot condone force of any kind, and taking someone's work and distributing as YOU see fit and not them is an act of force. You are forcing someone to do something they don't want.

Yeah, but then you have situations like this... [http://fukung.net/v/38056/fukly] Funny, wrong, but it shows that if you can't compete and cater to your customers, they'll find alternatives, legality be damned.

But what you're asking for is someone to give you money for an infringement, which I think is a bigger problem. That's actually pretty greedy for limited gain. I know we, the people are selfish, but if you want a quarter for everyone's infringement, you might want to take a look at how you do it. You might make a few people mad [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100928/16212911200/eff-comes-out-guns-blazing-in-countersuit-against-righthaven-stepens-media.shtml]

In a free society you have to allow the good with the bad... What I do have a problem with is other people, 3rd parties, trying to usurp the creator's wishes, yes, even if they're being assholes.

I'm more to believe that there's certain incentives that people respond to. The huge copyright trolling campaigns going on right now (the "Sue em all" tactic) is an incentive to make people pay settlement cases and make pirating anime bad. Now if I look... there's about two different legal services that are supported with ads in the US. The torrent has 0 commercials. Which do you think people will watch?

True, but good luck in them taking my copy away.

And now they're working on a fan made Mother 4. That should be awesome.

So that's your response? "Good luck"? I'm sure the discussion could use a little more substance than that. The Mother 3 scenario is exactly what I mean when it comes to permission. Once the copies are out, there is no physical way they can be collected. So don't worry, you'll get to keep your copy, and I'll get to keep mine.

(Mother 4 WILL be awesome)

You do realize on this one, it's supposed to be light jest right? If you want a serious answer, you should remember that when the US had weaker copyright laws and didn't allow foreign copyrights into the system, we were much better off with a smorgasboard of books that greatly helped to influence our culture during the 1800s. European authors were mad, but not one thing could be done to stop those infringements on their books. Other thing is, you never know what the book might inspire.

So if an author wants to control their work, let them try it. They may find out the hard way that it's tough to take things off the internet once it's on there. Let's just ask Sony how controlling the hack on the PS3 [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/02/sony-lawsuit-factory/] will go for them...

But trying to hold onto a song and being selfish with it aren't conducive to a great societal benefit.

Who gets to decide what is and isn't for the benefit of society? This is starting to sound like communism...

Nope, I'm not a communist and that's not part of the argument put forth. If you want the government to decide the benefits of society, that won't be a pretty sight. Matter of fact, it does a lot of harm to us. I'd rather the government merely license and allow matters of personal issues be settled between those two people.

Anyway... The benefits of a song can be far more valuable as it's allowed to progress. Artist gets known, people make memories, and there's other opportunities for the artist to take advantage of (as I've shown before) that copyright doesn't begin to address.

What I have issue with is how people think that copying takes away from a property claim.

I'm sorry but it comes down to consent. If they don't want their works copied, then who are you to copy them? You cannot justify technology as your answer, since technology itself doesn't DO anything other than exist. Humans use that technology, and they can use it for both positive and negative effects. If your lawn is your property, I don't have the right to go and cut it without your permission. I cannot justify my actions because of the technology of the lawnmower. I cannot justify my claim that a good looking yard is for the greater good of society. If it's your yard, and it isn't harming anyone else, then it's your property and not my responsibility.

You keep using the tangible versus an intangible so I have to keep thinking of how it is that a lawn is the same as a song, game, or anything else shared...

Let's go back and see the Betamax case. I have 4 things a judge is "supposed" to look at through claims of copyright infringement:

1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Let's look at number 1.

A song is archived by me representing the 90s. The artist wants it taken down. I say no and I'm doing this for nonprofit purposes. A judge believes it, the person losed their monetary claim to a song being posted. It's still available in the market allowing, and my copy doesn't do much to hurt her effort to sell it.

2) archive, let's continue

3) I used an entire song, perhaps an album, but that doesn't cut into anyone's ability to sell it.

4) Here's where it's quite hard to convince me that I'm causing her economic harm.

In case after case, from Whitney Harper's 37 songs to Blizzard's IP protection enforcement against bots, I have a problem with someone not doing homework and merely charging that economic harm has been allowed because of a copy. By that logic, Pirate Bay has cost the entertainment industry billions for simply existing. And yet... why are people still buying songs on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else? I'm more likely to believe that some people pirate. It just happens. Some try before they buy. Not every last download is a lost sale. So long as people can have an easier time with bittorrent than through legal means, they will pirate. And some people do it because they will never buy any entertainment. It's just in how you view it. I can't stop it, but being a writer, I know it occurs. My words once ended up in Russia. Just talked to the guy who had made a pdf and he turned into a fan. We never discussed copyright at all.

But imagine if I tried to start a digital library of one song from each artist that has lived in the last 20 years... Seriously, would I have to ask for each and every one's permission to put their songs on one site?

If the site was instead your own hard drive - your own personal collection - then no you wouldn't have to ask permission at all. Your music library is your own, for personal use. Distribution however is in the hands of someone who stands to benefit or loss from their creation.

That's a bone of contention since all of the mass sue em all tactics started...

People create for various reasons. Look at Wikileaks or Youtube where people do things for free.

Stop. "People" are individuals, and they create things for various reasons. SOME people want to give away information and art for free. SOME people don't. Not everyone is the same here, and what you're trying to do is shove everyone through this one vision of how you think it should be.

...

In this entire debate we've had, I have merely impressed upon you the various ideas that I see. I don't shove anything at anyone. I do want to make that clear. We're free to disagree on the minutiae of copyright till the cows come home, and I enjoy talking and finding out different opinions. But that does not mean I am saying there's some utopia for everyone about copyright or any other issues here. What I have found is that the artists with the greatest grasp of what technology can do for them are rising up to the top and leaving the legacy models behind. In all of this, the main issue that I would have is how you believe that copyright gets people to the pay window. I'm sorry, but I've found no evidence of this being the case. The artists tend to find it beneficial to them. The ones that want to lock it up and control it are usually the ones with a scarcity mindset, believing that what they hold on to, will always be with them. It didn't work for Stanley Lieber [http://www.undergroundthecomic.com/2010/10/pictures-help-us-learn/], it didn't work for Nina Paley [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_the_Blues#Copyright_problems], Nine Inch Nails [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Inch_Nails#Disputes_with_Universal_Music_Group], or even Metallica [http://www.zeropaid.com/news/85881/metallica-seeking-help-from-pro-file-sharing-trent-reznor/].

So the question is... How can so many people create with these copyright problems and make money in the new area and not be bogged by it? It's anti-consumer, and it's not a foundation of economy stimulus. Even the founding fathers had very little to say positive in monopolies. If you look at Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, they were against monopolies.

My view on IP is close to this [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080306/003240458.shtml].

The main reason why I have trouble with the "property" part isn't just the fact that it leads people to try to pretend it's just like tangible property, but because it automatically biases how people think about the concept. As I've written before, the very purpose of "property" and "property rights" was to better manage allocation of scarce resources. If there's no scarce resource at all, then the whole concept of property no longer makes sense.

Also, this explains why I feel the term Intellectual Property is actually intellectually dishonest. My words now are the property of a few ideas running in my head. The property you have is in terms of tangible goods in most circumstances. I bought a CD, I buy a book. What's on that is what I am interested in. But digital sources aren't scarce even with industry players trying to make artificial scarcities. Personally, since we're talking about copyrights and piracy, I keep to those words.

You cannot impose your will onto anyone else, even if you think it's good for them. That is not how a free society works. If you think that some people can decide what's best for others, then you are incredibly wrong in this issue.

Why do you keep insisting that somehow I'm imposing my views on everyone? All I've said is that copyright issues are false positives, they're not the foundation of society, and they cause more problems than they solve, seeing as how it's supposed to be a temporary monopoly that has spiraled way out of control. I should ask why you feel piracy is causing vast amounts of harm when after Napster, Pirate Bay, and other places, the reason that Hollywood and the music industry aren't richer is because they scare everyone away from doing business with them and won't change their minds. I've even had proof of artists in various professions making money without copyright law litigating. What you're saying is that the ones that depend on copyright should have their rights respected. Fine if they want to do that, but it's not going to happen. I don't control those people nor what they do. I can't give out a special signal to blow up their computers for the downloads. The people are part of various distributed networks, be it bittorrent (a legal software tool), cyber lockers (who the recording and movie industry hate since they can't go after the sharers themselves) or even a website with a download feature.

Regardless, has greater governmental enforcement actually caused piracy to go down, or increase? In every circumstance that the government has tried to stamp out piracy, it's increased. The problem is, you don't see the consequences of what is called IP maximalism. You say you agree that the system is borked, and yet you make it seem as if these people have no freedom in their choices.

Blizzard is fighting piracy, and I'm sure they're stabbing themselves in the foot. EA learned a valuable lesson when it made the DRM too draconian with Spore, and after seeing the "DRM-Lite" for Dragon Age II, I'm sure they won't look to piss people off into getting a pirated copy. And then there's Ubisoft...

If there was ever a game I wanted badly, and I mean BADLY, it would be Scott Pilgrim for the PSP... No, I'm not buying a 360 or PS3 and I love my laptop. If they put the damn thing on Steam, I'd buy that thing tomorrow.

Oh, and their always on DRM sucks.[/tangent]

Anyway, no, I don't impose you to agree with everything that I do. If I can show you that there are better ways than copyright law to make money, great. If not, we can agree to disagree. But no where am I saying "you must believe me because I know I'm the only truth out there"

So the question here is, what's the property that needs protection? The song? The arrangement? The fact that they should ask first? Kind of a mountain vs molehill issue on that one.

Yes you would need to ask for permission, unless it was in the public domain or being used under fair use. But here's the thing, if the media is under creative commons, or the person creating it explicitly said to use it, then the free or open media would be used and distributed first, giving the creator an advantage over the competition. This creates incentive for creators to release their work openly. However the creator always has the option to not do that (free society, remember).You cannot impose that onto the creator, just as you wouldn't want someone imposing their strategy into you. If you have a problem with the creator's standards, then go somewhere else, and vote with your feet. Once a creator sees the damage that their own authority causes, they will reconsider, but if they see people taking it anyways, it shifts the blame from themselves onto other people, and it makes them even more justified in their tyrannical position. What you're doing isn't helping, it's actually making things worse.[/quote]

That's called a scapegoat. If I blame my problems on immaterial points and I can't accept responsibility for my own actions, I can point fingers but it's not going to solve anything.

This argument also ignores a few other industries that spring up, such as the remix culture. They might have a mix in their head that needs certain songs. I thought I had showed that with the remix manifesto vid.

Also, a major detriment to the public domain [http://www.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday] has already occurred.

Finally, a tyrannical position really isn't supported by most small time artists. It's usually those that have the money to lobby and have the government support that tyrannical problem in the first place. I'm sure if you took away copyright (or at least limited greatly to 5 years...) we would actually see a lot more innovation in the entertainment field as people used older ideas infused with newer ones. As it stands, copyright as a monopoly on ideas really has hurt us (*points to public domain link*)

 

[Gindil]

Oh, forgot to make a post on piracy.

This one's short. Basically, it looks like Jeff Price, CEO and Founder of Tune Core has actually put up a few posts about the music industry that really should be a good read.

If you want to take a look at piracy, feel free. Even if you don't agree with my long view that piracy is escapism, it's worth it to look at other viewpoints.

Linkage [http://blog.tunecore.com/2010/11/the-state-of-the-music-industry-and-the-delegitimization-of-artists-pt-5-when-good-laws-turn-bad.html]

 

[2xDouble]

Please, watch this [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2653-Piracy]. I think you'll find it enlightening.

Thread over.