Today's Piracy report

[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.

 

[Varitel]

Some of these pirates do it unscrupulously. For example, I saw that someone had stolen Minecraft. That kind of thing annoys me.

 

[soulsabr]

A thread about piracy on the escapist? I like where this is going.

Sigh ... don't you mean ANOTHER thread about piracy on the Escapist I know where it will go?

 

[Gindil]

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

Thread over.

Seen it. Don't agree with everything but it's enlightening. And Sony's situation has truly gotten WORSE with their response to the hack, not better. And it's all their fault.

 

[Event_Horizon]

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

How does Paris Hilton achieve her success rather than mooch of her family's wealth? Oh... wait. In a free society you have to accept the decisions of other people even if you don't personally like it.

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.

If they want to do they and ruin their brand it's up to them. And if you want to create something derived from their work then you're not really creating anything new anyways. If you really want to be successful, create your own thing, or ask permission.

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.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2009/04/18/piracy_causes_nightmares_for_stardock_s_demigod

There's an example of a game's failure as the direct result of piracy. Look, I'm not going to disagree that piracy increases sales. I already said it does. However it is not the pirate's choice. They don't get to choose the benefits of other people. If a person is sick, you cannot force them into a hospital.

There are still great TV shows being brought to a new audience... The consumer has more options and ways to spend money. BUT, producers now have more options in their movie delivery options. 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.

But yet you said copyright was a nightmare, and right there you say that there are plenty of great things coming out. So are we in a golden age, or a dark age? Pick your side.

What I've failed to see is creators being protected along with securing livelihoods...

Of course you failed to see creators being protected because you haven't gone out and LOOKED for it. You've allowed confirmation bias you selectively perceive articles and factoids that corroborate your point. You don't see the author who is protected in court, because those cases don't get media attention. Copyright doesn't get its praise when it works, only when it doesn't, so your whole world view is skewed by the negative press releases. You say that copyright enforcement destroys the fan base, but that is only correlation not causation. Could it be the creator's imposed limitations on their product that limit the fan base and not copyright itself? That is the solution and not the problem. Strict limitations should be a negative affect on success of a product, but copyright law allows creators to express that right if they want to. Copyright doesn't force creators to do anything, but allows the creators to express their desires.

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

Not in the least, because copying your own tapes is not distribution, and is not infringing on copyright.

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.

And if you don't like the actions of the copyright holder, don't spend your money with them. Pirates are wanting to have their cake and eat it too by taking things they want, and to not support the people who make them. They're the ones who are hitting the bees nest. The best way to stop the corporate tyrants is to simply not support them at all, and walk away. If they want to abuse the law, then their greedy reputation will be their downfall. Now if the law itself is unfair, then the constitution protects against abuse, and if there is abuse going on than it's a problem that needs to be addressed. However if I want to limit my fan base and charge 50$ to read a short story, that is my right. If I want to defend my choice in court I can do that. As I said, the incentive is to create open works, but only pirates force that onto other people.

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]

That is perfectly consistent with my views. Copyright is a choice, pirates on the other hand take that choice away.

Copyright is supposed to be about creating incentives to create.

And it does, for many reasons. 1: it instills creator confidence. 2: it provides a profit motive. 3: it grants the creator options as how to distribute their work which therefore directly impact their chance of success.

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.

When you said Shakespeare didn't need copyright so therefore we don't is an argument from tradition and that is a logical fallacy. Your argument is based on a logical fallacy.

Hell, if copyright was so important to people, why is Beowulf still a celebrated epic poem from the 8-11th century?

Because of market forces. Beowulf has a novelty of being so old, and there the incentive not to change it.

For goodness sake, the Bible was created and has been shared for 2000+ years with no copyright claim from the Catholic church!

You want to talk about tyrannical ownership of a document, look no further than your own example. The Bible was translated to Latin, and it stayed in that language for centuries until the printing press was able to print it in German. For that time, people could not read Latin, hell they couldn't read in their own language. Talk about stifling knowledge, the Catholic church had a monopoly on the Bible. Copyright was not the problem there.

All this time, I have been saying that the moral issues in copyright law are the wrong issue.

Of course you ignore the moral issue because that goes completely against your argument. Instead of actually arguing for piracy as a moral issue, and failing miserably, you choose to look at technology only. The moral issue is that Pirates take away the freedom of the creator to do what they want. To argue that the freedom of the creator is less than the good of the collective is an issue no free person can agree with. I'm sorry, but all of the benefits in the world does NOT make piracy right if it takes away the freedom or ownership of the creator. I cannot force someone to take drugs to save their life, and I cannot force an artist to spread their work freely for their own good. Human rights is the foundation of enlightenment ethics, and you cannot simply toss them aside because you want to. Look to bull in the eye and see if you can make a moral argument in favor of piracy.

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.

Okay you haven't been listening. You're absolutely right that you have the CHOICE to innovate, but it's a CHOICE. The issue I have is with the individual who buys a CD, or a book, or a film, and decides to put it on the net for free. It's still a problem of someone taking something that's already there that doesn't belong to them, but I feel it is that big of a problem. The infringement of rights rests with the person uploading the media in the first place, not nearly as much with the person simply taking something that's already there.

If the business model is failing, then why are pirates increasing sales by pirating? Leave them alone and let them fail.

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.

Isn't all that enforcement the pirates' own fault in the first place?...

I've shown more or less how the corporate abuse is destroying the entire system.

Well yeah, corporations are going to try to abuse the system. The problem is with the corporations, not the system. As you said, we had Copyright for decades, centuries even, but it wasn't until 1976 that you say it became a real problem. Well why did it become a problem? Laws don't magically appear, they had to be created by someone. So the corporations co-opted with the government to give them an advantage, and you have a problem with everything the copyright laws stand for, not JUST the laws that were created then? I'd say the government and corporate monstrosity created the problem, not the idea of copyright as property protection. To say we then need to give up personal property rights to solve the problem, when you have no evidence to show that a system like that will even work, is totally ridiculous.

And something tells me you aren't looking at what the government is doing in regards to special interests.

I am completely against the special interests. Nowhere have I said that the entertainment industry has been doing things right.

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.

I also find that the be an oppressive system, but the principle of private ownership did not create that system. As I said before, many times, I cannot condone the actions of the newer oppressive laws. Right now I feel you're trying to latch onto anything you can use against me, even things I did not say.

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.

That's what I've been trying to say.

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.

I know you can't stop piracy of their goods. You can only stop yourself from putting the information online. I don't blame you (much) if you take what's already there. If it's free, people are going to take it. If they want to support the artists, they will. And the artists are incentivized to create a better product if they're in the mindset of earning a paying fan base instead of simply selling something. However the problem rests with the person who puts the data on the internet in the first place. I know that if they don't do it, another person will, and that's a problem. The oppressive regime of the media corporations have been handling it wrong, but with a problem as pervasive as this, and yes it is a problem if people's rights are infringed, then are you really surprised they would take such a violent approach? Piracy is, most of the time, good for sales, and it increases recognition, but what are the costs of a system where a person cannot chose how to distribute their work? A system where the masses control the creative property of one person is pretty much mob rule. If the same allowance were around in the renaissance, how long do you think it would be before someone put a mustache on the Mina Lisa and ruined everyone else's fun? At some point you have to let the creator own their property. The creator must choose whether to keep their project pure, or allow the mustache.

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.

No it isn't an efficient system, and that's why it's crumbling, and that's why it should crumble. If copyright law is as detrimental as you say, then it will naturally collapse, and the aspects of copyright law that are beneficial will stay. Judging by the track record of the early copyright laws, they survived because a society that had them worked better than a society without. People were better off having ownership and protection of things they created.

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.

There is a ton of value; I don't dispute that. The part that I dispute is that the entire process should be voluntary. Everything about the economy is based on volunteering in a mutually beneficial relationship. To do what you say means that it is a parasitic relationship, with one party benefiting at the expense of another. You're probably aware of the tragedy of the commons, which means that people take care of their own property better than they take care of someone else's. Give a plot of land private ownership, and the owner will maintain it; give a plot of land to the public, and it will be exploited. To give creative property to the masses, and not the owner, just asks for exploitation.

Now I apologize I had to prevent myself from commenting and copying some of your points to keep the thread from getting out of hand. Just note that I did read them.

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.

Yes we were better off, but at what expense? Authors in Europe weren't happy, and probably felt disincentivized to create. America was basically a parasite, profiting off the creative potential of the outside world. If American authors didn't come up with new ideas and instead took ideas from Europe, how does that increase the creative potential of society? If someone can rip someone off, they'll do it.

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.

What's almost as bad as communism is democracy (mob rule). Instead of the government making it okay to do whatever egregious deed, all it takes is 51% of the population to agree, and it's done. If you can get 51% of the population to take away the rights of a group of people, it's done. To say the creator has no property, or if you justify someone else taking ownership away without consent is saying that mob rule should decide on how a person distributes their creation. Basically it says throw it to the mob and have them handle it. Instead of the creator going into a mutually beneficial relationship with their buyers, the balance of power shifts in favor of the mob.

The Betamax case comes down to fair use. If you have a personal library of songs, or as you said, using it for educational purposes, they comply with fair use and it isn't a problem. Distribution is the key word because it affects the creator's success and therefore should grant them privileges to control distribution, just as you would control any other means for your success. If you put your purchased music onto a hard drive, even if you make 100 CD copies of it, but you're not distributing them, it's okay.

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.

All very true.

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

And I greatly oppose those efforts to sue people. The punishment should fit the crime, and I would take those guys who fined me to court for violation of the 8th amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Not that it would really work, realistically speaking, but I would definitely try. Hundreds of thousands of dollars is not the price of a hundred songs.

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.

When you justify piracy, you are justifying the imposing of someone's will onto another. Free distribution and torrent sites are fantastic tools for people to get their stuff our for free. That is a distribution method widely used by many people, and it works well for them. Pirates however are the third party that takes someone's property and puts it on those distribution networks without consent. If the pirates cause someone harm in that manner, it's a bad thing; but even if the pirates cause benefit to someone, it's still a bad thing. The consequences of them doing something good is overridden by their first action of doing something bad: infringing on a person's right to own the result of their work. That is the moral issue here. I cannot force you to take a pill to save your life if you don't want it.

You're absolutely right that artists have gone into different avenues of distribution and marketing, and yes they are successful, but that is not relevant to the debate here. Whether or not they succeed or fail has no consequence of a third party taking something that doesn't belong to them. In the end, anyone who desperately holds onto their creation will lose because of others who endorse other methods, but it isn't up to a pirate to manipulate a system they have no stake in. The companies will fail on their own; they don't need anyone's help.

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?

Well obviously if they are creating their own unique work then copyright won't be a problem for them. And if they allow people access to that work, they don't have to worry about copyright going against others from their side. I'll agree that some copyright laws can indeed be scaled back, because special interests have usurped the government, but to say pieces are broken, and therefore we should do away with copyright law, is like saying you don't like the speed limit so we have to do away with all traffic laws. Pick what specific aspects of the law you don't like, and begin there, don't take the easy route and just disqualify all copyright laws because a few aspects are negative. Do the ground work. Know what you're against.

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.

Does a digital copy of a story make it any less yours than a book? I don't think so. the only difference I see between digital and physical items is that digital things can be copied over and over, which creates only one problem that physical copies do not have, and that is the ease of distribution. The song you buy, whether from a CD or direct download, you can modify. Once it is distributed the game changes. Like I explained before, distribution rests with the owner, because they stand to gain or lose from their creation, the stakes are on them, and so should the responsibility.

Why do you keep insisting that somehow I'm imposing my views on everyone?

I meant "you" as in the plural you, not specifically referring to you, Gindil.

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.

1. Let me make it clear that I don't think piracy is doing nearly as much monetary harm as others say it is. It can even be good.

2. If Hollywood and the music industry are failing because they are forcing fans out, they will fail on their own, not because that copyright itself is bad, but because they are using copyright law badly.

3. If pirates do increase revenue, then pirating Hollywood movies and music is only keeping the juggernaut alive, therefore increasing the problem.

4. What harm pirates do is to the individual creator's rights by taking away ownership control, even if it is for their benefit.

Regardless, has greater governmental enforcement actually caused piracy to go down, or increase?

Do copyright laws themselves cause the problem, or do organizations who abuse copyright cause the problems? If you take copyright law out of the equation vs. taking the organizations out of the equation, you'll get pretty clear answers. If copyright were personal protection for personal property, and you could modify its use to however you want (like a creative commons), there would be far less abuses of the law.

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.

Which people? The creators or the consumers? The creators have freedom, and they should have freedom, because it is the result of their labor. The consumers also have freedom, except when it infringes on the freedom of the creator. The line that gets drawn is drawn by the creator, and if the rules are too strict, consumers will go someplace else. The government and special interests try to move that line just the same way the pirates do. The government limits the freedom of the consumer, and the pirate limits the freedom of the creator. The best answer is to have neither government oppression nor pirate subversion.

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*)

I agree with you wholeheartedly here (except for the 5 year thing, I think creators should decide). Government exacerbating an already charged situation isn't helping, and I think it's overstepping the government's grounds. Ideally the government should provide a court building to allow others to settle disputes and not distribute the law with an iron fist.

But like I said further up the page, there are aspects of the copyright law that do not work, and you haven't identified those. You've just painted copyright with a wide brush. The specifics you've given have dealt with particular abuses of the law, but that is the result of confirmation bias. You haven't identified the things that work, and yes there are plenty of things that work. It's no different than the people who write off capitalism because there are one or two things (they think) don't work, when they don't entirely understand the system.

 

[Gindil]

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

How does Paris Hilton achieve her success rather than mooch of her family's wealth? Oh... wait. In a free society you have to accept the decisions of other people even if you don't personally like it.

... She's a socialite with her parents able to finance her beginnings. Nowadays, her TV shows provide other forms of revenue. That's all done through contracts but still... I agree she's useless just not that somehow her form of "mooching" is relevant to familial success in copyright causes.

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.

If they want to do they and ruin their brand it's up to them. And if you want to create something derived from their work then you're not really creating anything new anyways. If you really want to be successful, create your own thing, or ask permission.

Permission culture does NOT lead to financial success. There's more evidence of the latter being a detriment in so many ways. Valve wouldn't have as much success with their source engine if people had to ask permission first. Further, as provided by the Crimson Echoes and Silver Knight links, this can truly hurt creativity fostered by the need to tell a unique story. The three members of the Crimson Echoes team weren't trying to be successful. They were fans that wanted to tell a unique story on Chrono Trigger, linking it like Square hasn't done. The Silver Knight story is all about taking care of the loose ends of the King's Quest series. Square has no reps that gave permission, merely lawyers that used the high statutory damages claim to cause a chilling effect. Activision just RECENTLY changed to a better place for mods and older games. Having someone destroy their work on King's Quest is a lot worse because A) King's Quest isn't really viable on the marketplace and B) it does nothing for the love of a fan who is dedicating their time and energy to their own work. Granted, some people respect that wish. It's not right in the slightest. But it happens that others will continue that work for their own reasons. Case in point [http://www.geekosystem.com/fan-made-chrono-trigger-sequel/]...

Now... Here's the questions that need to be asked.

Did this hurt Square's sales on a game that they have yet to update (in this case Chrono Cross)?

Did their copyright infringement need to be litigated away?

Did Square have to threaten three people with a legal battle PLUS a high statutory damage claim that would have taken time out of their lives to battle this thing? I want you to know that when the C&D came out, Fenris (one of the CE programmers) talked about how he didn't keep them working on the project exclusively. What he did was allow them to be with family and not shut in on just this one thing. If they had decided to fight this, they would have had to disrupt their lives with a court case that may have destroyed them. It was far easier to just destroy their work, posting it on Youtube to show what could have been.

Those are the types of things that I truly am against. If copyright infringement can do those things, I am against it, author be damned. That's too much abuse in the hands of authors. It's like the concept of an internet kill switch in the hands of Obama. That's too much to give one president, one person, regardless of the reasons. I can't say that copyright infringement is just, but I can say it happens. How do we do things to live in our new society and what can we do make people love our work and support us? Those are far better questions of an author destroying lives by a long legal court battle over economics.

Literature - the concept of an orc is not conducive to Tolkien. It's in the Warhammer series, along with any other concept of scifi/fantasy. If I had to ask permission to use either orcs, it would truly cause the numbers of books on the subject to decrease considerably. There's more but this is getting long regardless.

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.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2009/04/18/piracy_causes_nightmares_for_stardock_s_demigod

There's an example of a game's failure as the direct result of piracy. Look, I'm not going to disagree that piracy increases sales. I already said it does. However it is not the pirate's choice. They don't get to choose the benefits of other people. If a person is sick, you cannot force them into a hospital.

Rebuttal - Link to Minecraft [http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1121596044/how-piracy-works]

Instead of just relying on guilt tripping pirates into buying, or wasting time and money trying to stop them, I can offer online-only services that actually add to the game experience. Online level saving, centralized skins, friends lists and secure name verification for multiplayer. None of these features can be accessed by people with pirated versions of the game, and hopefully they can be features that turn pirates from thieves into potential customers.

Also, let's go back to Demigod for a second:

Link [http://frogboy.impulsedriven.net/article/347149/Demigod_Day_2_Status_Report]

We aren?t blaming piracy for the fact that the day 0 multiplayer experience absolutely sucked. The issue boiled down to us having put together a multiplayer infrastructure that was designed to handle around 50,000 or so connected users. If the game took off, we would simply add more servers as the load increased.

But what happened was that we ended up with 140,000 connected users, of which about 12% were actually legitimate customers. Now, the roughly 120,000 users that weren?t running legitimate copies of the game weren?t online playing multiplayer or anything. The issue with those users was as benign as a handful of HTTP calls that did things like check for updates and general server keep alive. Pretty trivial on its own until you have 120,000 of them. Then you have what amounts to a DDOS attack on yourself.

So far, it encouraged sales [http://forums.demigodthegame.com/346287]

But yet you said copyright was a nightmare, and right there you say that there are plenty of great things coming out. So are we in a golden age, or a dark age? Pick your side.[/quote]

I rail against copyright being used as a hammer with the consumer being the anvil. When I read all the problems with copyright law used to prevent consumers from using legal media, or even preventing content from being shown in new ways [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/can-big-cable-block-the-google-tv-revolution.ars], it's an issue. Copyright issues are a nightmare when it can force someone to pay 10x the amount for a song or you're hit with a domain seizure from ICE. Still, this doesn't stop people from trying new things, it just makes it so that people are innovative in more unique ways. Bar Karma for example... [http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/02/bar-karma-will-wright/]

What I've failed to see is creators being protected along with securing livelihoods...

Of course you failed to see creators being protected because you haven't gone out and LOOKED for it. You've allowed confirmation bias you selectively perceive articles and factoids that corroborate your point. You don't see the author who is protected in court, because those cases don't get media attention. Copyright doesn't get its praise when it works, only when it doesn't, so your whole world view is skewed by the negative press releases. You say that copyright enforcement destroys the fan base, but that is only correlation not causation. Could it be the creator's imposed limitations on their product that limit the fan base and not copyright itself? That is the solution and not the problem. Strict limitations should be a negative affect on success of a product, but copyright law allows creators to express that right if they want to. Copyright doesn't force creators to do anything, but allows the creators to express their desires.

No... I've seen more people shy away from the major record labels and I'm watching more people create with smaller resources. You want to say the author is "protected" but that protection by Salinger is a ban on books. Last I checked, McCarthyism didn't work. And the proof of copyright enforcement doing wanton destruction is in the ICE takedowns. It has dire consequences with our ability to tax US domain sites [http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-domain-exodus-continues-as-torrentz-dumps-com-101218/]. It's also in the fact that More [http://torrentfreak.com/makers-of-the-expendables-sue-6500-bittorrent-users-110208/] and more [http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-sues-hotfile-cyberlocker-service-110209/], the enforcement angle is like fighting terrorism... Once you put down one threat, about 500 more pop up because of your actions. We don't need protection for old business models. We need people to realize that those ones and zeroes are potential to sell other things than overinflated DVDs. I have hard drive space, I like games, I like movies, and I like music. Whether I get it from TPB, torrentfreak, or Blizzard shouldn't matter (btw, there ARE private servers for WoW. Though not technically legal, that's another area that shows that piracy could anecdotally increase sales of the original games. Still, some people play for $15 a month for things other than the price.)

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

Not in the least, because copying your own tapes is not distribution, and is not infringing on copyright.

The MPAA fought on this one hard and I'll say they lost. Now we have an abundance of goods, not a scarcity. If they want to remain solvent, they can make their own Netflix option and work with smaller creators of content. If they go down the road they're going, they'll look all the more like Luddites and all the more like they're out of touch with today's reality.

And if you don't like the actions of the copyright holder, don't spend your money with them. Pirates are wanting to have their cake and eat it too by taking things they want, and to not support the people who make them. They're the ones who are hitting the bees nest. The best way to stop the corporate tyrants is to simply not support them at all, and walk away. If they want to abuse the law, then their greedy reputation will be their downfall. Now if the law itself is unfair, then the constitution protects against abuse, and if there is abuse going on than it's a problem that needs to be addressed. However if I want to limit my fan base and charge 50$ to read a short story, that is my right. If I want to defend my choice in court I can do that. As I said, the incentive is to create open works, but only pirates force that onto other people.

*scratches head*

I dunno what to tell ya.. [http://torrentfreak.com/torrent-butler-serving-movie-torrents-with-class-110209/] It takes more time to take down the greedy people than it does to watch others use the resources available [http://torrentfreak.com/neil-gaiman-loves-piracy-its-advertising/]

Even then, this all points to piracy used more as a scapegoat rather than looking at it as another form of business to be tapped. I figure if someone has a reason to pirate, they will. Give them less of a reason and they'll buy from you. Case in point... [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/04221613023/once-again-if-you-dont-offer-authorized-versions-released-content-dont-be-surprised-if-people-get-unauthorized-copies.shtml]

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]

That is perfectly consistent with my views. Copyright is a choice, pirates on the other hand take that choice away.

It looks like you want to lump all pirates into the same category...

Copyright is supposed to be about creating incentives to create.

And it does, for many reasons. 1: it instills creator confidence. 2: it provides a profit motive. 3: it grants the creator options as how to distribute their work which therefore directly impact their chance of success.

1 - If all the "sue em all" lawsuits have proven, creator confidence in something not being pirated is a false incentive.

2 - ... Have we not discussed the litigation route being incredibly flawed, creating an incentive for lawyers to sue innocent people for copyright infringement? Have we also not talked about the statutory damages being woefully inept in the actual damages that piracy supposedly incurs?

3 - I don't think that matches up... Once something is on the internet, it's there. Once it's distributed, you can find other ways to make money flow. By all intents, I would look at the US's misguided attempts at thinking that creating more patents = more innovation. That's a joke actually. Real innovation comes from finding needs in society and filling them. If you put out a story on hardback, people are incentivized to see the ending of the series. Where they see the story, you may not even know. Hell, your biggest fan might also be the biggest pirate out there. You won't know. If anything, there's more to reaching an audience that you couldn't by just yourself, making your work all the more easier to distribute (as also shown with Steve Lieber's tale on 4chan)

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.

When you said Shakespeare didn't need copyright so therefore we don't is an argument from tradition and that is a logical fallacy. Your argument is based on a logical fallacy.[/quote]

Hell, if copyright was so important to people, why is Beowulf still a celebrated epic poem from the 8-11th century?

Because of market forces. Beowulf has a novelty of being so old, and there the incentive not to change it.[/quote]

Wait, what...? Market forces? Ok, I'm callin non sequitar on this. If Shakespeare is supposedly not relevant, yet Beowulf is, there's an issue. No one claimed Beowulf as their own, it's a story with partial pagan and Christian beliefs, set to writing. If people are saying that we NEED copyright to create, both show how that's a fallacy. If anything, we have people continuing to create without worrying about copyright, be it too expensive for the protections of it, or not caring about it.

As I remind you of Shakespeare's work, it is still celebrated today because it was made before the Statute of Anne. People changed his plays and made their own variations, but we remember Shakespeare's best. The entire Renaissance era was about taking from one place such as Italy, and creating stories based off of those works in say, England. Beowulf was about adding to the story and putting your own parts to the epic tale of a warrior king. I don't think those parts can be dismissed. In essence, they show a different view than the current dichotomy of pirate/antipirate. The incentive isn't just profit as you seem to think. If the monetary incentive was accurate, and that's what artists and authors made their books for, it would be that MORE people would actually copyright their work and go to enforce it. Yet, with every link, I show artists that see it in different ways.

Look at who complains the loudest about piracy and you'll find the ones that have the most to lose from their old system. The points still stand that even traditionally, the copyright was less about the artist and more about the middlemen that gained to profit from it. Artists now have a direct link to their audience. My point wasn't that we didn't need copyright before the Statute of Anne, merely that the profit motive itself is a fallacy.

For goodness sake, the Bible was created and has been shared for 2000+ years with no copyright claim from the Catholic church!

You want to talk about tyrannical ownership of a document, look no further than your own example. The Bible was translated to Latin, and it stayed in that language for centuries until the printing press was able to print it in German. For that time, people could not read Latin, hell they couldn't read in their own language. Talk about stifling knowledge, the Catholic church had a monopoly on the Bible. Copyright was not the problem there.[/quote]

I think they were pissed at Gutenberg too... Anyway, point taken though the Catholic church didn't want to spread the bible for a while.

Of course you ignore the moral issue because that goes completely against your argument. Instead of actually arguing for piracy as a moral issue, and failing miserably, you choose to look at technology only. The moral issue is that Pirates take away the freedom of the creator to do what they want. To argue that the freedom of the creator is less than the good of the collective is an issue no free person can agree with. I'm sorry, but all of the benefits in the world does NOT make piracy right if it takes away the freedom or ownership of the creator. I cannot force someone to take drugs to save their life, and I cannot force an artist to spread their work freely for their own good. Human rights is the foundation of enlightenment ethics, and you cannot simply toss them aside because you want to. Look to bull in the eye and see if you can make a moral argument in favor of piracy.[/quote]

I never was a person to sit here and tell others how they should view the world. So the moral imperative you keep describing is less about me saying pirates are taking something from the author, and more about how to gain from the exposure of the piracy. The freedom of the creator in every part of copyright law has been imposed upon for various reasons. When Forneaux created sheet music for pianos in the 1850s, authors became weaker as we got our first legal test of fair use. If I give a book away, it deprives an author of a sale but gains the benefit of allowing me to share something I like or enjoy with others. It's only in the digital era, where digital goods can be copied infinitely that it's supposedly a problem. That's shortening the arguments a considerable deal, but still trying to keep the main gist of each part.

I'm not ever in favor of the moral position that somehow I am superior to someone that doesn't pirate. It's too similar to lumping everyone in one category without finding out why they would do it. And, after finding out the reasons to gain from copyright such as the Performance Rights Organizations, the Copyright Boards, the mechanical rights accrued, and all the ways that copyright is used to nickel and dime artists and consumer alike, it's a bloated thing that needs a massive overhaul from the monster it is today.

When you have to pay a PRO 16% of your income to try to shut down a bar for playing your song once, that's one issue. When you have a secretive Copyright Board that puts up the tax on copyrights "due to inflation", that's another issue. When the PRO (BMI, Sesac, and one other) only pay the top 200 acts in the US for all the money they collect because they can't listen to the radio 24-7, the issue is not only in how the laws are enforced (they have the backing of the government on their side...) but in their all consuming nature to make examples of the small businesses that take advantage of songs being played. Yet again, look for yourself at the damage that copyright maximalism does [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090109/1823043352.shtml]

Okay you haven't been listening. You're absolutely right that you have the CHOICE to innovate, but it's a CHOICE. The issue I have is with the individual who buys a CD, or a book, or a film, and decides to put it on the net for free. It's still a problem of someone taking something that's already there that doesn't belong to them, but I feel it is that big of a problem. The infringement of rights rests with the person uploading the media in the first place, not nearly as much with the person simply taking something that's already there.

If the business model is failing, then why are pirates increasing sales by pirating? Leave them alone and let them fail.

... Why does it matter? If one person didn't do it, someone else would. The incentive to be first in hacking circles in breaking the new DRM is one incentive. Making a superior product to the maker (ie, no DRM in music, etc.) is another incentive. People have different reasons for breaking a DRM or putting things out in certain formats. I fail to see how a dissonance in values = less opportunities for an author that takes advantage of it. The Neil Gaiman link shows exactly that problem being fixed. Russia is HUGE on piracy because of a price differentiation between US sellers of goods and Russian sellers. If it's too high, well... This happens [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_201/6059-A-Nation-of-Pirates]. I think where we're not connecting is the cause and effect. This story about Brazil going from legitimate to pirate country may help to show where I stand on copyright law. It doesn't matter if someone thinks it's just or right. Can you avoid it, can you ensure you're making money, and can you compete?

The problem with the "let them fail" approach is when an already failing business or artist uses piracy to complain about something that CAN be changed on their end. Maybe they didn't save their money, maybe they didn't do everything they could to alleviate the problem, or perhaps they priced the product too high. The end result is that they might come to be customers if people stopped trying to dismiss the pirates and instead looked at them as potential customers. Neil Gaiman learned it, along with all of the other artists I linked to.

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.

Isn't all that enforcement the pirates' own fault in the first place?...

Nope. Cause and effect don't follow each other here.

I've shown more or less how the corporate abuse is destroying the entire system.

Well yeah, corporations are going to try to abuse the system. The problem is with the corporations, not the system. As you said, we had Copyright for decades, centuries even, but it wasn't until 1976 that you say it became a real problem. Well why did it become a problem? Laws don't magically appear, they had to be created by someone. So the corporations co-opted with the government to give them an advantage, and you have a problem with everything the copyright laws stand for, not JUST the laws that were created then? I'd say the government and corporate monstrosity created the problem, not the idea of copyright as property protection. To say we then need to give up personal property rights to solve the problem, when you have no evidence to show that a system like that will even work, is totally ridiculous.[/quote]

Copyright laws are NOT personal property protection. Look, if I give you a mix CD with the Jackson 5 on it, it's not the property of the Jackson 5. They got the money for that song, LOOOONG long ago. When I go to DeviantArt, pick a Mario drawing to put as an avatar, the artist can put their signature on it, but it doesn't automatically make my copy invalid. When I put up a walkthrough of Dead Space, with my commentary on it, it's not magically EA's property once again. I bought the game for my entertainment. I bought the console (no matter how much Sony says otherwise) and it belongs to me. Yes, they made the creepy music but I own my copy of the game.

I for one, am strong on personal property. But if you put out music, games, whatever, I'm strong on consumer choice in how they obtain their media. No two people are the same, and they have their own reasons for doing what they do. I don't want to limit the technology because someone else decries its bad. It's not a taboo to use Bittorrent. It's not a crime to download a song. If I like it, I support the artists through other means. But decrying that somehow, the author needs to be protected from me and what I want to do is ridiculous.

Further, I'll suggest looking up Thomas Jefferson and our Founding fathers. Their ideas on both are for limited times. The entire "limited times" actually came as a compromise. So before we get to another argument of tradition, this one IS outright important because of the context it gives to our Constitution. They had just fought against England regarding imposing tax laws. They saw firsthand what a monopoly on goods could do. They wanted a democracy and more liberal freedoms to see the country succeed. They had words:

Link [http://www.movingtofreedom.org/2006/10/06/thomas-jefferson-on-patents-and-freedom-of-ideas/]

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

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.

I also find that the be an oppressive system, but the principle of private ownership did not create that system. As I said before, many times, I cannot condone the actions of the newer oppressive laws. Right now I feel you're trying to latch onto anything you can use against me, even things I did not say.

No, but it seems you want to support the system, just to a smaller extent. That of personal artists when I'm actually showing that artists don't necessarily need it in the manner currently being used. If you look on Nina Paley's site, she has a great notice for how to have copyright work for artists. CC licensing is great (but I'm still leery about the ND, NS clauses... Too oppressive). The main people that use copyright law in its entirety is the bigger fish of record labels and movie labels, which is where I focus most of the disdain on. Any author or artist that feels those laws work well raise my ire unless they can be educated. I think I told the story about the one artist that lost my respect by calling me ignorant in copyright law and how to make money in new ways? Problem was, piracy had nothing to do with me telling 5 of my closest friends to check out her words and see if they wanted to support her. Bad news travels fast...

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.

I know you can't stop piracy of their goods. You can only stop yourself from putting the information online. I don't blame you (much) if you take what's already there. If it's free, people are going to take it. If they want to support the artists, they will. And the artists are incentivized to create a better product if they're in the mindset of earning a paying fan base instead of simply selling something. However the problem rests with the person who puts the data on the internet in the first place. I know that if they don't do it, another person will, and that's a problem. The oppressive regime of the media corporations have been handling it wrong, but with a problem as pervasive as this, and yes it is a problem if people's rights are infringed, then are you really surprised they would take such a violent approach? Piracy is, most of the time, good for sales, and it increases recognition, but what are the costs of a system where a person cannot chose how to distribute their work? A system where the masses control the creative property of one person is pretty much mob rule. If the same allowance were around in the renaissance, how long do you think it would be before someone put a mustache on the Mina Lisa and ruined everyone else's fun? At some point you have to let the creator own their property. The creator must choose whether to keep their project pure, or allow the mustache.

We agree that the corps are reacting violently to a paradigm shift. We agree it can't be changed. We accept that it's here to stay and those in power are fighting a losing battle.

But here, I disgree in a lot of ways. This thread shows games that are unique and innovative in their own rights. Regardless of the legality of these creative endeavors, they show exactly what people love to do and their love for different types of art. Does the creator control the song from the Ghostbusters, or is it used as inspiration for various projects? Can I make a movie based on a video game or do I have to pay for every sound (wait, Scott Pilgrim was an AWESOME movie...) No one controls these specific endeavors and I doubt they really need to be controlled. If anything, Leonardo da Vinci created a lot of projects as a Renaissance man that greatly inspired the next generation. Along with the next few years afterwards. And I find it truly odd that you talk about the Mona Lisa when people still draw it in Photoshop. They made it as a replica. And yet, the author is still known...

I'm sure we've had plenty of people who see the benefits of piracy. Just for fun [http://www.cracked.com/article_18513_5-insane-file-sharing-panics-from-before-internet.html]

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.

No it isn't an efficient system, and that's why it's crumbling, and that's why it should crumble. If copyright law is as detrimental as you say, then it will naturally collapse, and the aspects of copyright law that are beneficial will stay. Judging by the track record of the early copyright laws, they survived because a society that had them worked better than a society without. People were better off having ownership and protection of things they created.[/quote]

They survived because they were tacked on. Before they give out completely I'm sure you'll have a lot of people still wanting to justify them.

There is a ton of value; I don't dispute that. The part that I dispute is that the entire process should be voluntary. Everything about the economy is based on volunteering in a mutually beneficial relationship. To do what you say means that it is a parasitic relationship, with one party benefiting at the expense of another. You're probably aware of the tragedy of the commons, which means that people take care of their own property better than they take care of someone else's. Give a plot of land private ownership, and the owner will maintain it; give a plot of land to the public, and it will be exploited. To give creative property to the masses, and not the owner, just asks for exploitation.[/quote]

...

I'm referring you back to the public domain link. Also, more regarding the commons, Lawrence Lessig [http://books.google.com/books?id=dWf-p2SkGQ8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=lawrence+lessig&hl=en&ei=H95WTeuIIIGClAfP6YnCBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false]. He's more or less why I don't believe you can devalue a resource such as digital goods. Read it if you want. I still find it funny how you seem to think that somehow, my copying a song is exploiting the author in a parasitic relationship but I'll wait on this one...

Yes we were better off, but at what expense? Authors in Europe weren't happy, and probably felt disincentivized to create. America was basically a parasite, profiting off the creative potential of the outside world. If American authors didn't come up with new ideas and instead took ideas from Europe, how does that increase the creative potential of society? If someone can rip someone off, they'll do it.

BS, I say [http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/08/drool-britannia-did-weak-copyright-laws-help-germany-outpace-the-united-kingdom.ars]. Same problem occurs, if the book is too expensive to import, I find another source that's cheaper. Germany took advantage of it, so did the US back in the say. The result is a plethora of books that are quickly divulged unlike London in the 1700s.

But there are other concerns to be vetted. Even if we expand the discussion beyond Germany, it appears that we're really talking about world copyright policy versus London and its immediate environs. True enough, with the Statute of Anne in cement by the 1770s, "the general practice [among London booksellers] was to publish new books in low volumes and at high prices," historian Starr notes. "The trade was still able to restrain price-cutting."

Sound familiar? Remember when I talked about pdfs costing more than a hardcover book? Same problem, where people WILL find the cheaper solution. If the price is fair to the consumer, then they buy. If not, they go elsewhere. Basic economics says that the net result of piracy is the fact that digital software is not an agreed upon price. Unless you can control the market (*hint* 90s Microsoft) you need to find ways to make people love you (*hint pirated Adobe) Sometimes, the results are more brand loyalty which pay off in the long run.

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.

What's almost as bad as communism is democracy (mob rule). Instead of the government making it okay to do whatever egregious deed, all it takes is 51% of the population to agree, and it's done. If you can get 51% of the population to take away the rights of a group of people, it's done. To say the creator has no property, or if you justify someone else taking ownership away without consent is saying that mob rule should decide on how a person distributes their creation. Basically it says throw it to the mob and have them handle it. Instead of the creator going into a mutually beneficial relationship with their buyers, the balance of power shifts in favor of the mob.[/quote]

Communism is all about enforcing "fair share" to everyone at the point of the gun. It's also about one group superior since they're holding the gun. This still isn't relevant to our discussion about copyright laws.

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.

When you justify piracy, you are justifying the imposing of someone's will onto another. Free distribution and torrent sites are fantastic tools for people to get their stuff our for free. That is a distribution method widely used by many people, and it works well for them. Pirates however are the third party that takes someone's property and puts it on those distribution networks without consent. If the pirates cause someone harm in that manner, it's a bad thing; but even if the pirates cause benefit to someone, it's still a bad thing. The consequences of them doing something good is overridden by their first action of doing something bad: infringing on a person's right to own the result of their work. That is the moral issue here. I cannot force you to take a pill to save your life if you don't want it.[/quote]

Since I explained the moral issue/ property issue above, I'll only leave this one sentence.

You're absolutely right that artists have gone into different avenues of distribution and marketing, and yes they are successful, but that is not relevant to the debate here. Whether or not they succeed or fail has no consequence of a third party taking something that doesn't belong to them. In the end, anyone who desperately holds onto their creation will lose because of others who endorse other methods, but it isn't up to a pirate to manipulate a system they have no stake in. The companies will fail on their own; they don't need anyone's help.

Notice the ones that complain about piracy. Notice the ones failing. The ones that fail to take advantage of these things are usually the same ones that will point a blind finger at piracy instead of finding solutions. I love my old games, but they're not supported on the most recent systems. Nintendo no longer makes the SNES. NO ONE has brought Dragon Force (Sega Saturn) to the PC... Emulators are legal. Yet Roms are not...

Point is, there's more to the Piracy theme than someone putting out something for nothing. Usually, it has other things behind it.

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?

Well obviously if they are creating their own unique work then copyright won't be a problem for them. And if they allow people access to that work, they don't have to worry about copyright going against others from their side. I'll agree that some copyright laws can indeed be scaled back, because special interests have usurped the government, but to say pieces are broken, and therefore we should do away with copyright law, is like saying you don't like the speed limit so we have to do away with all traffic laws. Pick what specific aspects of the law you don't like, and begin there, don't take the easy route and just disqualify all copyright laws because a few aspects are negative. Do the ground work. Know what you're against.[/quote]

I thought I quoted statutory damages along with the lack of exceptions...?

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.

Does a digital copy of a story make it any less yours than a book? I don't think so. the only difference I see between digital and physical items is that digital things can be copied over and over, which creates only one problem that physical copies do not have, and that is the ease of distribution. The song you buy, whether from a CD or direct download, you can modify. Once it is distributed the game changes. Like I explained before, distribution rests with the owner, because they stand to gain or lose from their creation, the stakes are on them, and so should the responsibility.

Er... If I have a book of Tale of Two Cities and a friend wants to see it, I'm not going to go and ask Charles Dickens for permission, nor his estate. Same thing if we are both playing Starcraft with one copy. Finally, if I have music, I'm not paying them a quarter because 3 extra people heard it instead of me. The devil is in the details of how the owner wants to limit what I do with media. Whether these rules apply to these small examples or me making a pdf of a book and posting online, it's a decision that people make. All people can do is use it wisely.

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.

1. Let me make it clear that I don't think piracy is doing nearly as much monetary harm as others say it is. It can even be good.

2. If Hollywood and the music industry are failing because they are forcing fans out, they will fail on their own, not because that copyright itself is bad, but because they are using copyright law badly.

3. If pirates do increase revenue, then pirating Hollywood movies and music is only keeping the juggernaut alive, therefore increasing the problem.

4. What harm pirates do is to the individual creator's rights by taking away ownership control, even if it is for their benefit.

1) true. 2) It keeps getting worse... 3) Mmmm... Look at what I posted about blocking Google TV... 4) And yet... You're not showing #4... If anything, #4 is more a myth if artists are using other means to gain fanhood, readers, and devotees... I've been saying that it's a paradigm shift. What you're watching is the last dying breath of those imposing copyright laws for control. More and more, I believe you'll hear artists listening to their fan base more than the major labels. Link [http://torrentfreak.com/why-most-artists-profit-from-piracy/]

In conclusion we could say that music is more alive than ever before, that piracy is a tool to build a fanbase, and that the times when the music industry could dictate what we were listening to are over.

And that?s a good thing?

Regardless, has greater governmental enforcement actually caused piracy to go down, or increase?

Do copyright laws themselves cause the problem, or do organizations who abuse copyright cause the problems? If you take copyright law out of the equation vs. taking the organizations out of the equation, you'll get pretty clear answers. If copyright were personal protection for personal property, and you could modify its use to however you want (like a creative commons), there would be far less abuses of the law.

If copyright were allowed to expire, there wouldn't be a problem. But by the time you get through that mess, your idea is probably out of date.

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.

Which people? The creators or the consumers? The creators have freedom, and they should have freedom, because it is the result of their labor. The consumers also have freedom, except when it infringes on the freedom of the creator. The line that gets drawn is drawn by the creator, and if the rules are too strict, consumers will go someplace else. The government and special interests try to move that line just the same way the pirates do. The government limits the freedom of the consumer, and the pirate limits the freedom of the creator. The best answer is to have neither government oppression nor pirate subversion.

Odd wording... That seems closely thin to a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" considering what people do anyway.

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*)

I agree with you wholeheartedly here (except for the 5 year thing, I think creators should decide). Government exacerbating an already charged situation isn't helping, and I think it's overstepping the government's grounds. Ideally the government should provide a court building to allow others to settle disputes and not distribute the law with an iron fist.

But like I said further up the page, there are aspects of the copyright law that do not work, and you haven't identified those. You've just painted copyright with a wide brush. The specifics you've given have dealt with particular abuses of the law, but that is the result of confirmation bias. You haven't identified the things that work, and yes there are plenty of things that work. It's no different than the people who write off capitalism because there are one or two things (they think) don't work, when they don't entirely understand the system.

*ahem*

BS on confirmation bias. The DMCA is pretty egregious since it shifted most of the copyright infringement onto consumers for the first time in copyright's history. It shifted the fair use claim to one that says "follow the law or be punished for $150,000" and if your IP comes up on a site, expect to be identified for no other reason than someone's payroll is affected. Link [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Title_II:_Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act]

There's a lot of examples of bad laws. Inducement was pretty bad for filesharing networks, but that's a Supreme Court Decision that still haunts the filesharing world.

Anyway, anticircumvention of your legally owned machine is one problem. It's what has Sony suing Hotlinkz or whatever his name is.

The statutory damages is another huge problem. The DMCA takedown notice that hits suddenly for no other reason than Youtube's ID system, without you having a say is plain annoying. It's actually kept me from posting content on Youtube because of their three strikes policy which is really, REALLY bad when someone has their own posted content. Think about this, I post content of a concert that I went to. Yet, if the artists didn't want it on there and puts in a DMCA takedown notice, it takes down all of my "infringing" work. I went to a concert with my friends, to listen to their music. Yet, it has occurred that people have lost their account because of Youtube's three strikes laws. It's why I am not in favor of authors having more control than creators, as you seem to favor. In certain respects it puts on a pedastal the author as if they're sancrosanct. We're not. We mess up too and have to pass or fail on our own merits, same as any other industry.

DRM - The most asstastic way to screw over people, which I'm glad that more people found reasons to pop that thing like a zit...

Effects of DMCA - We now have less research because of patent law. Congress and the Executive Branch believe all the money is in enforcing copyright. We have legacy businesses impeding on the new innovators and how business is being done to promote their old business models as the best.

It's an innovator's dilemma more or less:

The list goes on and on with copyright being used as a way to control the newest works out there. It not only affects how we get products, it affects newer goods. I don't rail because of confirmation bias. I've watched for 10 years as copyright is used more and more as a cudgel for legal extortion. Individual artists should have choice but all of the good points of getting your name out far exceed any moral imperative to "control your work".

 

[Event_Horizon]

Permission culture does NOT lead to financial success

Any time someone uses a single word to describe our culture, I can only think of how they simplistically generalize everyone and everything. You haven't even defined what a permission culture is, so I have very little motivation to take that claim seriously.

The three members of the Crimson Echoes team weren't trying to be successful.

Did they own the Chrono series? No.

Square decided to force them to cancel their project because they were planning on releasing later games, namely Chrono Trigger for the DS. A really bad sequel can ruin a franchise, and if they had made the game horrendously bad, or changed the cannon, the least of Square's problems would have been possible problems with brand recognition, and at worst the re-release would have failed completely. Are those scenarios likely? Probably not, but it wasn't up to the Crimson Echo's team to decide.

Did this hurt Square's sales on a game that they have yet to update (in this case Chrono Cross)

Who knows. There are no data to support either side, so your question is at best rhetorical.

Did their copyright infringement need to be litigated away?

Depends if the cease and desist letter didn?t work. If the team continued anyways, then yes litigation was the only outcome.

It was far easier to just destroy their work, posting it on Youtube to show what could have been.

It wasn't really their work, was it? They didn't make the sprites, or program the code much. They didn't make the original game, or come up with the original concept. They had no stake in the success or failure of the Chrono series, but Square did. It seems the only thing the Crimson Echoes team did was take the work of someone else and do whatever they wanted to with it. Granted they had good intentions, but regardless, they basically stole and used someone's property without permission for their own success.

Those are far better questions of an author destroying lives by a long legal court battle over economics.

But pirates can just as easily destroy the lives of the author, writer, musician, and movie crew. You say you don't want power in one person, but the alternative is to have the majority overpower the minority. So what is the solution? The best answer is a society where nobody has power over anyone; that everyone can live freely by their wish, as long as it doesn?t hurt others. If you agree with that statement, then you disagree with your own argument, because pirates prevent creators from living freely. Deciding to keep my work to myself does not hurt anyone at all. I do no harm to them. Opening my work to the world can benefit people, but there is a difference between harming someone, and not benefitting them. The former is negative force, the latter is neutral.

If I had to ask permission to use either orcs, it would truly cause the numbers of books on the subject to decrease considerably.

Or, you could create your own concept and add to the pool of knowledge. How are you making a new idea when you take the ideas of others? Your stance appears hypocritical: you say you want to use the ideas of others to enrich society, but you don't actually come up with any new ideas to enrich society.

Rebuttal

Notch's personal opinion is not a real good rebuttal?

I rail against copyright being used as a hammer with the consumer being the anvil

So you blame the hammer, and not the person driving the hammer.

the enforcement angle is like fighting terrorism...

And how does copyright law actually enforce anything? Copyright law is a concept, and it's not a physical person. The things you really don't like are people using copyright law to their fullest extent, yet you don't address that. You should be blaming the arm for swinging the hammer, as the hammer itself is just a hammer, and cannot swing on its own. How about you blame the government who created the corporations? How about you blame the government for making special copyright laws for them? Well, in a small way I guess you have, but yet within your minute and specific condemnation of those institutions you throw out the principle of copyright law with them. It would be the same as disregarding all traffic laws because there are laws that the government enforces too harshly.

It takes more time to take down the greedy people than it does to watch others

That is simply an excuse used as a justification. The energy and time it takes to "catch" a pirate has no bearing on piracy's legitimacy.

Give them less of a reason and they'll buy from you.

I don't know how many times I have to say it until it sinks in, but I'll say it again. It doesn?t matter. It makes no difference on a person's personal choice how to be successful with their creation. You keep showing me alternative business models and calling it evidence, when everything you've said about business models has nothing to do whatsoever with the ethics of pirating. You've put so much energy into this non sequitur. You legitimize the power of the pirates to manipulate anything that's created instead of allowing the person that actually creates it to control their own livelihood. Pirates have no stake in the success or failure, so they should get no say in the process. Creators should never be in competition with themselves, and pirates cause that conflict of interest.

1 - If all the "sue em all" lawsuits have proven, creator confidence in something not being pirated is a false incentive.

Not at all. Creator confidence also has to do with fears of theft, not just piracy. Suing someone has no basis on their confidence if the creator thinks the accused broke the law. And let's be honest here, it's not the creators doing the suing, it's the publisher/movie studio/record label. Creators need to know that they will be protected if someone tries to plagiarize or profit off their work without supporting them, and copyright provides that protection. Copyright allows the creator to directly control their success and it therefore establishes the means for them to earn their livelihood.

2 - ... Have we not discussed the litigation route being incredibly flawed

And yet you try to connect it with copyright law. The law is simply a tool for people to use. If you don't like how people use the law, then make an argument that the people are wrong, or that the tool is too powerful. As it stands, you reject the tool outright. It's a very simplistic position you hold.

Once it's distributed, you can find other ways to make money flow.

And if I break you leg, there are plenty of other ways to get around. Like I said, that is a non sequitur. The choices a creator has are independent of the ethics of pirating. The issue here is that pirates take away choice, imposing their will on the creator's fundamental human rights, so therefore piracy is wrong. It also causes a conflict of interest in which the creator must compete with their own creation and not just the creations of others.

If Shakespeare is supposedly not relevant, yet Beowulf is, there's an issue.

It's not that Shakespeare isn't relevant, it's that the argument you use with Shakespeare as an example is simply wrong. Had someone changed Shakespeare's writing over the course of time, it would be less valued because of the editions. The same argument can be applied to Beowulf. Looking back at the Epic of Gilgamesh, the reason why it is so prized is because it has remained intact and uncorrupt for so long. Do you think the world's oldest story would be so valuable if it had been changed along the way? To some people it would be a problem. If one wanted to chronicle life in the 1920's in an element of fiction, don?t you think they have the right to prevent people from making spinoffs or sequels decades, even centuries into the future in order to keep their work pure and uncorrupted by cultural revisionism? Perhaps they wanted to have their work untouched by subsequent authors because their characters were members of their own family, or the plot was based on their own life's events. To say they cannot have their right because it benefits society means that you are sacrificing the rights of one for the good of many. The way to innovate past this is to allow other creators to make their own work. As long as others are still allowed to create new ideas, progress will not be stifled.

Beowulf was about adding to the story and putting your own parts to the epic tale of a warrior king.

That is simply not correct. The story could have been derived from many works, but the completed manuscript has remained unedited over the years, and that is partially the reason why it is so valued.

Yet, with every link, I show artists that see it in different ways.

Yet that doesn?t make your point valid. Also what proportion are these artists compared to the whole? I can link you to "scientists" who think Jesus rode a velociraptor, yet they are a tiny minority. Just because you can link to a handful of artists doesn?t mean the majority take that route. It doesn?t matter what route the artists choose or how many choose it because my point is that it should only be their choice. Only the artist should get to choose to give away their stuff for free. The pirate shouldn't.

And, after finding out the reasons to gain from copyright such as the Performance Rights Organizations, the Copyright Boards, the mechanical rights accrued, and all the ways that copyright is used to nickel and dime artists and consumer alike, it's a bloated thing that needs a massive overhaul from the monster it is today.

And that I can agree with you. My argument has only been on the principals of copyright, in that it gives protection and freedom to the creator. Now how much protection that amounts to is certainly up for debate, but you don't seem interested in even entertaining the ideas of copyright's benefits. That is a very simplistic perspective.

The moral issue comes down to fundamentals of liberty and human rights. I bring those up because it turns the somewhat moral gray area of piracy into a specific answer: that it is wrong. The freedom to distribute rests with the person who seeks to gain from their work and risks to lose from their work. The pirate is not entitled to that right because they did not create it and have no stake in success, but not only that, the pirate also takes that right away from the original creator by force.

If one person didn't do it, someone else would.

That is hardly a good justification.

I fail to see how a dissonance in values = less opportunities for an author that takes advantage of it.

It's not that pirates have bad values. When one talks about ethics, they don't talk about the content of the person's character, but the specifics of their actions. A bad person can do something good, and something good can be harmful. As I said before, we live in a free society that protects the rights of individuals. People who create something own it, and they have the freedom to release it as they please. Pirates who take work and submit it to torrent sites or release it to the internet break that freedom by choosing for someone else without their consent. What you call permission culture is actually human rights. Outside of my own choices I cannot force someone to do something they don't want, no matter how harmful, beneficial, or mundane. That is the basic ethical principal of the free world. Pirates who distribute work break that principal, so the ethics of their actions are clear.

Copyright laws are NOT personal property protection.

Okay, I concede that. But they are privileges under the law for a creator, and therefore owner of the work to secure their livelihood through any method of distribution they choose. As I said, because the creator of something owns it as property, and because their livelihood depends on their ability to profit from it, such rights of distribution are solely given to them. Anyone who distributes the author's work without their consent is infringing on their ability to secure their own livelihood.

I'm strong on consumer choice in how they obtain their media.

Consumers get to use the things they buy however they want, except for distribution, because that impacts the creator?s wellbeing. The consumer doesn?t profit from distribution anyways, so there is no financial justification for them doing it. To put the consumer's freedom above the freedom of the creator means you are giving control to the masses, which can cause undesirable effects on the creator.

I don't want to limit the technology because someone else decries its bad.

I never said the technology was bad. Torrents are just tools. It only becomes a problem when media is shared without direction of the creator. If the creator decides to release it on a torrent site for free, then there is no problem.

But decrying that somehow, the author needs to be protected from me and what I want to do is ridiculous.

If you were the author, you would be protected too. The only time you get to apply the law however you see fit is when you're in the position to where the law protects you. You want to allow freedom, great, you want to own everything about your creation, you can. Others cannot override your decision, and the law grants you protection from that.

[The Founders] had words:

Their words only talked about ideas; copyright doesn't apply to ideas.

I'm actually showing that artists don't necessarily need it in the manner currently being used.

Of course they don't specifically *need* to go down those routes, but anyone can choose them. What we have is a problem of choice here: pirates usurp the choice of creators.

Same problem occurs, if the book is too expensive to import, I find another source that's cheaper.

It's important to remember the extent of mercantilism in England at the time. It seems the problem wasn't the ideas that were restrained, but the monopolies and business cartels that kept the prices up. The difference between the past and our current state is that those books were reduced to a cheaper price not given away for free, and it is not known what kind of privileges the creator had in distributing their work. Now we can distribute information without restraint of businesses, where as it was a problem at the time. The current problem is that the decision to distribute is not being kept with the creator, but by a third party. But I ask you this, do you know how many new works were being created in the other countries at the time? The figures I read dealt with the number of books, not the content of said books. How do you know any new ideas were being spread at all? You?re also taking a LOT for granted here.

Er... If I have a book of Tale of Two Cities and a friend wants to see it, I'm not going to go and ask Charles Dickens for permission, nor his estate.

Copyright doesn't address that, so you don't have a problem there. If you were to copy the pages and send it to him over the internet instead of mailing him the book then it would technically be a problem. Understand what copyright doesn't protect: ideas, resale, personal modification, etc. Copyright protects the right to copy. Huh, now I wonder where they got the name from?

Whether these rules apply to these small examples or me making a pdf of a book and posting online, it's a decision that people make. All people can do is use it wisely.

This goes back to the tragedy of the commons. People are unwilling to take care of someone else's property as well as they take care of their own. Someone will be much more selective of how they distribute their own work as opposed to someone else's work.

Individual artists should have choice but all of the good points of getting your name out far exceed any moral imperative to "control your work".

And that should be left up to the artist, not a third party.

Aspects of the free market can do the job that pirates do and do it in an ethical manner. Creators who innovate and keep their works open will do better than creators who restrict and keep their works closed. The problem with pirates is that they usurp the principles of the free market and manipulate the system they have no stake in. I have to refine my definition a little further. People who take things that are already online are defined as pirates, but I think they are just a symptom of the market, and I would probably call them "prospectors". If someone goes into a deli, takes a plate of sandwiches, and gives them out in the park, the people who take those sandwiches I see as not (entirely) ethically responsible. If they are told the sandwiches are stolen, they can opt out, or they can take the free meal. The real "pirates" are the ones I see who distribute the works in the first place, and the statement that "if A doesn't do it, B through Z will" is not justification. Regardless of how many would do it, it is still wrong.

The degree of the creator's defense against the pirates can be discussed, and you?re right that the most violent and oppressive defenses are violating rights on their own. But note that these are defenses, and they would not occur in a voluntary economic system. Competition does not get taken to court if that competition makes a better product. Pirates however cause competition within the same product. If I make A, and my competitor makes B (something similar to A), the two things can compete in the open market. However if I make A, and a pirate takes A, and 'sells' it for free, I am now competing with my own creation. That causes a conflict of interest in the creative process, since a creator is forced against their will to compete against themselves. Not only that, but the pirate fixes the price without the creator's permission. The pirate violates almost every aspect of the voluntary economic system in which agreements are made between two or more willing parties. The pirate makes their decision without acknowledging the will of the creative party, and that is wrong regardless of their means, regardless of their motive, and regardless of the outcome. It is wrong not just on a moral issue because it tramples on human rights, but it is also wrong as an economic issue because an outside party is manipulating a completely voluntary economic system without anyone actually volunteering.

In regards to my assertion of confirmation bias, I think it holds a kernel of truth. All the links you've sent me (not very objective sources mind you) have spun the issue one way. I have not seen an objective analysis in your responses. It doesn?t matter how many years you?ve looked at cases of copyright abuse; if you cannot pick costs and benefits of the system as individual aspects, and prefer to simply dismiss the system altogether, then it shows me that you are simplistically absolute in your judgment.