"Intellectual Property" Law

[SkylerOcon]

Try syncing the intro to your Bowser Combo video to the latest Kanye West song, and watch it get taken down according to the DMCA. This is absurd. Nobody is saying "Boy, I heard the first 10 seconds of that song on YouTube, now I no longer need to purchase Kanye's new album". All this accomplishes is to stifle the creativity of an entire generation of artists, criminalize them, and give them a reason to start ripping you off for real.

Not to mention Fair Use which gives you full and complete permission to use a song for up to 30 seconds so long as you give permission. Taking down that video (I know this situation is entirely hypothetical, but a similar situation has probably happened) is actually a violation of copyright law on part of Youtube and the copyright holders!

 

[AltF4]

Yeah that's happening a lot now buzz
Google realized how much money they would save if they let people put music in their videos XD

To Alt: For clarification, the business model you proposed would make something like limewire have to buy a license, right?

It's one possible solution. But yes, you could paraphrase it very broadly like that. Some flat fee, which is not unreasonable. This was proven to work for radio stations, and I see no reason to believe it wouldn't again now.

Not to mention Fair Use which gives you full and complete permission to use a song for up to 30 seconds so long as you give permission. Taking down that video (I know this situation is entirely hypothetical, but a similar situation has probably happened) is actually a violation of copyright law on part of Youtube and the copyright holders!

There is no numeric threshhold for Fair Use. You can be successfully sued for copyright infringement for using even a single second of copyrighted material.

Fair Use in the US has four factors that are used to determine whether something is or is not Fair. They are:

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.

All four factors are taken into account, but not all criteria have to be met. Each case is reviewed individually in an intentionally vague method.

Some cases have been infringement despite only using a few seconds of copyrighted work. (Hip Hop "Sampling", which was made illegal.) Some cases are illegal despite begin for educational purposes. (The MPAA is suing middle schools now for showing movies to classes.) It all just depends.

Which is why an automated system like YouTube's automatic video take-down service is terrible. It tramples on Fair Use, eliminating due process in favor of presumed guilt.

 

[SkylerOcon]

Oh, really? My teacher had wrong information, then.

Anyway, a law so vague shouldn't exist. There needs to be a clear cut as line as possible. Just another reason for copyright reform.

 

[AltF4]

Well, I wouldn't be so quick to say THAT. Vagueness in laws often exist on purpose. To allow common sense to be applied. Sometimes when you create a hard clear cut line you can make loopholes. Something might clearly (to any reasonable human being) be a Fair Use, but is technically illegal. Or allow someone to improperly use copyrighted work, where it's technically legal.

Leaving some room for judges to make decisions on an individual basis is perfectly acceptable.

The problem is the machines enforcing Fair Use. Google's auto-DMCA takedown software is far from being an impartial judge that uses common sense. But there are so many YouTube videos that Google's software becomes the "De Facto Judge, Jury, and Executioner" of online content. There isn't even any human oversight.

 

[RDK]

One of my smash videos was flagged for copyright violation. XD

That wasn't for using a Kanye West song, it was for uploading an M2K match and passing it off as your own.

 

[Hive]

Sorry I haven't responded to you guys in a few days, I was actually out of town for awhile and unable to.
And Alt4 you don't have to explain them to me, I actually am quite familiar with the terms. ^^

Okay, first off let me say, yes the 21st century is very different. You spend a lot of time saying how the music industry shouldn't have copyright protection though. But, I actually agree with this point and am not contesting it. Why? For two reasons really.... the first is that its highly accessible and available to the internet (let's face it, who hasn't honestly pirated music??), and secondly its a low investment industry (songs don't cost a lot of money to produce quality). No matter how many songs we rip off the internet, the music industry will not degrade, or produce lesser quality etc... since it is so easy to make. Also, music is essentially a limited industry... honestly there's only so many different <good> beats you can use to create original work.

However, I disagree that revoking copyrights should be applied to the movie industry. Movies are gaining accessibility and better resolution through the internet more and more over time, and though the reasoning to lift copyright protection in that way seems similar, however, its unfair to compare it to the same standards as the music industry I think. This is because with films, basically,the cost of production of movies is much higher. This means that in order to make profit from a movie the developers will need match those millions of dollars in production costs (Unlike music, whose costs are easy to eliminate). This means essentially that if piracy is able to flourish enough (though not at that point yet) it will be impossible for people to produce films of the same quality because people aren't going to spend millions of dollars to make a film for the public's benefit (or that receives high net losses).

Its true that it would be exceedingly accessible to people and it wouldn't be possible to really stop it ever (I'm not even saying not to get films from the net either), but in this case I believe the individual self interest's of people are actually harmful to the aggregate interest of the people because it does tangible harm to the quality of the movie (and to the producers and suppliers). Therefore I believe film makers should retain copyrights, not to end piracy lol, but just to be able to profit from their own hard work (i think its important to keep movies as a profitable industry that can benefit from increased demand).

The worst part though is that even if the film/industry does well and has the potential to be profitable with piracy (without copyright laws- both individual and corporate piracy...), there is absolutely no way you can make sure the profits go to the person who made it. If film isn't protected other corporations could just take films and market it for themselves. And they will, trust me. The film makers would essentially have to have their own publishing and distribution company/rights for security. Lifting the protections would actually promote piracy rather then just get rid of obstacles to it, there would be no reason corporations wouldn't take and sell profitable material they gain for free. It would become a financial risk to the producer/writer if this happened.

It really is interesting to me though how many people can see the logic in trademark/patents but can't see how extending similar rights to protect against unfair competition to intellectual works in tangible mediums is just as crucial.

Economically its unsound too, lifting copyright protections takes away the demand supply relationship between the products. Especially as piracy completely destroys the observable demand for the products, prices for the movies/theaters will have to spiral down as a result. Theaters would be affected, movies would be affected, producers would be affected, distributors, etc... Basically this will not just kill producers, but everyone who helps the film companies, even co. you wouldn't expect (bookstores, video game stores as well if they aren't extended to those). The results would be very harmful on the aggregate economy, employment, etc... It would actually be pretty catastrophic if done suddenly.

Its essentially a cost benefit analysis imo

and I'm NOT saying their aren't flaws to allowing these copyright laws. there are. But I think the benefits to it outweigh the flaws by a significant amount.

(I mean, imagine if profits for the video game industry became near nonexistant bc of piracy? Sure we get free video games, but if these video games are all "Hannah Montana: The Movie"....l)

This means that they will be able to sue extreme offenders for money in order to be able to make profits and deliver product quality. Will company's go haywire and sue every minor infraction? No, they will not. And I think people overaggerate this point way too much. Why? Resources. Its the same reason these industries can't today (its not because they are trying to intimidate a few people to try to make everyone stop pirating ^^). In order to effectively litigate, the industry needs first of all enough attorneys, time, evidence, money (for attorney fees (which are very large) and other court costs), etc... Even if they have a successful claim corporations can only gain variable amounts of money depending on the magnitude of the crime (I use corporation bc they are legal entities unlike proprietorships, partnerships <yuck> and other business types). Basically the money, time, etc.. you need to sue someone for these infractions is so high (and carries such a risk if they lose) that they really only can go against the most extreme/outrageous offenders. People who steal one/two songs aren't going to get sued, almost certainly. It would cost more to sue them then to leave it alone. Even if they could sue every little offense they could get in trouble for malicious prosecution imo. So the problem is over feared imo. (also copyrighted videos on common websites many times are put intentionally by the author to have people look at/download, etc...risk it being contributory or assumed risk)

Basically I think its reasonable that movie maker's should be able to retain copyright then to prosecute extreme offenders, the point of course won't be to end piracy (that's impossible), the point is to make profit and therefore enabling them to keep making the movies we love (and video games). And don't argue that the movie industry can survive on low balance... what you are referring to is those artys/human drama videos which basically suck. Hive wants her scifi/fantasy films!

 

[blazedaces]

Sorry I haven't responded to you guys in a few days, I was actually out of town for awhile and unable to.
And RDK you don't have to explain them to me, I actually am quite familiar with the terms. ^^

Okay, first off let me say, yes the 21st century is very different. You spend a lot of time saying how the music industry shouldn't have copyright protection though. But, I actually agree with this point and am not contesting it. Why? For two reasons really.... the first is that its highly accessible and available to the internet (let's face it, who hasn't honestly pirated music??), and secondly its a low investment industry (songs don't cost a lot of money to produce quality). No matter how many songs we rip off the internet, the music industry will not degrade, or produce lesser quality etc... since it is so easy to make. Also, music is essentially a limited industry... honestly there's only so many different <good> beats you can use to create original work.

First of all, no one here is suggesting copyright be abolished entirely, only changed (or a better word would be updated) in a lot of ways. And just because music has been probably pirated more then movies, doesn't mean it's not highly accessible to many. Where's the evidence to support this conjecture that the industry won't degrade? I'm not saying it's not true, but you're just speculating here.

However, I disagree that revoking copyrights should be applied to the movie industry. Movies are gaining accessibility and better resolution through the internet more and more over time, and though the reasoning to lift copyright protection in that way seems similar, however, its unfair to compare it to the same standards as the music industry I think. This is because with films, basically,the cost of production of movies is much higher. This means that in order to make profit from a movie the developers will need match those millions of dollars in production costs (Unlike music, whose costs are easy to eliminate). This means essentially that if piracy is able to flourish enough (though not at that point yet) it will be impossible for people to produce films of the same quality because people aren't going to spend millions of dollars to make a film for the public's benefit (or that receives high net losses).

Studies like this one show the movie industry is increasing it's sales/profits and we all know as technology gets better piracy is increasing as well. Unless you have evidence that shows your statement to be fact, you can't just speculate and make assumptions. You say "if piracy is able to flourish enough" as if it's not ridiculously rampant already. The movie industry makes plenty of money!

And who exactly cares if it doesn't? So the world won't have drug-addicted, scientology obsessed movie stars? So we won't have billion dollar blockbuster hits? Who amongst this group is not going to be a billionaire or millionaire anymore that we should really be concerned about?

AltF4 gave this example earlier. A while ago, before refrigerators were in every household many more stores sold ice (since some stores still do today). It was a thriving industry since quite a lot of demand for ice existed. Then new technology came along and provided a refrigerator to nearly every household. Now ice was free and so the demand for ice bought outside diminished. Did the people who sold ice start suing every household because they were no longer making money? Or did they find new jobs?!

People not making money IS NOT AN ARGUMENT FOR COPYRIGHT! You might as well try to argue with me that alternative energy sources that would stop us from needing oil anymore would be bad because oil companies all over the world would stop making trillions each year! Do you realize how stupid this sounds?! The purpose of copyright has never been and will never be to provide some people with more money (even though that's how the owners of a lot of copyright would have you think). The purpose was originally and should be to encourage creativity.

Again, I'm not promoting the idea that copyright should be abolished entirely. I just think it's current reach is ridiculous. The system is horrible and completely corrupt. Copyright should stop being automatic, it should be registered. It shouldn't exist for 95 years after an authors death, this is ridiculous. It shouldn't hinder creativity like it's doing. There's no reason to take down videos off of youtube with small movie clips or little bits of sound in the background to a song. I could go on and on about how the current system completely fails. But this thread has explained that many, many times.

Further more, a solution to "piracy" is to legalize it using proposed solutions, of which there are plenty. One of which was explained on this page or perhaps the one before it, in the same manner that radio stations are legal.

Its true that it would be exceedingly accessible to people and it wouldn't be possible to really stop it ever (I'm not even saying not to get films from the net either), but in this case I believe the individual self interest's of people are actually harmful to the aggregate interest of the people because it does tangible harm to the quality of the movie (and to the producers and suppliers). Therefore I believe film makers should retain copyrights, not to end piracy lol, but just to be able to profit from their own hard work (i think its important to keep movies as a profitable industry that can benefit from increased demand).

Why? Provide evidence on any of your conjectures and conclusion. These same arguments were used when video tapes, dvd's, and movie rentals came out. They didn't apply then and they don't apply now. If piracy was made legal through a reasonable system (that is, if this society would stop criminalizing every child practically in the world) plenty more artists would have made more money by now. The war on piracy is an absolute failure.

The worst part though is that even if the film/industry does well and has the potential to be profitable with piracy (without copyright laws- both individual and corporate piracy...), there is absolutely no way you can make sure the profits go to the person who made it. If film isn't protected other corporations could just take films and market it for themselves. And they will, trust me. The film makers would essentially have to have their own publishing and distribution company/rights for security. Lifting the protections would actually promote piracy rather then just get rid of obstacles to it, there would be no reason corporations wouldn't take and sell profitable material they gain for free. It would become a financial risk to the producer/writer if this happened.

E-v-i-d-e-n-c-e
Why in the world is there "absolutely no way you can make sure the profits go to the person who made it"? And who exactly are we talking about here when you say "made it"? The writer of the script? The producer who puts up the cost of production? The actors?

And who in the world was arguing that abolishing copyright would reduce piracy?!

It really is interesting to me though how many people can see the logic in trademark/patents but can't see how extending similar rights to protect against unfair competition to intellectual works in tangible mediums is just as crucial.

Don't even get me started on patents. These concepts are riddled with stupidity. They do not help the world, they hurt it in so many ways.

Economically its unsound too, lifting copyright protections takes away the demand supply relationship between the products. Especially as piracy completely destroys the observable demand for the products, prices for the movies/theaters will have to spiral down as a result. Theaters would be affected, movies would be affected, producers would be affected, distributors, etc... Basically this will not just kill producers, but everyone who helps the film companies, even co. you wouldn't expect (bookstores, video game stores as well if they aren't extended to those). The results would be very harmful on the aggregate economy, employment, etc... It would actually be pretty catastrophic if done suddenly.

Are you living in some fantasy world where copyright actually slows down the amount of piracy being done today? If copyright were abolished tomorrow, the amount of movies/music/software downloaded would negligibly increase. No one out there cares what the law has to say about this subject. That's why your arguments have absolutely no merit. If you want to ask what would happen if piracy was rampant, ask what is happening right now.

Its essentially a cost benefit analysis imo

and I'm NOT saying their aren't flaws to allowing these copyright laws. there are. But I think the benefits to it outweigh the flaws by a significant amount.

Evidence. What benefits outweigh the costs exactly? By how much? Why does it have to be black and white? Why do we need to either have this horribly corrupt system or not? Why can't we just adjust it to remove some of the ridiculous costs?

(I mean, imagine if profits for the video game industry became near nonexistant bc of piracy? Sure we get free video games, but if these video games are all "Hannah Montana: The Movie"....l)

The video game industry is weird enough right now as it is. Much of the industry tries to make the best game in existence as opposed to the game that will make them the most money. It doesn't matter though, because piracy is not necessarily driving down any profit. Nor should this be an argument against piracy or for copyright. There are more important matters concerning the world than will EA sports make yet ANOTHER football game this year?

This means that they will be able to sue extreme offenders for money in order to be able to make profits and deliver product quality. Will company's go haywire and sue every minor infraction? No, they will not. And I think people overaggerate this point way too much. Why? Resources. Its the same reason these industries can't today (its not because they are trying to intimidate a few people to try to make everyone stop pirating ^^). In order to effectively litigate, the industry needs first of all enough attorneys, time, evidence, money (for attorney fees (which are very large) and other court costs), etc... Even if they have a successful claim corporations can only gain variable amounts of money depending on the magnitude of the crime (I use corporation bc they are legal entities unlike proprietorships, partnerships <yuck> and other business types). Basically the money, time, etc.. you need to sue someone for these infractions is so high (and carries such a risk if they lose) that they really only can go against the most extreme/outrageous offenders. People who steal one/two songs aren't going to get sued, almost certainly. It would cost more to sue them then to leave it alone. Even if they could sue every little offense they could get in trouble for malicious prosecution imo. So the problem is over feared imo. (also copyrighted videos on common websites many times are put intentionally by the author to have people look at/download, etc...risk it being contributory or assumed risk)

This is a joke, right? So many people have been sued that are not "extreme/outrageous offenders" (like this case against a deceased grandmother) Why don't you do research on this subject instead of speculating about what should happen? The problem is not at all over-feared. If anything the problem is under-feared.

Basically I think its reasonable that movie maker's should be able to retain copyright then to prosecute extreme offenders, the point of course won't be to end piracy (that's impossible), the point is to make profit and therefore enabling them to keep making the movies we love (and video games). And don't argue that the movie industry can survive on low balance... what you are referring to is those artys/human drama videos which basically suck. Hive wants her scifi/fantasy films!

First of all, the RIAA suing individuals doesn't give ANY money back to the artists who provided the any means of creating the film. Same thing goes for the MPAA for music. Plenty of profit can and is being made despite file-sharing being prevalent.

-blazed

 

[Hive]

There were a few things in your post that sounded a but ad hominem, I'm not sure if that was actually your intent though. ^^ Quite frankly, I know more about the subject then you think (probably more than most people here). That doesn't make what I'm saying right though of course, just you'd better not assume otherwise. Anyways, I will respond to your post, I'm not sure if I'll be able to respond back though (college reports )

I realize that you aren't trying to abolish copyright law as a whole, but its hard to tell specifically which parts are being addressed by you guys. And most of the things concerning these changes are directed at getting rid of (certain flaw here) but don't concern themselves with what costs would happen as a result of those actions. Politicians I think do this to try to avoid hard issues, for example they will say they will pay education x___ amount of money but not specify where it comes from, so I guess I need a little direction on what parts specifically are asked to be changed. So basically for the most part I'm just going to concern myself with the law as a whole, and leave it to the reader to pick out the relevant parts of my arguements.


There IS a reason why legislation against copyright protection to movies/authors/etc.. is not favored by the vast majority of economists. There are flaws and benefits to such an action of course, but the benefits far outweigh the flaws. Unfortunately I think the discussion so far has sort of been about highlighting certain key flaws or benefits to make points instead of considering the opportunity costs of each action.

Studies like this one show the movie industry is increasing it's sales/profits and we all know as technology gets better piracy is increasing as well. Unless you have evidence that shows your statement to be fact, you can't just speculate and make assumptions. You say "if piracy is able to flourish enough" as if it's not ridiculously rampant already. The movie industry makes plenty of money!

This seems at first glance to make sense, but it really isn't applicable to this discussion. Unfortunately this change could be explained by any number of irrelevant things (more good movies this year, aggregate moods, more demand, nominal increases, we don't even know if the movie profits are distributed fairly or polarized, or even from organic growth of the industries, or if the same amount of receivers of that money is the same (more receivers=less average), and more really). I'm not sure if you were actually trying to make the point that increased piracy actually contributed to this, or that it didn't harm the industry bc its still making money, but this is intellectually dishonest. It would be like saying that as schools increase and more people attend them, (and as school robberies increase) school robberies don't hurt schools. I think its fairly obvious that piracy hurts the movie industry. There is a direct relationship between stealing a movie and decreased demand for the industry. You get a movie online there is less of a chance you will buy it. And I really don't think its reasonable to say that somehow you having a movie effects other's demand, bc they are motivated more to buy movies, at least not to the extent that it will create more purchased movies than lost sales.

A major flaw in people's attacks on the movie industries ability to make profits I think is that people are representing them mentally by the top profit earners. Are producers/stars still making big money? Yea, probably. This doesn't show an industry is successful though. Look at the US today, the top earners in the countries wages have been going up steadily even during the recession while other industries are failing. US incomes have actually been stale for years, with statistical avg income earners seeing only 2.7% increase in wages since 1996, while if distributed equally this would have been a 30% increase with the avg. male income being over $11,000 more . ("One Pay Gap Shrinks, Another Grows" David Wessel). So increases in industries are highly misleading of the industry as a whole. What we need to be concerned about is the ability of the average and middle class film maker to be protected under law.
And if piracy is significant enough it will not only hurt these fields but the industries related to their success (which are a lot). Piracy has been increasing over the years (this isn't contested is it?) it makes sense that given enough time then if these increases remain constant that they would eventually hit a critical point. Its only really at critical points that you see things wrong in industries and that top profit earners in the industry get hurt (look at the housing industry, everyone thought it looked amazing before it died). Why? One reason because these top earners can afford more securities and if the industry does happen to go bad, its not like their income gets hit hard, what happens is that employees with low priority get fired to save profits for the higher ups. This doesn't mean it will definitely happen, its speculation. I believe that given enough time the self interests of individuals will start to hurt profit and employment in the movie and game industries as they increase, which will hurt quality, which really will end up hurting what the consumers want out of games and movies (and so self interest has harmed the aggregate interest). But really anything we say about the future of the industry isn't set in stone. This isn't my main arguement against anti-copyright legislation though, but I guess I sort of made it seem that way bc I spent so much time on it.

My real concern for the industry involves what would happen if such laws were removed, so far our analysis has been based around pretending that the problems with the industry would pretty much remain constant and wouldn't introduce new problems by removing them. I disagree with this. Yes companies suing for infringement does suck. I admit it. That doesn't mean I don't think the fears of it are way overrated, but it is lame. This is undone however by the loss of rights if these protections are lifted I think. Corporations, and businesses really will use the loss of ownership rights to the material to do any number of completely horrific things: taking movies/books, etc.. they think are profitable and selling them to make money for themselves. Bigger corp. could afford to market them cheaper too and to wider audiences then the people who give the proceeds to the actual movie makers. Businesses could intentionally make "similar" products to leech off of the maker's sales. I don't need evidence to show that this will happen, it already happens, or attempts to happen even with the laws. There is no doubt in my mind corp. would do this. Because the author/producer will always have the threat that if he makes a good product it will be stolen and marketed better by businesses, etc.. Making these things will become a financial risk, i.e. there would a significant threat of the profits of a product that took lots of money to make going to someone completely else. This was shown historically before the laws were applied/solidified, and it will certainly happen today if such laws are removed. Its actually worse then I lead on here, because actually this will open the gateway for corporations to monopolize industries by quickly taking over new products of competitors and outselling them, destroying their profit base. Even if the product isn't that worthwhile there is a huge threat of theft not to make profits but to kill off competition. Copyright protections allow new inventors/authors/etc... to really get into these fields. without them they would be outmarketed unfairly by larger companies. Hopefully this seemed solid enough, I can't really go through my macro/and law books right now to elongate my post to show that it is true.

So here's the tradeoff, because it IS a tradeoff, no one side has all the answers.
Less litigation by companies, and more individual taking of ideas/movies.
Or More Corporate piracy, unfair competition, and no author/producer protections?
Its seems obvious that the threat of missing many of these protections (to me at least) is a much worse threat than the perceived problems we have today.

(also the grandma thing is pretty stupid, but its more of an appeal to the people than an actual arguement against me. She distributed nearly a thousand songs to people, etc.. Its lame that she is a grandma, etc... but she was a major distributor like I said. Its only because the case allowed enough compensatory damages that the people thought they had a good shot of getting and which would outweigh the attorney fees. The vast amount of cases though will not be directed at low offenders in these industries imo).

 

[AltF4]

There IS a reason why legislation against copyright protection to movies/authors/etc.. is not favored by the vast majority of economists.

Unsupported claim #1

There are flaws and benefits to such an action of course, but the benefits far outweigh the flaws.

Unsupported claim #2

This seems at first glance to make sense, but it really isn't applicable to this discussion. Unfortunately this change could be explained by any number of irrelevant things (more good movies this year, aggregate moods, more demand, nominal increases, we don't even know if the movie profits are distributed fairly or polarized, or even from organic growth of the industries, or if the same amount of receivers of that money is the same (more receivers=less average), and more really).

It is not a point by itself, but rather a counter-point.

The MPAA cries bloody murder about how "piracy is strangling the industry" and how it will put them all out of business. And they plead to congress on their hands and knees to pass laws to save them from those evil pirates!

But this is nonsense. Any real evidence on the matter suggests quite the opposite. That despite the global economy being in the tank, and despite piracy being "such a terrible problem", the movie industry does just fine.

I think its fairly obvious that piracy hurts the movie industry. There is a direct relationship between stealing a movie and decreased demand for the industry.

No, this is not at all obvious! If it is so obvious, then it should be easy for you to find me some empirical data linking piracy to loss of profits! But you won't. Because no such data exists.

Just look at the latest X-Men movie. It was pirated and was widely available a month before the theatrical release. Yet the movie did not just "fine" at the box office, but outstandingly well! In the most high profile case to date, piracy has yet to cause the movie industry any harm.

I think the reason should be obvious. Watching a movie in your home is no substitute for a movie theater.

Unsupported claim #3

You get a movie online there is less of a chance you will buy it.

Unsupported claim #4

And I really don't think its reasonable to say that somehow you having a movie effects other's demand, bc they are motivated more to buy movies, at least not to the extent that it will create more purchased movies than lost sales.

Unsupported claim #4.5 (it's kind of the same as #4)

Quite to the contrary, and this was addressed in the OP. (See section 7 under Copyright Law) The vast majority of downloads are not in place of purchasing that content.

A major flaw in people's attacks on the movie industries ability to make profits I think is that people are representing them mentally by the top profit earners. Are producers/stars still making big money?

Small and independent artists are the ones who benefit most from piracy! Only the very top percentage of artists ever make [significant] amounts of money from record deals. Musicians make the lion's share of their money from concerts.

A nice anecdotal account can be found like this.

And if piracy is significant enough it will not only hurt these fields but the industries related to their success (which are a lot).

Unsupported claim #5

Piracy has been increasing over the years (this isn't contested is it?)

No, it's not contested. This is most certainly true. And more importantly, there is nothing you can do to stop it. Every time a grandmother or fax machine gets sued by the MPAA and RIAA, more and more people turn to the Pirate Bay.

No matter how much legislation is put in place, no matter many lawsuits, this is the future. Deal with it.

it makes sense that given enough time then if these increases remain constant that they would eventually hit a critical point. Its only really at critical points that you see things wrong in industries and that top profit earners in the industry get hurt (look at the housing industry, everyone thought it looked amazing before it died). Why? One reason because these top earners can afford more securities and if the industry does happen to go bad, its not like their income gets hit hard, what happens is that employees with low priority get fired to save profits for the higher ups.

So... you're saying that despite there being zero evidence to support the claim that piracy is hurting the movie / music industry, you're claiming that it will reach a "critical point"... where the sky will start falling?

We've heard that story before. We've heard it about every new technology that's come out. The movie and music industry sure are a paranoid bunch.

This doesn't mean it will definitely happen, its speculation.

I know!

I believe that given enough time the self interests of individuals will start to hurt profit and employment in the movie and game industries as they increase, which will hurt quality, which really will end up hurting what the consumers want out of games and movies (and so self interest has harmed the aggregate interest).

Unsupported claim #6

My real concern for the industry involves what would happen if such laws were removed,

Here you are again with this whole "removal" nonsense. We're not talking about removing copyright law. Reform is what we want.

This is undone however by the loss of rights if these protections are lifted I think. Corporations, and businesses really will use the loss of ownership rights to the material to do any number of completely horrific things: taking movies/books, etc.. they think are profitable and selling them to make money for themselves. Bigger corp. could afford to market them cheaper too and to wider audiences then the people who give the proceeds to the actual movie makers. Businesses could intentionally make "similar" products to leech off of the maker's sales. I don't need evidence to show that this will happen, it already happens, or attempts to happen even with the laws.

...sigh... You know... I don't know what to say. We've already established (and you've acknowledged this, even!) that copyright law for the purpose of preventing commercial plagiarism should exist.

And we can write that law, while still allowing non-commercial copying.

Copyright protections allow new inventors/authors/etc... to really get into these fields. without them they would be outmarketed unfairly by larger companies.

You CLAIM again, to have a thorough understanding of these laws, yet here you make one of the most fundamental and fatal mistakes. You are confusing Copyright and Patent laws.

You cannot Copyright an invention. That's what Patents are for. We are talking about Copyright now, not patents. But you come in trying to confuse the subject by mentioning inventors.

So here's the tradeoff, because it IS a tradeoff, no one side has all the answers.
Less litigation by companies, and more individual taking of ideas/movies.
Or More Corporate piracy, unfair competition, and no author/producer protections?
Its seems obvious that the threat of missing many of these protections (to me at least) is a much worse threat than the perceived problems we have today.

There is no tradeoff.

You are mistakenly (once again) assuming that we have only the option of completely removing Copyright Law, or Infinitely extending it like we're doing today.

There is an optimal middle ground.

One that prevents corporate plagiarism and using others' works "for profit", while still allowing ordinary citizens to live their lives without being criminalized.

 

[blazedaces]

There were a few things in your post that sounded a but ad hominem, I'm not sure if that was actually your intent though. ^^ Quite frankly, I know more about the subject then you think (probably more than most people here). That doesn't make what I'm saying right though of course, just you'd better not assume otherwise. Anyways, I will respond to your post, I'm not sure if I'll be able to respond back though (college reports )

Well, I apologize if that was the case. I'll admit this topic gets me easily fired up, but I mean no offense. I only wish to proliferate a healthy discussion of the subject. And I guess I did jump to the conclusion that you knew less than you did, as most people do, but it was a wrong assumption to make. That being said, let's move on.

I realize that you aren't trying to abolish copyright law as a whole, but its hard to tell specifically which parts are being addressed by you guys. And most of the things concerning these changes are directed at getting rid of (certain flaw here) but don't concern themselves with what costs would happen as a result of those actions. Politicians I think do this to try to avoid hard issues, for example they will say they will pay education x___ amount of money but not specify where it comes from, so I guess I need a little direction on what parts specifically are asked to be changed. So basically for the most part I'm just going to concern myself with the law as a whole, and leave it to the reader to pick out the relevant parts of my arguements.

I think you're making similar assumptions about myself and the people of this thread that you accused me of making onto you. I'm not saying it wasn't a warranted accusation, but you should also listen to yourself. Can you provide specific examples of changes of which I or specific people have not thought through the consequences of said changes? I don't know which ones you refer to, but here are five changes Lawrence Lessig (who's a Stanford law professor by the way) posited in his book Remix (which is free to download under a creative commons license, though I highly recommend buying it as it's well worth the price):

1. Deregulating Amateur Creativity (Never before digital technology did copyright law attempt to regulate amateur activity, why should it do so now and stifle creativity in our youth today in such a way?)
2. Copyright must be registered (as is NEARLY EVERY OTHER PROPERTY LAW IN EXISTENCE)
3. Simplification (in general, if copyright is to apply to every child with a computer, the methods to clear copyright need to be applicable to them, not just to major corporations with expensive lawyers at their disposal)
4. Decriminalizing the Copy (Digital technology causes every single use to create a copy. That doesn't mean that copyright needs to regulate every use of digital technology. Imagine if we tried to regulate books this way? It's just silly)
5. Decriminalizing File Sharing (For 10 years this war against "piracy" has gone on, and it has completely failed to deter the children of our nation from sharing files from all over the world. There have been solutions to this posited, like a single license just as radios receive, but others have also been given. We need to think of a solution that will give money back to artists instead of trying to stop this action, which can't be stopped, but can only be criminalized.)

There IS a reason why legislation against copyright protection to movies/authors/etc.. is not favored by the vast majority of economists. There are flaws and benefits to such an action of course, but the benefits far outweigh the flaws. Unfortunately I think the discussion so far has sort of been about highlighting certain key flaws or benefits to make points instead of considering the opportunity costs of each action.

Copyright was a solution to a problem in economics called "externalities". There are good externalities, and bad externalities. In the example of artistic copyright, we are dealing with a good externality, the benefit to the rest of society from the contribution the artist made. Copyright is a hindrance of some of our freedoms in order to encourage that benefit society receives from the hard work of artists. But when we are harming society so much, only to benefit the individual artist (not in a manner that encourages any further contribution to society like we intended) we are not committing copyright to its original purpose.

Let me give you an example. Copyright extension. I can understand the idea of extending the term of future copyrighted works, but it doesn't make any sense to extend the term of currently copyrighted works. People don't understand that giving someone a copyright is giving them a monopoly on that very specific product. By extending copyright, we are essentially paying them more. This doesn't make sense in ANY OTHER CONTEXT. In other examples where people provide a public good (like say, firemen, or teachers) have we ever considered paying them a year after they are done working? After they have already provided that public good? This is ludicrous!

Look, instead of me just assuming, why don't I ask you, what exactly is the extent of your knowledge in economics? I'm not perceiving a vast knowledge base coming from your direction. I've been wrong before though.

Lastly, what economical experts exactly are you talking about that fully endorse current copyright law? You mentioned benefits outweighing the costs. What benefits? Why do they outweigh the costs? Please provide evidence to back up your statements.

This seems at first glance to make sense, but it really isn't applicable to this discussion. Unfortunately this change could be explained by any number of irrelevant things (more good movies this year, aggregate moods, more demand, nominal increases, we don't even know if the movie profits are distributed fairly or polarized, or even from organic growth of the industries, or if the same amount of receivers of that money is the same (more receivers=less average), and more really). I'm not sure if you were actually trying to make the point that increased piracy actually contributed to this, or that it didn't harm the industry bc its still making money, but this is intellectually dishonest. It would be like saying that as schools increase and more people attend them, (and as school robberies increase) school robberies don't hurt schools. I think its fairly obvious that piracy hurts the movie industry. There is a direct relationship between stealing a movie and decreased demand for the industry. You get a movie online there is less of a chance you will buy it. And I really don't think its reasonable to say that somehow you having a movie effects other's demand, bc they are motivated more to buy movies, at least not to the extent that it will create more purchased movies than lost sales.

My point was only to show that the movie industry can make plenty of money despite the threat of piracy. At least I actually backed up my statement with a study as opposed to speculating about future unknown conditions. How is there a direct relationship between sharing a file of a movie and decreasing demand for the industry (because it's not the same as stealing)? Wouldn't rampant sharing of a file cause more people to hear about the movie, thus encouraging even more to buy it or go to theaters to see it? Many agree watching a movie in theaters is an experience you can't just simulate on your home screen. So isn't any PR good PR? Look at what I'm doing. Speculating. Yeah, it's a great theory, but without numbers it isn't much. And neither is yours.

I can get ANY MOVIE/SONG/GAME/SOFTWARE I WANT online. Do I still buy movies? Do I still buy music? Do I still buy games? Do I still buy software? Yes to all of the above. You're going to say not everyone is like me. But not everyone is like you think either. We have to look at the entire population, not singular individuals.

A major flaw in people's attacks on the movie industries ability to make profits I think is that people are representing them mentally by the top profit earners. Are producers/stars still making big money? Yea, probably. This doesn't show an industry is successful though. Look at the US today, the top earners in the countries wages have been going up steadily even during the recession while other industries are failing. US incomes have actually been stale for years, with statistical avg income earners seeing only 2.7% increase in wages since 1996, while if distributed equally this would have been a 30% increase with the avg. male income being over $11,000 more . ("One Pay Gap Shrinks, Another Grows" David Wessel). So increases in industries are highly misleading of the industry as a whole. What we need to be concerned about is the ability of the average and middle class film maker to be protected under law.

Didn't you say in the last post that you were talking about movies with very large budgets? What "average and middle class" film maker are you talking about?! Not all industries are alike. "Average and middle class" film makers can't afford to sue huge corporations for copyright infringement. It's part of the problem of the current system. Only the large corporations benefit! It doesn't protect the "average and middle class".

And if piracy is significant enough it will not only hurt these fields but the industries related to their success (which are a lot). Piracy has been increasing over the years (this isn't contested is it?) it makes sense that given enough time then if these increases remain constant that they would eventually hit a critical point.

Yes, because technology's advancement is going to hit a critical point *rolls eyes*. Dude, I'm sorry, but steady state situations will never apply here.

Its only really at critical points that you see things wrong in industries and that top profit earners in the industry get hurt (look at the housing industry, everyone thought it looked amazing before it died). Why? One reason because these top earners can afford more securities and if the industry does happen to go bad, its not like their income gets hit hard, what happens is that employees with low priority get fired to save profits for the higher ups. This doesn't mean it will definitely happen, its speculation. I believe that given enough time the self interests of individuals will start to hurt profit and employment in the movie and game industries as they increase, which will hurt quality, which really will end up hurting what the consumers want out of games and movies (and so self interest has harmed the aggregate interest). But really anything we say about the future of the industry isn't set in stone. This isn't my main arguement against anti-copyright legislation though, but I guess I sort of made it seem that way bc I spent so much time on it.

If you want to ignore these past 10 years of continually increasing file-sharing and continue to claim it will eventually destroy the industry (just like before people claimed such about VCR, DVDs, Video rental stores, etc.) then go ahead. But without anything to back it up this is, as you said, not "set in stone".

My real concern for the industry involves what would happen if such laws were removed, so far our analysis has been based around pretending that the problems with the industry would pretty much remain constant and wouldn't introduce new problems by removing them.

Quote me suggesting this. Otherwise, stop discussing it. You already said you understand I was against abolishing copyright, so why are you talking about this scenario now?

I disagree with this. Yes companies suing for infringement does suck. I admit it. That doesn't mean I don't think the fears of it are way overrated, but it is lame.

Provide proof that the fears of it are overrated, or stop making this statement.

This is undone however by the loss of rights if these protections are lifted I think. Corporations, and businesses really will use the loss of ownership rights to the material to do any number of completely horrific things: taking movies/books, etc.. they think are profitable and selling them to make money for themselves. Bigger corp. could afford to market them cheaper too and to wider audiences then the people who give the proceeds to the actual movie makers. Businesses could intentionally make "similar" products to leech off of the maker's sales. I don't need evidence to show that this will happen, it already happens, or attempts to happen even with the laws. There is no doubt in my mind corp. would do this. Because the author/producer will always have the threat that if he makes a good product it will be stolen and marketed better by businesses, etc.. Making these things will become a financial risk, i.e. there would a significant threat of the profits of a product that took lots of money to make going to someone completely else. This was shown historically before the laws were applied/solidified, and it will certainly happen today if such laws are removed.

Provide evidence of this "historically". Which laws are we talking about here? Before copyright came into existence? Before copyright was applied to digital technology? I'm not even saying I disagree with you, or that I don't know of it happening in this day and age, but please stop just claiming things without backing them up with evidence.

Its actually worse then I lead on here, because actually this will open the gateway for corporations to monopolize industries by quickly taking over new products of competitors and outselling them, destroying their profit base. Even if the product isn't that worthwhile there is a huge threat of theft not to make profits but to kill off competition. Copyright protections allow new inventors/authors/etc... to really get into these fields. without them they would be outmarketed unfairly by larger companies.

But large corporations use patents (I assume this is what you're referring to) today to do this exact thing. In the first post I believe AltF4 provided a perfect example: IBM using patents to sue new software from small companies who can't afford the legal fees of defending themselves against such allegations. They are forced to sell their patents. Thus IBM uses the law to do just what you claim it's supposed to avoid.

Hopefully this seemed solid enough, I can't really go through my macro/and law books right now to elongate my post to show that it is true.

I encourage you to take the time to do so. I know you're busy, as we all are, but I would think it's worth it.

So here's the tradeoff, because it IS a tradeoff, no one side has all the answers.
Less litigation by companies, and more individual taking of ideas/movies.
Or More Corporate piracy, unfair competition, and no author/producer protections?
Its seems obvious that the threat of missing many of these protections (to me at least) is a much worse threat than the perceived problems we have today.

This is a horrible explanation of the trade-offs between both sides of this issue.

(also the grandma thing is pretty stupid, but its more of an appeal to the people than an actual arguement against me. She distributed nearly a thousand songs to people, etc.. Its lame that she is a grandma, etc... but she was a major distributor like I said. Its only because the case allowed enough compensatory damages that the people thought they had a good shot of getting and which would outweigh the attorney fees. The vast amount of cases though will not be directed at low offenders in these industries imo).

I don't understand. Did you not read the article I provided? Did you find another source that made such claims? Why didn't you provide a source? I took another look and most say similar things. Here's from the article I posted:

In January the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed it's latest set of lawsuits against 717 P2P users. However, one of these alleged copyright infringers was a little different from the rest. The RIAA claimed that 83-year old Gertrude Walton shared over 700 pop, rap and rock songs on a P2P network, using smittenedkitten as her nickname. [highlight]What the RIAA didn't know, is that this woman died in December 2004. Her daughter, Robin Chianumba lived with her for 17 years and said that her mother wouldn't even allow a computer in the house.

The RIAA now admit that it is very unlikely that Ms. Walton was actually smittenedkitten and have blamed the lawsuit on the time it takes gather information on illicit file swappers.[/highlight] "Our evidence gathering and our subsequent legal actions all were initiated weeks and even months ago," said RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy. "We will now, of course, obviously dismiss this case." Well if they decided not to dismiss the case, I wonder they would plan on winning it.

This case is an example how flawed the RIAA's campaign is. It is claimed that the RIAA most of the time don't exactly have solid evidence against people they sue but the people still prefer to settle than to face the Recording Industry lawyers. "I believe that if music companies are going to set examples they need to do it to appropriate people and not dead people," Chianumba said. "I am pretty sure she is not going to leave Greenwood Memorial Park to attend the hearing."

Where did you get "thousands" from? The RIAA claimed it was over 700 songs. But the deceased grandmother did not actually have a computer in the household. That was my point! That the RIAA is not only going after serious offenders. Here's two more examples:

The RIAA here sued a grandmother who the defending lawyers from the EFF say "could not have downloaded music from the file-sharing sercice Kazaa because they used a Macintosh computer."
The RIAA sued a family that does not own a computer!

There are more examples. Don't try and get around this one.

-blazed

 

[Hive]

Spoiler

editblazed I realized you were calmer/focused in discussion, sorry if it seemed like i was going off on you as much as alt4 in the above)

<sigh> this is why I don't argue on smashboards

its not that i haven't researched this (and have evidence) extensively, I would love to prove you wrong but I feel it at times this discussion has become more about frivolity, persistence, and emotional arguements rather than overviews of the information.
For example there are things you want evidence for that their are no reasonable evidence for: such as what will happen to the future of movie industry? is impossible to calculate. No amount of economic models can predict this reasonably, the fed can't even predict important industries.
A lot of the evidence you guys add is actually highly ambiguous and irrelevant, and then later quoted as being evidence to support your conclusions, which is wrong. There is precious little points supported by relevant information. I realize this is how you view my arguements too, and to a degree you are right, but this is misleading. The problem is a lot of my information is from classes, and school texts, and experience, so while it may not seem to be evidenced it actually is highly, just finding the evidence in a tangible form requires a lot of research (again). Also a lot of it would be understood if you had a better understanding of economics, and only seems unverified because of this. This doesn't mean i don't have evidence lined up, and i would if I know the debate would be formal and we don't scream "bloody murder" on every little assumption no matter the probability of it being false, and if i'm not just teaching instead of debating.
The grandma thing for example, besides being a distributor of hundreds of songs (and so not against my point bc compensatory damages would be hight), I feel like is more put in because she is just a grandma, not because she was a good counterpoint because of the factual information, and even were one incident true, how can we apply this generally to the industry? And even more so how can this lead to a prediction of consistency if the restrictions were lifted? I think a main point is that corporations will steal from each other if restrictions are lifted. this is common sense because it happened before the laws, attempt to happen with the laws in place, and would require that corporations ignore policy that gives them profits. So I won't even bother with this point.
The movie industry profits, like I said before is highly ambiguous, it could mean any number of things that are can not only support this but are more reasonable. I understand that you are just trying to show that piracy doesn't affect it as much as thought, but the information on the condition of the industry from this can be misleading. Are proftits accelerating, was it a temporary acceleration, were profits polarized, etc..? This doesn't mean its wrong, this just means that you can not keep citing it as evidence.
Finally, I'm not going to go into does piracy have aggregate bad affects on the movie industry? This I suppose is what sort of ticked me off. This is about as bad as posing the question, "does robbery have bad affects on stores?" the opposing argument being that it motivates people to shop more. Besides being imo "intellectually dishonest" (supporting a position you know is false or highly probable to be false) there is not going to be any way that such a thing can be verified aggregately. I understand your want for evidence, and information but there is a point where common sense I think, or at least assumptions about the arguement needs to be involved. As much as I want to argue with you guys, I can't argue every little and irrelevant point concerning the industry, its beyond my capabilities, and would only further elongate my posts and dilute any meaning in them. This is why I seem to be avoiding some issues I think. I'm not, and I most certainly am not afraid of any issues concerning this. In fact, I agree with about 50% of what you are saying. But there are certain things that I think that you believe that are based around fundamentally biased information (your views on the movied industry, economists (sometimes), the reasons behind copyright protections in the first place, litigations,...). I think litigations on people are way overblown, given the amount of lawsuits per month v. actual offenders is one thing. And given this amount it only makes sense companies will go after the most profitable cases that they can find. Also attorney resources (which are huge), time involved (about half a year on some of the quicker cases), probability of losing a case, and documentation, all make it highly improbable that a small offender will be sued for copyright infringement. For this I think it is overfeared.
Also statements about me "worming out of issues" i just haven't addressed, and being in a "fantasy" are highly irrelevant (and offensive).

So here's what I propose we do in the future (though i'm not sure i'll debate it anymore) blazed (i'm not wasting time with your so called "evidence" altf4, its not even close to showing proof of anything in the industry past isolated incidents)
1.we address 1 issue at a time so the issue cannot be sidetracked, diluted, ignored, etc...
2. Only relevant information to the issue, and try to avoid tying the issue into too many different fields
3. Smaller posts (and no multiquotes )
4. Actually look at and consider opportunity costs, all decisions have costs and benefits, you can not only highlight things that benefit your point and refuse to address others.
5. Do some amount of reasonable research on a subject, before deciding something is unverified and passing liability on to the writer (waisting time)(this basically covers most of my points)

 

[AltF4]

I love the part where you try to call me out for Ad Hominem attacks... then insult me, and ignore every piece of factual and empirical data I've shown.

I also fail to see where maturity was lost. I do hate it when a debate becomes a "dog pile" against a single person, but we continue on anyway. Quite often it is me being piled on!

And, no, you cannot cite "common knowledge" in a debate that is exactly about refuting that supposed common knowledge.

 

[blazedaces]

The sad fact is, I have tried over and over to look up this information. But most of the arguments for copyright extension (against copyright reform) is riddled with logical fallacies and inapplicable metaphors. Statements like "people have a right to what they create" and "file sharing is the same as stealing"...

Look, I welcome you to prove me/us wrong. Whether you realize it or not, I love economics and I use my knowledge of it to make arguments all the time. But just yelling "you haven't looked at opportunity cost" isn't making an argument. You can try the same tactics we use on you, but the fact of the matter is, most of our statements we support with evidence.

Do I have a bias for a certain side like everyone in the world? Yes. Do I try to avoid it? Yes, and I go to great lengths to, but I know also that's not completely avoidable.

Provide an example of a good book to read that would make whatever argument you're driving at. I read a lot... I'll at least give it a try.

-blazed

 

[AltF4]

Added to the OP:


12) Tim O'Rielly on Piracy: Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution. This is a very good read from the very well known creator of O'Reilly publishing. O'Reilly is a major book publisher, and more than a credible source of insight.

In this article, he describes how piracy is no threat to him as a book publisher. And even goes to describe how publishing may look in the 21st century. He (as we all do) makes a clear distinction between people who redistribute his works for a profit, and those who merely exchange digital copies of his books. The former, he claims is not a significant threat to him as a book publisher, and the former is indeed a benefit. Great read.

 

[Mewter]

In this article, he describes how piracy is no threat to him as a book publisher. And even goes to describe how publishing may look in the 21st century. He (as we all do) makes a clear distinction between people who redistribute his works for a profit, and those who merely exchange digital copies of his books. The former, he claims is not a significant threat to him as a book publisher, and the former is indeed a benefit. Great read.

This thread is awesome.
Wait. You said the former is not a great threat but at the same time it is a benefit? Did you mean to say "the latter", by any chance, or was that not a mistake? To me, it seemed like the second one was more of a benefit than the first. Just making sure.

 

[AltF4]

oops, Yes. A typo.

It now reads:

"The former, he claims is not a significant threat to him as a book publisher, and the latter is indeed a benefit. Great read."

Thanks.

EDIT:

I see that Hive decided to respond... in spoiler tags edited into a previous post.

You're not trying to hide anything up there, are you Hive? Still no sources, I see? I didn't think so.

EDIT2: Another thing: sweet god use paragraphs. Everything you post is a giant wall of impossible to read text, Hive.

EDIT3: Check this out, lol! This is awesome. Look at the the MPAA and RIAA cooked up:

http://www.copyrightalliance.org

They just blatantly lie all over the place. And the rest is such a misrepresentation of fact, it makes me laugh. Check some of this stuff out:

Up until 2006, one of the largest global sellers of pirated films and music files was sold by a company based in Sweden – PirateBay

Lol, suddenly the Pirate Bay is a "Company" SELLING things? This is too good. And "up until" 2006? Do they not know they're still operating just fine? lol

Have you ever heard somebody say, “Of course, we want to see artists get paid,” and then they follow that with a phrase beginning with “but”? Generally the “but” and what follows it, implies a belief that copyright protections are not really important any more. That belief can begin to erode or even eliminate the intellectual property rights accorded to creators in the U.S. Constitution and through global treaties. The U.S. Congress in 1790 -- in one of its first major acts -- passed the first Copyright Act. They did that because they felt it was vital to a newly created and growing country that embodied a belief in the rights of the individual. That wisdom is as true today. If anyone ever says they want to see artists get paid, remind them we already have a system that does that, and it has been doing so successfully for 217 years. It has helped make our American creative culture unique and great, and it will continue to do so.

Just lol-tastic.


If you want some real information, try heading to http://www.teachingcopyright.org/

It was created by the EFF, and has *gasp* information that is not lies.

 

[blazedaces]

Hive. What single issue would you like to debate?

By the way, I have taken more then one course on economics, as well as read several books on various economics-related subjects. I would argue my knowledge of it is fair. Frustratingly though, as much as I'm interested in taking more economics courses, taking one is akin to forcing myself to slow down everything. Maybe it's because I'm studying engineering, but with my experience I can learn what an economics course teaches in a month in a few days, if not a week. And they tend to be filled with idiots (maybe that's because none of the courses were that advanced...).

That being said, I would not call the term opportunity cost an advanced economics concept. Instead of constantly saying that I or anyone here doesn't understand a certain concept, you should just explain it in whatever terms you wish. If someone doesn't understand they can ask. Don't assume I or someone else here doesn't know a certain subject before you bring it up.

Now, what would you like to discuss specifically? The only thing I would say you shouldn't ask about, is what would happen if copyright laws did not exist at all. We would both just nod our heads in agreement about this. I think both extremes (abolishment of copyright and absolute permanent control through copyright) offer disadvantages that we can agree upon. You're welcome to analyze any situation from an economical point of view (through supply and demand curves if you wish) and feel free to explain the cost/benefit analysis, including opportunity costs.

-blazed

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

Hive, you are really upset that everyone seems to avoid research, but the point is that you have been tainted by the very research you have engaged in. What is your definition of an unbiased source? Everything you've been saying sounds like it came from some BSA or RIAA report. On top of that, many of your statements simply defy common sense. For instance, you have this wild belief that without IP laws, no one could make money, and everyone would just steal each others' stuff. Well, we're trying to point out to you that people are making money by ignoring IP laws regarding their own creations. The site Techdirt.com does not care one bit if you were to set up your own site and blatantly rip all of their content without giving proper credit. More authors are putting PDF files of their entire books online because they find it increases sales of the physical books. Musicians are telling labels to go jump off a cliff as they put their music online for free and make absurd amounts of money touring the country. The loss of IP laws hurts only one industry: the collection of useless middlemen who were rich before the Internet and now have no purpose but refuse to admit it.

 

[AltF4]

Canada has officially recalled their three reports in support of copyright extensions, due to them being plagiarized. (And also for making **** up)

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/05/28/conference-board-copyright-geist.html

The irony, oh the irony. And they call ME the pirate, lol.

 

[blazedaces]

Canada has officially recalled their three reports in support of copyright extensions, due to them being plagiarized. (And also for making **** up)

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/05/28/conference-board-copyright-geist.html

The irony, oh the irony. And they call ME the pirate, lol.

When do you think it is that you can convince someone they are going down the wrong path when they have been going down that path for so long? Will we have to wait for all the politicians of the current era to die before we see a serious fallout of this silly war on piracy?

Sometimes, I think that's the case...

Global warming is looming upon us, proposition 8 was just upheld by the supreme court of california, we're in an economic crisis threatening quite literally the entire world, but we're wasting our time enacting laws that criminalize our youth and stifle our creativity in order to help clearly already flourishing large corporations...

-blazed

 

[AltF4]

I did a bit of an edit on the OP. I moved Trademark down to the bottom, since it's the least important of the topics. I removed some of the first sections on Copyright law. I re-read them, and didn't feel like they had a whole lot of substance. Maybe I'll try to combine them and re-post it in the future.

I also added two new sections:

Ownership: A lot of this debate boils down to a concept of ownership. Some people intuitively “feel” that when they come up with an idea (both good and bad!) they they “own” that idea. However, as you shall see, this belief makes little sense in the world of Ideas.

Ownership requires control. Indeed, ownership is defined by control. For example, I “own” a pen that happens to be next to me right now. I control this pen, it is in my grasp. Other people are not physically capable of using this pen without my permission. It transfers ink onto paper at my whim, and only my whim. I own this pen. It would be wrong of someone to steal this pen from me, because it would deprive my of my ability to make use of the pen.

But contrast this, now, with “owning” a star. There are, in fact, organizations that let you “purchase” a star! And they are mostly laughed at, because one cannot in any way control a star. You cannot prevent others from viewing it, you cannot prevent comets from ramming into it, you cannot prevent black holes from sucking it up. You have just as much “ownership” over any particular star than a goldfish does. The fact that you got scammed into paying $40 for a certificate which says otherwise is irrelevant. In what sense can someone “steal” your star from you? The word is meaningless in this context.

The same is true for ideas. Information cannot be owned, because it cannot be controlled. “Information wants to be Free” is a recurring theme you will hear from proponents of digital civil liberties. It is a phrase to remind you that information cannot be owned, that it cannot be controlled. If information cannot be owned, it can also not be stolen. It can only be copied, which is inherent to the very nature of information.


...and...

5) Secret Patents In theory, Patents are supposed to be registered. Registration is necessary because not everything is Patentable. You cannot, after all, get Patents on things which are so obvious they don't constitute as an invention. The registration process is absolutely essential to how Patents are supposed to work.

A new inventor has to be able to know whether their creation has any Patent conflicts after making it.

But this is not the case in reality. When two people have a dispute over the ownership of a Patent, it is awarded to whoever can prove that they made the invention first. This makes some intuitive sense.

However, this leads to the practice of “Secret Patents”. A Secret Patent is when a person or corporation makes an invention (or claims to) and keeps proof of its creation, but never registers it. This way, when someone else comes along and infringes on this Patent, they can swoop in and claim prior ownership. Thus snatching the invention away from its rightful creator... unless they pay a licensing fee.

So suppose you are an inventor, for a moment. In today's Patent system, even if you DID search exhaustively through every single registered Patent (which itself is impossible, see above), and even if you COULD determine effectively if any one of those were in conflict with your invention (which is also impossible, see above), you can STILL be sued for Patent infringement. IBM can come out and claim that they proof that they have prior creation of a component to your invention, and that they'll sue you if you don't pay up a couple thousand dollars.

And remember, that as a lone inventor (or even a small company) you cannot afford the tens of thousands of dollars in court costs to defend a Patent. This is how large corporations exploit Patent law to blackmail smaller organizations into paying sums of money.

No due process, no judge, no jury. You are guilty by mere accusation., and must pay up or be sued out of business.

 

[blazedaces]

5) Secret Patents In theory, Patents are supposed to be registered. Registration is necessary because not everything is Patentable. You cannot, after all, get Patents on things which are so obvious they don't constitute as an invention. The registration process is absolutely essential to how Patents are supposed to work.

A new inventor has to be able to know whether their creation has any Patent conflicts after making it.

But this is not the case in reality. When two people have a dispute over the ownership of a Patent, it is awarded to whoever can prove that they made the invention first. This makes some intuitive sense.

However, this leads to the practice of “Secret Patents”. A Secret Patent is when a person or corporation makes an invention (or claims to) and keeps proof of its creation, but never registers it. This way, when someone else comes along and infringes on this Patent, they can swoop in and claim prior ownership. Thus snatching the invention away from its rightful creator... unless they pay a licensing fee.

So suppose you are an inventor, for a moment. In today's Patent system, even if you DID search exhaustively through every single registered Patent (which itself is impossible, see above), and even if you COULD determine effectively if any one of those were in conflict with your invention (which is also impossible, see above), you can STILL be sued for Patent infringement. IBM can come out and claim that they proof that they have prior creation of a component to your invention, and that they'll sue you if you don't pay up a couple thousand dollars.

And remember, that as a lone inventor (or even a small company) you cannot afford the tens of thousands of dollars in court costs to defend a Patent. This is how large corporations exploit Patent law to blackmail smaller organizations into paying sums of money.

No due process, no judge, no jury. You are guilty by mere accusation., and must pay up or be sued out of business.

Also, in case people didn't understand from your post, because patents are so horribly inefficient there actually do exist patents for the most ridiculously common ideas you can imagine (including the wheel).

This is partially due to the way patents are written, bogged down by incredibly hard to understand legal jargon that even today's lawyers have trouble going through them. Also, there is no search system in patent law. There is no way to come up with an invention and try to see if it's been patented. Going to the patent office will not help you. Though, as you point out, it wouldn't make much of a difference.

There's a horrible belief in this country about how we have the "right" to our ideas (or to own our ideas as Alt mentions above). Why? This has been rooted so deeply in our culture no one even stops to ask why of it anymore. Why should we have a right to an "idea"? There's a good reason we have other rights (like the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, etc.). We can reason and come to an understanding of why we should be given these rights, among many others. But a right to our ideas?

It would be like giving us a right to the words we speak. Imagine if every time you said something, or wrote something down for the first time, the words uttered were considered "owned" by you forever? That people tried to go around telling you that if you wrote down his words you would be stealing them? It sounds so silly. Yeah, that's what the right to owning an idea sounds like to me. I can understand the reason for copyright to exist, and it's a good one. But it's NOT because people have some notion of a right to "their" idea...

-blazed

 

[l3lue2ain]

I was so heated at how pirate bay went down. In general I don't feel sharing should be illegal. All our lives from children they teach us to share then as adults sharing certain toys or new songs are illegal. The Laws need to be adjusted. They are so happy about busting a few people that were trying to make a world a better place. Meanwhile people are getting they're identities stolen and getting away free. Identity these are the ones that should get punishment.

 

[AltF4]

Piracy

Introduction:

This is going to be a topic about Piracy. Of course I am talking about "Information Pirates", not "Jack Sparrow" type pirates. (For future reference, note my use of capitalization) It will be different than my other "Intellectual Property" thread in the respect that it will be far more specific. This thread will not include the topics of Trademark and Patent law. It is going to be concerned almost exclusively with Copyright law, and more specifically within that topic about Piracy. IE: Not about Remixing, Fair Use rights, DMCA provision specifics, etc...

I am a Pirate, and so are many of you reading this. The following discussion will describe in detail exactly what that means, what the history of Piracy is, why I am proud to be a Pirate, and what needs to be done.


History

Every story has a beginning. The story of Piracy does not begin with Napster, and it does not end with the Pirate Bay. In order to fully understand the arguments that will follow (and the arguments of my opponents), you must see in in the light of proper context. These stories will help you understand exactly what it means to be a Pirate.

Throughout the following stories, I want you to recognize and pay attention to the following patterns:

1. An established group has a working model for business
2. Disruptive Invention and Innovation Occurs
3. The establishment resists the innovation
4. The establishment either adapts to the innovation and profits, or does not adapt and is replaced

One: The Phonograph

At the birth of the 20th Century, one of the biggest forms of entertainment in America was Vaudeville. It was an interesting mix of song, dance, animal acts, etc... You might consider it a cross between a concert and a circus.

Vaudeville had a very workable business model. They charged admission. Obviously, in order to enjoy a Vaudeville show, one must be sitting in the stands! And for a very long time this system worked. Many very popular, very creative, and very influential acts came out of Vaudeville.

The a man by the name of Thomas Edison came about and invented a little machine called the Phonograph. It was a machine that allowed the operator to record sound and then later play it back again.

The establishment was now shaken to its core. If you recall, the Vaudeville model revolves around being able to charge admission. With the invention of the Phonograph, people could listen to entertainment in their own homes and never pay the Vaudeville entertainers a dime! Naturally, the entertainment industry fought back against this new disruptive technology and cried out saying that these phonographs would destroy creativity.

One man, John Phillip Souza even made this testimony to Congress in 1906:

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy...in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.

This is an important quote, and we will return to it again later.


Of course the phonograph did not kill creativity, but rather gave birth the the Record Industry. Of course what else should we expect? That Vaudeville remain the predominant form of entertainment for the rest of human history? Of course not, at some point it must come to and end. And so it did.

Two: Hollywood

This story doesn't fit exactly in with the rest in terms of theme, but it's worth telling.

Thomas Edison later went on to creating lots of other important inventions than the phonograph. One of the other things that he did was make patents of lots of new innovative ways to record video. Technically he didn't invent it himself, but it was manufactured in his factories, and marketed in his name: The Vitascope. This was technology that allowed the user to make a movie. They could record video, and then later play sound on top of it.

But one thing that Edison did was keep a very close eye on his patents. Nobody was allowed to use Thomas Edison's patents without his expressed consent, and after giving him a hefty sum of money.

So a group of film Pirates did not like this and thought that they could do much better with Edison's technology but couldn't afford to pay him. So instead they fled to the west coast of the United States and began to make movies illegally using Edison's patents. But America was a very big place in the early 1900's and Edison didn't have much of a way to enforce his legal rights.

These film Pirates went on to settle an entire city based on ripping off Edison's patents and others' ideas to make a profit out of it. The city was named Hollywood. The leader of the film Pirates was named William Fox, who would later found the Fox Film Corporation. (And later, 20th Century Fox)


Three: Pirate Radio

It is now the mid to mid-late 1900's. The established entertainment industry is the Record Industry. They have a workable business model selling plastic disks called Records. They record music and other forms of entertainment onto these disks, an then they sell them out to others.

But then a new technology came along: Radio. Now, technically radio communication was not invented in the mid 1900's, but that's when it became largely commercially viable. Before that time, radios were enormous bulky things that a normal consumer couldn't possibly afford.

At this time, radio stations started popping up. They took music from the record industry and played it over the airwaves.

The Record Industry thought this was just terrible, and that it must be stopped! They called these radio stations "Pirates". And in fact, the term "Pirate Radio" still exists today.

After all, they were "stealing" music created by the Record Industry, playing it over the airwaves, making a profit, and not giving a dime back to the Record Industry. Naturally this disruptive new innovation must be stopped!

But it was not to be that way. Legally speaking, the record industry had every right to shut down these Pirate Radio Stations. But common sense prevailed. A world in which there are radio stations is far preferable to a world in which there is not. The law was amended to allow these stations to exist, and a whole new form of entertainment arose from it.


Four: Cable Television

Music was not the only thing that wound up getting broadcast over the airwaves, but video too. The television was a very popular form of entertainment and of course is still today. But there was a time when in order to watch TV, you had to tune it into a radio signal being broadcast. An entire industry was built around this.

Then a new technology came about: Cable Television. This story is remarkably similar to that of radio stations. People began getting their TV signals not over airwaves, but rather through a wire to their house.

The operators of Cable Television would literally take the signals from radio TV and put it out over the wire (and add their own content, too).

The entertainment industry was furious! Again called these stations "Pirates", and again the term "Pirate Television" remains. The current industry tried desperately to shut down these clearly illegal operators.

But it was not to be. The law was again amended to allow cable television operators to exist. Because a world where cable TV exists is preferable to one where it does not. Even if it means the loss of profits by the establishment. As we all know, cable TV would wind up replacing radio broadcast TV


Five: The VCR

It is now (appropriately) the year 1984, and video entertainment was a boom. The majority of households owned a television and the entertainment industry profited greatly by being able to serve content to these boxes.

But then a new invention came around. Sony Corporation had just spent a lot of money developing the Betamax. For those of not alive in 1984 (I wasn't!) the Betamax was the first form of the VHS tape. It's essentially the same thing, but VHS would later take over, and then be subsequently replaced by DVDs.

What the VCR allowed someone to do was to record video off of a television and later watch it at their own discretion whenever they wanted. Why, this was heresy to the entertainment industry! Someone is trying to sell a device whose sole purpose is to make copies of copyrighted content?!

The then Chairman of the MPAA, Jack Valenti (The Motion Picture Association of America) even made this statement to congress in 1982:

I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

And this went to court in the very famous "Sony Betamax" supreme court decision. Universal Studios and Walt Disney Corporation sued the Sony Corporation for selling the Betamax.

But yet again, common sense prevailed. Not only did the VCR not destroy the American film industry, but it sparked an entirely new industry. Billions of dollars were later made by buying and selling VHS tapes. Creativity flourished, and the "rights" of the copyright holders were correctly and justly ignored.


Six: The United States of America

I saved the best for last. Chronologically, this should go first. But it's most important.

The United States of America was founded as a Pirate nation. During the Industrial revolution, America was able to maintain its progress as much as it did by completely and blatantly ignoring the copyrights and patents of other countries. It was official US policy just to take and "rip off" any patents being used in Europe at the time. That way America could freely industrialize.

This, of course, upset Europe very much. Britain tried in vain to prevent the US from continuing this practice, by passing legislature such as the Iron Act of 1750.

Failing to further prevent America from infringing on their patents and copyrights, European began to call Americans "Jankes", a Dutch phrase meaning "Pirate". Americans would later take this name and mispronounce it into "Yankee".

That's right, the word "Yankee" itself means "Pirate".


Today

So today history again repeats itself. A new technology has risen which completely disrupts the current establishment. This technology is Bit Torrent over the Internet. It has revolutionized the way distribution is done. It is democratized, decentralized, and efficient. But the most important aspect of Bit Torrent is the mechanics of distribution.

Bit Torrent is unique in the respect that it reverses the dynamics of scarcity. Typically, the more demand there is for something, the harder it is to get. Even pure information can be scarce in this respect. For example, if 10 million people all tried to log into the Smashboards at once, the servers would crash. The words on this very page right now are distributed from a single source, and that source can only handle so much weight.

What Bit Torrent does is reverse this. The more demand there is for something, the easier it is to get it. Scarcity for bits has thusly been eliminated. The only reason one cannot obtain a piece of data on the Internet over Bit Torrent is because it is so unpopular as to not have anyone sharing it.


But this disrupts the current entertainment industry. They cry foul and label us as "Pirates"! They say that this new Piracy is killing creativity, and that if left unchecked will destroy entertainment completely!


Opportunity and Innovation

But what they don't see is opportunity. It is true that the era of the DVD and the CD is over. What we are seeing is transition into a completely new form of business. It may very well be the case that we see a return to Vaudeville, in a way. We are seeing not just passive media, but Social Media.

You see, one of the important differences between the Vaudeville star and the recording industry star was personal interaction with the fan. In order to be successful on stage, one must be charismatic. In order to be successful on records, you need to sound very well.

Interaction and charisma is already starting to see a rebirth in music and film through places like MySpace.com. Say what you will about the musicians present there, but there is a renaissance of artists popping up through the website. They accomplish this not purely by "sounding good" but by being friends with their fans. Connecting with them through more than just the music.

We see this with artists like Radiohead, Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails), and a whole host of others. What they do is accumulate fans who love them first, and their music second. I personally donate to both of those artists in the form of purchases and other means.

Just as some Vaudeville stars were not able to make the transition to records, some current artists will not be able to transition to the new form of media. This is not, however, the same thing as saying that creativity itself suffers. Not unless you think creativity also suffered from the invention of the phonograph, or the radio, or cable TV, or the VCR.


A Market Signal

One of the biggest things that Piracy is, is a market signal. Piracy is the consumers telling the industry that they need to do better. That the way they have been doing business for the last several decades is no longer sufficient.

For example, there is a clear demand for what many call "The Celestial Jukebox". This mythical device would be as small, trendy, available, and as accessible as an iPod. It would allow the owner to listen to any recorded audio work in history at the touch of a button. And it would allow the owner to donate a small sum of money at their discretion to the artist of the works they just listened to.

This device needn't be a myth, however. It is perfectly possible to make one! What is preventing the Celestial Jukebox from existing is not a problem of engineering, but rather a legal one. Copyright law simply does not allow such a thing to exist.

But a fruitful and workable economy can clearly be seen to be available from the Celestial Jukebox. Artists (especially of the type described above) will easily be able to make lots of money by accumulating fans over the device.

The problem is not that artists won't get paid, no. The problem is that the current established record industry plays no part in that future. The multi-billion dollar industry would be made almost completely obsolete by such a device. And so they fight to ensure that it never exists. Piracy is the fight to ensure that it does.


What Piracy is not

What Piracy is NOT is stealing. This claim that Piracy equates to theft is nothing more than a petty attempt to push aside everything above and simplify this entire topic to a single word.

Stealing is wrong. That much is obvious. Stealing is wrong because it deprives the original owner of something which they would have otherwise possessed. If you went onto my driveway and stole my car, that would be wrong. I would no longer have a car because of it! And that would be harmful to me.

But copying is not stealing. If you went into my driveway and made a copy of my car, I would be in no way damaged. In fact, if such a device existed that would allow copies of cars to be made, I would proudly place my car in my driveway for all to see and copy it! To deny someone something of value when it costs nothing to you is just plain rude. I think we all learned that lesson in Kindergarten, that it is a good thing to share.

Pirates are loyal paying customers. The myth of people downloading mounds of works and never paying a dime for anything is flatly false at worst, and hyperbolic at best. I personally own a huge collection of DVDs, purchased from a brick-and-mortar store. This is not a contradiction, this is the nature of Piracy. We do not want "everything for free". What we want is something better than what we have right now.


How you can get involved

The fight for Piracy has many battlefields. There are matters of law, social opinion, creativity, and technological works.

You can get involved politically by joining your local Pirate Party. Such as the United States Pirate Party, or several in Europe.

There are organizations involved with case law (as opposed to legislation) such a The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the good old ACLU that you can get involved with.

You can get involved socially by being open about who you are as a Pirate. (Such as by making convincing forum posts such as this one!) The media industry itself is the opponent here, so no mainstream media outlet will ever allow our side of the story to be told. Which is why this is all over the Internet, but nowhere on TV! People's opinions matter, and we want every one of them.

Piracy is a technological innovation. If you work in technology, it is important for you to make sure that what you do improves society. Technology is power in the information age. Concentrate your efforts on things that make us as a society more Free, as opposed to less Free.

And if you are an artist, make sure that you embrace and flourish in the information age. This can mean trivial things like interacting with fans on Myspace, it can mean doing drastic things like dropping a label and distributing your music yourself, and it can mean encouraging your fans to become literally involved with your work through remixing and hyperdistribution. Visit places like Creative Commons and let it be known that you are not like the RIAA and MPAA.

 

[Overload]

Good read, you've made some good points. Hopefully, as with the phonograph, radio stations, cable TV, VCRs, etc., common sense will prevail with bit torrent technology.

 

[AltF4]

Fixed. Thank you.


As for the law. It is highly doubtful that any meaningful debate will even take place within the halls of lawmakers. The entertainment industry is very large, and has powerful lobbies. But there's more to it than that.

New BitTorrent technologies are already being developed to incorporate strong encryption. In not long, BitTorrent will be efficient, private, and totally anonymous. That mixed with other new developments like streaming BitTorrent video and audio will revolutionize file sharing all over again.

 

[Crimson King]

I maintain the belief that while Bit Torrent might be a good distribution platform, forcing innovation on the industry is wrong and stupid. Essentially what the pirate movement is doing is saying "Well, it's easy to get free movies and games, so now, I need to find a way to validate this. Oh, wait, I got it! FREE (as in no regulation) INFORMATION!" and that is bull****, because movies and games are entertainment, which is created by artists who use talent. Their talent is something that cannot ever be replicated. To say, someone else will come along and make the same thing, is on the same terms as socialism's belief that everyone is replaceable.

With the patent thing, I agree in the sense that it's over-regulation; however, totally removing patents would be the end of culture as we know it because of people like Disney. Even with patents/copyrights in affect, Disney has gotten away with loads of intellectual property theft and made millions off of it. If you totally remove patents/copyrights, you are saying to places like Disney that they are allowed to go online and steal any idea they see of fan-made stuff.

 

[Purple]

With the patent thing, I agree in the sense that it's over-regulation; however, totally removing patents would be the end of culture as we know it because of people like Disney. Even with patents/copyrights in affect, Disney has gotten away with loads of intellectual property theft and made millions off of it. If you totally remove patents/copyrights, you are saying to places like Disney that they are allowed to go online and steal any idea they see of fan-made stuff.

Be the end of culture? Not exactly, the ideas and drawings aren't copied to the thread, things eventually evolve in their own story and characters, and usualyl change for the better. I wouldn't say it would completely destroy culture, but however just make it slowly distort.

 

[Crimson King]

Believe it if you want, but google Kimba the White Lion. Disney, blatantly, stole all the ideas from a fairly popular anime series and crafted it into their most popular movie of all time, The Lion King. The series creators never saw a single cent, and Disney only got away with it because it was an Asian movie, and a lot of Asian markets lack copyrights.

 

[AltF4]

Wow, CK. You manage to perfectly mirror every argument that the establishments of every other major technology has made.

I mean, some of the things that you're saying is just silly.

forcing innovation on the industry is wrong and stupid.

You are aware that the nature of innovation IS that it is forced on everyone. Should we have made automobiles illegal because it is "wrong and stupid" to force innovation onto horse drawn carriage makers?

Innovation simply happens. Failing to innovate and stay with the times is a good way to go bankrupt. This is and has always been the nature of innovation.

This is how a Free Market works. Those that can compete survive, and those that do not go under. The Free Market does not work by making laws to ensure that no innovation can occur in a market. THAT is wrong and stupid.

Essentially what the pirate movement is doing is saying "Well, it's easy to get free movies and games, so now, I need to find a way to validate this. Oh, wait, I got it! FREE (as in no regulation) INFORMATION!" and that is bull****

Well, there's no way to argue with blatant lies, mischaracterizations, and insults. Who are you to tell me what I believe in?

Without even so much as a shred of evidence to support those claims, too. I had just gone at great lengths to dispel these exact myths. The entertainment industry wants to you believe exactly those lies. You are calling me a thief, but are trying to dance around the exact word. The only thing I can say is "You're Wrong"

With the patent thing, I agree in the sense that it's over-regulation

Why am I getting the growing feeling like you didn't read my OP at all? I thought I made it explicitly clear that this thread is not about patents.

totally removing patents would be the end of culture as we know it

This is just downright silly. You are once again confusing copyright and patent law. You really need to understand the differences. They are not at all the same thing. And misunderstandings of the system leads to outrageous comments like this one. Fully understanding patents and copyrights is central to understanding these issues.

One of the MAIN points of the OP (which seems to be ignored again) is to show that time after time, the entertainment industry cries wolf any time a disruptive new technology is invented. They cry that this new technology will be the death of entertainment. But it is of course not. Time after time, the technology is shown to be a great positive force for entertainment.


Furthermore, you fail to recognize that the removal of the copyright system is not what Pirates want. I suggest you actually read the platform of the Pirate Party. And also the Swedish Pirate Party.

There should be a clear distinction made between commercial and non-commercial activities. Things that a 12 year old girl does after school and what multi-billion dollar corporations do to generate profit do not deserve to be governed by the same laws. The law has always supported this. Up until the Internet, copyright law did not apply to 12 year old girls, but now it does.

Copyright law was never written or intended to be applied to anything but large corporations. This is why the mechanics of it all break down, and why copyright law needs reform. Not Abolition, as you frequently cry. Reform.

Commercial copying of the kind you mention with Kimba the White Lion is wrong. (Though the Kimba case actually rides on thin ice about how much was used, imo) That kind of copying can be addressed separately from the kind that 12 year olds do. There is no need for those actions, which are clearly totally different, to be governed by the same set of laws. Protections for for-profit organizations against other for-profit organizations can and should exist.

If you make a creative work, and want to use it commercially, that's great. You should be granted protection (for a limited time, as the Constitution states) from other people who would profit from your work. You alone should be able to generate profit from selling the work itself, merchandising based off of the work, etc...

What you should not be able to do is stop others from contributing and sharing of the work non-commercially. If a teenager in Uganda makes a fan-sub of your work and puts it on YouTube, that should be legal. If a remix of the work combined with other works is created and shared, that should be legal. But most importantly, non commercial file sharing should be legal.



But there are some more ignored points that I consider very important. Why should we disallow a product like the "Celestial Jukebox" from existing through copyright law? It is a perfect example of a product that could easily exist, and could very easily be a rich marketplace for artists. But because it cuts 95% of the corporations out of the picture, it is being outlawed. Why is this justified? Since when do we write laws to prevent a few very wealthy corporations from incurring damage due to their own inability to innovate?

 

[pacmansays]

Hmmm I somewhat agree with your point that piracy that isn't stealing as its not actually taking anyone's property but wouldn't it be similar to shoplifting?

The product was put out to be sold and you literally took it without paying, you broke out the deal set out for the product....

Its not just copying as a film is not just an item a person owns: its a product which is meant to be distributed

 

[manhunter098]

Shoplifting involves the theft of a physical object that is being sold, you are depriving the store of its property when you shoplift. So no it is not the same, you can try to make a case that the artists and creators of media content deserve monetary incentive for their works, but using shoplifting as an analogy to piracy is not accurate at all.

 

[AltF4]

If you lend your neighbor a book, is that stealing? What if your neighbor would have otherwise bought the book? By lending him your book, you are depriving the author of a sale.

Is giving a bad review to a movie theft? You will cause lots of people to not see the movie. You will cost the filmmakers lots of money.


It is obvious that nothing we are talking about here is stealing. Attempts to label it as such are missing the point. Not even the LAW recognizes file sharing as stealing. It's just simply not stealing. All the rhetoric to the contrary is propaganda thrown at you from the entertainment industry.

 

[Crimson King]

Wait, why did you make a new topic?

Use your giant topic on intellectual property since the two go hand-in-hand.

 

[AltF4]

This thread has now been merged with the "Piracy" thread. Just for those of you who are confused. What used to be the OP of the Piracy thread now resides in the middle of this OP, under a section titled Piracy / File Sharing.

For all of you just joining this debate, I urge you to read the OP. Yea. I know. It's long. But otherwise we wind up getting lots of ill-informed posts that have already been addressed. I have written the OP to be as informative as it is persuasive.

 

[RDK]

I'm a blatant pirate, and I'm pretty much set on the issue, but for this thread I'm going to go ahead and go Devil's Advocate and see if we can get some interesting discussions going.

Shoplifting involves the theft of a physical object that is being sold, you are depriving the store of its property when you shoplift. So no it is not the same, you can try to make a case that the artists and creators of media content deserve monetary incentive for their works, but using shoplifting as an analogy to piracy is not accurate at all.

Downloading files you haven't paid for is still stealing. Let's use music as an example. If the person who recorded an album hadn't done so, there would be no files for you to download. Saying it's okay to steal it just because it exists and it's available online is foolish.

Lending a book to a friend is also a bad analogy. In this case you are not making a direct copy of the book; you are letting your friend borrow the original. People's households have literally become personal printing presses and recordings studios due to the information age.

Let me ask you this: as an artist, what is my incentive to create if I'm not going to be rewarded for it? Why would I work hard knowing that as soon as somebody legitimate buys my music, it's going to be available on the web for any Joe Blow to steal?

If we took this scenario to its logical end and applied it to the entire economy, civilization would fall apart. An entirely free-product market cannot exist; it offers too much reward to those who leech and too little reward to those who produce.

 

[manhunter098]

RDK, could you read my post again? I only pointed out that shoplifting was an inaccurate analogy for piracy. I said and intended to imply no more than that.

And by the way, television shows do not make money because the people who watch pay money for them (well HBO and similar channels are an exception), so I dont see why an artist would have to rely on people actually purchasing their work to make money. So its misleading to say that a free product market does not work or that artists cannot make money because people download free copies of their work (hell most music artists hardly see a penny for their efforts when it comes to music sales, they get most of their income through concerts and promotional events). This of course also applies to the free manga scanlations that I enjoy so very much, the websites hosting the manga are offering to me free distribution (not really a product but it is a service) at their own costs, which are paid for also by advertisements. Adding further to that is the fact that the people who translate it and edit the images to incorporate English as opposed to Japanese text are typically performing a higher quality service than many English manga publishers for free, and they are not necessarily getting any monetary compensation, though they are electing not to.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

People often refer to illegal copying as "stealing" strictly for the moral sting, and this drives me crazy. Even after explaining in great detail how piracy is not the same as stealing, the common response is along the lines of "stop justifying your actions; piracy is stealing; end of story".

Using this logic, I could escalate an assault charge to "murder" just because "assault" does not have the edge I want it to have. I understand the tendency for people to demonize piracy, but calling it stealing over and over only serves to weaken their position.

 

[AltF4]

Here's yet another study saying what I'm been all along: That Pirates are loyal paying customers.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=138587#=rss2534

 

[RDK]

And by the way, television shows do not make money because the people who watch pay money for them (well HBO and similar channels are an exception), so I dont see why an artist would have to rely on people actually purchasing their work to make money.

So its misleading to say that a free product market does not work or that artists cannot make money because people download free copies of their work (hell most music artists hardly see a penny for their efforts when it comes to music sales, they get most of their income through concerts and promotional events). This of course also applies to the free manga scanlations that I enjoy so very much, the websites hosting the manga are offering to me free distribution (not really a product but it is a service) at their own costs, which are paid for also by advertisements. Adding further to that is the fact that the people who translate it and edit the images to incorporate English as opposed to Japanese text are typically performing a higher quality service than many English manga publishers for free, and they are not necessarily getting any monetary compensation, though they are electing not to.

What? We're talking about the music industry, not manga and TV shows. And you've still failed to show why a completely free-product society would not collapse.

People often refer to illegal copying as "stealing" strictly for the moral sting, and this drives me crazy. Even after explaining in great detail how piracy is not the same as stealing, the common response is along the lines of "stop justifying your actions; piracy is stealing; end of story".

Using this logic, I could escalate an assault charge to "murder" just because "assault" does not have the edge I want it to have. I understand the tendency for people to demonize piracy, but calling it stealing over and over only serves to weaken their position.

How is piracy not the same as stealing? Someone, somewhere crafted the files you are now downloading. If they had not, you could not download them. You're taking somebody else's product and deciding not to pay for it.

The analogy between piracy / theft and murder / assault makes no sense whatsoever. What exactly is piracy, then, if it's not stealing? You're taking something without the creator's consent. It has nothing to do with "moral sting", it's just common sense.