micahrp said:
Where did I say illegal or legal? I proved public versus private. Are you saying this privacy is immoral and should be illegal?
If all digital content would be open to the public for access, then the Internet as a whole would be a form of
public domain. And vice versa, if listening on any open-air performance would be controlled by the artists through law, then the places where these are held would automatically be the artist's
private domain.
That's basically my whole argument, that large, non-scarce portions of the Internet (that is, the content on it) SHOULDN'T be locked away as someone's property, but be a public surface, analogous to a street that anyone can walk on, and art and entertainment should exist without limiting my movement on it.
So you are basically just begging the question, by citing how "the street performer is a free speech user in a public setting." but "copyright holders have the right to keep their products private".
micahrp said:
Are you saying this privacy is immoral and should be illegal?
That's quite a loaded question. It's a bit like a fundamentalist asking a gay marriage supporter "Do you want to limit my religious freedom rights by allowing gay couples to marry?" Ugh, no and yes, I simply don't think that telling other people whom to marry was ever a part of other people's religious freedom rights to begin with.
It's not so much that I want "this privacy" to be illegal, that I think it shouldn't be considered a form of privacy to begin with. An already released content is already a subject of public discourse, it is lifted into popular culture, and it is naturally accessible through a publically available technology. Therefore, declaring that it is in someone's "privacy rights" to stop others from repeating it, is unfair.
micahrp said:
I got no response (not even a snear) to the fair use of private property example when someone stated there is no fair use of private property.
I didn't reply, because even if you are right about that one, you already conceded the other one about copyright expiration that made teh same point. You wrote a paragraph about how Public Domain is needed for creativity, which is a nice and true explanation, but it only underlines how the main difference between property and intellectual property is, that IP is to be defined in the way that benefits creativity the most, while property is kept with it's owner's heirs as long as it exists.
micahrp said:
For the company example here is my specific redress. The suggestion is an attempt to decouple supply and demand. In the supply and demand economy satisifing demand without also satisfying supply hurts the economy. If all the entertainment companies switched to that suggested model (which is an already saturated market) would jobs be lost or gained? Would all the companies make survive or what percent do you think would go out of business?
That's the luddite fallacy, claiming that more cheaply satisfied demand in a particular field of work, leads to overall job losses.
If the population would spend less money on the same entertainment, then yes, the entertainment industry would shrink down. But at the same time, the money that would have been spent on the no longer scarce data, can now be spent in other products and services, increasing their industries' size (and room for employment) by an equal amount.
Besides, if "creating jobs in the entertainment industry" would be our first priority, then we could as well allow corporations to legally enforce everything that they write in their EULA, to ban used sales, and to not allow fair use, and legalize every possible money-making scheme that they can think of, just to help the entertainment industry grow even larger.
micahrp said:
My suggested solution that has been repeatedly dismissed (when the only dismissal I can understand is laziness) is to GROW the supply side. If you disagree with the companies go compete against them with that better model and drive them out of business yourself. More supply leads to more jobs and often lower prices when there is true competition.
micahrp said:
Levels of technology creating unenforceable situations does not make those technologies morally right to use. What if someone could untraceably kill over the internet (just stepped into Deathnote territory) or untraceably steal money over the internet from bank accounts (Im trying to step back and give the more real current example) should we legalize that killing/stealing? Or would the government try to find some "unbalanced" way of enforcement? The governments response to all those technology-unenforceablity situations should be consistant.
What if we would have the technology to easily create tens of thousands of whales? Would that make whale hunting OK?
What if we would have the cigarettes that don't cause any smell or unhealthy effect to outsiders? Would that make ignoring the public smoking bans OK?
That's the difference between commandments that stem from natural law, and that had been the cornerstone of all civilizations for thousands of years, and legal regulations that exist for a specific practical purpose that may or may not stay relevant on the long term.
Copyright is the latter. It has been written solely because the early modern era's book printing needed to be regulated, and at the time, this appeared to be a simple way to do it.
That's what all the "piracy is theft" comments are about. Trying to associate it with a universal sin, as opposed to the infringement of a regulation that may not even be necesary to begin with.