Downloading is a human right.

[DracoSuave]

Assuming the rights of an owner amounts to appropriation, which copying without authorization amounts to.

Read again that britsh law:

A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another

That law only talks about PROPERTY, it says nothing about "appropriating someone's monoplistic licenses of exclusive production", since there is no such thing. Appropration refers to actual enumerable objects that can literally be taken away, not to infringement of exclusive selling rights.

Copyright is covered by entirely separate laws.

Intellectual property is a form of property, and that includes 'monopolistic licenses of exclusive production.' That's a basic right of intellectual property.

I find it more telling that you villainize the people who produce the things you want, rather than those who attempt to sponge of their work.





Okay, let's put it in different terms.

Let's say you're a father, a family man, and you decide to make a home movie with your kid. Your kid's flying around in a cape, and you film it, and it's cute.

Do you have the right to decide not to show that video of your kid goes onto youtube?
Do you have the right to decide not to show that video on the evening news?
Do you have the right to decide not to have pedophiles wanking off to your video?

Do you have those rights?

If you answer yes to ANY of those, you've just acknowledged that the creation of a piece of art does, in fact, carry specific rights to the distribution of that art. You can make the decision to distribute OR NOT distribute that video of your child as you see fit.

If you answer no, then you therefore do NOT mind if I break into your home and take data off your computer. You do NOT mind if I take videos of your children and post them against your will as a parent. You do NOT mind if I steal photos of you and your girlfriend having naked time and putting them on redtube. You do NOT mind if I do these things, because you do not accept those rights exist.


This is where the hypocracy comes into play--once you realize that protecting your privacy REQUIRES acknowledgement of intellectual property rights, you realize that YOUR rights as a human being are jeopardized by the total 'freedom of information' that these people are championing.

 

[chikusho]

Intellectual property is a form of property, and that includes 'monopolistic licenses of exclusive production.' That's a basic right of intellectual property.

Actually, "intellectual property" is an excemption to property law. If it was property, existing property laws would suffice.

The copyright monopoly is actually four different conceptual monopolies. It is commercial monopolies on duplication and public performance, and it is so-called moral rights to be associated with one?s work and to have the right of veto against conceptual violations of it. These are four quite different mechanisms.
...
Something given or shared of free will cannot be described as theft in any philosophy, and somebody else is sharing their copy with you of their free will in a typical file-sharing process as you are manufacturing your own copy. It is, however, infringing a governmentally-sanctioned duplication monopoly, which is a completely different beast than property rights.

http://falkvinge.net/2013/02/13/five-basic-misconceptions-about-the-copyright-monopoly-and-sharing-of-culture/

 

[Entitled]

Intellectual property is a form of property, and that includes 'monopolistic licenses of exclusive production.' That's a basic right of intellectual property.

IP is a form of property in the same way as "character assassination" is a form of assassination, or as "gold farming" is a type of farming.

In other words, it's not. It's a figure of speech, an analogy, and not even a very good one.

I'm not saying that IP rights don't exist, just that comparing piracy to theft on the basis that both are outlawed by laws that are sometimes compared to each other, is an argument from a false analogy.

Okay, let's put it in different terms.

Let's say you're a father, a family man, and you decide to make a home movie with your kid. Your kid's flying around in a cape, and you film it, and it's cute.

Do you have the right to decide not to show that video of your kid goes onto youtube?
Do you have the right to decide not to show that video on the evening news?
Do you have the right to decide not to have pedophiles wanking off to your video?

Do you have those rights?

If you answer yes to ANY of those, you've just acknowledged that the creation of a piece of art does, in fact, carry specific rights to the distribution of that art. You can make the decision to distribute OR NOT distribute that video of your child as you see fit.

I didn't understand the first question, and answered no to the third. The second one depends on whether by "evening news" we are talking about a commercial TV network that is getting a profit from ad revenues around the news, in which case I think YES, it should belong to the IP holder's exclusive publishing right, but no in a non-commercial sharing of video clips.

I'm aware that people have a number of legal Intellectual Property rights, and I believe that they are morally entitled to a number of these (even if not all of them).

If you answer no, then you therefore do NOT mind if I break into your home and take data off your computer. You do NOT mind if I take videos of your children and post them against your will as a parent.

That's a slippery slope fallacy. IP is a series of commercial regulations, that's limits were constantly reinterpreted and rewritten over time. It can be an entirely consistent idea to want to add certain further limits to it, and not others.

Besides, privacy rights are especially different from copyrights. I believe that I have a right to protect my actual property, such as my home or my hard drive, and my body, but I don't believe that I have a right to stop other people from watching the digital data that I already distributed, or to tell people what they are allowed to do with their penis while watching my public youtube videos.

This is where the hypocracy comes into play--once you realize that protecting your privacy REQUIRES acknowledgement of intellectual property rights, you realize that YOUR rights as a human being are jeopardized by the total 'freedom of information' that these people are championing.

IP doesn't protect privacy, it protects economical benefits. As the US constitution says, they are written "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". IP laws need to be exactly as wide or tight as it is necessary to promote progress.

 

[Entitled]

At what point did the product get raised to become public? I still haven't been convinced a private product privately sold to individuals is culture. At what number of individual sales is it no longer private?

Why wouldn't it be culture?

In this thread, I've never attempted to use an esoteric, special definition of "culture" that somehow explains copyright reform on it's own, I just used the phrase interchargibly with "art" and "creative work" and "data", and specifically clarified it as "pop-culture" (to differentiate it from separate meanings of the word such as "ethnic/local culture", or "civilization").

What is unfair about stopping them? I hate the word fair. It is not used right and is used too often and is not accompanied by a basis of comparison (thank you Jim Henson, we still miss you). The closest to a basis of comparison you gave is "it is naturally accessible through a publically available technology" so we shouldn't "stop others from repeating it" (I hope you don't mind that quote I believe I kept your thought in tact). My rebuttal is: it wasn't available in the n=1 case. Someone had to be first. So someone uploaded it when it wasn't "naturally available". Or is this an example where the n=1 case is false but the n+1 case and the nth case is true and the principle doesn't violate logic.

Maybe instead of "unfair", a better term would be that it is "dispropotional" to stop them.

Let's say, that you have the chance to magically build a whole skyscaper in New York by giving a thousand people migraine for a week. Let's say that you can also magically equip it with all furniture by giving ten thousand people migraine. Let's say, that you can also give it free wi-fi access, by giving one billion people migraine.

The funding of media is a bit like that. I cen see the reward, and a price, and I see how it's getting dispropartionally heavy on the general population around the end.

There are already plenty of possible ways to fund the creation of art, and most of them only has to slightly limit the freedoms of a few rival publshers to work. (such as granting exclusive rights to creators for being the one who can place ads around a show, or sell merchandise), and overall, they are good enough to do the job of letting our favorite well-known genres and mediums exist.

Yet at the same time, someone also had this "brilliant" idea, of making somehow more money, by making sure that no unauthorised digital copies of these shows ever appear on the Internet. And to guarantee this, publishers get to patrol all the video sharing that I and millions of others would otherwise do on the Internet, remove content that I just uploaded, make me hit a brick wall as I would try to rewatch a video that was still there a week ago, force me to blindly pay for every content solely based on reviews and ads and hype, install game-breaking DRM, entirely lock out countries from experiencing their product that they can't make a deal with, etc.

Constant headache for a billion people, a bit of extra for the industry.

I feel as a consumer that I benefitted from them profitting.

That's the one claim I can't really argue with.

If you think that it's worth having all these limits in turn for having the exact AAA games and blocbuster movies that we have now, as opposed to risking that under my plan, publishers would be a bit less profitable, and maybe a few of our favorite works couldn't have happened (or not the way they did), that's your call.

I disagree with it, partially because most of my best media experiences in the past years were low-budget, and/or non-copy-protected to begin with, but also because I feel that there is very little fundamental difference between a $20 million mid-budget movie and a $200 million blockbuster, not just in artistic merit, but even in terms of production values. It mostly goes to bloated celebrity talent fees, marketing, publisher fees, and frivolous details.

I wouldn't care the least bit if the biggest games would have to have PS2 graphics, or if sci-fi blockbuster movies like Transformers, would have to be made from the budget of District 9.

But that is largely a matter of personal taste. I guess there are also some people who wish publishers would have even more control, so they could afford even more expensive projects that they can't now.

 

[DracoSuave]

Intellectual property is a form of property, and that includes 'monopolistic licenses of exclusive production.' That's a basic right of intellectual property.

IP is a form of property in the same way as "character assassination" is a form of assassination, or as "gold farming" is a type of farming.

In other words, it's not. It's a figure of speech, an analogy, and not even a very good one.

I'm not saying that IP rights don't exist, just that comparing piracy to theft on the basis that both are outlawed by laws that are sometimes compared to each other, is an argument from a false analogy.

What bothers me here, is that this is what allows you to move the goalposts, as pro-piracy advocates always do.

This is how it works.

An anti-pirate advocate describes it as theft, describes it as property rights--in a moral sense. The argument is about the -morality- of piracy, not the -legality- of piracy.

Then, a pro-piracy advocate says 'Oh no, it's not technically theft under convenient law XCSDFG' and thus, having redefined theft from the moral sense to the legal sense, has shifed the goal posts, and redefined terms that the original proponent did not intend.

That's not a valid rebuttal.

Okay, let's put it in different terms.

Let's say you're a father, a family man, and you decide to make a home movie with your kid. Your kid's flying around in a cape, and you film it, and it's cute.

Do you have the right to decide not to show that video of your kid goes onto youtube?
Do you have the right to decide not to show that video on the evening news?
Do you have the right to decide not to have pedophiles wanking off to your video?

Do you have those rights?

If you answer yes to ANY of those, you've just acknowledged that the creation of a piece of art does, in fact, carry specific rights to the distribution of that art. You can make the decision to distribute OR NOT distribute that video of your child as you see fit.

I didn't understand the first question, and answered no to the third. The second one depends on whether by "evening news" we are talking about a commercial TV network that is getting a profit from ad revenues around the news, in which case I think YES, it should belong to the IP holder's exclusive publishing right, but no in a non-commercial sharing of video clips.

I'm aware that people have a number of legal Intellectual Property rights, and I believe that they are morally entitled to a number of these (even if not all of them).

The first question is really simple. If you made a video of that kid, do you have the right to say 'No' to someone publishing it on Youtube. Say I want to publish that video--do you have the right to tell me to fuck off?

The point of this is not whether you agree with the specifics of intellectual property rights, but merely their existance. If you do, then we have communicated a term correctly, and we both agree those rights can and should exist.

If you answer no, then you therefore do NOT mind if I break into your home and take data off your computer. You do NOT mind if I take videos of your children and post them against your will as a parent.

That's a slippery slope fallacy. IP is a series of commercial regulations, that's limits were constantly reinterpreted and rewritten over time. It can be an entirely consistent idea to want to add certain further limits to it, and not others.

Besides, privacy rights are especially different from copyrights. I believe that I have a right to protect my actual property, such as my home or my hard drive, and my body, but I don't believe that I have a right to stop other people from watching the digital data that I already distributed, or to tell people what they are allowed to do with their penis while watching my public youtube videos.

See there's the problem... you don't see the similarity between your own personal right not to publish and someone else's right not to publish. You don't understand that it's the same concept--your privacy rights are bolstered by your intellectual property rights. It's why people can't just break in and publish your movies.

Now obviously, you cannot control what people do with your published material, should you decide to do so. But you're not giving up your publishing rights, the fundamental RIGHT to decide the fate of your own product.

If the consumer hasn't bought from you the right to distribute your product--they haven't paid for it, why do they have an intrinsic right to distribute that product? This is a strictly moral question here... does selling something to someone ALSO include giving them the rights to manufacture exact copies and redistribute them for free?

Does selling something to someone give them the right to pick the locks you put on that thing in order to make it tougher for them to distribute it to others for free?

This is where the hypocracy comes into play--once you realize that protecting your privacy REQUIRES acknowledgement of intellectual property rights, you realize that YOUR rights as a human being are jeopardized by the total 'freedom of information' that these people are championing.

IP doesn't protect privacy, it protects economical benefits. As the US constitution says, they are written "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". IP laws need to be exactly as wide or tight as it is necessary to promote progress.

Yes, it -also- protects economical benefits. There's the rub. Finally someone admits it.

You've JUST admitted there's economical benefits from someone making a work and publishing it--which means there's something to be deprived from them.


So... do you admit they have intellectual property rights? Yes.
Do you admit that some of those rights should be respected? Yes.
Do you admit that their own personal work can have economic benefit? Yes.
Do you admit that intellectual property rights protects the creators' economic interest? Yes.

So the big question is... do the creators of a work have a right to economic benefits from the distribution of that work? Do they, in other words, have the right to sell something you clearly agree belongs to them?

And do you, as a customer, have the right to make copies of their work, distribute it for free, and thusly undercut someone you made a deal with?

Remember, this is NOT the same as you selling your own copy of that work. Doing so is fine, you were sold one copy and you do with it as you please. This is you manufacturing knockoffs and distributing them for free.

If you don't want to call it theft because you're hung up on legal definitions... it's most certainly some sort of violation of contract law at best, it'd be similiar to counterfeiting or whatnot. The fact that it's digital and thus your manufacturing costs are negligible doesn't make the concept any different.

I'd rather not get hung up in the legal definitions in what is plainly a moral argument on my side. It's morally theft--you are violating their property rights and causing them harm, specificly by creating knock-off products in order to produce a competitive advantage.

Something given or shared of free will cannot be described as theft in any philosophy, and somebody else is sharing their copy with you of their free will in a typical file-sharing process as you are manufacturing your own copy. It is, however, infringing a governmentally-sanctioned duplication monopoly, which is a completely different beast than property rights.

But it ISN'T given or shared of free will, is it?

Or rather, the 'free will' here isn't the 'free will' that matters. By this definition, proper theft, is not theft.

After all, the thief certainly exercised free will, even if the owner did not.

This argument completely boils down to 'It's not theft because I have the ability to perform the theft' which is like saying breaking into someone's house ceases to be immoral because you own a set of lockpicks.

The question is, who owns the COPY. And it's actually pretty clear--if you buy a product, you're not buying the right to make cheap knock-offs and distributing it as the original. If you went in, studied the code, and recoded it from the ground up, or made your own original product from scratch that acts as a similar version (What Zynga does), then you'd be manufacturing and distributing of your own free will.

And that's the hypocrasy of it--if it's Zynga making a similar and competing version to a game, they're knock-off artists, and they're stealing from others' creative works blah blah blah. But when YOU do it, and you don't even bother to make your own, all you do is just copy-paste bits and distribute them... you're a hero of the internet!

When, by ANY reasonable definition, you're actually worse--because unlike Zynga, you AREN'T manufacturing something of your own. All you're doing is stealing someone else's idea, making a copy, and distributing it because you just don't want to pay for it.

 

[Vegosiux]

If you answer no, then you therefore do NOT mind if I break into your home and take data off your computer.

Not the best analogy. One might still mind the "breaking and entering" bit even if they had not minded the "taking the data from my computer" bit. After all, they'll likely have to replace a lock or something.

Put that computer in a place where you don't need to commit a second offense to get to it, though, and the analogy stands.

 

[Xanadu84]

Well that's cool and all but people still deserve to be paid for their work.

If you're an artist "getting paid" is producing your work and having it appreciated. If it isn't and it's about the money, you're not what I'd call an "artist".

If your not concerned with getting paid, then you are also not what I would call, "Well fed" or "Not homeless".

Seriously, there is a middle ground here. Artists want to get paid for doing a good job, just like every other person in the world, and that is a good thing. There's mitigating factors for piracy, and problems with the way things are now, but the idea that artists shouldn't want to get paid for there efforts is fundamentally absurd.

I think you assumed that when I say "artist" I was talking about the person who produces art. I wasn't. That should clear up the misunderstanding.

It absolutely does not, because I don't think there is a better definition for, "Artist" then, "A person who produces art".

At the end of the day, whoever you are talking about as an, "Artist" is a human being who needs to eat, and who should be specializing in whatever job you think that artists do. Not scraping by with a day job and only donating there remaining time and energy to a financially free endeavor.

 

[Vegosiux]

It absolutely does not, because I don't think there is a better definition for, "Artist" then, "A person who produces art".

At the end of the day, whoever you are talking about as an, "Artist" is a human being who needs to eat, and who should be specializing in whatever job you think that artists do. Not scraping by with a day job and only donating there remaining time and energy to a financially free endeavor.

That's a little vague, though, I mean "producing art" thing. It's not a job description, and then we have all that "what is and what isn't art" stuff...

But I suppose we can settle on the description that while art can be a hobby, it does not need to be one? And, of course that there needs to be some personal commitment to the affair past "I just do this to make money"? Basically, it has to have a non-monetary component of motivation somewhere.

But let me put it this way. I sometimes try my hand on writing. I couldn't live off it, nor would I be able to force myself to write anything decent if my life depended on it without proper inspiration. Sure I could pass some junk reading, but nothing good. Am I an artist, or not?

 

[Xanadu84]

It absolutely does not, because I don't think there is a better definition for, "Artist" then, "A person who produces art".

At the end of the day, whoever you are talking about as an, "Artist" is a human being who needs to eat, and who should be specializing in whatever job you think that artists do. Not scraping by with a day job and only donating there remaining time and energy to a financially free endeavor.

That's a little vague, though, I mean "producing art" thing. It's not a job description, and then we have all that "what is and what isn't art" stuff...

But I suppose we can settle on the description that while art can be a hobby, it does not need to be one? And, of course that there needs to be some personal commitment to the affair past "I just do this to make money"? Basically, it has to have a non-monetary component of motivation somewhere.

But let me put it this way. I sometimes try my hand on writing. I couldn't live off it, nor would I be able to force myself to write anything decent if my life depended on it without proper inspiration. Sure I could pass some junk reading, but nothing good. Am I an artist, or not?

Yes, absolutely. Quality may be questionable, but in that respect sure, you are an artist. And if you were exceptional at it, then the world at large would benefit if you did it more often, created more work, and honed your craft. In order to do that more often, you would need to spend less time doing whatever your current job is, and more time writing. I think that sure, an Artist needs to love what he or she does, and the ability to create something people enjoy needs to be a huge boon to the artist. But end of the day, people still gotta eat, and no one should be forced to pay their hard earned money for your work unless they want to. The buisness side should not be ignored, and it can't be discarded. That's just reality, unless the only good artists are those who are already independently wealthy.

Also, I was purposefully vague to demonstrate just how broad this job of, "Artist" is. Whats odd is that I have given a incredibly broad definition, and been told that the term 'Artist is actually OUTSIDE of that broad definition.

 

[Entitled]

What bothers me here, is that this is what allows you to move the goalposts, as pro-piracy advocates always do.

This is how it works.

An anti-pirate advocate describes it as theft, describes it as property rights--in a moral sense. The argument is about the -morality- of piracy, not the -legality- of piracy.

Then, a pro-piracy advocate says 'Oh no, it's not technically theft under convenient law XCSDFG' and thus, having redefined theft from the moral sense to the legal sense, has shifed the goal posts, and redefined terms that the original proponent did not intend.

That's not a valid rebuttal.

The problem is, that copyright apologists bring up the whole theft analogy to justify a moral goalpost-moving to begin with. No one ever says things like "murder is morally theft, because it takes away something against your will".

Because if something is obviously evil on it's own, then no one is trying to justify it, and therefore there is no comparison needed.

In case someone *does* come up with a murder scenario that some people cosider morally OK, then others won't just reply with a thought-terminating cliché about how "murder is wrong because it's theft", but they will start to debate the actual details of the scenario and whether it has a positive or negative overall consequence.

In case of copyright, the thought-terminating cliché is used as an excuse of not having to look at IP law as a set of actual regulations that have a specific purpose and might need to be redefined to better fit that purpose, but as something that is bad because it is categorically considered a crime.

The first question is really simple. If you made a video of that kid, do you have the right to say 'No' to someone publishing it on Youtube. Say I want to publish that video--do you have the right to tell me to fuck off?

In that case, it's depending on whether I have already published the video to the public. I don't support privacy violations that involve breaking into my private files, but I don't think that IP holders should control on which free video sharing site their already published work appears on.

See there's the problem... you don't see the similarity between your own personal right not to publish and someone else's right not to publish. You don't understand that it's the same concept--your privacy rights are bolstered by your intellectual property rights. It's why people can't just break in and publish your movies.

Just because they are determined controlled by a same generic idea, the "control over data" and "information freedom", doesn't mean that commercial copyright laws and personal privacy laws are the exact same thing.

You would reveal my hypocricy, if you would catch me saying something like "I have a right to take picures of your children against your or their will and share them on the Internet, but you have no right to take pictures of my children without my permission". Or "I have a right to break into your home and take the novel that you are writing off your computer, but you have no right to break into my home".

Which I didn't. I didn't change my reply to the latter examples, because you changed "others" to "you". I changed them because you changed other conditions. In the first example, you were talking about a father recording a video, putting it up on youtube, and then trying to control it's distribution. In the latter example, you were talking about creeps secretly recording videos about other people's kids.

Two separate cases, one is a matter of copyright, the other is a matter of privacy right.

If the consumer hasn't bought from you the right to distribute your product--they haven't paid for it, why do they have an intrinsic right to distribute that product? This is a strictly moral question here... does selling something to someone ALSO include giving them the rights to manufacture exact copies and redistribute them for free?

Does selling something to someone give them the right to pick the locks you put on that thing in order to make it tougher for them to distribute it to others for free?

This is where the hypocracy comes into play--once you realize that protecting your privacy REQUIRES acknowledgement of intellectual property rights, you realize that YOUR rights as a human being are jeopardized by the total 'freedom of information' that these people are championing.

I don't think that they have an "intrinsic right" to it, or that "freedom of information" is above all else. As I said in my first post in this thread, I don't think that downloading is any more of a basic human right than copyright is. There are a number of reasons why I think that liberalizing copyright to allow for downloadings would be healthy for all culture, but ultimately it's just a matter of whatever is more convenient for us as a society at any given time.

Yes, it -also- protects economical benefits. There's the rub. Finally someone admits it.

You've JUST admitted there's economical benefits from someone making a work and publishing it--which means there's something to be deprived from them.

It does. Then again, if copyright length would be 110 years instead of 95 years, then publishers would get even more economical benefits. If taking a screenshot from a game wouldn't fall under Fair Use, publishers could charge a few cents for making each of them, thus gaining extra economical benefits. If you wouldn't be allowed to record TV shows for timeshifting, then you would miss tonight's movie, and then you could watch it by paying for it on Netflix, so banning DVD recorders would mean extra economical benefits for publishers.

So the big question is... do the creators of a work have a right to economic benefits from the distribution of that work? Do they, in other words, have the right to sell something you clearly agree belongs to them?

Big question indeed. And here comes back the comment that started our discussion: intellectual property is NOT THE SAME THING AS PROPERTY.

This is not just a fine print of the law, this is a fundamental difference between how ownership works, and how copyright works: you can't truly *own* a piece of content. You can have special licences, that give you the monopoly to sell it's copies. You can have the right to ban it's imitators. You can have the right to arrest people who watch it without your permission. You can have the right to keep these special licenses for 25, 35, 50, 70, 95, or 110 years.

While at the same time, the consumers and the public have their own related rights through the many limitations and exceptions to copyright [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitations_and_exceptions_to_copyright], that grant them access to content that other people have financial interest in, in the name of freedom of speech and usr rights.

Because even though publishers have "a right to economic benefits", that doesn't mean that they have an absolute right to every imaginable benefit of a piece of content. Because they don't really *own* the content, they only have a major interest in it, along with many others.

The belief that copyright law as it is written right now goes too far, and grants one too many rights to IP holders, (the right to control individuals' non-commercial filesharing), doesn't translate to wanting to "take away their property" from artists, it's about wanting to change the exact set of special monopoly licenses that artists control, for another one that would have a larger emphasis on freedom of speech and user rights.

Likewise, you might have your negative opinion about someone going ahead of the law and making copies that are illegal right now, but it's not analogous to theft, any more than liberalizing copyright is analogous to legalizing theft.

 

[The Material Sheep]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah people trying to justify not wanting to put down money on things by acting as if it's some noble crusade against corporations wooooooooooooo!

Let's not count the amount time skill, and money that went into all these things whether they are literally physical property or not. Apparently you have a human right to these things that you had no part in the creation of and don't intend on either reimbursing for the service.

You might not be taking something physical from someone but your taking something from someone for free without their consent. Who cares if it's a physical property or not? It's a product their time and effort not yours. You don't get to decide at what price they give it over to you or if there is a price at all.

Point being you are not the judge and jury of what constitutes how other people use their property. The world isn't centered around you. Don't be a dick. Pay for a game if it's worth playing.

 

[thanatos388]

As long as YOU don't have to pay its fine yes?

 

[thanatos388]

It absolutely does not, because I don't think there is a better definition for, "Artist" then, "A person who produces art".

At the end of the day, whoever you are talking about as an, "Artist" is a human being who needs to eat, and who should be specializing in whatever job you think that artists do. Not scraping by with a day job and only donating there remaining time and energy to a financially free endeavor.

That's a little vague, though, I mean "producing art" thing. It's not a job description, and then we have all that "what is and what isn't art" stuff...

But I suppose we can settle on the description that while art can be a hobby, it does not need to be one? And, of course that there needs to be some personal commitment to the affair past "I just do this to make money"? Basically, it has to have a non-monetary component of motivation somewhere.

But let me put it this way. I sometimes try my hand on writing. I couldn't live off it, nor would I be able to force myself to write anything decent if my life depended on it without proper inspiration. Sure I could pass some junk reading, but nothing good. Am I an artist, or not?

Are you selling your work? Then people should pay to see it. If you give it away for free then its for free to anyone who can get your writing. Don't try to muddle the situation with this whole "definition of artist" bullshit. You know that's what your doing.

 

[Vegosiux]

Are you selling your work? Then people should pay to see it. If you give it away for free then its for free to anyone who can get your writing. Don't try to muddle the situation with this whole "definition of artist" bullshit. You know that's what your doing.

I'm sorry, but I have to ask, what's your point and what are you trying to say? Considering that you have not been in this particular line of conversation so far I get the feeling you just needed to snap at someone for some reason, and I got to be the "someone". Please don't do that.

Now, if there's a point you want to make for me to address, by all means, go ahead. But please stop just dropping in and being confrontational like that. Such behavior usually relays a distinct lack of genuine interest in a discussion; but I'm willing to give you the benefit of doubt this once.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Are you really of the opinion that an artist is someone who makes goods to be consumed for payment? Is that really why you're studying art?

For me, those are two very different questions. Yes I think an artist makes (or at least can make) goods to be consumed for payment. You can go to Hobby Lobby or a furniture store and buy factory-prints or handmade furniture, so why wouldn't an individual be able to do the same? I see no difference between paying Hobby Lobby for a print to hang on my wall and paying an artist for a handmade work to hang on my wall, apart from a greater percentage of the money going to the creator and the uniqueness of the product. They don't have to, if that's what you're trying to get me to say, but they certainly can. An artist isn't just one thing, but I thought for the purposes of this thread we were talking about artists who were selling their things.

I don't know what this thread is about anymore. If it's about whether artists should be paid then I don't know why I bothered - it's not even a question because like I've been saying all along the essence of the artist is in his/her creating art and nothing more. The professional artist is a person, the artist is a concept. Should people be paid for their work? Of course. But logistics and politics don't interest me. Why talk about artists? I was hoping to go into more interesting questions concerning art and technology but it looks like no one else wants to, even an art student.

As for your second question, why am I studying art, I suppose yes I am wanting to make money for studying art, but I suppose knowing my degree would be more helpful to you. My major is computer animation, so what I'm hoping to make money from is producing animations and motion graphics for either a single client over time or multiple clients at an ad firm. I still consider that art, even though it might not be character animation I still use principles of arts and graphic design to make my work. I don't really want to freelance if at all possible, I do want a certain amount of security and regularity.

But as for everyone else, I don't think I could name a single person I've met in the art department who doesn't have some desire to make money for what they do. Many consider it to be the perfect job--creating stuff day and night, and paying the bills with their work without having to have a day job. Of course they're doing it for the art, but there's no reason they can't make money off of it as well. Just because the job is their passion doesn't mean they can't plan to make a few bucks off of it. I mean, just holding onto the stuff they make isn't reasonable from a practical standpoint. Professional artists can produce hundreds, if not thousands, of works in a single year. You can't just hold onto that stuff, you have to get it moving either through galleries or into the hands of buyers or else you both run out of space and money.

Good luck to you! (with your studies)

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Well that's cool and all but people still deserve to be paid for their work.

If you're an artist "getting paid" is producing your work and having it appreciated. If it isn't and it's about the money, you're not what I'd call an "artist".

If your not concerned with getting paid, then you are also not what I would call, "Well fed" or "Not homeless".

Seriously, there is a middle ground here. Artists want to get paid for doing a good job, just like every other person in the world, and that is a good thing. There's mitigating factors for piracy, and problems with the way things are now, but the idea that artists shouldn't want to get paid for there efforts is fundamentally absurd.

I think you assumed that when I say "artist" I was talking about the person who produces art. I wasn't. That should clear up the misunderstanding.

It absolutely does not, because I don't think there is a better definition for, "Artist" then, "A person who produces art".

At the end of the day, whoever you are talking about as an, "Artist" is a human being who needs to eat, and who should be specializing in whatever job you think that artists do. Not scraping by with a day job and only donating there remaining time and energy to a financially free endeavor.

Great. 11 pages of discussion to reach that conclusion that people need to eat. I'm proud to have participated in it.

 

[chikusho]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah people trying to justify not wanting to put down money on things by acting as if it's some noble crusade against corporations wooooooooooooo!

Infringing on the copyright monopoly has nothing to do with defending corporations, but allowing this to continue is far more important than the totalitarian laws and technology that would need to be implemented in order to effectively hinder piracy.

Let's not count the amount time skill, and money that went into all these things whether they are literally physical property or not. Apparently you have a human right to these things that you had no part in the creation of and don't intend on either reimbursing for the service.

It's been proven time and time again that free access to culture increases money spent in any media. Good word of mouth can be a far better payment than a few dollars.
Also, noone has a human right to "these things", you clearly did not read the verdict in the original post.

You might not be taking something physical from someone but your taking something from someone for free without their consent. Who cares if it's a physical property or not? It's a product their time and effort not yours. You don't get to decide at what price they give it over to you or if there is a price at all.

No, you are manufacturing your own copy of something from someone who wants to share it. There is no taking involved.
The price of something is highly relevant because no matter what the product is, if someone doesn't want to pay the set price for it he or she never will, piracy or no piracy. Piracy however, and free spreading of content allows knowledge of the product to reach an audience who might want to pay for it.

Point being you are not the judge and jury of what constitutes how other people use their property. The world isn't centered around you. Don't be a dick. Pay for a game if it's worth playing.

There is no "property" involved in piracy.