Today's Piracy report

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

If someone else created it, and you want it, buy it.

I've seen all sorts of clever rhetoric and semantics but I've never yet had it explained to me how taking something that isn't yours without paying for it isn't stealing.

Oh, and the Escapist don't like it when you support piracy on the forums, so this should soon be shut down.

 

[Nurb]

In all honesty, no one really knows how much piracy affects larger companies because they never show any numbers to prove anything, only saying it's really affecting them

The Institute for Policy Innovation actually has a report out about the revenue lost to the music industry due to piracy. However, the numbers are inflated by (at least) 400%. So... take that how you will.

Yea, no one is really genuine, they're making the numbers look bad to make a point, plus people are less willing to support the old system where companies make more money than the artists.

But I wish piracy had an effect; I want EA, Activision and Ubisoft to go bankrupt haha

 

[Lilani]

Copyright infringement and piracy are not the same thing. And both problems need to be solved separately. Pirates need to learn that there is no free lunch and they can't have everything in the world on tap without consequences. And companies that think fanmade content celebrating their works are scum that need to be whitewashed out of existence need to learn how to identify a compliment when they see one. For example, Viacom needs to learn that those kids who make "Top 5 Spongebob Moments" videos on YouTube aren't trying to screw them over. They're just showing the world how much they love Spongebob.

 

[Nurb]

If someone else created it, and you want it, buy it.

I've seen all sorts of clever rhetoric and semantics but I've never yet had it explained to me how taking something that isn't yours without paying for it isn't stealing.

Oh, and the Escapist don't like it when you support piracy on the forums, so this should soon be shut down.

Or you just haven't accepted that theft removes from a quantity, and piracy is copying existing content, making an "extra". That's why it's called piracy and not theft, and not treated the same as someone shoplifting.

 

[KalosCast]

Yea, no one is really genuine, they're making the numbers look bad to make a point, plus people are less willing to support the old system where companies make more money than the artists.

But I wish piracy had an effect; I want EA, Activision and Ubisoft to go bankrupt haha

Yeah, you'd be seeing some pretty lean years from the video game industry if that happened. Activision includes Blizzard, EA includes Bioware, Mythic and Criterion. Activision includes Blizzard, Sierra, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch. Ubisoft has a ton of self-branded studios, along with Massive.

Sure, they're dicks, but they're dicks that make really popular games.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

If someone else created it, and you want it, buy it.

I've seen all sorts of clever rhetoric and semantics but I've never yet had it explained to me how taking something that isn't yours without paying for it isn't stealing.

Oh, and the Escapist don't like it when you support piracy on the forums, so this should soon be shut down.

Or you just haven't accepted that theft removes from a quantity, and piracy is copying existing content, making an "extra". That's why it's called piracy and not theft, and not treated the same as someone shoplifting.

Theft is sometimes used as informal shorthand to refer to stealing from property, but the term actually refers in criminal law to the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely given consent.

Intellectual Property as defined under most copyright law counts as another person's property, and even if it didn't the game would belong to the developers, the publishers, the stores which stock it.

Has the designer given his free consent to take his game without paying for it? The it's theft. Theft is not removal from a quantity, burglary, looting, robbery etc are, but theft itself is just the wider concept of taking things that aren't yours without paying for them.

IE. Stealing.

 

[Gindil]

In all honesty, no one really knows how much piracy affects larger companies because they never show any numbers to prove anything, only saying it's really affecting them

The Institute for Policy Innovation actually has a report out about the revenue lost to the music industry due to piracy. However, the numbers are inflated by (at least) 400%. So... take that how you will.

That's been debunked 20 ways from Sunday. I'd refer you look into the GAO report (piracy) along with this:


Which gets into those next rounds:

Odd thing is, the ones that want to control imaginary property the most, gain the most from controlling how others use it.

This isn't an odd thing at all that the people who's profits are hurt by piracy are the people railing against it. This is like saying it's odd that people who's houses are on fire are the people who most demand firefighters. Alternatively, this is like saying it's odd that nearly every piracy advocate also benefits from free music, movies, and video games.

This also supports the IP maximalist position that copyright law must be helping them when all of the research proves otherwise. Control of a work in all distribution channels is impossible. An author can't control an individual book anymore than an artist can keep their work off of 4chan or someone making their own version. Such is the nature of people.

This argument only supports people who aren't already well-known. These artists have the potential to gain notoriety from file-sharing networks. However, your argument conveniently ignores people who already have dedicated fanbases. Works by these people are unsurprisingly the most sought-after works through illicit means. If you notice, any evidence for this argument has never been for anything other than small independent artists.

Ok Go [http://www.okgo.net/] - Built their entire fanbase through shared youtube videos

Steve Lieber [http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/10/19/underground-artist-steve-lieber-wins-over-4chan-with-love-and/] - Talked to 4chan, came out alive, had people buy his books.

Nina Paley [http://blog.ninapaley.com/] - still has Sita Sings the Blues on Youtube for free.


I could go on, but your point about it not helping the indies is a little flat.

This argument also only really works in the cases of music, where there's a high enough profit margin that the sales lost from piracy are less-felt than say, the video game industry which has much higher costs and a much lower profit margin. Excluding the odd case of small independents.

Odd... This argument absolutely ignores Free 2 play games [http://www.freemmorpglist.com/] and even EA understands [http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/battlefieldheroes/news.html?sid=6283592]. You're also ignoring the fact that the industry adapts to the new changes.

Finally, the music industry is not the recording industry. Small heads up.

I tend to think about it like this:

If I'm a musician in the 14th century, I would have to play my instrument to an audience and repeat it every time I wanted to be paid. I had to worry about someone using my song, so I would keep a repertoire of songs on hand and continue competing.

Nowadays, I'm free to make the songs and sell CDs for them so long as people want them. I have a back catalogue and I don't have to remember them all off the top of my head. There's other ways to differentiate myself and bigger venues I can play in. I'd like to think that there's more opportunities for artists than what piracy supposedly takes away.

Yes, and this is a great thing for spreading and preserving works of art. However, there are no numbers to suggest that illicit distribution has any impact on ticket sales for live shows, making this little more than a red herring.

Link [http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/battlefieldheroes/news.html?sid=6283592] (pdf)

 

[Nurb]

Yea, no one is really genuine, they're making the numbers look bad to make a point, plus people are less willing to support the old system where companies make more money than the artists.

But I wish piracy had an effect; I want EA, Activision and Ubisoft to go bankrupt haha

Yeah, you'd be seeing some pretty lean years from the video game industry if that happened. Activision includes Blizzard, EA includes Bioware, Mythic and Criterion. Activision includes Blizzard, Sierra, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch. Ubisoft has a ton of self-branded studios, along with Massive.

Sure, they're dicks, but they're dicks that make really popular games.

And that's why they're dicks, people put up with it.

People will never stop making video games, companies will come up again and they'll be independent, numerous and innovative like they were in the 90's before 3 companies made everything. The developers let themselves be bought out too, that's why I'm no longer supporting Bioware after selling themselves to EA.

It'll suck for a short time, but in the long run, things would be better for gamers if those companies collapsed

If someone else created it, and you want it, buy it.

I've seen all sorts of clever rhetoric and semantics but I've never yet had it explained to me how taking something that isn't yours without paying for it isn't stealing.

Oh, and the Escapist don't like it when you support piracy on the forums, so this should soon be shut down.

Or you just haven't accepted that theft removes from a quantity, and piracy is copying existing content, making an "extra". That's why it's called piracy and not theft, and not treated the same as someone shoplifting.

Theft is sometimes used as informal shorthand to refer to stealing from property, but the term actually refers in criminal law to the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely given consent.

Intellectual Property as defined under most copyright law counts as another person's property, and even if it didn't the game would belong to the developers, the publishers, the stores which stock it.

Has the designer given his free consent to take his game without paying for it? The it's theft. Theft is not removal from a quantity, burglary, looting, robbery etc are, but theft itself is just the wider concept of taking things that aren't yours without paying for them.

IE. Stealing.

You can try to argue all you want, but the facts are, based on the laws that exist, that piracy is not considered heft. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I am going by the law in regards to piracy. It's like calling communism and socialism the same thing.

 

[Gindil]

If someone else created it, and you want it, buy it.

I've seen all sorts of clever rhetoric and semantics but I've never yet had it explained to me how taking something that isn't yours without paying for it isn't stealing.

Oh, and the Escapist don't like it when you support piracy on the forums, so this should soon be shut down.

This is a debate that's been going on for some time. You're free to express any opinion.

Same as these guys [http://www.economist.com/node/15868004?story_id=15868004]. I argue against large extensions to copyright. IMO that isn't just.

The moral case, although easy to sympathise with, is a way of trying to have one?s cake and eat it. Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right. From 1710 onwards, it has involved a deal in which the creator or publisher gives up any natural and perpetual claim in order to have the state protect an artificial and limited one. So it remains.

The question is how such a deal can be made equitably. At the moment, the terms of trade favour publishers too much.

Last problem is where the issues lie right now.

 

[KalosCast]

-snip-

Okay. Wow. You literally managed to completely fail at even basic comprehension of my posts. Learn to read and try again. You gotta be trollin at this point.

Some starting points...
(1)Regarding the IPI study: I already stated the numbers were heavily inflated. In fact, I said that these studies were exaggerated in an earlier post.

(2)I said that the piracy -> popularity thing happens ONLY in rare cases of small independents. Your argument still says nothing about well-known names.

(3)Free-to-play games also have absolutely nothing to do with the effects of piracy on gaming. These are built in a micro-transaction model, and in almost all cases aren't actually free to play in a practical sense, due to gear restrictions for free players ("selling power") which is a common criticism of most F2P MMOs as well as Battlefield Heroes. The other alternative approach to this are games like League of Legends where you can theoretically be a competitive player without spending a dime on the game, but it will just take a ludicrous amount of time to unlock everything required to do it.

 

[Gindil]

-snip-

Some starting points...
(1)Regarding the IPI study: I already stated the numbers were heavily inflated. In fact, I said that these studies were exaggerated in an earlier post.

Those were other points of reference that you might also want to look into. Helpful suggestions, not a bone of contention.

(2)I said that the piracy -> popularity thing happens ONLY in rare cases of small independents. Your argument still says nothing about well-known names.

(3)Free-to-play games also have absolutely nothing to do with the effects of piracy on gaming. These are built in a micro-transaction model, and in almost all cases aren't actually free to play in a practical sense, due to gear restrictions for free players ("selling power") which is a common criticism of most F2P MMOs as well as Battlefield Heroes. The other alternative approach to this are games like League of Legends where you can theoretically be a competitive player without spending a dime on the game, but it will just take a ludicrous amount of time to unlock everything required to do it.

They take time away from consumers from other games. I would argue that the games industry must recognize that those players exist and try to find ways to convince them to play their games. Odds are, if anyone looked at the people playing the F2P games along with the console games, piracy may not be the issue, but where people spend their time. Think about it, if you don't have enough money to pay for a $60 game, you might have the HD space for a new MMO and have more fun with it and say $10 worth of equipment than you will with the newest Dead Space. If anything, the piracy may be there, but you have more rewards with the F2P games than you may have with piracy. (Yes, piracy may still go down, but that's stretching here)

 

[Event_Horizon]

If a creator can control what a person does to their own economic benefit, that's selfishness.

It's not selfishness, it's their liberty to choose how their work is used. Liberty is not on the side of the consumer, because the consumer does not benefit or fail from the distribution of media, only the creator does, so the creator possesses the liberty to distribute/sell their creation.

Thomas Jefferson's words only extend to ideas, and ideas are not protected, so there is no problem here.

Are you now trying to assert, yet again, that copyright laws are the same as personal property laws?

I think words are getting mixed up because the creator owns their creation, and has the right to copy it as they please. Copyright and ownership go hand in hand, and to say that the owner does not have the right to copy, and that pirates do, is saying they have no ownership of what they make, since as soon as they make it, it belongs to someone else.

So when you say:

Your descriptions put most of the power in the hands of the few (author/holders of copyrighted content).

Then that is exactly right, because the consumers have no ownership of the original product, and they only own particular copy of it, to which they have no right to distribute it beyond what the creator wants. To say that the consumer has more rights than the creator is not making a mutually beneficial system, but a parasitic system, in which the masses will control whatever they please, regardless of the outcome towards the creator.

Now you can give up control, as you say here:

I never had control of how my work is distributed.

But giving up control is only up to you, and no one else. Essentially you "create" tons of information a day, and most of it from facebook updates to these forum posts are simply mundane to you. You give up that information to the internet for free, but if someone like a private marketing firm were to take that information that you release for free and build a profile for you and sell that profile to corporations would you have a problem with it?

So is what's good for the goose also good for the gander? If the pirate can take information and "sell" it for free, can't someone else take your free information and sell it for a price? That is essentially your argument here. If information is released to the internet, then it's fair game. However if you were put in the place of the artist and not the consumer, and you were instead the facebook user that has their information copied, processed, and sold to the highest bidder, would you then agree with your same logic?

... You seem to have lost it here by saying it's immoral again...

Well if it's immoral to use force onto someone else, and you admit that piracy is using force on someone else, then it is immoral.

Forcing someone to be better today than they were tomorrow is a bad thing... There's a LOT of coaches that are going to be fired tomorrow...

Yes forcing something good onto someone is bad. If the coaches physically forced players to do what they wanted, and the players had no option to opt out, then it would be a human rights violation. You cannot force someone to work for you because that is slavery. The coaches would then be arrested, as they should.

The two things you describe are to ask an author for permission on everything, which isn't a free society, along with a belief that authors should have all rights. They still have their rights, they're are still human and treated with dignity and fairness.

If authors were indeed treated with dignity and fairness, they wouldn't have their works used in ways they don't want. That's fair. A free society allows people to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't impede on the rights of others, and pirates do just that. A free society would not tolerate piracy.

In terms of morality and the Valenti quote. To me, copyright is an economic right, not a moral right and does not raise moral issues.

Rights are moral issues, in that our society is based on principals of human rights, and it is against ethics to break those rights. Now copyright might be a privilege, but it is a privilege seen necessary to allow creators to maximize their own personal ability to secure their livelihood. If you say that copyright is not a privilege of the creator, then who could get the privilege to copy whatever they want? To say that it is the privilege of the consumers means putting creative control in the hands of mob rule. If an author/musician/etc cannot choose how to use their own creation, it means they cannot control the efforts of their work, and therefore cannot control their ability to secure livelihood. You're right that they can choose other directions in the face of piracy, but the force that blocks them from certain choices is not simply an effect of the market, but the effect of those who break the aspects of ethics and a voluntary economic system.

And I addressed property rights and copyright further up, but they are closely tied.

The effect of one legal entity, be it a business or person being able to control the market to their own economic advantage, does not lose validity, whether we call it a monopoly, oligarchy or monopolistic competition. I don't throw around monopoly lightly. I only use it when you effectively want to do exactly what the definition states.

You might not throw the term around lightly, but you use it as a generalization and such a generalization makes the term meaningless. To say an author has a monopoly over their work is like saying you have a monopoly on your car. They both are used to secure livelihood and income, they both are owned exclusively by one person. But the author's work should be allowed to be changed and used by the collective without their permission and your car can't?

And you really need to let go of this control issue...

It's not about my issue of control, it's about allowing others to be as controlling as they want. I hate to sound like one of those uber-patriots, but allowing others to do what they want is freedom. I have no desire to control my work with a vengeance, but I can only let people do what they want with their work and their lives. If they want to control it absolutely, then it's none of my business. If anything, I WANT others to sabotage themselves. But who are the people making the decisions for others here?

Every time I ask about protections, you point to tragedy of the commons. The question is "They have more reason to protect their own work... Because...?" And if they protect that, what does it mean for the system vs finding new ways to make money? The tragedy of the commons has yet to occur with digital resources, and I believe you know it.

People rarely know how to use someone else's property as well as their own, and they'll rarely take care of someone else's land/property/creation as well as their own. So if I had to decide who to give the privilege of distribution to: the person who actually made it and stands to gain from it, or everyone else who has no stake in it, then the choice is clear. The tragedy of the commons is clear today as ever, since someone will not think twice about distributing a song they never made.

Creators have more reason to protect their work because it is their work, and they get the check from writing it, selling it, etc. What that means for the system is that the system can find new information and new ideas, or that those who make works open will capitalize on an open system which can compete with others who choose not. It's not that I see the system is as bad thing, but the push of such a system is being done against those who wish to cling to the old one. Hypothetically if I want to write a novel and have it ONLY be in print, and I find a publisher willing to do that, then is it right for someone else, who has not worked on my book, who doesn't get paid for the book, who doesn't know WHY I wanted it that way, to just do what they please even if it's against my right to copy my own work? It's my work, not theirs. It's my livelihood, not theirs. It's my decision, not theirs.

What you seem to reason is that authors should try to protect their work, without finding new ways to do business (which is more a cornerstone to economics than sitting and coasting on past success).

Not at all, again try to understand what I'm saying. I'm saying that authors should be able to opt in or out of distribution methods if they choose. I'm all for authors finding ways to do business differently, I am one of them, but it should be their choice and no one else's. That is the concept of liberty. Your liberty only extends as far as the liberty of another person. So I say that the authors have the liberty to choose, and you say they don't because of utilitarian reasons. Again I have already made the distinction between creator's rights and consumer's rights, and given logical reasons as to why those limitations exist. You haven't addressed them.

What I've been arguing is more people should allow more channels. And since it helps them, fans could distribute regardless of asking for permission. If the fans do what they do best (spread the news), and the author does what he does best, everyone is better off. That has NOTHING to do with any other system or impeding upon their rights.

No, that particular example doesn't impede on anyone's rights, but you leave the pirates out of that system. That is the focus of this issue for me.

In all media, EVERY person who wants money works to outcompete themselves in some regard.

No. They don't compete against the same product. Creating a TV show, and then creating a different TV show years later is not competing against oneself. To force Ford to compete against themselves is to have an industrial plant make exact copies of Ford cars/trucks and sell them on the open market against Ford's originals. The same manufacturer making a new product years later, or a different manufacturer making a spin-off product is not the same thing as a business competing against itself. To have such a scenario requires a part of the business to "go rogue" while keeping the same name, which doesn't happen.

Between the system being "good" and this, it's kind of hard to take it seriously that the way you envision the system, is how it can continue, when you still show no evidence of this.

I can't "show" such a system because such a system does not exist. That means you cannot say such a system cannot work, because you cannot prove a negative. I am using logic and reasoning using my understanding of economics and creative incentives to show how a different system would work. But more important than that, I'm taking the fundamental ideas of human rights and looking at them within your system, and seeing that such a system is not conducive to individual rights because the system you propose takes away the rights of the individual for the well being of the collective. Your system violates human rights at a basic level.

What's wrong is that it hinges on looking for a way to explain bad behavior on the part of the copyright holder, giving incentive to believe that their success is somehow guaranteed.

I had to delete/ignore a lot of what you asserted because I don't advocate for half of what you think I do. I'm all for a system where people are allowed to both succeed and fail, but it must be their fault. Pirates are a third entity that takes it upon themselves to manipulate the market.

I get and agree with a lot of what your argument says, but at what cost? Mashups are great, and so are remixes, but as much of an emphasis you put on piracy as an economic issue, you ignore the economy as a way to shift the paradigm. You say that the pirates are shifting the paradigm, but I say the means in which they do it are unethical, and the evolving market can change by the hands of the consumers. Pirates are actually doing a lot more to hurt that change than encourage it, and here?s why:

Consider a market where author A can allow free use, and author B does not. Author A will succeed in every aspect you advocate for. Author A will must more likely spread further than author B by inadvertently creating multitudes of spinoffs and sequels and fanfiction, and like a virus, author A's ideas will be spread. The author could even make a living off their work. Author B however is stuck in a system where advertising is needed to get the word out. If we look at diffusion of pure information, then in this scenario author A wins and author B doesn't, and the market has handled it all naturally and by the wisdom of crowds.

However if you put a pirate in the situation, suddenly author B, who would have lost in the first scenario, gains the advantage that author A has. Not only do they have the same strategy as author A, but they also have their original strategy. Whatever advantage A had over B is now nullified, and the paradigm shift is slowed since those taking advantage of it are less inclined to succeed now that larger forces are also using the same methods. Another downside is that author B now is forced to have their works modified without their permission, breaking their right of copy. With the addition of the pirate, A no longer has the advantage because author B is forced into the market, and author B is forced to compete with himself (or herself) all without consent.

Basically, taken to the logical conclusion you point out, if something violates the creator's rights, it's wrong.

If something violates anyone's rights, it's wrong. So, yes.

That's the main thing consistent in your argument that they have control to their own benefit at the behest of everyone else.

You have the same rights. You have the right to pick whatever job you want at the behest of everyone else. You have the right to pick your mate at the behest of everyone else. You have the right to pick your food at the behest of everyone else. Since everyone has the right to choose what they THINK is best for them, then the author has the right to choose what they think is best for them. All you can do is let it be. That is liberty. Someone forcing you to work a job without your consent because it's for the "greater good" has little difference with someone forcing you to sell your work for free without consent for the "greater good".

Strawmen are great when you try to make them say something I haven't said. *thumbs up* In terms of economics of piracy, they don't matter. Let's not try to make a strawman out of that, shall we?

Piracy helping the creator is not the point. The ends do not justify the means. If you really really don"t want my money, I cannot force you to take it. Even something beneficial cannot be forced onto someone if they do not want it.

Stop trying to dismiss [pirates] as if they aren't there.

I acknowledge they're there, and that's the problem. They do what the markets could do, but worse, and in violation of people's rights.

The liberty rights you assert, undermine the rights of consumers. Regardless of the distribution right you seem to want to assert for artists, it's still happening.

Well if you can't understand it, or at least conceptualize the logic behind it, and your only response is that it's happening and that's that, then there really isn't anything more to say about it. I've already explained why authors/creators should get the privilege of distribution: because their livelihood hangs on those decisions.

You constantly want to say that all of this is immoral.

And you want to say the benefits are better than allowing the market to decide and allowing people to do as they please. Any kind of force is immoral. Pirates use force. The conclusion therefore is pretty easy.

Is it right to lock people up for sharing? Probably not. Fine them? Yes. Make an incentive not to tamper with the market, and let the market handle it and there will be little problem. That means that both corporations and individual pirates shouldn't do it. If a book is too expensive, there are ways to get it cheaper without breaking the creator's right to profit from their work. If there's a book that isn't translated into a language, or brail, or isn't an audiobook, then you go with their competitor and don't support the people who don't capitalize on the market. Companies speak in dollars, and if they see a mass exodus away from their product and towards a competitor due to their own negligence, then they will change, they have to change, or fail. Pirates are not a legitimate competitor in the market because they did not create the product and do not directly benefit from the success of the product. Additionally, pirates make good scapegoats for companies who are failing because of their inability to change, therefore causing companies to keep restricting content. The DRM is an example of punishing customers because companies who cannot find new ways to succeed blame pirates. If pirates were out of the system, their competitors would do the work of the pirates, and DRM would not be an issue.

This is an argument over how people are trying to find better ways to profit.

Then we've been wasting our time. I've said time and time again that they are welcome to find profit in any way they choose. The market is wide open for them, and ingenuity is worth a lot.

A creator makes something new, it's outcompeting themselves as well as their competitors.

Different products don't mean a creator is competing with themselves. A different product means a different competition.

Great assertion, now back it up with data/proof. I'm still waiting from the last three times I've asked.

I went back through your posts and looked for instances where you asked for proof and I can't find any time you've asked. Second of all, there is no data that I can show which demonstrates basic economic principles out the top of my head. Instead of asking for proof, you should really do some research on what capitalism is, how it works, and what fundamental principals support the economics behind it. Otherwise this is a one sided conversation.

You repeated the same thing about 4 times with no economic data whatsoever...

I don't know what you think this is but this is not an economic argument. You keep trying to shift it to an economic argument because you think you have a strong argument for it, but you haven't touched the ethics of pirates and you throw out my argument because of a baseless assumption.

There is no force or intimidation in copyright infringement. No one's held a gun to your head or that of the author's.

If you had been reading what I said you'd understand why it is force. If the author doesn't want their work digitally distributed, and the pirate digitally distributes the work then IT IS FORCE. The pirate is forcing the author to do something they don't want.

Hmm... I could talk about the unintended consequences but that might be too much since I've been doing that for a while now.

I know you've been doing it for a while, and it's pointless because it doesn't have anything to do with the morality of piracy.

There's more but with ASCAP, only paying the top 200 tours in the US, it's worth looking into what those long contracts in just the music and movie industry actually contained in older times vs now.

You miss the point. So record companies attempt to be profitable, but copyright isn't about profit, it's about how the creator can go about their best intentions to acquire that profit. Record labels only use copyright as a tool to get that profit.

I agree until the principles, where a smaller monopoly may work for a limited time, as the Founding fathers attended and more exceptions.

But that isn't your argument. Your argument has always been that the monopoly, no matter how small or temporary, is wrong in and of itself.

But to say that an author's human rights is infringed upon because of an economic issue is ludicrous.

You keep calling it an economic issue, but no matter how many times you say it, it doesn't make it so. The argument I put forward is that of a moral issue, and you?ve avoided it to defend an economic issue. But you just don't do that when discussing something. You can't sidestep the points I make and substitute rebuttal for your own points of a completely different argument. Points have to match up blow for blow if any kind of resolution is going to be made, it's why debates on some things never get finished, because on side argues apples and the other side argues oranges.


You want to say it's an economic issue and find points to support it, well I can't stop you, and nor do I disagree. So there you go, you win the economic issue, but you still haven't met the moralistic issue, so you haven't really moved at all.

The only thing harmed by a download of media is the 1s and 0s on a hard drive. No one was shot, no witnesses have to be arraigned for a murder, and the end of the world hasn't happened because of piracy (despite the larger corporations stating otherwise)

By that logic I, or the government, or a corporation could hack into your computer or scan your emails or take any kind of information they want since that information is just 1?s and 0?s. To say that data has no personal protection means that anyone can take whatever they want from anyone. Just because it is a digital age and data has no boundaries doesn?t mean that we should have no boundaries. If you think it?s okay to copy and distribute an author?s book as much as you want, then why can?t I copy and distribute all your information as much as I want? If you question who has the right to copyright in a digital age, then I can ask who says you have the right to privacy in a digital age. Do you see my point?

I thought you had conceded the property rights point when it was effectively shown that what I legally own on tangible products has no regard for the copyright of the company

I didn't concede that. I conceded in my mistake that I put copyright with personal property. You were correct that they are not one in the same, but no you don't get the same rights as the creator. The creator has certain rights because they created it, and you have certain rights because you purchased it. But if only one person can choose to distribute it, then it is the privilege of the creator to do so because they made it.

What's also happening is that with property rights, you have legal ownership of those tangible goods. I have effectively and consistently said they are not the same thing and should not be confused. You seem to again want to put them in the same category.

I understand that, but the tangible and digital are similar when it comes to ownership. If I plant an apple tree and harvest the apples, the labor I put into that work makes those apples mine. If I design a 3D image of an apple, the labor I put into that work makes that image mine. Even though the image is digital and can be copied over and over, it is still the result of labor to which I have ownership. Now the choice is mine what to do with that image. If I post that image to deviantart (or wherever) and I say you cannot post the image as your own, or take it to another site, then not only is it my right to decide what I do with my work, but if someone were to do it anyways, it would be breaking my rights. Nobody can tie my to my computer chair and move my hand on the mouse causing me to submit the image to another site involuntarily, and there is little difference in someone copying it and doing the same. The only difference is the latter does not use physical force, but there is still force all the same. To say then that I still have my image of an apple and therefore I didn't lose anything completely misses the fact that someone just forcefully usurped the creator's desires. Nobody would do that to you in any other way. If you wanted a red car, and that was your desire, but the dealership MADE you pay for a green car, even though it cost the same, they would still be forcing you into an involuntary contract. If you wanted a red avatar, and someone forced you to buy a green avatar, that would also be force. The tangible and the digital are more similar than you think.

Yes, I should be paid, but if my asking price is too high, it can lead to a lot of negative results such as the buy just takes one since I technically won't miss it, or walk away from the deal.

If your asking price is too high and someone steals a bunny then it is theft since as the creator/owner you state a price and someone usurps that choice and picks their own price - free. If that person walks away from the deal then that is just the nature of capitalism. Nobody forces you to lower your price, and nobody forces the other person to buy it. Pirates however force you to lower your price because they have YOUR good for free.


It is your choice, and only your choice to drop the price, and even though it might not be beneficial to you, you are allowed to do it. Capitalism allows for mismanaged businesses to exist, and it allows for those businesses to fail. The ethics question does ask if it's wrong to take the bunny, and looks at specific criteria as to why it's wrong, and the criteria follows that yes it is wrong.


We need to get out of the Robin Hood mentality. Is it right for someone to take advantage of the few for the good of the many? The answer is no. Is it right for someone to take advantage of the many for the good of the few? Again, no. The perfect system, the system in which the free market exists, is a system where nobody takes advantage of anybody. As I said, pirates are not ethical in that system because they take from the few for the benefit of the many. Force by any means is unethical. The only time force should be used is in a reaction to already present force.

What the larger copyright owners are doing is trying to limit consumer choice so that they can profit off of the limited choices.

Think of Spartacus not simply as a show, but as a self contained brand. If the Spartacus brand is not on Netflix or Hulu or available on DVD, and is too expensive, then the Spartacus brand doesn?t disserve your attention, nor your money. Go spend your time somewhere else. If some brands want to limit consumer choice then they will find themselves outcompeted by other brands who enable consumer choice. The market can handle all the innovation and consumer freedom you want all on its own, all completely voluntarily and ethically. Pirates on the other hand force failing brands to stay alive by giving away free brand recognition. Pirates do not benefit those who choose other business models, and only help the older, stubborn, failing business models to stay up just a little while longer.


Consider my scenario further up the page. The market can cause brands to compete, and the wisdom of crowds will allow open brands to win, and therefore competition between those brands will enable the paradigm shift. If pirates are allowed to flourish they will put those failing and closed brands onto the same playing field as those who are trying to take advantage of the open networks. Pirates are then free advertisers to oppressive regimes. Your solution is to get rid of the oppressive regimes, and my solution is to get rid of the pirates who usurp the market. If you disagree then you?re welcome to disagree, but I implore you to keep an open mind about what it is you advocate for.

 

[Gindil]

If a creator can control what a person does to their own economic benefit, that's selfishness.

It's not selfishness, it's their liberty to choose how their work is used. Liberty is not on the side of the consumer, because the consumer does not benefit or fail from the distribution of media, only the creator does, so the creator possesses the liberty to distribute/sell their creation.

Thomas Jefferson's words only extend to ideas, and ideas are not protected, so there is no problem here.

Are you now trying to assert, yet again, that copyright laws are the same as personal property laws?

I think words are getting mixed up because the creator owns their creation, and has the right to copy it as they please. Copyright and ownership go hand in hand, and to say that the owner does not have the right to copy, and that pirates do, is saying they have no ownership of what they make, since as soon as they make it, it belongs to someone else.

If it's not to progress the arts and sciences, then there's a social benefit of gained knowledge and gained experiences. No one's said they can't own a tangible form of media, just that the ability to control where a show is watched, or where someone picks up a game is not theirs to make.


So when you say:

Your descriptions put most of the power in the hands of the few (author/holders of copyrighted content).

Then that is exactly right, because the consumers have no ownership of the original product, and they only own particular copy of it, to which they have no right to distribute it beyond what the creator wants. To say that the consumer has more rights than the creator is not making a mutually beneficial system, but a parasitic system, in which the masses will control whatever they please, regardless of the outcome towards the creator.

And your emphasis that authors NEED this is essentially discrimination. You ask for them to be able to control all of their stuff and you don't look at the damage that does. If an author decided their book shouldn't be in a library, that's their choice but why is it that a pirate can still do so? I'm never going to agree that there's any benefit to such a system and I'm really glad that such a system doesn't exist. It would be too controlling and it would not allow any expression of different ideas on whatever was produced. It fails to take into account exactly what I've been trying to get you to understand for a long time but obviously at this juncture, you want to ignore it for your own belief in "ethical" standards that don't exist.

I never had control of how my work is distributed.

But giving up control is only up to you, and no one else. Essentially you "create" tons of information a day, and most of it from facebook updates to these forum posts are simply mundane to you. You give up that information to the internet for free, but if someone like a private marketing firm were to take that information that you release for free and build a profile for you and sell that profile to corporations would you have a problem with it?

It's called an autobiography...

So is what's good for the goose also good for the gander? If the pirate can take information and "sell" it for free, can't someone else take your free information and sell it for a price? That is essentially your argument here. If information is released to the internet, then it's fair game. However if you were put in the place of the artist and not the consumer, and you were instead the facebook user that has their information copied, processed, and sold to the highest bidder, would you then agree with your same logic?

Horrible example since private data is far different from the commercial data we've been discussing.

... You seem to have lost it here by saying it's immoral again...

Well if it's immoral to use force onto someone else, and you admit that piracy is using force on someone else, then it is immoral.

And the circle comes full turn by saying economic harm of an author impedes their free speech rights. *thumbs up*

Forcing someone to be better today than they were tomorrow is a bad thing... There's a LOT of coaches that are going to be fired tomorrow...

Yes forcing something good onto someone is bad. If the coaches physically forced players to do what they wanted, and the players had no option to opt out, then it would be a human rights violation. You cannot force someone to work for you because that is slavery. The coaches would then be arrested, as they should.

*facepalm.jpg*

Coaches motivate. I used that specifically to show how ludicrous your position seems to have become. Coach = trainer = more experienced runner/athlete that gives pointers for people to improve. Last I checked, if there's someone saying "this route might be better" but you decide to use another, that's still your choice, but they get to say "I told you so." No force needed.

The two things you describe are to ask an author for permission on everything, which isn't a free society, along with a belief that authors should have all rights. They still have their rights, they're are still human and treated with dignity and fairness.

If authors were indeed treated with dignity and fairness, they wouldn't have their works used in ways they don't want. That's fair. A free society allows people to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't impede on the rights of others, and pirates do just that. A free society would not tolerate piracy.

Non sequitar ending. Since pirates haven't impeded on other's rights save for economic data in most regards, I'm not answering that one again. You haven't proved the force thing without going off about liberty (which still is a flawed definition) to me and judging by the fact that over millions of people around the world are using tools to share data, I highly doubt they're all as morally bankrupt as you seem to believe.

In terms of morality and the Valenti quote. To me, copyright is an economic right, not a moral right and does not raise moral issues.

Rights are moral issues, in that our society is based on principals of human rights, and it is against ethics to break those rights.

Let's split this up for a quick minute. Copyright is about changing economic incentives for authors to create. Human rights are about governments or businesses taking away what has been in our Constitutional Amendments [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution]. Piracy does not search your home, nor does it quarter military personnel. It does not stop you from freely assembling and saying what you say. This is an example of human rights impeded [http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/prof-arrested-tortured-for-watching-viral-vids/]. Watching a viral video and discussing it isn't immoral. It sure as hell doesn't break ethics. That is what ethics should be used to prevent, not someone finding out how to have a higher consumer surplus by watching One Piece somewhere other than Hulu.

Now copyright might be a privilege, but it is a privilege seen necessary to allow creators to maximize their own personal ability to secure their livelihood.

Bullshit. People create for various reasons but copyright isn't one of them.

If you say that copyright is not a privilege of the creator, then who could get the privilege to copy whatever they want? To say that it is the privilege of the consumers means putting creative control in the hands of mob rule.

Last I checked, we aren't talking about forms of governance. You need to stop that. Just because one form of governance doesn't work, it doesn't automatically make me one because you don't like it.

To answer your question, creative control comes out of various forms. If you've paid attention, people use the tools to create and it's shared however. That isn't mob rule, it's communities forming around certain media. If I make a trailer for Spartacus, I used existing data to make something I hope people will like. It might fail, it might succeed. But the tools of creation are there for all to use and create as they see fit.

If an author/musician/etc cannot choose how to use their own creation, it means they cannot control the efforts of their work, and therefore cannot control their ability to secure livelihood. You're right that they can choose other directions in the face of piracy, but the force that blocks them from certain choices is not simply an effect of the market, but the effect of those who break the aspects of ethics and a voluntary economic system.

Transformative media and deriative works say there's other options for a musician than current copyright law can enforce. The ones currently succeeding are the ones that allow sharing. The ones failing the hardest are the ones that look to copyright to depend on their livelihood. What you're failing at is seeing where the market goes.

Sneakernet was all about sharing cassette tapes. Did it cause the demand for music to die? Or was it about control (which I've been saying all along?)

When Fornieuax made sheet music available for the piano in the 1850s, did someone complain about the ethics of that new piracy?

When the automobile came to take over for the horse and buggy, was there not an outcry?

The market shifts as there are demands for new products. The newest thing is filesharing. Artists and authors have made money even though all these other forms of piracy have taken place and occurred for a long time. The market shifts, the producer has to keep up with what the consumer wants. Right now, it's freedom of media. That doesn't stop them from creating.

You might not throw the term around lightly, but you use it as a generalization and such a generalization makes the term meaningless. To say an author has a monopoly over their work is like saying you have a monopoly on your car. They both are used to secure livelihood and income, they both are owned exclusively by one person. But the author's work should be allowed to be changed and used by the collective without their permission and your car can't?

It's a monopoly [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/judge-rules-for-salinger-in-copyright-suit/?hp]. I'm not getting into another argument about property vs copyright again.

Every time I ask about protections, you point to tragedy of the commons. The question is "They have more reason to protect their own work... Because...?" And if they protect that, what does it mean for the system vs finding new ways to make money? The tragedy of the commons has yet to occur with digital resources, and I believe you know it.

People rarely know how to use someone else's property as well as their own, and they'll rarely take care of someone else's land/property/creation as well as their own. So if I had to decide who to give the privilege of distribution to: the person who actually made it and stands to gain from it, or everyone else who has no stake in it, then the choice is clear. The tragedy of the commons is clear today as ever, since someone will not think twice about distributing a song they never made.

That's an assumption you're making. The better way to say this is that they would use the property to their own interests. Also, if distributing a song is a bad thing, I assume you don't have any of the sites I've told you about. Facebook allows you to distribute to a friend's list, last.fm is ALL about distributing artists. Myspace, Ustream...

Yeah, big tragedy of the commons...

Creators have more reason to protect their work because it is their work, and they get the check from writing it, selling it, etc. What that means for the system is that the system can find new information and new ideas, or that those who make works open will capitalize on an open system which can compete with others who choose not. It's not that I see the system is as bad thing, but the push of such a system is being done against those who wish to cling to the old one. Hypothetically if I want to write a novel and have it ONLY be in print, and I find a publisher willing to do that, then is it right for someone else, who has not worked on my book, who doesn't get paid for the book, who doesn't know WHY I wanted it that way, to just do what they please even if it's against my right to copy my own work? It's my work, not theirs. It's my livelihood, not theirs. It's my decision, not theirs.

Answered this before. It's starting to feel like this conversation is getting bogged down... [http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=jason+robert+brown]

Anyway, if you don't want to do it, the market will probably shift away from you. Thing is, that means you lose opportunities to have those sales, since people will get them elsewhere. Such is how the market works. If I can't find what I want at one location, I pick up my ball and move elsewhere. Since I absolutely HATE iTunes, I don't buy from their store. Doesn't mean I don't find movies and such from other sources (Hulu, surfthechannel), just that any authors that market exclusively on iTunes miss me by default. So I find artists through other means. That's been going on for quite a while. I'm used to that system for me. And that means I go to promote on various sites other artists that share a similar view. They don't want their work shared? Fine, I don't. But maybe someone else feels differently.

What you seem to reason is that authors should try to protect their work, without finding new ways to do business (which is more a cornerstone to economics than sitting and coasting on past success).

Not at all, again try to understand what I'm saying. I'm saying that authors should be able to opt in or out of distribution methods if they choose. I'm all for authors finding ways to do business differently, I am one of them, but it should be their choice and no one else's. That is the concept of liberty. Your liberty only extends as far as the liberty of another person. So I say that the authors have the liberty to choose, and you say they don't because of utilitarian reasons. Again I have already made the distinction between creator's rights and consumer's rights, and given logical reasons as to why those limitations exist. You haven't addressed them.

The market has never worked that way... Once a book or DVD is on the market, you really can't take it off of it. So saying that distribution models are a choice like that really doesn't work... It's like saying an author has the choice of giving to Walmart or Target... And yet, Best Buy wants sales too.

What I've been arguing is more people should allow more channels. And since it helps them, fans could distribute regardless of asking for permission. If the fans do what they do best (spread the news), and the author does what he does best, everyone is better off. That has NOTHING to do with any other system or impeding upon their rights.

No, that particular example doesn't impede on anyone's rights, but you leave the pirates out of that system. That is the focus of this issue for me.

If you've noticed, the pirates are a part of the system as fans. They do it regardless. Maybe they like the band, maybe they like to share stuff, maybe they go to concerts... We don't know. Dismissing all the people on a filesharing site as a pirate just makes it seem as if the spreading of a work is done with some malicious intent. What's funny and amazing, if you look at some of the torrents, those "pirates" say "buy X" or buy "Y" as they're giving it away for free. Obviously, it's to someone's benefit. As I view it, gaining fans and brand loyalty does a lot more for people than complaining about the piracy so...

In all media, EVERY person who wants money works to outcompete themselves in some regard.

No. They don't compete against the same product. Creating a TV show, and then creating a different TV show years later is not competing against oneself. To force Ford to compete against themselves is to have an industrial plant make exact copies of Ford cars/trucks and sell them on the open market against Ford's originals. The same manufacturer making a new product years later, or a different manufacturer making a spin-off product is not the same thing as a business competing against itself. To have such a scenario requires a part of the business to "go rogue" while keeping the same name, which doesn't happen.

*tilts head to the side*

*rubs hands on bridge of the nose*

I'll say this slowly.

That. is. trying. to. make. yourself. better. than. what. you. did. before.

The reason you get into the market? Compete with your own product be it book, comedy, car, or your gymnastics. But saying Ford doesn't compete with their older products? That's insanity.

If that were true, we would all be driving around in Model-T [http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/92.html]s

Between the system being "good" and this, it's kind of hard to take it seriously that the way you envision the system, is how it can continue, when you still show no evidence of this.

I can't "show" such a system because such a system does not exist. That means you cannot say such a system cannot work, because you cannot prove a negative. I am using logic and reasoning using my understanding of economics and creative incentives to show how a different system would work. But more important than that, I'm taking the fundamental ideas of human rights and looking at them within your system, and seeing that such a system is not conducive to individual rights because the system you propose takes away the rights of the individual for the well being of the collective. Your system violates human rights at a basic level.

What you're basically asking for is a filter. Along with discrimination. Those two things right there are quite more limiting factors to the thriving chaos that is the internet. And for the last time, I'm not going on about the different systems of governance, that's yours. The system I've been describing is what's going on today. Human rights haven't been violated because you believe that economic "harm" has been committed. The author has the chance to get up and try something new. If a pirate allows a download, it's a signal to the author to find a way to compete with free. What does he offer to people? I've explained all of that and you ignore it for your own beliefs that the system is somehow only a one way street. It's not. People have various methods to choose from and various tools. If they want convenience and access and BT gives it to them, then so be it. If they want ease of use and no commercials, a download isn't going to hurt their DVD collection.

Now this is but a tangent... But you really need to decide how you can prove this. You haven't, for 5 posts now. What I've been asking for is where does your fundamental idea of human rights come from, as in a source?[ You keep going on about this that I'm going to basically dismiss it as non sequitar because that is not defined by anything but you. Those three words are now meaningless because the only definition is you saying them and propping them up. They are not something defined by the dictionary. They aren't defined by liberty. They don't come from great philosophers such as Plato, Socrates, or Aristotle. Your belief is just that until you can truly define this in a way that doesn't seem to block all conversation from moving forward.

What's wrong is that it hinges on looking for a way to explain bad behavior on the part of the copyright holder, giving incentive to believe that their success is somehow guaranteed.

I had to delete/ignore a lot of what you asserted because I don't advocate for half of what you think I do. I'm all for a system where people are allowed to both succeed and fail, but it must be their fault. Pirates are a third entity that takes it upon themselves to manipulate the market.

Nope. People succeed and fail for various circumstances. The term of "fair" doesn't apply to any capitalistic endeavor.

I get and agree with a lot of what your argument says, but at what cost? Mashups are great, and so are remixes, but as much of an emphasis you put on piracy as an economic issue, you ignore the economy as a way to shift the paradigm. You say that the pirates are shifting the paradigm, but I say the means in which they do it are unethical, and the evolving market can change by the hands of the consumers. Pirates are actually doing a lot more to hurt that change than encourage it, and here?s why:

*sigh* Napster increased sales of CDs and the labels freaked out. You've just made all the users of Napster into pirates from way back in 2001. Good job, but here we go:

Author B however is stuck in a system where advertising is needed to get the word out. If we look at diffusion of pure information, then in this scenario author A wins and author B doesn't, and the market has handled it all naturally and by the wisdom of crowds.

However if you put a pirate in the situation, suddenly author B, who would have lost in the first scenario, gains the advantage that author A has. Not only do they have the same strategy as author A, but they also have their original strategy. Whatever advantage A had over B is now nullified, and the paradigm shift is slowed since those taking advantage of it are less inclined to succeed now that larger forces are also using the same methods. Another downside is that author B now is forced to have their works modified without their permission, breaking their right of copy. With the addition of the pirate, A no longer has the advantage because author B is forced into the market, and author B is forced to compete with himself (or herself) all without consent.

If A were smart, he'd find new ways to compete, and the two authors may have different strategies than what you seem to advocate. This doesn't work because of the fact that you're isolating a lot of variables to try to shift things to where I have to say "Oh, it's author B winning"

Maybe A is a jackass that no one wants to support. Maybe B sings on the side. Dunno because A could be a sci-fi writer with B being a romance novelist. The markets could be totally different, along with the strategies involved. Best way to answer is that A keep trying until s/he gets it right. The pirate in this case merely acts as a neutral party for all. Hell, it just may be that there was a scandal on B, driving up demand. Welcome to a free market. You don't know where it'll go, and neither does anyone else.

Basically, taken to the logical conclusion you point out, if something violates the creator's rights, it's wrong.

If something violates anyone's rights, it's wrong. So, yes.

And "rights" should be in quotes, because of the earlier discussions. Basically, That's a lot of author's who have "violated" rights [http://falkvinge.net/2011/02/21/there-will-never-be-a-shortage-of-content/]. Funny that, it doesn't seem to be slowing down all of the material we're using...

That's the main thing consistent in your argument that they have control to their own benefit at the behest of everyone else.

Someone forcing you to work a job without your consent because it's for the "greater good" has little difference with someone forcing you to sell your work for free without consent for the "greater good".

And again, argument fails on account of no author being slugged over the head to create a book.

Strawmen are great when you try to make them say something I haven't said. *thumbs up* In terms of economics of piracy, they don't matter. Let's not try to make a strawman out of that, shall we?

Piracy helping the creator is not the point. The ends do not justify the means. If you really really don"t want my money, I cannot force you to take it. Even something beneficial cannot be forced onto someone if they do not want it.

It's not. But I repeat myself. It's just the way the world works. Your entire ethical point doesn't seem to flow with what people are actually doing. Yes, you control yourself. But to say no one else has liberty at the behest of an author stops being liberty. As I've said before, the piracy of material doesn't matter in the long run because a good business plan will make it better. People will still come to the artist/author for whatever and find ways to support them. The ones with the most to lose are the ones that depend on copyright, not their own creative muscles, for sustenance. And all the ways that creativity are coming out, the lines are truly blurred.

Look up machinima sometime. Look up how people transform media to their own uses. If copyright is supposedly the original author's, it would really behoove Microsoft to go after Red vs Blue, who made a successful comedy franchise out of Halo.

Stop trying to dismiss [pirates] as if they aren't there.

I acknowledge they're there, and that's the problem. They do what the markets could do, but worse, and in violation of people's rights.

[citation needed]

The liberty rights you assert, undermine the rights of consumers. Regardless of the distribution right you seem to want to assert for artists, it's still happening.

Well if you can't understand it, or at least conceptualize the logic behind it, and your only response is that it's happening and that's that, then there really isn't anything more to say about it. I've already explained why authors/creators should get the privilege of distribution: because their livelihood hangs on those decisions.

You constantly want to say that all of this is immoral.

And you want to say the benefits are better than allowing the market to decide and allowing people to do as they please. Any kind of force is immoral. Pirates use force. The conclusion therefore is pretty easy.

Is it right to lock people up for sharing? Probably not. Fine them? Yes. Make an incentive not to tamper with the market, and let the market handle it and there will be little problem. That means that both corporations and individual pirates shouldn't do it.

FINALLY! You're talking behavioral economics. It's a lot more than the ethics thing which doesn't do anything. Problem here is that the fine is out of whack, and the chances of people getting hit with a lawsuit is like being struck by lightning.

But if you need further convincing this is a bad idea... [http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/07/13/2024228/RIAA-Paid-16M-In-Legal-Fees-To-Collect-391K] Also, it's good to read what this actually did [https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-years-later] when the RIAA tried it. Even now, that incentive doesn't work.

If a book is too expensive, there are ways to get it cheaper without breaking the creator's right to profit from their work. If there's a book that isn't translated into a language, or brail, or isn't an audiobook, then you go with their competitor and don't support the people who don't capitalize on the market.

Impossible to do. Publishers have a monopoly on Amazon. The only actual person that has gone to a few different people would be Nina Paley. Her system worked [http://blog.ninapaley.com/2009/12/07/i-2/]. It's smarter than giving away all rights to one person as is the usual course.

Companies speak in dollars, and if they see a mass exodus away from their product and towards a competitor due to their own negligence, then they will change, they have to change, or fail. Pirates are not a legitimate competitor in the market because they did not create the product and do not directly benefit from the success of the product. Additionally, pirates make good scapegoats for companies who are failing because of their inability to change, therefore causing companies to keep restricting content. The DRM is an example of punishing customers because companies who cannot find new ways to succeed blame pirates. If pirates were out of the system, their competitors would do the work of the pirates, and DRM would not be an issue.

Lessons to learn:

Pirates are underserved customers [http://paidcontent.org/article/419-warner-bros.-targets-new-consumer-segment-pirates/]

Scapegoats aren't the root of the problem. Economics are. [http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/84200/analyzing-piracy-the-industrys-scapegoat/]

Spore [http://torrentfreak.com/spore-most-pirated-game-ever-thanks-to-drm-080913/]

Better yet... Ubisoft [http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/0219/Why-Ubisoft-DRM-for-Assassin-s-Creed-2-has-outraged-gamers] Yes, they ARE the joke...

A creator makes something new, it's outcompeting themselves as well as their competitors.

Different products don't mean a creator is competing with themselves. A different product means a different competition.

Model-T... All I'm sayin. And you just proved me right.

Great assertion, now back it up with data/proof. I'm still waiting from the last three times I've asked.

I went back through your posts and looked for instances where you asked for proof and I can't find any time you've asked. Second of all, there is no data that I can show which demonstrates basic economic principles out the top of my head. Instead of asking for proof, you should really do some research on what capitalism is, how it works, and what fundamental principals support the economics behind it. Otherwise this is a one sided conversation.

I'm going to just ignore the constant jabs since I've actually shown a lot more in regards to economic ways that piracy won't matter and all you've done is talk about how competing against yourself and improving yourself is a bad thing. I'm also going to ignore you trying to chastise me when you've had ONE link in regards to piracy which was rebutted when I showed one of the developers basically explain how they DDoS themselves by not preparing for a mass influx of people. I'm also going to ignore the fact that the ones that don't worry about piracy and look to provide a service (Valve [http://blogs.forbes.com/oliverchiang/2011/02/15/valve-and-steam-worth-billions/]) seem to be doing a lot better when they listen to their customers and understand the business that they're in.

It's also truly ironic that you're trying to say I don't understand capitalism, I link you to an economist that seems to have a good head on his shoulders in regards to copyright, and you want to ignore that information because it doesn't fit your ethical beliefs. Bravo.

You repeated the same thing about 4 times with no economic data whatsoever...

There is no force or intimidation in copyright infringement. No one's held a gun to your head or that of the author's.

If you had been reading what I said you'd understand why it is force. If the author doesn't want their work digitally distributed, and the pirate digitally distributes the work then IT IS FORCE. The pirate is forcing the author to do something they don't want.

Explained above. Author needs to get on top of that and capitalize. Such is how an economy works, not wait until permission is gained. Perhaps instead of trying to subtly jab at me with not knowing about capitalism, you should look into how markets work again?

Last I checked, small businesses spring up and flourish based on what people need. They don't get an ok to bring out X product or Y product. They find out which product works, and which doesn't and make arrangements to sell more of Y if it is good and less of X. If X sells more in another country, you provide that. If it sells less, you don't. But if there's a way to fulfill that demand with less effort, I'm sure the business doesn't mind. They just find a way to make it work to their advantage.

Hmm... I could talk about the unintended consequences but that might be too much since I've been doing that for a while now.

I know you've been doing it for a while, and it's pointless because it doesn't have anything to do with the morality of piracy.

And I'll say the inverse is true. Since I already talked about the system, I won't repeate here.

There's more but with ASCAP, only paying the top 200 tours in the US, it's worth looking into what those long contracts in just the music and movie industry actually contained in older times vs now.

You miss the point. So record companies attempt to be profitable, but copyright isn't about profit, it's about how the creator can go about their best intentions to acquire that profit. Record labels only use copyright as a tool to get that profit.

I agree until the principles, where a smaller monopoly may work for a limited time, as the Founding fathers attended and more exceptions.

But that isn't your argument. Your argument has always been that the monopoly, no matter how small or temporary, is wrong in and of itself.

Because it distorts the market, yes, and it distorts the natural growth of artists that depend on it. Nowadays, there's less artists concerned with copyright. Even then, Creative commons has problems such as ND and NS which is truly problematic. I may not like copyright for 70 years + death of author, but I wouldn't mind if we had a public domain to pull resources from after 3-5. That was the balance originally intended with 14 years, such would be okay, but there really needs to be a large reduction of those rules so that JD Salinger [http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/45738-j-d-salinger-estate-swedish-author-settle-copyright-suit.html] (RIP) can't control copyright from the grave.

But to say that an author's human rights is infringed upon because of an economic issue is ludicrous.

You keep calling it an economic issue, but no matter how many times you say it, it doesn't make it so. The argument I put forward is that of a moral issue, and you?ve avoided it to defend an economic issue. But you just don't do that when discussing something. You can't sidestep the points I make and substitute rebuttal for your own points of a completely different argument. Points have to match up blow for blow if any kind of resolution is going to be made, it's why debates on some things never get finished, because on side argues apples and the other side argues oranges.

I didn't concede that. I conceded in my mistake that I put copyright with personal property. You were correct that they are not one in the same, but no you don't get the same rights as the creator. The creator has certain rights because they created it, and you have certain rights because you purchased it. But if only one person can choose to distribute it, then it is the privilege of the creator to do so because they made it.

You want to say it's an economic issue and find points to support it, well I can't stop you, and nor do I disagree. So there you go, you win the economic issue, but you still haven't met the moralistic issue, so you haven't really moved at all.

Two things, I had something in here about the Supreme Court saying this was an economic issue.

Second, every time I've asked about the moral issue, you go in a circle about how it's a human right, how it's wrong on a basic level, etc. You need to define those rights. The points I've made is that if you're concerned about how you can control someone else and the choices they make in regards to piracy, you're asking the wrong questions. Artists and authors are asking "what can I do to make money and stop piracy?". Newsflash: Napster, showed us something different. It showed us that the old ways of doing business don't apply when TPB can be the largest library in the world without holding a single data file.

With about $200, I can hold the Library of Congress within a hard drive. That's 2 TB of information. Does that copying of so much of our heritage, from books of recent authors to the words of Jefferson supposedly make me some morally bankrupt person?

All of those people on those sites, if you want to make them pirates, be my guest. Try to tell them that this is unethical. Tell them that what they're doing is wrong because it doesn't put food on the table of the artist because they won't spend $20 for a DVD (that may be overpriced), $20 on a pdf(that's definitely overpriced), or they're trying to experiment and find new artists outside of their comfort zone.

Wanna know what Napster did? It showed us how overpriced the music was. For years people complained about the quality of songs coming out of the woodwork of the RIAA machine. You buy a CD, get one really good pop song, and about 11 songs of crap. And you would have to buy a CD to get the song you enjoyed.

Now? Try before you buy. You don't like it? Don't buy it, delete the mp3 or keep it. It's only a few bytes on a computer. And the artist? They're still performing for those that like that music. I may not like all of the Blue Man Group, but damned if they don't still perform. May love Shakira, but hard to see her where I am. So no, I don't think you have the right idea of what "human rights" actually entail from the moralistic POV. If anything, piracy seems to support the Progress of the Arts and Sciences by distributing material wholesale a lot more than an artist's right to profit. Copyright never guaranteed income. If you want it, go out and get it, and keep trying until you get it right. As I said before, and I'll say again, it's a crutch that's used to distort the system for the ones that came before.

The only thing harmed by a download of media is the 1s and 0s on a hard drive. No one was shot, no witnesses have to be arraigned for a murder, and the end of the world hasn't happened because of piracy (despite the larger corporations stating otherwise)

By that logic I, or the government, or a corporation could hack into your computer or scan your emails or take any kind of information they want since that information is just 1?s and 0?s. To say that data has no personal protection means that anyone can take whatever they want from anyone. Just because it is a digital age and data has no boundaries doesn?t mean that we should have no boundaries. If you think it?s okay to copy and distribute an author?s book as much as you want, then why can?t I copy and distribute all your information as much as I want? If you question who has the right to copyright in a digital age, then I can ask who says you have the right to privacy in a digital age. Do you see my point?

That just happened with HBGary, who pissed off anonymous. Entirely different ballgame of private and commercial data. Also, don't piss off anonymous.

What's also happening is that with property rights, you have legal ownership of those tangible goods. I have effectively and consistently said they are not the same thing and should not be confused. You seem to again want to put them in the same category.

I understand that, but the tangible and digital are similar when it comes to ownership. If I plant an apple tree and harvest the apples, the labor I put into that work makes those apples mine. If I design a 3D image of an apple, the labor I put into that work makes that image mine. Even though the image is digital and can be copied over and over, it is still the result of labor to which I have ownership. Now the choice is mine what to do with that image. If I post that image to deviantart (or wherever) and I say you cannot post the image as your own, or take it to another site, then not only is it my right to decide what I do with my work, but if someone were to do it anyways, it would be breaking my rights. Nobody can tie my to my computer chair and move my hand on the mouse causing me to submit the image to another site involuntarily, and there is little difference in someone copying it and doing the same. The only difference is the latter does not use physical force, but there is still force all the same. To say then that I still have my image of an apple and therefore I didn't lose anything completely misses the fact that someone just forcefully usurped the creator's desires. Nobody would do that to you in any other way. If you wanted a red car, and that was your desire, but the dealership MADE you pay for a green car, even though it cost the same, they would still be forcing you into an involuntary contract. If you wanted a red avatar, and someone forced you to buy a green avatar, that would also be force. The tangible and the digital are more similar than you think.

Apples and oranges are similar. They're fruit and they taste delicious.

BTW, if you really feel that way about putting something on deviantart, you might wanna take down your avatar. I'm sure someone's going to be mad that you're using it on a site such as Escapist without their permission.

Yes, I should be paid, but if my asking price is too high, it can lead to a lot of negative results such as the buy just takes one since I technically won't miss it, or walk away from the deal.

If your asking price is too high and someone steals a bunny then it is theft since as the creator/owner you state a price and someone usurps that choice and picks their own price - free. If that person walks away from the deal then that is just the nature of capitalism. Nobody forces you to lower your price, and nobody forces the other person to buy it. Pirates however force you to lower your price because they have YOUR good for free.

Perfect time to do this:


Seems your exact idea was in this link. I got the bunnies from the Remix Manifesto and thought you might catch the reference.

We need to get out of the Robin Hood mentality. Is it right for someone to take advantage of the few for the good of the many? The answer is no. Is it right for someone to take advantage of the many for the good of the few? Again, no. The perfect system, the system in which the free market exists, is a system where nobody takes advantage of anybody. As I said, pirates are not ethical in that system because they take from the few for the benefit of the many. Force by any means is unethical. The only time force should be used is in a reaction to already present force.

*sigh*
So first you say it's okay for the tools to be there. Now you're railing against it because hey, the 21st century allows people to use 'em. The movies and music are going to be there for others to share as they see fit. I never would have heard of Sintel if it wasn't free. I have resources to look at Pioneer One on Bittorrent, resources that say it would be difficult to watch this show on TV such as time. Your entire governance idea, I see no credibility in. All it seems to be is you saying "It's communism, it's dictatorial, it's X" without any credence to those ideas. I'll get into the free market which is that the choices the market (ie people) make, dictates what is prevalent. Do we want the closed, controlled TV series on StarTV, or do we want the convenience of our own time to enjoy a movie? Do we want the convenience of watching anime at 3 am without it being censored for us, or do we want ease of access at the regular times it's shown? What about other incentives that are ignored: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/why-anime-fans-pirate-the-shows-they-love.ars]

. ...But the bigger concerns are about availability and the quality of the subtitles?an issue of particular importance to anime fanatics.

...

While streaming content can appear at US outlets within a week or so of airing in Japan, non-streaming material can take far longer. "For non-streaming, yeah, ask the lawyer why it took FUNimation a year to get Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 out," said Otaku1.

Three different fans, quite a number of reasons to pirate that have NOTHING to do with economics. The morality of piracy doesn't begin to find out how you can cater to customer and MAKE them purchase. It also ignores what the fans want. In this case, they like Bittorrenting with a certain fansubber. Irony is, with the longer series, they have a copyright on their own fansub with the official one being copyrighted as well...

So the free market works that the official sub should be a lot better than what the fansubbers offer. Let Funimation keep working on that.

What the larger copyright owners are doing is trying to limit consumer choice so that they can profit off of the limited choices.

Think of Spartacus not simply as a show, but as a self contained brand. If the Spartacus brand is not on Netflix or Hulu or available on DVD, and is too expensive, then the Spartacus brand doesn?t disserve your attention, nor your money. Go spend your time somewhere else. If some brands want to limit consumer choice then they will find themselves outcompeted by other brands who enable consumer choice.

Kinda hard when your friends like the show, telling you about it and you HAVE to watch it to keep up. Word of mouth is still a popular advertiser. I just happen to believe the tools in play extend that.

The market can handle all the innovation and consumer freedom you want all on its own, all completely voluntarily and ethically. Pirates on the other hand force failing brands to stay alive by giving away free brand recognition. Pirates do not benefit those who choose other business models, and only help the older, stubborn, failing business models to stay up just a little while longer.

Show me someone that failed because of piracy, I'll show you a failing business model. RIAA and MPAA [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/piracy-once-again-fails-to-get-in-way-of-record-box-office.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss] still have a long way to go when the head honcho says "You can't compete with free [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100903/10122810894.shtml]"

Consider my scenario further up the page. The market can cause brands to compete, and the wisdom of crowds will allow open brands to win, and therefore competition between those brands will enable the paradigm shift. If pirates are allowed to flourish they will put those failing and closed brands onto the same playing field as those who are trying to take advantage of the open networks. Pirates are then free advertisers to oppressive regimes. Your solution is to get rid of the oppressive regimes, and my solution is to get rid of the pirates who usurp the market. If you disagree then you?re welcome to disagree, but I implore you to keep an open mind about what it is you advocate for.

They flourish regardless of you trying to stop them. They're a part of the market. Just like a garage sale or flea market sell a movie I don't like, I'm not going to stop them. Can't stop all of the sales on Ebay, can't stop all of the sales on Craigslist or anything else. To try to single out one variable (in this case pirates) is tantamount to exclusion for nothing. This really isn't the heart or crux of the problem.

Saying that pirates are promoting oppressive regimes is nothing more than an assumption. I'll show again the Piracy and Promotion [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=918240] (new link) and Digital Distribution [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1381827] (old link, but pdf version). Pirates are made up of various different people doing various things. I can't call them all pirates and dismiss what they do which is seeding data, downloading and overall sharing for various reasons. Some want to make a great movie site with torrents. Some want to use their bandwidth to share movies they liked. Some hack DRM, some just want a few downloads. This is the world that we live in that the law fails to regulate with copyright law. In that world is something a lot more efficient than what copyright has caused. Whether you want to dismiss it as unethical, it will continue to exist because their values are far different than what you value. That's human nature. We don't all have the same experiences and we may not agree on everything. But thinking that billions of people will suddenly change what they're doing for an economical belief that copyright needs to protect the artist (instead of getting the artist to work with the systems created) fails to convince when all evidence points to that being false.

 

[Event_Horizon]

If it's not to progress the arts and sciences, then there's a social benefit of gained knowledge and gained experiences.

And there can be a huge social benefit if the government forces people to have X amount of children, or force genetic testing, or force people to be scientists, or to outlaw smoking or trans-fats. Any kind of "social benefit" is usually found fallacious somewhere along its premises because someone will somewhere get abused by the system. The utilitarian accepts 100 people prospering at the expense of 1. That brand of ethics has been found fallacious and retired in the presence of improved contemporary ethics.

You ask for them to be able to control all of their stuff and you don't look at the damage that does.

The only damage that is caused is being done defensively. Now it's not that I agree with what they do, or that it's fair, but they don't fine people who don't do anything. They fine people as a reactionary measure even if it is misguided.

I'm never going to agree that there's any benefit to such a system

Remember when I said keep an open mind? If you're not willing to consider other ideas then the conversation should really stop now, otherwise your continued argument is simply self-masturbatory.

Horrible example since private data is far different from the commercial data we've been discussing.

How is it different? You're the one who said data is just 1's and 0's. You never made any distinctions, so I'm just taking what you said: that data is data. Also, what is private data? Don't you use public channels. Don't you make commercial data?

And the circle comes full turn by saying economic harm of an author impedes their free speech rights. *thumbs up*

No idea where I said that...

I used that specifically to show how ludicrous your position seems to have become.

Well, it is pretty ludicrous if my points aren't understood. If there's something I've been bad in clarifying then please let me know and I'll try to say it better.

Since pirates haven't impeded on other's rights save for economic data in most regards

But this is what I'm talking about. This isn't from the economic perspective, and I've tried over and over to state why, but something is getting lost in the dialog.

Copyright is about changing economic incentives for authors to create.

Not correct. Copyright is the privilege of sole right to copy.

Human rights are about governments or businesses taking away what has been in our Constitutional Amendments [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution].

No, human rights are a set of privileges granted to humans on the grounds of being human. The Constitution for example does not GRANT rights, but it protects rights already present, inalienable rights. So for your example, Zimbabwe does not adhere to our constitution, and does not adhere to human rights, therefore the example is not valid. So when you say watching a viral video is not immoral (pardon the double negative) then you are correct. It is not immoral.

Last I checked, we aren't talking about forms of governance.

Correct. Mob rule is not just a term used in government, and the term can be used when not referring to government. Mob rule in this case means the will of the majority take a single person's creation and use it how they see fit without consent, instead of allowing the creator to maintain ownership of their work.

If you've paid attention, people use the tools to create and it's shared however.

Your argument has been to sacrifice the good of one for the good of many. Your argument puts the power of a work into the hands of the people who have absorbed it, and not the one who created it. That isn't a bad system in and of itself, but it does become unethical if the creation is taken from the creator without their consent or by force.

Transformative media and deriative works say there's other options for a musician than current copyright law can enforce. The ones currently succeeding are the ones that allow sharing. The ones failing the hardest are the ones that look to copyright to depend on their livelihood. What you're failing at is seeing where the market goes.

How have I failed to see it when I said all that a few posts ago?

Also, if distributing a song is a bad thing, I assume you don't have any of the sites I've told you about.

I never said distributing a song was a bad thing, I said distributing a song without the artists' consent is a bad thing.

They don't want their work shared? Fine, I don't. But maybe someone else feels differently.

Thank you for summarizing my entire stance. If someone doesn't want their work shared, when who has the right to share it?

The market has never worked that way... Once a book or DVD is on the market, you really can't take it off of it. So saying that distribution models are a choice like that really doesn't work... It's like saying an author has the choice of giving to Walmart or Target... And yet, Best Buy wants sales too.

You can have exclusives to specific retailers. Manufacturers don't have to sell at Walmart, or Target, or Best Buys, and authors/musicians can refuse to do business with itunes. But consider this. If an artist doesn't want to distribute their music on itunes, and itunes forces them to do it anyways, is it wrong for itunes to do so? If your answer is yes, then consider this as well: what if an artist doesn't want to distribute their song through torrent sites, and someone forces them to do it anyways by posting it there. Is it wrong for them to do so? If you answered no to that question, and yes to the first, then how do you explain the doublethink?

If you've noticed, the pirates are a part of the system as fans. They do it regardless.

If I remember correctly, didn't you say something to me about generalizing why people pirate things? Who says that pirates are fans?

Dismissing all the people on a filesharing site as a pirate just makes it seem as if the spreading of a work is done with some malicious intent.

Do you think that most things people do wrong have malicious intent? How many people do things that they think will be helpful but end up having effects they didn't plan for? Granted I'm not saying that the effects of piracy are bad, but human rights override the consequentialist argument. It is not the pirate's responsibility to distribute the media. That being said, if the creator puts a creative commons license on their product which allows for free distribution, then there would be no problem. The only time the pirate (the one who distributes media) is in the wrong is when the creator doesn't want them to do something but they do it anyways.

That. is. trying. to. make. yourself. better. than. what. you. did. before.

That. Is. Not. Competition.

Competition - a business relation in which two parties compete to gain customers (WordNet)

You cannot compete against yourself because you are a single party. Are pirates competitors? Well in a way I guess they are. But are pirates *legitimate* competitors? No, because they don't create a product, they use other people's products in the same market. They have no profit motive and they do not feel the consequences of risks.

Human rights haven't been violated because you believe that economic "harm" has been committed.

I'm really going to have to start counting how many times you've attributed something to me that I didn't say. Honestly it's starting to get me pissed off since you put so much time into writing responses and putting up links that I would kind of expect you to at least understand what I'm trying to say. Economics isn't the point here. It doesn't matter that pirates help the creator, because the pirate's actions are wrong in and of themselves, regardless of the consequences. I cannot do something good for you if you don't want it.

What I've been asking for is where does your fundamental idea of human rights come from, as in a source?[

A source of human rights? Study enlightenment ethics and in particular the Constitution. Just fyi, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle were a few hundred years short of human rights. Try John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith.

The term of "fair" doesn't apply to any capitalistic endeavor.

Not exactly true.

This doesn't work because of the fact that you're isolating a lot of variables to try to shift things to where I have to say "Oh, it's author B winning"

I'm isolating variables so we can compare two equal things. What you've done is sidestepped the conversation. You have to break down an idea into its basic parts, and you cannot simply create imaginary variables to further your side.

You have to assume that A and B are writing nearly similar stories in the same genre, using the same style of writing, otherwise the exercise is futile. So I implore you to try it again and not make stuff up this time.

That's a lot of author's who have "violated" rights[/url]. Funny that, it doesn't seem to be slowing down all of the material we're using...

Again, you're using the ends to justify the means. It's no different than saying "a madman drove a truck ran into a building and killed forty people, but now we'll have a newer and better building, therefore the accident was really okay".

And again, argument fails on account of no author being slugged over the head to create a book.

Well I'm glad that argument fails, because I didn't make that argument. I never said the author was forced to make the book, but only that the author is forced to distribute it.

It's just the way the world works. Your entire ethical point doesn't seem to flow with what people are actually doing.

But your argument is fallacious because it basically says: this is how the world works, so it is pointless to change it. No, that is flat out wrong. Just because a system exists, doesn't mean it needs to keep existing, or that it's good, or even bad for that matter. Pirates exist, but their existence doesn't mean they are immune to ethics. Consider your logic in a different context: "Dying is just the way the world works. Your entire ethical point that death is bad doesn't seem to flow with the people who are actually dying." So I suppose since X exists we shouldn't change it? Can't agree with that.

FINALLY! You're talking behavioral economics. It's a lot more than the ethics thing which doesn't do anything.

I'd avoid the absolutes in saying that ethics doesn't do anything. Revolutionary ethics in enlightenment Europe for example were the foundation for the American government that protected the people's rights, which then caused revolutions in human rights and in politics around the world. The concept of human rights was revolutionary at the time, and it's what shapes our world today. To say ethics doesn't do anything is to disintegrate everything you were raised on.

You cannot simply rely on the necessity of technology to justify its use. To do that means you legitimize the horde or rampaging killbots because they are killbots, who are made to rampage in hordes, and therefore they are okay, without asking if the killbots should do what they do.

I'm going to just ignore the constant jabs since I've actually shown a lot more in regards to economic ways that piracy won't matter and all you've done is talk about how competing against yourself and improving yourself is a bad thing.

Well I'm NOT going to ignore the non sequiter that you keep posting since I am not arguing from an economic standpoint, and I am going to highlight the straw man since I never said improving yourself is bad, and I'm going to point out that you're wrong since it is impossible to compete against oneself because the very definition of competition means two people, and a single person cannot be two people.

Author needs to get on top of that and capitalize. Such is how an economy works, not wait until permission is gained. Perhaps instead of trying to subtly jab at me with not knowing about capitalism, you should look into how markets work again?

I'm not economic or marketing expert, but I have some understanding about how markets work. And it is because of that understanding that I can see that pirates are not legitimate players in the market. The market needs specific rules to be successful, namely the absence of force. Since force will always skew the market in favor of large businesses, causing a positive feedback system. On the other hand, people who take things and distribute them without consent are forcing creators/distributors to take a distribution channel they did not want. I tried to put together an exercise in the last post, but you invented imaginary variables and threw it out.

Nowadays, there's less artists concerned with copyright. Even then, Creative commons has problems such as ND and NS which is truly problematic. I may not like copyright for 70 years + death of author, but I wouldn't mind if we had a public domain to pull resources from after 3-5.

Then make that argument. I actually inclined to agree with you here. Make copyright protection customizable to which creators can pick and choose what kind of protection they want, like the creative commons license. Make the fines fit the crime, especially in the digital age. That means limiting the courts so they don't get out of hand. If you were to say we NEED reform, then I would 100% agree. Reform isn't just something that should happen, but it NEEDS to happen, since laws have not progressed into the digital age. Instead of fining someone 1000$ a song, fine them 5$ a song, because the 1000$ deterrent isn't working, that is if you CAN catch them in the first place.

At the end of the day there might not be a lot people can do, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss it and work out the ethics. Even if it's impossible to catch any pirate, it doesn't mean that we should accept them as a natural routine that they will exist, or that their actions are permissible.

Two things, I had something in here about the Supreme Court saying this was an economic issue.

And you didn't provide the context as to what they meant by that statement. Nor does that magically mean that the issue isn't ethical in nature, it just means that the Court didn't want to see it that way.

I've asked about the moral issue, you go in a circle about how it's a human right, how it's wrong on a basic level, etc. You need to define those rights.

You want me to define some terms, well I can do that.

From Wiki: "Human rights are those rights which are held by all human beings"

I don't like that definition because it uses the terms within the definition itself.

International Economics sums it up better: "The conditions and expectations to which every person, by virtue of his or her existence as a human being, is entitled."

For Americans, the Constitution names some rights that are protected from government intervention. These rights are protected by anyone, and nobody can intervene with these rights:

Right of Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly, Petition (sue) the Government, etc etc. Right to own property is also there. Now because these rights are inalienable, the Constitution ASSUMES we have the rights already, and the only purpose of the Bill of Rights is to restrict government from those rights. Your rights also do not extend into the rights of another person. Example: you have the right to assemble. But people have the right to own and therefore control their property. So if you choose to assemble on someone else's property without consent, there is a conflict. The person who owns the property has their rights triumph over yours because you are the primary aggressor, meaning you are the person who violates the rights first, and your right to assemble can only be violated as a response to you already violating someone's rights.

What does this mean in the context of piracy?

Human rights apply to both the creator of a work, and to the consumer who purchases a copy of that work. Just as in my example above, the creator has a special privilege given to them that gives them, and only them, the right to choose what manner to copy their work. If pirates choose whatever manner they want to copy the work, then they are breaking the creator's right to copy. That is an infringement of rights. Now if it is wrong to sensor someone, if it is wrong to imprison someone without a trial, and if it is wrong to take their information, then it is also wrong to break a creator's right to copy.

Or I could put it this way, though note I'm kinda bad at creating arguments:

P1: Infringing on rights is unethical.

P2: (Some) pirates' actions infringe on someone's right to choose distribution without consent.

C: Therefore (some) pirates' actions are unethical.

I added in the *some* because I read what you said at the bottom, and no not all pirates are the same. This is simply focusing on people who distribute media without consent.

If anything, piracy seems to support the Progress of the Arts and Sciences by distributing material wholesale a lot more than an artist's right to profit.

Regardless of whether copyright makes an income or not, it gives people the security in creating what they want. Now you can shrug away that idea, but if I didn't think my works were protected, I would NEVER use online critique sites for my fiction because of theft/plagiarism. If nobody could copyright their work or patent it, there would be far less incentive to release those works, therefore doing the exact opposite of what you want.

BTW, if you really feel that way about putting something on deviantart, you might wanna take down your avatar. I'm sure someone's going to be mad that you're using it on a site such as Escapist without their permission.

-_- I don't have one yet.

So first you say it's okay for the tools to be there. Now you're railing against it because hey, the 21st century allows people to use 'em.

A scalpel is a tool, and it can be used to save someone's life, or it can be used to end it. A gun is a tool, and it can be used for hunting food or for taking a human life. Tools are not ethical or unethical by their existence; it's how they're used that's the problem. A torrent is just a tool, and its existence doesn't make it a bad thing. It only depends on how it is used. I don't blame the torrent, nor do I want to paint pirates as bad people, but I am pointing out how some of their actions are unethical.

I'll get into the free market which is that the choices the market (ie people) make, dictates what is prevalent.

But as I said, in a free market pirates' actions are also unethical. The FREE market must be voluntary in absolutely every aspect, and there must be no force whatsoever. I cannot control the competition, and the competition cannot control me. If piracy is a competitor, then it is an illegitimate competitor because it controls the product of the creator without their consent. The pirate's singular action that makes it unethical in the sense of human rights also makes it unethical in the free market because the pirate forces the creator to do something the creator does not want.

Kinda hard when your friends like the show, telling you about it and you HAVE to watch it to keep up.

I can't say I've heard the peer pressure argument before in discussing copyright. Even so, we're talking about novelties here, not necessities.

Show me someone that failed because of piracy, I'll show you a failing business model.

I don't see how that matters if piracy causes success or failure, since I am looking at the basic actions of piracy. If you want to argue about the benefits of piracy, then you're probably better off going to another thread, since I'm talking ethics and I won't say that you're wrong on those points. If you don't want to talk ethics, which has been my main point all along, then you can opt out of the discussion. I'm not trying to sound mean, but you keep trying to legitimize your point on economics which is a non sequiter in the discussion.

They flourish regardless of you trying to stop them. They're a part of the market. Just like a garage sale or flea market sell a movie I don't like, I'm not going to stop them. Can't stop all of the sales on Ebay, can't stop all of the sales on Craigslist or anything else.

Once again you're taking legal actions that are protected by fair use and using them in your argument against copyright. To start, just because pirates exist in the current market does not make their actions ethical, nor does it mean they should be allowed to continue. Next, selling your goods at a garage sale or flea market is not against copyright or fair use, the same thing applies to Ebay and Craigslist. I'm not arguing against those, so why do you even bring them up?

Saying that pirates are promoting oppressive regimes is nothing more than an assumption.

It's simple logic. If the media corporations are oppressing their customers with the legal system, and pirates spread the said corporations' media, making it successful. Therefore pirates are making the media corporations successful.

Pirates are made up of various different people doing various things. I can't call them all pirates and dismiss what they do which is seeding data, downloading and overall sharing for various reasons.

Okay I admit that I was painting pirates with a wide brush. I did try to distinguish between the person who takes what's already there, and the person who puts it up in the first place, but you're right that everyone is a little different and has different reasons. Assuming that they are all the same was wrong, and I was wrong in saying that.

I can understand the people who mod games for non-commercial use. I appreciate the work people do to remove DRM and release it to people who have already purchased the game. But just because we live in a digital age and there are things we can do doesn't mean we should. The technology and the knowledge exist to release viruses, worms, and trojans to the internet, but just because those techniques exist doesn't mean it's ethical to do so. Just because a person can hack into a computer and track people's private information doesn't mean it should be done. Now is piracy on the same level? No way. But there are things we allow in the digital age, and things that we don't allow.

This is the world that we live in that the law fails to regulate with copyright law. In that world is something a lot more efficient than what copyright has caused. Whether you want to dismiss it as unethical, it will continue to exist because their values are far different than what you value.

In a world that values information over anything else then it is the better world, but in a world that values certain rights it far from the best world. Copyright is intended as the middle ground, to keep the creator's rights intact and protect them from theft and abuse while allowing for fair use and innovation. Now what others have used copyright for I cannot condone.

And I also cannot condone the actions of the people who usurp that right. That's not to say I mean to demonize them. My intent is to add in some perspective as far as human rights go. On an issue that debates consequences, human rights is some new food of thought. And, for a change, it is a definitive answer. To argue economics doesn't touch on the argument I'm making. To also say that pirates exist, end of story, ignores the ethics of their actions.

 

[Alphakirby]

Ok, I admit I'm a pirate,but only for old roms and DS roms,torrents take too fucking long (How the hell could it be INFINITY until this ZIP folder of all things is downloaded!?)

 

[Gindil]

You ask for them to be able to control all of their stuff and you don't look at the damage that does.

The only damage that is caused is being done defensively. Now it's not that I agree with what they do, or that it's fair, but they don't fine people who don't do anything. They fine people as a reactionary measure even if it is misguided.

No, you haven't read more into this. The makers of Hurt Locker are looking for IPs in a wild search to get names to identify and harass people to settle very large cases. That's wrong on the ethical level and that sure as hell isn't ends justifying means. That's one reason I would take away copyright for such extraneous lengths. It causes people to make something, then "protect" it, which causes them to turtle on their past success. I've been pretty succinct in showing artists that have let go of copyright concerns and found success in flexing their creative muscles. The damage of trying to call people thieves for being interested in a movie they've never heard about but might find entertaining if they see it first sure as certain isn't hurting the authors. Like Ford says "If you think you can't, you're right" If the authors think there's harm, they'll go searching for it. It's why I showed you Salinger and Tolkien so many posts ago. And the problem of them trying to silence other people does a hell of a lot more harm than the supposed piracy problem which I've said constantly is far blown out of proportions.

I'm never going to agree that there's any benefit to such a system

Remember when I said keep an open mind? If you're not willing to consider other ideas then the conversation should really stop now, otherwise your continued argument is simply self-masturbatory.

That's bullshit, I've heard what you've had to say, and you've yet to find a way to truly implement them without them being discriminatory (author choosing their own system of, whereas the pirate supposedly does something else entirely) or having the negative impact of either making authors so reliant on an outdated system, or ignoring everything to say that "ethics = #1 importance".

You say filter out and respect an author's wishes... That's pretty much impossible to do when there's so many systems out there to try the filter. People shared media for far longer than Napster and have had this same debate ever since Gutenberg made the printing press. The tools have yet to truly discriminate. The only thing that can are the people behind them. You've called them pirates, communists, dictators, aggregators, infiltrators, and close to scum, for what? Because supposedly, there's some moral resonance with all people to make filesharing a voluntary system, that does exactly what the author wishes?

Newsflash: That hasn't worked with copyright for the last few years and you've yet to truly prove that. You've gone on and on about how the pirates "force" the market to do what they do to the economic detriment of authors. All I've told you is that authors need to find the new ways to make money when the old ways stopped working. We don't do things the same way we did them in the 1920s. There's a lot more technology and there's a lot of ways to create, far more than in the yesteryears of the generation before. I could take Michael Jackson's Thriller song, remix it and boom, it's something new. I'll leave off here because I'm sure I'll have to revisit this question.

Horrible example since private data is far different from the commercial data we've been discussing.

How is it different? You're the one who said data is just 1's and 0's. You never made any distinctions, so I'm just taking what you said: that data is data. Also, what is private data? Don't you use public channels. Don't you make commercial data?

I make stories. I don't put up stuff on FB, Steam, or GamerDNA that I don't want to be made public. As I said before, HBGary had that happen in regards to their emails through their own blunders. And the commercial information isn't being sold, it's being shared. There's no monetary profit in it so trying to make the aggregation of that data somehow subversive is a little circumspect. Regardless, That's happened before [http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20012115-245.html]. You take steps to prevent private data from being spread like that such as making use of your privacy settings. It still doesn't work the same for copyright since A) the data of a DVD, CD, etc is used for far different purposes than private data and B) that data isn't used to try to ruin your credit.

Since pirates haven't impeded on other's rights save for economic data in most regards

But this is what I'm talking about. This isn't from the economic perspective, and I've tried over and over to state why, but something is getting lost in the dialog.

The problem comes with your insistence that it's a "forced" relationship and I've tried over and over to tell you that it's not. In essence, it's as if you want to say the flea market is bad because I can buy grapes cheaper there than at Wal-Mart. All of the reasons that people pirate content is economical. Why do 10 people pirate a movie at 11pm when it just came on at 9pm? Why do you have so many people that have an interest in Iron-Man 2 before it comes out in theater? Why do you have so many people that pirate old SNES roms that are no longer available in any format other than on their PC?

The moral standpoint that you've been holding to can't answer these questions because it treats piracy as a taboo. Your examples have been anecdotal at best and fairly hard to follow because they leave out so much of what a person is doing. You need the how (which we know) and the why. The economist tries to find out why someone pirates and tries to deter that behavior. Quite frankly, when I think of a moralist, it's the same as a religious person coming up to me and saying "Thou shalt not copy".

Further, the incentives you seem to espouse aren't adding up. We had large lawsuits, and it's undermined copyright law considerably. I've talked how the smaller copyright holders (myself, Nina Paley, Steve Lieber...) have found other ways to make either copyright law or their own ingenuity work for them that flexes their muscles far more than the current rounds of copyright law.

I mean seriously, remember how DVDs have that (what feels like) 5 minute warning where the FBI warns you about federal copying? That's the faith-based (moral) economics at work. In all ways, those probably cause more piracy since people don't have to watch all the previews [http://mnmal.org/post/1416521946/i-am-not-saying-piracy-is-good-no-i-think-piracy]. After the fifth commercial on a DVD, I know I would not care one lick about ever buying another DVD that had those ads.

Copyright is about changing economic incentives for authors to create.

Not correct. Copyright is the privilege of sole right to copy.

And your insistence is that authors need that right, when the inverse is constantly being proven true.

If you've paid attention, people use the tools to create and it's shared however.

Your argument has been to sacrifice the good of one for the good of many. Your argument puts the power of a work into the hands of the people who have absorbed it, and not the one who created it. That isn't a bad system in and of itself, but it does become unethical if the creation is taken from the creator without their consent.

Alright, I'm not getting through to you. Let's turn this around. How are ethics going to make this a better society? Especially when all the examples show a different tale than the one you're weaving?

They don't want their work shared? Fine, I don't. But maybe someone else feels differently.

Thank you for summarizing my entire stance. If someone doesn't want their work shared, when who has the right to share it?

God does.

The market has never worked that way... Once a book or DVD is on the market, you really can't take it off of it. So saying that distribution models are a choice like that really doesn't work... It's like saying an author has the choice of giving to Walmart or Target... And yet, Best Buy wants sales too.

You can have exclusives to specific retailers. Manufacturers don't have to sell at Walmart, or Target, or Best Buys, and authors/musicians can refuse to do business with itunes. But consider this. If an artist doesn't want to distribute their music on itunes, and itunes forces them to do it anyways, is it wrong for itunes to do so? If your answer is yes, then consider this as well: what if an artist doesn't want to distribute their song through torrent sites, and someone forces them to do it anyways by posting it there. Is it wrong for them to do so? If you answered no to that question, and yes to the first, then how do you explain the doublethink?

And then the exclusive is gone when someone sells it on eBay. How about we ask Metallica how the forcing of their songs through torrent sites worked out for them? Or Napster in general? Just sayin...

If you've noticed, the pirates are a part of the system as fans. They do it regardless.

If I remember correctly, didn't you say something to me about generalizing why people pirate things? Who says that pirates are fans?

Steve lieber [http://www.undergroundthecomic.com/2010/10/pictures-help-us-learn/]

Nina Paley [http://blog.ninapaley.com/2008/10/29/copyright-was-designed-by-distributors-to-subsidize-distributors-not-creators/]

Neil Gaiman [http://www.switched.com/2011/02/11/neil-gaiman-piracy-leads-to-more-book-sales/]

*thumbs up*

Do you think that most things people do wrong have malicious intent? How many people do things that they think will be helpful but end up having effects they didn't plan for? Granted I'm not saying that the effects of piracy are bad, but human rights override the consequentialist argument. It is not the pirate's responsibility to distribute the media. That being said, if the creator puts a creative commons license on their product which allows for free distribution, then there would be no problem. The only time the pirate (the one who distributes media) is in the wrong is when the creator doesn't want them to do something but they do it anyways.

Might be wrong, [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107927-Crysis-2-Leak-Not-As-Bad-As-First-Thought] but it happens. I'm more apt to watch what the company does. Leaks happen and so does piracy. It's how we deal with it that makes us better. I don't doubt that maybe 20% of people may choose not to buy it. But maybe there's that many more people that choose to watch it on Youtube, play this like a larger demo and make sales from the unfinished game.

That. is. trying. to. make. yourself. better. than. what. you. did. before.

That. Is. Not. Competition.

Competition - a business relation in which two parties compete to gain customers (WordNet)

You cannot compete against yourself because you are a single party. Are pirates competitors? Well in a way I guess they are. But are pirates *legitimate* competitors? No, because they don't create a product, they use other people's products in the same market. They have no profit motive and they do not feel the consequences of risks.

Fansubbers - compete for better translations. Are they pirates if they continue making a series already released or do their translations make the official one better.

Bodybuilders - Compete against others, but also compete to better themselves. Sculpting the body takes months of dedication and you have to learn how to cut your weight, cut water weight and make yourself look that much better in competition.

(random1) - Known for great DVD releases on TPB (name is not real). If you check out their torrents, they're usually the best. Even then, there's all kinds of incentives for release sites to make movies available faster than anyone else. I would check out the Warez scene and read up on it. What I am saying is that there are other incentives than profit that people look for. But to say that no one competes to better themselves? I can pull up plenty of athletic examples, but I guess Jared (Subway guy) is the best example.

It doesn't matter that pirates help the creator, because the pirate's actions are wrong in and of themselves, regardless of the consequences. I cannot do something good for you if you don't want it.

Then what in the world are you doing in the free market? ?

What I've been asking for is where does your fundamental idea of human rights come from, as in a source?[

A source of human rights? Study enlightenment ethics and in particular the Constitution. Just fyi, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle were a few hundred years short of human rights. Try John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith.

...

Adam Smith? The one that tells us thus:

"A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate. The price of monopoly is upon every occasion the highest which can be got. The natural price, or the price of free competition, on the contrary, is the lowest which can be taken, not upon every occasion, indeed, but for any considerable time together. The one is upon every occasion the highest which can be squeezed out of the buyers, or which, it is supposed, they will consent to give: the other is the lowest which the sellers can commonly afford to take, and at the same time continue their business."

Very surprised to see you bring up the Enlightenment when I did that same thing a while back... And the liberty they talked about is for people to make their own choices about how they get media. Then, you have Smith also critiquing the mercantile system along with protectionist tariffs (what copyright is at the heart of it). If that's where you're going with this, I won't stop you, but if you're really talking about human rights and not economic rights, you should agree with a lot more of what you're seeing in the links I post than you're letting on.

The term of "fair" doesn't apply to any capitalistic endeavor.

Not exactly true.

[citation needed]

This doesn't work because of the fact that you're isolating a lot of variables to try to shift things to where I have to say "Oh, it's author B winning"

I'm isolating variables so we can compare two equal things. What you've done is sidestepped the conversation. You have to break down an idea into its basic parts, and you cannot simply create imaginary variables to further your side.

You have to assume that A and B are writing nearly similar stories in the same genre, using the same style of writing, otherwise the exercise is futile. So I implore you to try it again and not make stuff up this time.

... No. Terry Goodkind and Terry Brooks are two authors that write similar books. But I can't tell you why one is more popular than the other. Even then, Tolkien trumps most sci-fi writers. You also have Laurell K Hamilton who's most recent work is horrid but she started off well. The problem is that no matter the industry, you're trying to lump together a lot of different variables that can't really be traced.

V and Clockwork Orange are similar movies. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson are similar books. Why is one more popular while the other seems to have languished in mediocrity? I can't explain that one. Why author A would be more popular through piracy than author B is anyone's guess. The market decides that through something we can't figure out, and something I highly doubt piracy is answerable to. It's an argument that really can't be made for good or bad. It's a pretty weak analogy especially by trying to fit piracy in the mix.

That's a lot of author's who have "violated" rights[/url]. Funny that, it doesn't seem to be slowing down all of the material we're using...

Again, you're using the ends to justify the means. It's no different than saying "a madman drove a truck ran into a building and killed forty people, but now we'll have a newer and better building, therefore the accident was really okay".

You keep saying that, then I go on a linking spree proving that people create out of reasons other than copyright. So no, it's not a "justify the means" argument. The argument put up is that the author's rights are violated by sharing media in various ways. First, derivative works and transformative works are being used based on the original copyrighted materials. Supposedly, if that isn't given an okay by the makers of the original content, then it's immoral.

Second, things are being shared on various networks regardless of the supposed immorality of it. It's how we share our favorite movies, songs, and games, regardless of the author's rights. Some people are paying for it and some make copies. Maybe they use it in clips, I don't know. But the constant looking for analogies when I've shown you that there is a LOT more media being made because copyright can't shut it all down is really a fallacy on your part. I mean seriously, how many parodies of Hitler have been made? And yet the producers tried to take a few down while they're still popular? How has that worked out?

And again, argument fails on account of no author being slugged over the head to create a book.

Well I'm glad that argument fails, because I didn't make that argument. I never said the author was forced to make the book, but only that the author is forced to distribute it.

And this is borderline saying "if a customer doesn't want to share anything of mine, it's going to be to my benefit only." Very fallacious argument since we've already discussed how people give away books in various ways.

It's just the way the world works. Your entire ethical point doesn't seem to flow with what people are actually doing.

But your argument is fallacious because it basically says: this is how the world works, so it is pointless to change it. No, that is flat out wrong. Just because a system exists, doesn't mean it needs to keep existing, or that it's good, or even bad for that matter. Pirates exist, but their existence doesn't mean they are immune to ethics. Consider your logic in a different context: "Dying is just the way the world works. Your entire ethical point that death is bad doesn't seem to flow with the people who are actually dying." So I suppose since X exists we shouldn't change it? Can't agree with that.

The system has changed and so has the market as I said in what you haven't posted of mine. It continues to evolve. But every part of the system that you seem to want to try for means to discriminate in favor of authors which no longer holds true. So regardless of whether you think the ethics are important, things have changed to make things a lot easier for people to copy. The definitive irony is that we've copied quite a number of things. I've asked before, I'll ask again, how would ethics supposedly solve this problem? It sure as hell isn't changing it now, and with TPB putting out a new type of magnet tracker (ie getting stronger...), it seems that ethics is again failing to take into account of why people supposedly pirate.

FINALLY! You're talking behavioral economics. It's a lot more than the ethics thing which doesn't do anything.

I'd avoid the absolutes in saying that ethics doesn't do anything. Revolutionary ethics in enlightenment Europe for example were the foundation for the American government that protected the people's rights, which then caused revolutions in human rights and in politics around the world. The concept of human rights was revolutionary at the time, and it's what shapes our world today. To say ethics doesn't do anything is to disintegrate everything you were raised on.

No, it doesn't. Ethics and values are different depending on the culture you're raised in. Even in America what I value might be different from what you do. But let's continue:

You cannot simply rely on the necessity of technology to justify its use. To do that means you legitimize the horde or rampaging killbots because they are killbots, who are made to rampage in hordes, and therefore they are okay, without asking if the killbots should do what they do.

... Skynet conspiracy... Really?

No, that's just BS. Get another example and I'll take your ethics line seriously. Right now, I'll be laughing from the fiction of Terminator 5: Rise of the Killbots.

Well I'm NOT going to ignore the non sequiter that you keep posting since I am not arguing from an economic standpoint, and I am going to highlight the straw man since I never said improving yourself is bad, and I'm going to point out that you're wrong since it is impossible to compete against oneself because the very definition of competition means two people, and a single person cannot be two people.

Marathon runners do it, Freelance writers do it, I do it by making better stories from the criticism I've taken. People compete against themselves to achieve their personal best. They also compete against others, but the best bodybuilders still want to get that much stronger and better than they did before. A personal best is to compete against yourself. Even Andrew Carnegie believed in that. The other part was your entire thing about coaches which really had me wondering about you. If you think that coaches don't push people to compete against themselves and make them better in the long run, you really have to work hard to disprove that.

Author needs to get on top of that and capitalize. Such is how an economy works, not wait until permission is gained. Perhaps instead of trying to subtly jab at me with not knowing about capitalism, you should look into how markets work again?

I'm not economic or marketing expert, but I have some understanding about how markets work. And it is because of that understanding that I can see that pirates are not legitimate players in the market. The market needs specific rules to be successful, namely the absence of force. Since force will always skew the market in favor of large businesses, causing a positive feedback system. On the other hand, people who take things and distribute them without consent are forcing creators/distributors to take a distribution channel they did not want. I tried to put together an exercise in the last post, but you invented imaginary variables and threw it out.

And yes, I threw it out again because there's a lot more to it than what you're insisting upon. And here's where you're confused, I believe. The market has a few consistencies but what you're trying to do is make specific rules. Adam Smith says it best about the artificial scarcity that you're trying to impose. It means that the producers have to go elsewhere to make a buck or use some other method to profit. Just as we don't make the same cars year after year, we also don't try to make gobs of money in an area where there is abundance. If we do, the profit may be low. In almost every industry, I believe that's true before piracy comes into play. Think about how much anime used to cost than what it does now. It's still highly overpriced for seasons (3 episodes cost $20). So if you try to buy an entire season (based on the US run schedule of 3 months *1 episode per week = 4 weeks*3*$20 =$240), you're going to really hurt yourself financially. A lot of people don't buy anime for that one reason. Now if the price were lowered, the gross margin might make up for the drop in price, especially with increasing demand. All of this is far better than trying to convince people that piracy is killing the industry. And that's just one example of an industry that could use a price reduction.

Nowadays, there's less artists concerned with copyright. Even then, Creative commons has problems such as ND and NS which is truly problematic. I may not like copyright for 70 years + death of author, but I wouldn't mind if we had a public domain to pull resources from after 3-5.

Then make that argument. I actually inclined to agree with you here. Make copyright protection customizable to which creators can pick and choose what kind of protection they want, like the creative commons license. Make the fines fit the crime, especially in the digital age. That means limiting the courts so they don't get out of hand. If you were to say we NEED reform, then I would 100% agree. Reform isn't just something that should happen, but it NEEDS to happen, since laws have not progressed into the digital age. Instead of fining someone 1000$ a song, fine them 5$ a song, because the 1000$ deterrent isn't working, that is if you CAN catch them in the first place.

You've totally misunderstood me this entire time. I HAVE been making this argument by stating that the public domain needs to come back with a vengeance. I don't like the current copyright law which gives way too much power to authors that do all sorts of bad things to our rights in the Constitution. The most egregious try to usurp the 1st and 4th Amendment in search of profit.

At the end of the day there might not be a lot people can do, but that doesn't mean we can't discuss it and work out the ethics. Even if it's impossible to catch any pirate, it doesn't mean that we should accept them as a natural routine that they will exist, or that their actions are permissible.

Alternatives?

Two things, I had something in here about the Supreme Court saying this was an economic issue.

And you didn't provide the context as to what they meant by that statement. Nor does that magically mean that the issue isn't ethical in nature, it just means that the Court didn't want to see it that way.

I've asked about the moral issue, you go in a circle about how it's a human right, how it's wrong on a basic level, etc. You need to define those rights.

You want me to define some terms, well I can do that.

From Wiki: "Human rights are those rights which are held by all human beings"

I don't like that definition because it uses the terms within the definition itself.

International Economics sums it up better: "The conditions and expectations to which every person, by virtue of his or her existence as a human being, is entitled."

For Americans, the Constitution names some rights that are protected from government intervention. These rights are protected by anyone, and nobody can intervene with these rights:

Right of Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly, Petition (sue) the Government, etc etc. Right to own property is also there. Now because these rights are inalienable, the Constitution ASSUMES we have the rights already, and the only purpose of the Bill of Rights is to restrict government from those rights. Your rights also do not extend into the rights of another person. Example: you have the right to assemble. But people have the right to own and therefore control their property. So if you choose to assemble on someone else's property without consent, there is a conflict. The person who owns the property has their rights triumph over yours because you are the primary aggressor, meaning you are the person who violates the rights first, and your right to assemble can only be violated as a response to you already violating someone's rights.

What does this mean in the context of piracy?

Human rights apply to both the creator of a work, and to the consumer who purchases a copy of that work. Just as in my example above, the creator has a special privilege given to them that gives them, and only them, the right to choose what manner to copy their work. If pirates choose whatever manner they want to copy the work, then they are breaking the creator's right to copy. That is an infringement of rights. Now if it is wrong to sensor someone, if it is wrong to imprison someone without a trial, and if it is wrong to take their information, then it is also wrong to break a creator's right to copy.

Or I could put it this way, though note I'm kinda bad at creating arguments:

P1: Infringing on rights is unethical.

P2: (Some) pirates' actions infringe on someone's right to choose distribution without consent.

C: Therefore (some) pirates' actions are unethical.

I added in the *some* because I read what you said at the bottom, and no not all pirates are the same. This is simply focusing on people who distribute media without consent.

And the crux of the issue where I'm not agreeing is that copyright is a government issued right. By all merits and standards, copyright can't infringe on the rights that people naturally have. What I have talked about are what people do with the media. We assemble to talk and discuss new movies. We seek ways to make cheaper financial decisions. What we also do is find ways to support our arts which don't require bankrupting anyone involved. An author can't stop me from sharing a book with a girlfriend. They also can't stop me from watching the Super Bowl with about 5 other people. Such are the ways that copyright block their original intent, "progress the arts and sciences". As I interpret that, you're supposed to find *new* ways to make yourself relevant to the market, not depend on the old.

If anything, piracy seems to support the Progress of the Arts and Sciences by distributing material wholesale a lot more than an artist's right to profit.

Regardless of whether copyright makes an income or not, it gives people the security in creating what they want. Now you can shrug away that idea, but if I didn't think my works were protected, I would NEVER use online critique sites for my fiction because of theft/plagiarism. If nobody could copyright their work or patent it, there would be far less incentive to release those works, therefore doing the exact opposite of what you want.

And I'm trying hard to wrap my head around it, but I can't... Copyright is an after effect of creation. You built it, you can market something but in all of the ways that copyright supposedly creates, it doesn't do what you're saying it does. It really is a false incentive. You can put stories under a pseudoname and no one's the wiser. Nowadays, people create out of more venues mainly out of things that came before. Honestly, what security is being found in copyright that the natural process of sharing media doesn't fix already?

I've already shown you that regardless of what people think, more content is created in a variety of ways, be it machinima art, deviantart, or rule 34...

Uhm... Yeah...

BTW, if you really feel that way about putting something on deviantart, you might wanna take down your avatar. I'm sure someone's going to be mad that you're using it on a site such as Escapist without their permission.

-_- I don't have one yet.

... Uhm... You might have to pirate one...

I'll get into the free market which is that the choices the market (ie people) make, dictates what is prevalent.

But as I said, in a free market pirates' actions are also unethical. The FREE market must be voluntary in absolutely every aspect, and there must be no force whatsoever. I cannot control the competition, and the competition cannot control me. If piracy is a competitor, then it is an illegitimate competitor because it controls the product of the creator without their consent. The pirate's singular action that makes it unethical in the sense of human rights also makes it unethical in the free market because the pirate forces the creator to do something the creator does not want.

And what you're essentially doing here is saying that the little guys are not competitors. IF we take your argument and apply it, then we're discriminating against what's offered. For all of the reasons I've stated, that discrimination is wrong. That's far more unethical than saying the pirates offer nothing to the market. The pirates are doing something, that the author can capitalize on. Beating the pirate over the head with the LAWstick because he found ways to do things at a cheaper price does a disservice to us all in higher prices and stagnation. These are the results of that discrimination.

In regards to making someone feel guilty about the unethics of it, you gotta figure why do people do these things? They might love a series to death but understand it can't be shown outside of their country. Maybe they're looking for something. I can't answer every last question on that. But saying that the pirate is supposedly immoral for valuing their piracy a little differently really can't help in this situation.

Kinda hard when your friends like the show, telling you about it and you HAVE to watch it to keep up.

I can't say I've heard the peer pressure argument before in discussing copyright. Even so, we're talking about novelties here, not necessities.

Wait... You've never heard how people sit down and talk about soap operas or did you read the link about how Hollywood is invading Middle Eastern culture through bittorrent?

Show me someone that failed because of piracy, I'll show you a failing business model.

I don't see how that matters if piracy causes success or failure, since I am looking at the basic actions of piracy. If you want to argue about the benefits of piracy, then you're probably better off going to another thread, since I'm talking ethics and I won't say that you're wrong on those points. If you don't want to talk ethics, which has been my main point all along, then you can opt out of the discussion. I'm not trying to sound mean, but you keep trying to legitimize your point on economics which is a non sequiter in the discussion.

Dude, you came in and started the argument on those grounds. I've been fairly patient in responding to you with as minimal snark as I can imagine. I've tried telling you that the ethics don't matter because of various reasons:

Difference in values
Difference in the cultures involved
Economic opportunities
Price differentiation
Why people pirate
How to combat piracy
Embracing piracy as a business model
Looking at pirates as potential fans not your worst enemies
Copyright as a business model
Other alternative models to copyright
Making money in the 21st century
----------------
The list goes on. It's not that I'm merely dismissing the morality or immorality, but it has yet to answer questions put forth by even the Enlightment era Freedom Fighters of the 1700s. From what I gather on Jefferson and Smith, they would embrace the market having new ways to flourish and be delighted to find newer ways to share music or artistry that amused them.

They flourish regardless of you trying to stop them. They're a part of the market. Just like a garage sale or flea market sell a movie I don't like, I'm not going to stop them. Can't stop all of the sales on Ebay, can't stop all of the sales on Craigslist or anything else.

Once again you're taking legal actions that are protected by fair use and using them in your argument against copyright. To start, just because pirates exist in the current market does not make their actions ethical, nor does it mean they should be allowed to continue. Next, selling your goods at a garage sale or flea market is not against copyright or fair use, the same thing applies to Ebay and Craigslist. I'm not arguing against those, so why do you even bring them up?

I wish I could tell you how many times Ebay gets hit with DMCA takedown notices from people selling legal merchandise...

Saying that pirates are promoting oppressive regimes is nothing more than an assumption.

It's simple logic. If the media corporations are oppressing their customers with the legal system, and pirates spread the said corporations' media, making it successful. Therefore pirates are making the media corporations successful.

No, that's an assumption [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message]. For them to take bad paths that are truly anticonsumer, the corporation may self destruct and cause its own downfall.

Pirates are made up of various different people doing various things. I can't call them all pirates and dismiss what they do which is seeding data, downloading and overall sharing for various reasons.

Okay I admit that I was painting pirates with a wide brush. I did try to distinguish between the person who takes what's already there, and the person who puts it up in the first place, but you're right that everyone is a little different and has different reasons. Assuming that they are all the same was wrong, and I was wrong in saying that.

I can understand the people who mod games for non-commercial use. I appreciate the work people do to remove DRM and release it to people who have already purchased the game. But just because we live in a digital age and there are things we can do doesn't mean we should. The technology and the knowledge exist to release viruses, worms, and trojans to the internet, but just because those techniques exist doesn't mean it's ethical to do so. Just because a person can hack into a computer and track people's private information doesn't mean it should be done. Now is piracy on the same level? No way. But there are things we allow in the digital age, and things that we don't allow.

Thank you for the first part. Regarding viruses and worms? We have people that research those for a reason.

This is the world that we live in that the law fails to regulate with copyright law. In that world is something a lot more efficient than what copyright has caused. Whether you want to dismiss it as unethical, it will continue to exist because their values are far different than what you value.

In a world that values information over anything else then it is the better world, but in a world that values certain rights it far from the best world. Copyright is intended as the middle ground, to keep the creator's rights intact and protect them from theft and abuse while allowing for fair use and innovation. Now what others have used copyright for I cannot condone.

And I also cannot condone the actions of the people who usurp that right. That's not to say I mean to demonize them. My intent is to add in some perspective as far as human rights go. On an issue that debates consequences, human rights is some new food of thought. And, for a change, it is a definitive answer. To argue economics doesn't touch on the argument I'm making. To also say that pirates exist, end of story, ignores the ethics of their actions.

I'm really not sure how we don't keep the creator's rights intact by using the new media in various ways. When someone uses transformative media or derivative media, they usually attribute the authors involved.

Oddly enough, when people aggregate data, they mostly insist to tell people to buy the actual DVD, CD, etc. As I say, our culture, is fairly complex. Yes, piracy exists, and we won't ever get rid of it. I've never meant that's the end of the story. The more intriguing part to me is why do people do the things they do? In that regard, people are a lot more complex than what ethics seems to resolve. All people find a way to share information and give to their communities respectively. The thing that can't be separated is our needs for entertainment, our needs to socialize and our needs to communicate our intents. In a way, as I see it, copyright seems to get in the way of that natural flow between author of content and what the public wants. It seems to say "I made this, you owe me, world!" which is kind of... Forced. I go to the library, I find someone's book I like, I may rent it about 5 times before I buy my own from Barnes and Noble. These are the things that I doubt ethics really get into. What people should have is the opportunity is to enjoy media at their own discretion. If copyright were working right, it wouldn't be a huge issue, along with the issues of piracy. In essence, people still do it, even knowing it's supposed to be "wrong". Why?

Those are the questions that seem to be answered a lot more by seeking out and asking what makes them buy media or decide to pirate. I hoped that I answered all of those to the best of what I saw. It just seems that the immorality can't find those reasons that I saw with economics.

 

[Event_Horizon]

In response to your paragraph: you're right. The backlash against pirates does more harm than good, and I agree with you, in fact I have never stated otherwise. The point I made is that corporations don't legally "assassinate" users without cause. Their action is only a reaction. Now if a game developer is breaking constitutional rights, then that's of course a problem. However every time a business takes someone to court, it's for reactionary measure.

Yes you must respect the author's wishes, just as you would respect ANYONE'S wishes. I don't have the right to educate your children without your permission. I don't have the right to open your mail without your permission. I also don't have the right to distribute your work without permission. So in our discussion there is no issue in how you personally use the work, or how you modify it, but how you distribute it. The problem is not with the technology in this respect. The problem is with how it's used. Had Napster gotten consent to do what it did, it would probably still exist. If this sounds a little messed up for you, then just understand where the market is coming from on this issue.

You've gone on and on about how the pirates "force" the market to do what they do to the economic detriment of authors.

Well the first half of this sentence you have right, but the second half is not. Yes pirates force the market to do what they want, but it doesn?t have to be at the economic detriment of authors. It could be, and usually is, to the economic benefit to the authors. Regardless of determent or benefit, I?m looking at the actions specifically. Any use of force in any context is unethical. The only exception to that rule is when force is already used upon you, and so your force is simple reactionary to already present force. Like when someone points a gun at you, they have already present force, so your force of self defense is therefore okay.

Your only retort to the issue of pirates and their use of force is:

I've told you is that authors need to find the new ways to make money when the old ways stopped working.

Which is nothing more than a cop-out. It takes the discussion away from the problem itself, and focuses on a non-sequiter. The issue I've been bringing up is one of the ethics of the pirate's specific actions.

You take steps to prevent private data from being spread like that such as making use of your privacy settings. It still doesn't work the same for copyright since A) the data of a DVD, CD, etc is used for far different purposes than private data and B) that data isn't used to try to ruin your credit.

Okay, I can see that.

The problem comes with your insistence that it's a "forced" relationship and I've tried over and over to tell you that it's not.

That is because I'm looking at one kind of pirate for a particular discussion, and you're using a completely different kind of pirate for your defense. Again I'm not looking at the person who downloads the movie at 11pm for free from a torrent site. I'm looking at the person who puts the movie up in the first place. Those are two completely different ethical actions, and only one is my focus, and has always been.

The person who goes online to get a pirated version of Snakes on a Plane because they don't want to spend the money on the DVD is not the person who I have a problem with. Yes there are other ethical issues in that action, but they are completely different to the person who uploads the movie in the first place.

The moral standpoint that you've been holding to can't answer these questions because it treats piracy as a taboo.

Again that's a straw man, and your following statements show to me that you haven't been listening to most of what I've said. I'm not treating piracy as a taboo, I'm looking at actions within a specific set of criteria, taking what I know from ethics, and making a calculation of whether they're ethical or not. Saying that an action is unethical is not saying the pirate is a bad person, or that they have bad intentions.

An economist looks at certain things, but an ethicist looks at others. Note that a "moralist" and an ethicist are not the same thing. The moralist uses a top down perspective on determining right or wrong (it "feels" right or wrong/black and white absolutes), while the ethicist goes from the bottom up: looking at specific actions, how they impact, and what infringements take place within a framework of contemporary ethical principles.

So when you say:

You need the how (which we know) and the why.

The answer is NO, you don't need to know the how which and why because those questions are asked of a person's internal thoughts, and since we cannot absolutely know 100% what a person is thinking, those answers are irrelevant. We look at the actions that they take, since they are concrete and objective.

I mean seriously, remember how DVDs have that (what feels like) 5 minute warning where the FBI warns you about federal copying? That's the faith-based (moral) economics at work.

That is an assumption at work. Lawyers are the applicators of ethics. They probably came to that conclusion based on ethical principles, but I don't know, and neither do you. So when you said it was a faith based decision, that is only you assuming so.

And your insistence is that authors need that right, when the inverse is constantly being proven true.

You haven't proven so. When you show that authors are protected under the law against theft, plagiarism, and force without copyright then I might believe you. Secondly, you cannot take the anecdote that "many authors don't choose it, so we don't need it anymore". That line of reasoning is fallacious, because everything you create whether you get it protected or not has some innate protection. To take that away allows for theft.

Alright, I'm not getting through to you. Let's turn this around. How are ethics going to make this a better society?

A society where every person is an End in their own right and not the Means to an overall end; where every person has rights that cannot be infringed upon, therefore giving them protection against unwanted force or oppression. It allows anyone to do whatever they want to their heart's content as long as it doesn?t interfere with someone else.

The problem with your vision is that it treats people as a Means (a tool) to an End. Your society values information over human beings as individuals. The author who wishes to keep their works protected, in your society, is stripped from that right of self-determination by the anonymous populous, and their work is instead used to benefit society as a whole. That person is used as a Means, a human doing, instead of an End, a human being.

That is why the "greater good" argument doesn't seem to work, especially when used in practice. A society that accepts everyone as individuals and establishes boundaries has significantly less oppression and allows for personal growth. In such societies, any force or oppression is met with a defensive reaction of force. The utilitarian vision however accepts oppression within the system as a default.

And then the exclusive is gone when someone sells it on eBay.

That is resale. Not the same thing.

I'm more apt to watch what the company does. Leaks happen and so does piracy. It's how we deal with it that makes us better.

I disagree with your opinion. That again is just saying that shit happens, deal with it. No positive change can ever happen if people simply accept their condition.

Fansubbers - compete for better translations.

Bodybuilders - Compete against others, but also compete to better themselves.

Yeah, they compete against OTHER PEOPLE. Your examples run counter to your argument. If you can think of one legitimate example of someone forced to compete with themselves in a legal market, then I will be inclined to agree.

But to say that no one competes to better themselves? I can pull up plenty of athletic examples, but I guess Jared (Subway guy) is the best example.

Jared is not competing with himself. Athletes compete against other people. There does not need to be competition for someone to better themselves. Competition has a very specific definition of what it is, and you can't just call something competition whenever you want to.

"A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate. The price of monopoly is upon every occasion the highest which can be got. The natural price, or the price of free competition, on the contrary, is the lowest which can be taken, not upon every occasion, indeed, but for any considerable time together. The one is upon every occasion the highest which can be squeezed out of the buyers, or which, it is supposed, they will consent to give: the other is the lowest which the sellers can commonly afford to take, and at the same time continue their business."

Ah yes, good quote, and he's right. Your interpretation isn't as accurate since what you define as a monopoly is not what Smith defines as a monopoly. "Monopoly" is used very specifically in terms of an economic market, and NOT in a temporary monopoly (ownership) that a creator has over their creation. Actually the quote expresses one of the fundamental tenets of my argument:

"The one is upon every occasion the highest which can be squeezed out of the buyers, or which, it is supposed, they will consent to give: the other is the lowest which the sellers can commonly afford to take, and at the same time continue their business."

The part about consent emphasizes my point, that the market is complete voluntary. The buyer negotiates a lower price, and the seller negotiates a higher price. Both are doing so without the use of force on either, and the end result is a mutually beneficial relationship, or if not, the deal is rejected. However when someone takes a piece of media and simply submits it to a torrent site they aren't legitimate sellers in the market because they did not make the product. Now if it's for non-commercial there is some wiggle room, and if they modify it into a derivative work then that's different.

Adam Smith emphasized the role of personal property and ownership as a cornerstone of capitalism, to which someone can gain wealth from their time and energy in the act of creation. A person who decides to write a book, for example, makes that finished product their own property. Since it is their property, they can choose whatever they like with it, meaning they could burn it, copy it, edit it, sell it, etc. However if someone were to take that book and burn it without asking, that would be an infringement on rights. Now if instead of burning the book, someone copied the book without asking, it would still be an infringement of rights, and that is one of the main points of the issue.

And the liberty they talked about is for people to make their own choices about how they get media.

LOL, no I don't think they were talking about the internet or torrent sites when the enlightenment philosophers conceptualized liberty. Liberty does not apply when it interferes with the liberty of another. The author has the liberty to do what they want with their creation, and the consumer cannot force them to do anything they don't want with it.

Liberty - personal freedom from servitude or confinement or oppression (WordNet)

While servitude and oppression are pretty strong words, I would say that taking an author's work without their consent and distributing it however that person desires constitutes confinement of the creator's personal liberties.

The market decides that through something we can't figure out, and something I highly doubt piracy is answerable to. It's an argument that really can't be made for good or bad. It's a pretty weak analogy especially by trying to fit piracy in the mix.

I'll put it a different way. I don't know if you've heard of viral marketing, but I assume you have since you're well versed in online distribution networks. I think you would agree that pirates provide free viral marketing to a particular piece of media. Now the small fish in the market cannot compete with commercials or expensive ads that the media corporations can buy, so the little guys use viral marketing as a method of distribution and advertising. That works for them, and it allows them to compete with the larger media corporations. The problem comes when the pirate takes the media from the corporations and also markets it virally. Instead of the smaller guys having a selective advantage over the competition, suddenly the competition is also taking their marketing method as well. This hurts the smaller media creator, and at the same time infringes on the rights of the media corporations because they did not choose it.

Now I'm all for viral marketing. I don't have anything against the paradigm shift or the technology it uses. But the question is this: who should decide to use viral marketing, the creator or the customer?

You keep saying that, then I go on a linking spree proving that people create out of reasons other than copyright.

And all those links are not part of the issue, because the intent of the creator is inconsequential to the ethics of pirates. The ends justify the means argument you're putting forth, the way I understand it, goes like this. The beneficial End that you are looking for is a society that is rich in information and creativity, where things can be shared easily. The Means to do this is to use creator's information, distribute it, and modify it however the populous desires.

That I do not agree with because it treats people as human doings, and not human beings. From what I've gathered from your stance is that only the work that people create matters, and the people who create those works are inconsequential. You seem to have a problem with asking the creator, or allowing the creator to express their rights if it comes in conflict with the greater good.

Second, things are being shared on various networks regardless of the supposed immorality of it. It's how we share our favorite movies, songs, and games, regardless of the author's rights.

And that's what I have a problem with. We can't just disregard human rights whenever we feel it's convenient for us. A drug user could be damaging themselves with overindulgence, but I don't have the right to force them to stop. The user has certain human rights, and I cannot disregard those rights. If the author has the right to choose how to distribute their media, then I don't have the right to choose for them. It's really that simple.

If you want to convince me, then you have the option to conclusively show that the author has no such rights. To do so, you need to demonstrate that when people create something, that they are not entitled to the right of distribution. Or you could show that the use of force is not wrong. You have not done that though. You've put your own argument forward, many times, trying to get me to see your side, but it's not going to work if it doesn't touch on my points. Yes other distribution networks are great. Yes copyright laws are restrictive. Yes creators can still make money. Yes the markets are shifting. Yes the technology is not the issue. But none of those things address and therefore change my fundamental points, so I remain unconvinced.

So regardless of whether you think the ethics are important, things have changed to make things a lot easier for people to copy.

Again that's another non-argument. To say that things have changed, and unethical actions continue, so therefore ethics don't matter is a fallacious argument. It disregards the opponent's argument in favor of a conclusion backed up by no premises.

I've asked before, I'll ask again, how would ethics supposedly solve this problem?

Recognize that humans have rights. And if the creator has the right to restrict their product, then the creator can do just that, even if it hurts them. If you write a story, and you want nobody to distribute it, no fan-fiction, no unauthorized sequels or spin-offs, then you should have the right to dictate that, just as you have the right to do everything else. You assume that it will hurt the creative community, but that is just an assumption. The creative community will move on to something else and keep creating. The problems that we see today are caused when the creative community takes things that are restricted, instead of taking things that are free to take.

FINALLY! You're talking behavioral economics. It's a lot more than the ethics thing which doesn't do anything.

I'd avoid the absolutes in saying that ethics doesn't do anything. Revolutionary ethics in enlightenment Europe for example were the foundation for the American government that protected the people's rights, which then caused revolutions in human rights and in politics around the world. The concept of human rights was revolutionary at the time, and it's what shapes our world today. To say ethics doesn't do anything is to disintegrate everything you were raised on.

No, it doesn't. Ethics and values are different depending on the culture you're raised in. Even in America what I value might be different from what you do. But let's continue:

Actually that is not correct since Ethical Relativism has been torn apart by the critiques against it. Look up the arguments against Ethical Relativism. Basically by relativist standards, if my culture allowed for murder, and I murdered you, it would be fine. The field of Normative Ethics tries to find a moral code that generalizable to human kind to which everyone agrees. They haven't found it, but one principal that has stood up to scrutiny is the idea that every human has certain rights.

No, that's just BS. Get another example and I'll take your ethics line seriously. Right now, I'll be laughing from the fiction of Terminator 5: Rise of the Killbots.

That was tongue in cheek reference to Futurama. I'll try another analogy. If I made a machine that could scan everything on the internet at once, and find every criminal activity online at any time, but I could also see into every person?s private data as well, then your argument would allow for that technology merely on the basis of its existence. A piece of technology doesn?t go ethically unchecked simply because it exists.

Adam Smith says it best about the artificial scarcity that you're trying to impose. It means that the producers have to go elsewhere to make a buck or use some other method to profit.

I own the stories on my hard drive. They're mine because I used my labor to make them. Is it bad that I?m making my own stories scarce because I want them to be private? No because it is my right to do so. We aren't talking about necessities here, we are talking about novelties - works of fiction and music. There can be no monopoly on "music". Not one person or entity can own every sound. You're trying to say ownership is the same as a monopoly, which makes the term monopoly almost meaningless.

I HAVE been making this argument by stating that the public domain needs to come back with a vengeance. I don't like the current copyright law which gives way too much power to authors that do all sorts of bad things to our rights in the Constitution. The most egregious try to usurp the 1st and 4th Amendment in search of profit.

Have I not agreed with you on some of those points?

Alternatives?

The failure I see is in the failure of manufacturers to provide information to the consumer. By keeping fair use actions secret, it affectively puts the consumer at a significant disadvantage. What I mean by this I can explain as an example.

Say you?re looking through a book store's CD section. You pick up two CD's and compare them, and neither has any kind of information that says what you can and cannot do with them. I'd propose this alternative which would cost almost nothing, and incentivize open works immediately. Say you pick up a CD, and at the bottom is says in icon form that you cannot upload the CD to the internet, and you are forbidden to share it with your friends. Next to it is a different CD which says that it permits uploading and file sharing to the internet, AND encourages remixes and mashups with the music contained inside. Assuming both CD's are equal, right there is an explicit statement of fair use in regards to distribution, and there are no questions as to what the consumer can do with their product. Another fortunate byproduct is that consumers will naturally gravitate to open works, therefore leveraging a market incentive to such release open works.

A specific example of this is downloading mp3's on itunes vs amazon. Itunes music files can ONLY be played in itunes and you cannot transfer the files to other computers without first downloading itunes on that computer and registering with them via internet. Contrast that with amazon's mp3 downloads which requires no special media player, and allows you to play the music in any media player. You can transfer and copy to as many computers and devices as you want, and costs the same as itunes. The problem is that there is nothing on either site that explains what you can and cannot do with each song you buy. The problem is that consumers are not given enough information to make a sound choice.

And the crux of the issue where I'm not agreeing is that copyright is a government issued right. By all merits and standards, copyright can't infringe on the rights that people naturally have.

And that's an excellent argument to make. You're probably going to want to kill me for stating this: but why didn?t you say that sooner? That hits my argument square in the chest, and it's a valid rebuttal. The response to your statement is that if we give the same rights to the creator, and to the consumer, at some point they clash.

Let's assume the creator has the right to distribute their creation however they want without anyone deciding for them.

Let's also assume that the consumer has the right to distribute their purchase however they want without anyone deciding for them.

Now what if the creator doesn't want to broadcast their film on the internet, and the consumer wants to broadcast their film to the internet? Unfortunately there's a conflict, and someone's rights have to be infringed. So, who should win over the other, and why?

Honestly, what security is being found in copyright that the natural process of sharing media doesn't fix already?

I might want to say what the heck and find a literary agent and publisher for my work. Copyright means nobody can just outright take it from me without permission. You're right that a lot of authors aren't renewing copyright, and good for them. Some people want the option. I've sent emails of my work to my friends. They could potentially share it with others, and those people could try to profit from it. By simply writing my story, it?s protected, and I can seek damages if they take my story. Is that likely? Probably not, but the protection is there. Also, why don't we see companies simply taking any media they want and profiting from it? The heavy hitters of any industry are also restrained by copyright for the good of the little guys.

IF we take your argument and apply it, then we're discriminating against what's offered. For all of the reasons I've stated, that discrimination is wrong.

Discriminating against who? You?ve said it's discriminating, but you haven't used examples. I think I know what you?re saying, but I can only make an assumption. I offer my own example for what you're talking about: remix artists. They make their own music using the music of other people. That in itself I have no problems with, but what if the artist doesn't want them to? What then? Does the remix artist have the right to go over the head of the composer?

Beating the pirate over the head with the LAWstick because he found ways to do things at a cheaper price does a disservice to us all in higher prices and stagnation.

But the pirate didn't find a cheaper way to manufacture a similar product. They took an existing product and copied and sold it for free. That isn't the same thing.

But saying that the pirate is supposedly immoral for valuing their piracy a little differently really can't help in this situation.

It is not the pirate who is immoral; it is their action that is unethical. My intent is not to demonize anyone here.

Dude, you came in and started the argument on those grounds. I've been fairly patient in responding to you with as minimal snark as I can imagine.

My initial statement wasn't to you, but to someone else, and your first statement to me was based on economics. So no, I did not come in and address you, nor did I make an argument on economic grounds. I came in speaking to someone else on the ethical argument, and you responded to me with the non-sequiter, and here we are.

I've tried telling you that the ethics don't matter because of various reasons:

And I've said that it's simply a dodge. You wouldn't go into a philosophy class and start talking economics, and that?s what you?ve done here. You haven't wanted to argue my points, you?ve wanted to restate yours. Now in fairness you make good points, and if I were arguing from an economic standpoint I would probably be convinced, and I've learned a lot. However if I have certain ideas, and your argument doesn't challenge those ideas directly, then I have no pressure to change them.

I'm really not sure how we don't keep the creator's rights intact by using the new media in various ways.

What if the creator doesn't want to use the new media? The pirate forces them to. That's the issue I have.

In that regard, people are a lot more complex than what ethics seems to resolve.

You make a good point.

In a way, as I see it, copyright seems to get in the way of that natural flow between author of content and what the public wants. It seems to say "I made this, you owe me, world!" which is kind of... Forced.

I can definitely see that happening when corporations hold the copyrights. I agree with you that when they use copyright to squeeze the pennies out of kids in court it?s a bad thing, no question. I see the holder behind the copyright as a problem, and not the copyright itself. To me, copyright lets the author to say "I made this, take it and use it however you want" as well as allowing "I made this, don't do X, Y, Z with it." Copyright puts the power into the hands of the creator to allow or disallow usage however they want because in the end, it?s theirs. That system allows for the good and the bad. The market then regulates the bad out of the system, and fosters the good to thrive.

The key flaw in that system comes when a person does X, Y, Z when the creator doesn't want them to. Yes the creator is being stuck up, but they are allowed to be stuck up. It would be as if your co-worker acted like a total and complete dickhead, so you decided to beat the crap out of them. Who is in the wrong there? Yes the creator limiting their creation, like the co-worker, acted antisocially, but the force used against them is worse. We're allowed to act like jerks, and we're allowed to limit our customers. But we are not allowed to use force against someone else. I will concede that not every person who uses force is a pirate, and not every pirate uses force, and I was wrong to insinuate so, however if there are people who use force for good, I must disagree with their actions.

I can understand that you see a lot of good being done economically by the free viral marketing that pirates do, and I know you see the good in the creative potential out there in derivative works. I see that too, but my own personal conscience is that unethical actions cannot be used for the greater good. I can confidently say that almost everyone who legitimately wanted to do good things ended up doing horrible things in the process because they felt the need to sacrifice certain rights or individuals for the cause.

 

[Gindil]

-snip-

All due respect, I'll answer the questions but I'll have to cut this short. I've just gotten a really big wave of info that I'll be going through that you also might be interested in:

Link [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.269464-Poll-A-few-thoughts-on-piracy#10339755]

Since I'm going to be reading for the next few days, it wouldn't do well not to spread the information on my part.

There are some ethical questions within this missive. Will it change my view? Perhaps, but it's all the better to allow you the same information so we're on the same wavelength in regards to this debate.