VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Untrue assumptions:
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I don't think my position is that hard to understand. Once someone watches your movie, they have the idea of it, yes, but what should that have to so with the ability to monetize it? Copyrights are not of ideas anyway. They are of tangible works, and it is only those tangible works (including characters) which I have been saying that we should protect.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
IP law exists to balance the profits of creators against the benefits of unrestricted consumption.
That includes creators incorporating old creations into new creations, but there's also a lot of benefit to allowing anyone who feels like it to watch movies, download books, listen to music, etc.
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
I don't know what you mean about ruining creative futures. They are paying people for their work after all.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
IP law exists to balance the profits of creators against the benefits of unrestricted consumption.
That includes creators incorporating old creations into new creations, but there's also a lot of benefit to allowing anyone who feels like it to watch movies, download books, listen to music, etc.
Why should people get entertainment or art for free? I literally can't even comprehend why this should be so. In our society, you pay for the things you want, and even the things you need like food and medicine.
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
Presumably it's balanced up by the people who buy due to wider exposure. That's not necessarily saying that piracy is always a sales neutral event, it's just that there's no direct correlation between sales and the level of piracy, sometimes it costs you and sometimes it earns you more.
I'd also point out that the artist didn't create exclusive control (they lost it as soon as they wrote it down, played it or painted it), so they've not 'lost' anything here until some degree of it is granted. Think of it as society buying the rights for the work off the creator with a grant of exclusivity that helps the original artist profit from their creation.
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
IP law exists to balance the profits of creators against the benefits of unrestricted consumption.
That includes creators incorporating old creations into new creations, but there's also a lot of benefit to allowing anyone who feels like it to watch movies, download books, listen to music, etc.
Why should people get entertainment or art for free? I literally can't even comprehend why this should be so. In our society, you pay for the things you want, and even the things you need like food and medicine.
Why should people have to pay for entertainment? Why should people ave to pay for food or medicine. There's a broader point to be made about recognizing the worth of a monetary system in encouraging behavior, but it's also something I've always wondered. Why DO I have to?
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
One thing that I haven't seen brought up is that - for the vast majority of artists, writers, musicians and even filmmakers - the sale of their work is the least important part of their income. Since we tend to equate artist with the .001 percent who have their work pushed by corporate distributors, that really gets lost. And that's more true than ever now, which is why so many people talk about the death of the midlist.
The vast majority of writers do not make money from book sales. They teach, with a smaller number making money from the lecture circuit. The vast majority of musicians make their money from performances and merchandising, not selling their music. The corporate superstar system is actually horrible for the arts, since it is focused on maximizing marketing for a handful of artists while letting everyone else sink or swim. Take away that network of university professorships, lecture circuits, festivals, clubs and artist grants, the number of artists worldwide who make a living solely from selling their work numbers in the low thousands.
That doesn't mean that I don't support copyright. I rather like the "death of the author" as a yardstick, since it recognizes the years of uncompensated labor that goes into any successful piece of art. That said, I think the clock should start running down a lot faster in any situation where the artist gives up rights to their work. That would disincentive the Motown situations where the art makes millions of dollars, while the artist lives in poverty because they were an artist and not a contract attorney.
The government already has the right to remove property through taxation. Would SKFM be against a high (say, 23 percent) tax on copyrighted works? It would be no different from taxing regular property.
IP law exists to balance the profits of creators against the benefits of unrestricted consumption.
That includes creators incorporating old creations into new creations, but there's also a lot of benefit to allowing anyone who feels like it to watch movies, download books, listen to music, etc.
Why should people get entertainment or art for free? I literally can't even comprehend why this should be so. In our society, you pay for the things you want, and even the things you need like food and medicine.
Suffice it to say that it's awesome when society can replicate and consume valuable goods at zero marginal cost.
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
Presumably it's balanced up by the people who buy due to wider exposure. That's not necessarily saying that piracy is always a sales neutral event, it's just that there's no direct correlation between sales and the level of piracy, sometimes it costs you and sometimes it earns you more.
I'd also point out that the artist didn't create exclusive control (they lost it as soon as they wrote it down, played it or painted it), so they've not 'lost' anything here until some degree of it is granted. Think of it as society buying the rights for the work off the creator with a grant of exclusivity that helps the original artist profit from their creation.
But you don't have exclusive control of anything without government intervention. If I build a chair but the government does not protect my claim, my possession is only exclusive to the extent that I can defend it with physical force. We don't want people self defending their property, and I see no reason why IP should be any different from physical property in that regard.
The government already has the right to remove property through taxation. Would SKFM be against a high (say, 23 percent) tax on copyrighted works? It would be no different from taxing regular property.
A tax would be fine with me. The relationship between an individual and the government is fundamentally different from the relationship between two private individuals.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
I don't know what you mean about ruining creative futures. They are paying people for their work after all.
Basically, there are people who buy X product and people who don't. Pirates exist in both groups. If you don't buy music, for example, every song/album you download doesn't translate into a lost sale because you never purchase music anyway. If you always/never pirate music and buy it, there is no problem. If you pirate and sometimes buy, each decision to purchase comes down to the perceived value of owning it. At no point, though, does piracy translate into a lost sale. You're either willing to pay for it, or you're not.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
One thing that I haven't seen brought up is that - for the vast majority of artists, writers, musicians and even filmmakers - the sale of their work is the least important part of their income. Since we tend to equate artist with the .001 percent who have their work pushed by corporate distributors, that really gets lost. And that's more true than ever now, which is why so many people talk about the death of the midlist.
The vast majority of writers do not make money from book sales. They teach, with a smaller number making money from the lecture circuit. The vast majority of musicians make their money from performances and merchandising, not selling their music. The corporate superstar system is actually horrible for the arts, since it is focused on maximizing marketing for a handful of artists while letting everyone else sink or swim. Take away that network of university professorships, lecture circuits, festivals, clubs and artist grants, the number of artists worldwide who make a living solely from selling their work numbers in the low thousands.
That doesn't mean that I don't support copyright. I rather like the "death of the author" as a yardstick, since it recognizes the years of uncompensated labor that goes into any successful piece of art. That said, I think the clock should start running down a lot faster in any situation where the artist gives up rights to their work. That would disincentive the Motown situations where the art makes millions of dollars, while the artist lives in poverty because they were an artist and not a contract attorney.
All that this will do is lower the value that they receive when they make a deal with a publisher. . .
A tax would be fine with me. The relationship between an individual and the government is fundamentally different from the relationship between two private individuals.
But it would functionally act as a killer of copyright after a uncertain amount of time. What is the difference between the government killing copyright one way and killing it another way using taxes?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
I don't know what you mean about ruining creative futures. They are paying people for their work after all.
Basically, there are people who buy X product and people who don't. Pirates exist in both groups. If you don't buy music, for example, every song/album you download doesn't translate into a lost sale because you never purchase music anyway. If you always/never pirate music and buy it, there is no problem. If you pirate and sometimes buy, each decision to purchase comes down to the perceived value of owning it. At no point, though, does piracy translate into a lost sale. You're either willing to pay for it, or you're not.
I don't understand why you are writing off the pirate who would just consume less if he had to pay. I know people who buy console games but pirate PC games, for example, because its easy. Eliminate piracy, and they would buy PC games too, they would just play less of them.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
A tax would be fine with me. The relationship between an individual and the government is fundamentally different from the relationship between two private individuals.
But it would functionally act as a killer of copyright after a uncertain amount of time. What is the difference between the government killing copyright one way and killing it another way using taxes?
I don't follow how a 23% tax on the sale of a copyrighted good would kill copyright.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
One thing that I haven't seen brought up is that - for the vast majority of artists, writers, musicians and even filmmakers - the sale of their work is the least important part of their income. Since we tend to equate artist with the .001 percent who have their work pushed by corporate distributors, that really gets lost. And that's more true than ever now, which is why so many people talk about the death of the midlist.
The vast majority of writers do not make money from book sales. They teach, with a smaller number making money from the lecture circuit. The vast majority of musicians make their money from performances and merchandising, not selling their music. The corporate superstar system is actually horrible for the arts, since it is focused on maximizing marketing for a handful of artists while letting everyone else sink or swim. Take away that network of university professorships, lecture circuits, festivals, clubs and artist grants, the number of artists worldwide who make a living solely from selling their work numbers in the low thousands.
That doesn't mean that I don't support copyright. I rather like the "death of the author" as a yardstick, since it recognizes the years of uncompensated labor that goes into any successful piece of art. That said, I think the clock should start running down a lot faster in any situation where the artist gives up rights to their work. That would disincentive the Motown situations where the art makes millions of dollars, while the artist lives in poverty because they were an artist and not a contract attorney.
This is kind of where I'm heading with this. People arguing the contrary are profoundly ignorant of how these industries actually work. 95% of people working in creative industries do not make any (see: $.01) from the sales of their creative work. People who purchase work thinking they are "supporting the artist" are buying a lie perpetuated by organizations like the RIAA, who by the way, have created exactly fucking nothing in their lifetime we would call music.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
I don't know what you mean about ruining creative futures. They are paying people for their work after all.
Basically, there are people who buy X product and people who don't. Pirates exist in both groups. If you don't buy music, for example, every song/album you download doesn't translate into a lost sale because you never purchase music anyway. If you always/never pirate music and buy it, there is no problem. If you pirate and sometimes buy, each decision to purchase comes down to the perceived value of owning it. At no point, though, does piracy translate into a lost sale. You're either willing to pay for it, or you're not.
I don't understand why you are writing off the pirate who would just consume less if he had to pay. I know people who buy console games but pirate PC games, for example, because its easy. Eliminate piracy, and they would buy PC games too, they would just play less of them.
Because they're still not buying it either way, which is my point. People either buy things, or they don't. If we eliminated piracy, it doesn't change how people spend their money.
And really, that's never going to happen, eliminating piracy. Most people fall somewhere in the middle (pirate some, buy some). The people who are extreme about it will never pay for content because there will always be a way around it.
The government also has no problem fucking with property rights of physical property when it feels it is necessary for the common good. That is one of the purposes of the government. Easements, adverse possession, etc. Your idea of property rights has generally been an aberration compared to ideas where property rights can be destroyed to benefit the common good.
A tax would be fine with me. The relationship between an individual and the government is fundamentally different from the relationship between two private individuals.
But it would functionally act as a killer of copyright after a uncertain amount of time. What is the difference between the government killing copyright one way and killing it another way using taxes?
I don't follow how a 23% tax on the sale of a copyrighted good would kill copyright.
Companies would dump the fuck out of their copyrighted works when they feel the tax is too high compared to benefit received from the copyrighted works on a case by case basis. For example, the tax on the Silly Symphonies copyright would probably be more than it is worth to keep it. This happens with property taxes. They don't keep around shitloads of property just for the sake of it because paying the property tax on it would cost more than anything it would be worth.
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
Presumably it's balanced up by the people who buy due to wider exposure. That's not necessarily saying that piracy is always a sales neutral event, it's just that there's no direct correlation between sales and the level of piracy, sometimes it costs you and sometimes it earns you more.
I'd also point out that the artist didn't create exclusive control (they lost it as soon as they wrote it down, played it or painted it), so they've not 'lost' anything here until some degree of it is granted. Think of it as society buying the rights for the work off the creator with a grant of exclusivity that helps the original artist profit from their creation.
But you don't have exclusive control of anything without government intervention. If I build a chair but the government does not protect my claim, my possession is only exclusive to the extent that I can defend it with physical force. We don't want people self defending their property, and I see no reason why IP should be any different from physical property in that regard.
Because you've moved from people taking something you have, like the original bit of art or the chair, to asking the government to step in and stop other people using their own property in pursuit of their own livelihood.
It's different from normal property because you're having to ask for an additional level of government involvement. The copyright eventually expiring is the price you pay for this additional support and protection.
Tastyfish on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
I don't know what you mean about ruining creative futures. They are paying people for their work after all.
Basically, there are people who buy X product and people who don't. Pirates exist in both groups. If you don't buy music, for example, every song/album you download doesn't translate into a lost sale because you never purchase music anyway. If you always/never pirate music and buy it, there is no problem. If you pirate and sometimes buy, each decision to purchase comes down to the perceived value of owning it. At no point, though, does piracy translate into a lost sale. You're either willing to pay for it, or you're not.
I don't understand why you are writing off the pirate who would just consume less if he had to pay. I know people who buy console games but pirate PC games, for example, because its easy. Eliminate piracy, and they would buy PC games too, they would just play less of them.
Because they're still not buying it either way, which is my point. People either buy things, or they don't. If we eliminated piracy, it doesn't change how people spend their money.
And really, that's never going to happen, eliminating piracy. Most people fall somewhere in the middle (pirate some, buy some). The people who are extreme about it will never pay for content because there will always be a way around it.
Someone who downloads and plays 10 games a year for free probably won't stop gaming if piracy goes away. Even if they only buy one game a year, that is a better situation.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
Presumably it's balanced up by the people who buy due to wider exposure. That's not necessarily saying that piracy is always a sales neutral event, it's just that there's no direct correlation between sales and the level of piracy, sometimes it costs you and sometimes it earns you more.
I'd also point out that the artist didn't create exclusive control (they lost it as soon as they wrote it down, played it or painted it), so they've not 'lost' anything here until some degree of it is granted. Think of it as society buying the rights for the work off the creator with a grant of exclusivity that helps the original artist profit from their creation.
But you don't have exclusive control of anything without government intervention. If I build a chair but the government does not protect my claim, my possession is only exclusive to the extent that I can defend it with physical force. We don't want people self defending their property, and I see no reason why IP should be any different from physical property in that regard.
Because you've moved from people taking something you have, like the original bit of art, to asking the government to step in and stop other people using their own property in pursuit of their own livelihood.
It's different from normal property because you're having to ask for an additional level of government involvement. The copyright eventually expiring is the price you pay for this additional support and protection.
I do not understand this distinction that you see. In both cases, I am asking for protection of my exclusive right to benefit from my work.
But what you are asking for is different in each case. Why should we consider physical property to be the same as intellectual property, when you don't even consider them the same, since you're asking us to defend them in completely different ways?
The manuscript you've written has as much protection as the chair you've made, or the grain you've grown. Your problem is that you don't think you can earn enough from reading it to people and want me to step in. Why should I?
Under most philosophies, private property is recognized because it is believe to be the best way to protect the value of land and to ensure it is put to productive use. That is the argument John Locke used. This argument allows for exceptions and modifications to property rights where it can be shown it is not the case that it is the best way to protect the value of land and to ensure it is put to productive use.
Your view fetishizes property rights as an ends in itself.
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VanguardBut now the dream is over. And the insect is awake.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
I don't know what you mean about ruining creative futures. They are paying people for their work after all.
Basically, there are people who buy X product and people who don't. Pirates exist in both groups. If you don't buy music, for example, every song/album you download doesn't translate into a lost sale because you never purchase music anyway. If you always/never pirate music and buy it, there is no problem. If you pirate and sometimes buy, each decision to purchase comes down to the perceived value of owning it. At no point, though, does piracy translate into a lost sale. You're either willing to pay for it, or you're not.
I don't understand why you are writing off the pirate who would just consume less if he had to pay. I know people who buy console games but pirate PC games, for example, because its easy. Eliminate piracy, and they would buy PC games too, they would just play less of them.
Because they're still not buying it either way, which is my point. People either buy things, or they don't. If we eliminated piracy, it doesn't change how people spend their money.
And really, that's never going to happen, eliminating piracy. Most people fall somewhere in the middle (pirate some, buy some). The people who are extreme about it will never pay for content because there will always be a way around it.
Someone who downloads and plays 10 games a year for free probably won't stop gaming if piracy goes away. Even if they only buy one game a year, that is a better situation.
You would do well to do actual research on this topic instead of presenting half-baked anecdotes.
US P2P users have larger collections than non-P2P users (roughly 37% more). And predictably, most of the difference comes from higher levels of ‘downloading for free’ and ‘copying from friends/family.’ But some of it also comes from significantly higher legal purchases of digital music than their non-P2P using peers–around 30% higher among US P2P users. Our data is quite clear on this point and lines up with numerous other studies: The biggest music pirates are also the biggest spenders on recorded music.
The study analyzed weekly data from 1,344 movies in 49 countries over a five-year period. Here’s the crux of the results: “In all specifications we find that the shutdown had a negative, yet in some cases insignificant effect on box office revenues.” Not all movies were negatively affected: “For blockbusters (shown on more than 500 screens) the sign is positive (and significant, depending on the specification).”
I think we've hit on the issue...there's simply no reason anybody should have to pay for entertainment after the artist has been compensated for their work.
Some limited copyright protection is clearly necessary to achieve that (or at least I'd say it is).
But SKFM can't wrap his mind around anything ever not costing money. It's alien to him. If the original artist has been compensated for the work they put in, and if no additional work is required of them to create the copy, why should they still get paid? Why should I still have to pay?
If I could push a button and make food appear, and if the farmer or manufacturer responsible for the creation of that button has long since been paid, is there something wrong with food being free?
We have to pay for food and medicine because additional work has to go into the creation of each unit. Not so with entertainment. There is only an upfront cost. There really, theoretically, need only be upfront payment. Which is where the idea of a limited copyright period comes from.
Eventually, the public gets to benefit from the zero marginal cost of additional units. That's, like, amazing and awesome. But SKFM recoils at the idea of the magic food button.
I'd really like an explanation of why this particular brand of work, or this particular brand of property, should be able to generate revenue without additional work in perpetuity. Why is the value of this labor, unlike all others, infinite?
Even Locke appears to have considered the decision of the majority of the legislature to be good enough consent to force a person to give up property.
140. 'Tis true, Governments cannot be supported without great Charge, and 'tis fit every one who enjoys his share of the Protection, should pay out of his Estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own Consent, i.e. the Consent of the Majority, giving it either by themselves, or their Representatives chosen by them. For if any one shall claim a Power to lay and levy Taxes on the People, by his own Authority, and without such consent of the People, he thereby invades the Fundamental Law of Property, and subverts the end of Government. For what property have I in that which another may by right take, when he pleases to himself?
Under most philosophies, private property is recognized because it is believe to be the best way to protect the value of land and to ensure it is put to productive use. That is the argument John Locke used. This argument allows for exceptions and modifications to property rights where it can be shown it is not the case that it is the best way to protect the value of land and to ensure it is put to productive use.
Your view fetishizes property rights as an ends in itself.
People in general also like having things for themselves. If the food in the pantry where I live isn't in some way assigned for my use, I wouldn't have any left if a neighbour decided to eat it first, and there wouldn't be grounds to stop the neighbour or compensate me. It would be inconvenient, and make planning my week difficult.
It would require many adjustments to make things run smoothly, I suppose.
do you disagree that spurring the progress of science and arts should be the primary goal of copyright, or do you contend that a >20 year copyright is needed to spur the progress of science and arts?
Or to put that in more general terms, what is the purpose of copyright, in your opinion? Who's good is it serving?
Tube already gave the example of an author like Lee; she wrote an excellent book, but she wasn't a 'novel-a-year' writer like, say, Koontz or Rice or Grisham. Copyright protection allowed her exclusive rights to the money made from her magnum opus, and allowed her estate (and anyone dependent on the money from that estate) to continue collecting money from it after she died.
If you want a more tragic story, look at Lovecraft: he wrote and wrote until cancer finally took him, and he died penniless - mostly because he wasn't offered the same kind of negotiating partners & author protections that people like Lee later had (there were also other issue that led to Lovecraft's poverty, like his mental instability, but the lack of strong author protections were definitely large contributing factors).
Is there a reasonable argument that someone like Lee wouldn't have written her magnum opus if she was only guaranteed a mere 20 years of profits from it? That seems to me to be not how most writers or businesses work.
Remember, under the constitution, the purpose of copyright is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts”, not to compensate creators indefinitely. It's an important distinction, because there are two sides that you can come at this from - the side that says we should be focused on giving artists what they "deserve" or the side that says we should do whatever spurs on the creation of more art.
So, to break your argument into something a bit more specific: do you disagree that spurring the progress of science and arts should be the primary goal of copyright, or do you contend that a >20 year copyright is needed to spur the progress of science and arts?
Can't we pursue both? I'd like to pursue both, especially since I think they're complementary goals.
In that case, why would you say that we need a copyright term greater than 20 years to spur progress? The free software movement deals in what would otherwise be copyrighted material, but agrees that they won't restrict anyone who agrees to make any improvements they make available under those same conditions (ie: everyone agrees to share their improvements). This agreement has given us any number of programming languages, as well enabled substantial advancements in the field of computer science and numerical modelling. If they worked with copyright as it is practiced in other fields, I'd be impressed if we had made it all the way to 1980s state of the art.
I don't think we need a term greater than 20 years to spur progress. I think we need a term greater than 20 years to give artists what they deserve.
I'd like to pursue both, especially since I think they're complementary goals.
If the primary goal of copyright is spurring progress, then anything that retards that is a problem. If the primary goal is to properly compensate artists then you are stating that you're willing to sacrifice progress in favor of compensation. It's the difference between saying that a 50 year development cycle on derivative works is acceptable and that it is a vast impediment to progress that drags down everyone.
I guess I would return your own question to you: Why would you say that we need a copyright term shorter than 70 years to spur progress?
The short version, as could be gleaned from some of my other posts, is that I think a 70 year term fails miserably to spur progress at the same rate a shorter term would.
New Zealand has the unhappy distinction of being in the vanguard of using the "three strikes" approach of punishment for people accused of sharing unauthorized copies online. As in France and the UK, this was brought in without any preparatory research to ascertain its effectiveness, and without any real thought about the practical implications. That makes a post by Susan Chalmers on the blog of InternetNZ, a "non-profit open membership organisation dedicated to protecting and promoting the Internet in New Zealand", particularly valuable.
It's full of fascinating details, and is well-worth reading for the insights it gives into the realities of the three-strike approach in New Zealand. Take the following, for example:
Both were caught illegally uploading songs. The specific "wrong" here according to the Copyright Act is that only the copyright owner can "communicate the work to the public". The law appears to presume that when your BitTorrent client allows other P2P users to download from you, then you are communicating that work to the public, even though that “public” could in fact be one person
That might seem a mere technicality, but as Chalmers points out, it isn't:
The written decisions showed that the account holders had a limited understanding of the technology they had been punished for using. Neither account holder seems to have understood that when you download a file, the client will automatically start uploading it to peers who request it. This goes to suggest that the account holders didn't know what their computer was doing was wrong (though they may have understood that downloading was wrong).
Again, this isn't a minor detail, because of perhaps the most problematic aspect of the three-strikes approach:
The law inverts the age-old principle (you know, that one that's essential to due process and a democratic society) that a person is "innocent until proven guilty". In a normal copyright infringement case that occurs in a court of law, the burden is on the copyright owner to prove that the alleged infringer infringed.
Under Skynet, the burden is on the alleged infringer/account holder to prove that they did not infringe. Specifically, they have to contest each of the three infringements listed on the notices.
Chalmers' post makes clear why the tribunal's "guilty until proven innocent" approach is unjust: it presupposes that the people involved fully understand what they are accused of. If they don't, they stand little chance, since they won't be able to defend themselves, and probably won't think to hire -- or be able to afford -- lawyers to navigate the complex process of defense in an area that is still being defined. With the traditional legal system of innocent until proven guilty, the burden of proof lies with the copyright owners, who are better placed to hire lawyers, since they are typically large companies that turn to them reflexively, and can easily pay their considerable fees. And in those circumstances, the accused will naturally be conscious that they need to seek legal help -- no sensible lay person would think to argue the case themselves.
As Chalmers emphasizes:
We have to be immensely careful that in developing novel legal standards and processes to protect copyright owners in the online environment, we do not gloss over the basic safeguards that should be provided to people under a fair legal system.
On the basis of these early cases, and the clear bewilderment and helplessness of those accused, it would seem that this is simply not happening. It will be interesting to read a similar analysis once more people have been processed by the system.
I've got a number of conflicts when it comes to copyright.
Thinking about the real world, I'd hate to see someone create a work, struggle to publish / sell it, and in ten - fifteen - twenty years when the copyright expires, have Disney snap it up and make it into a billion dollar blockbuster while the original creator starves.
At the same time, I hate the idea of a world where in eight hundred years, Disney owns all rights to Mickey Mouse's likeness, or any derivative works that include a mouse, a steamboat, or a character named 'Willie'.
The best idea I can come up with is giving the creator / original copyright owner exclusive rights for something akin to one generation. Roughly 20-25 years. Possibly guarantee the suggested 14 years from creation / initial publication, with the ability to extend those rights ten more years provided the work is still being distributed / sold.
Think about it...we could easily live in a world where we could freely exchange any movies, music, or TV shows made prior to...~1988. Public domain. Rolling Stones? Beatles? GI Joe? Transformers? Star Wars? You want to sell a complete 'Movies of the 70's'? Sure, you could...just package it up and sell it. The complete 'Beatles' collection? Go ahead.
Companies like Disney would be forced to offer something meaningful to get you to pay $30 for a DVD of Snow White, but they would probably still get plenty of business as 'the real Disney' collection. Yeah, they could steal someone's novel and make a screenplay, but Warner Brothers could do the same thing, and hire the original author as a consultant and sell 'the authorized movie'.
New Zealand has the unhappy distinction of being in the vanguard of using the "three strikes" approach of punishment for people accused of sharing unauthorized copies online. As in France and the UK, this was brought in without any preparatory research to ascertain its effectiveness, and without any real thought about the practical implications. That makes a post by Susan Chalmers on the blog of InternetNZ, a "non-profit open membership organisation dedicated to protecting and promoting the Internet in New Zealand", particularly valuable.
It's full of fascinating details, and is well-worth reading for the insights it gives into the realities of the three-strike approach in New Zealand. Take the following, for example:
Both were caught illegally uploading songs. The specific "wrong" here according to the Copyright Act is that only the copyright owner can "communicate the work to the public". The law appears to presume that when your BitTorrent client allows other P2P users to download from you, then you are communicating that work to the public, even though that “public” could in fact be one person
That might seem a mere technicality, but as Chalmers points out, it isn't:
The written decisions showed that the account holders had a limited understanding of the technology they had been punished for using. Neither account holder seems to have understood that when you download a file, the client will automatically start uploading it to peers who request it. This goes to suggest that the account holders didn't know what their computer was doing was wrong (though they may have understood that downloading was wrong).
Again, this isn't a minor detail, because of perhaps the most problematic aspect of the three-strikes approach:
The law inverts the age-old principle (you know, that one that's essential to due process and a democratic society) that a person is "innocent until proven guilty". In a normal copyright infringement case that occurs in a court of law, the burden is on the copyright owner to prove that the alleged infringer infringed.
Under Skynet, the burden is on the alleged infringer/account holder to prove that they did not infringe. Specifically, they have to contest each of the three infringements listed on the notices.
Chalmers' post makes clear why the tribunal's "guilty until proven innocent" approach is unjust: it presupposes that the people involved fully understand what they are accused of. If they don't, they stand little chance, since they won't be able to defend themselves, and probably won't think to hire -- or be able to afford -- lawyers to navigate the complex process of defense in an area that is still being defined. With the traditional legal system of innocent until proven guilty, the burden of proof lies with the copyright owners, who are better placed to hire lawyers, since they are typically large companies that turn to them reflexively, and can easily pay their considerable fees. And in those circumstances, the accused will naturally be conscious that they need to seek legal help -- no sensible lay person would think to argue the case themselves.
As Chalmers emphasizes:
We have to be immensely careful that in developing novel legal standards and processes to protect copyright owners in the online environment, we do not gloss over the basic safeguards that should be provided to people under a fair legal system.
On the basis of these early cases, and the clear bewilderment and helplessness of those accused, it would seem that this is simply not happening. It will be interesting to read a similar analysis once more people have been processed by the system.
There's a core legal principle called "ignorance of the law is no excuse".
I've got a number of conflicts when it comes to copyright.
Thinking about the real world, I'd hate to see someone create a work, struggle to publish / sell it, and in ten - fifteen - twenty years when the copyright expires, have Disney snap it up and make it into a billion dollar blockbuster while the original creator starves.
At the same time, I hate the idea of a world where in eight hundred years, Disney owns all rights to Mickey Mouse's likeness, or any derivative works that include a mouse, a steamboat, or a character named 'Willie'.
The best idea I can come up with is giving the creator / original copyright owner exclusive rights for something akin to one generation. Roughly 20-25 years. Possibly guarantee the suggested 14 years from creation / initial publication, with the ability to extend those rights ten more years provided the work is still being distributed / sold.
Think about it...we could easily live in a world where we could freely exchange any movies, music, or TV shows made prior to...~1988. Public domain. Rolling Stones? Beatles? GI Joe? Transformers? Star Wars? You want to sell a complete 'Movies of the 70's'? Sure, you could...just package it up and sell it. The complete 'Beatles' collection? Go ahead.
Companies like Disney would be forced to offer something meaningful to get you to pay $30 for a DVD of Snow White, but they would probably still get plenty of business as 'the real Disney' collection. Yeah, they could steal someone's novel and make a screenplay, but Warner Brothers could do the same thing, and hire the original author as a consultant and sell 'the authorized movie'.
Your world sounds horribly unfair to me. If you didn't make the music or buy the right to distribute it, why should you ever profit from it?
I've got a number of conflicts when it comes to copyright.
Thinking about the real world, I'd hate to see someone create a work, struggle to publish / sell it, and in ten - fifteen - twenty years when the copyright expires, have Disney snap it up and make it into a billion dollar blockbuster while the original creator starves.
At the same time, I hate the idea of a world where in eight hundred years, Disney owns all rights to Mickey Mouse's likeness, or any derivative works that include a mouse, a steamboat, or a character named 'Willie'.
The best idea I can come up with is giving the creator / original copyright owner exclusive rights for something akin to one generation. Roughly 20-25 years. Possibly guarantee the suggested 14 years from creation / initial publication, with the ability to extend those rights ten more years provided the work is still being distributed / sold.
Think about it...we could easily live in a world where we could freely exchange any movies, music, or TV shows made prior to...~1988. Public domain. Rolling Stones? Beatles? GI Joe? Transformers? Star Wars? You want to sell a complete 'Movies of the 70's'? Sure, you could...just package it up and sell it. The complete 'Beatles' collection? Go ahead.
Companies like Disney would be forced to offer something meaningful to get you to pay $30 for a DVD of Snow White, but they would probably still get plenty of business as 'the real Disney' collection. Yeah, they could steal someone's novel and make a screenplay, but Warner Brothers could do the same thing, and hire the original author as a consultant and sell 'the authorized movie'.
Your world sounds horribly unfair to me. If you didn't make the music or buy the right to distribute it, why should you ever profit from it?
Your view has no relation to copyright as it exists in the US. It is actively working against the reason we have copyright. That is to say, your view would require a constitutional amendment before it could be enacted. This is because you're working with a very different set of basic assumptions than everyone else in the thread. You're neither going to sway anyone nor be swayed by anyone until those assumptions change, which seems unlikely.
do you disagree that spurring the progress of science and arts should be the primary goal of copyright, or do you contend that a >20 year copyright is needed to spur the progress of science and arts?
Or to put that in more general terms, what is the purpose of copyright, in your opinion? Who's good is it serving?
Tube already gave the example of an author like Lee; she wrote an excellent book, but she wasn't a 'novel-a-year' writer like, say, Koontz or Rice or Grisham. Copyright protection allowed her exclusive rights to the money made from her magnum opus, and allowed her estate (and anyone dependent on the money from that estate) to continue collecting money from it after she died.
If you want a more tragic story, look at Lovecraft: he wrote and wrote until cancer finally took him, and he died penniless - mostly because he wasn't offered the same kind of negotiating partners & author protections that people like Lee later had (there were also other issue that led to Lovecraft's poverty, like his mental instability, but the lack of strong author protections were definitely large contributing factors).
Is there a reasonable argument that someone like Lee wouldn't have written her magnum opus if she was only guaranteed a mere 20 years of profits from it? That seems to me to be not how most writers or businesses work.
Remember, under the constitution, the purpose of copyright is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts”, not to compensate creators indefinitely. It's an important distinction, because there are two sides that you can come at this from - the side that says we should be focused on giving artists what they "deserve" or the side that says we should do whatever spurs on the creation of more art.
So, to break your argument into something a bit more specific: do you disagree that spurring the progress of science and arts should be the primary goal of copyright, or do you contend that a >20 year copyright is needed to spur the progress of science and arts?
Can't we pursue both? I'd like to pursue both, especially since I think they're complementary goals.
In that case, why would you say that we need a copyright term greater than 20 years to spur progress? The free software movement deals in what would otherwise be copyrighted material, but agrees that they won't restrict anyone who agrees to make any improvements they make available under those same conditions (ie: everyone agrees to share their improvements). This agreement has given us any number of programming languages, as well enabled substantial advancements in the field of computer science and numerical modelling. If they worked with copyright as it is practiced in other fields, I'd be impressed if we had made it all the way to 1980s state of the art.
I don't think we need a term greater than 20 years to spur progress. I think we need a term greater than 20 years to give artists what they deserve.
I'd like to pursue both, especially since I think they're complementary goals.
If the primary goal of copyright is spurring progress, then anything that retards that is a problem. If the primary goal is to properly compensate artists then you are stating that you're willing to sacrifice progress in favor of compensation. It's the difference between saying that a 50 year development cycle on derivative works is acceptable and that it is a vast impediment to progress that drags down everyone.
I guess I would return your own question to you: Why would you say that we need a copyright term shorter than 70 years to spur progress?
The short version, as could be gleaned from some of my other posts, is that I think a 70 year term fails miserably to spur progress at the same rate a shorter term would.
Why do you assume one of the two goals must be "THE primary goal", and the other subservient to it? Why can't we treat them as equally important?
Posts
1) Every digital theft is a lost sale. This is patently false. If you add up the number of illegal downloads of music, it exceeds the number of record sales in any year.
2) These properties are valuable. In most cases, this is not the case. Major publishing houses, record companies etc., lose money on almost all of their investments. This was true prior to the Internet being a thing, and it's still true.
1 doesn't matter. If for every 5,000 instances of piracy I lose one sale, I'm still harmed.
2 Is wrong because there is value on exclusive control. It doesn't matter if the whole investment is a loser on net.
Well, it does matter. There is no link between piracy and sales. None. Zero. You're creating a relationship that doesn't exist to argue your harm and you are wrong.
Well, I wouldn't disagree there is value inexclusive control, but that's a really simplistic way of looking at the issue. These companies have ruined people's creative futures so that these exclusive properties can just sit in an archive somewhere. Again, no benefit to the creator.
That includes creators incorporating old creations into new creations, but there's also a lot of benefit to allowing anyone who feels like it to watch movies, download books, listen to music, etc.
How can it be the case that not one person who pirates would otherwise buy? That can't be possible. But regardless (and this goes to the second point) exclusive control is of value, and piracy abridges that right. Not to mention the injustice of someone just taking the benefit of my labor, making me their involuntary servant.
I don't know what you mean about ruining creative futures. They are paying people for their work after all.
Why should people get entertainment or art for free? I literally can't even comprehend why this should be so. In our society, you pay for the things you want, and even the things you need like food and medicine.
Presumably it's balanced up by the people who buy due to wider exposure. That's not necessarily saying that piracy is always a sales neutral event, it's just that there's no direct correlation between sales and the level of piracy, sometimes it costs you and sometimes it earns you more.
I'd also point out that the artist didn't create exclusive control (they lost it as soon as they wrote it down, played it or painted it), so they've not 'lost' anything here until some degree of it is granted. Think of it as society buying the rights for the work off the creator with a grant of exclusivity that helps the original artist profit from their creation.
Why should people have to pay for entertainment? Why should people ave to pay for food or medicine. There's a broader point to be made about recognizing the worth of a monetary system in encouraging behavior, but it's also something I've always wondered. Why DO I have to?
The vast majority of writers do not make money from book sales. They teach, with a smaller number making money from the lecture circuit. The vast majority of musicians make their money from performances and merchandising, not selling their music. The corporate superstar system is actually horrible for the arts, since it is focused on maximizing marketing for a handful of artists while letting everyone else sink or swim. Take away that network of university professorships, lecture circuits, festivals, clubs and artist grants, the number of artists worldwide who make a living solely from selling their work numbers in the low thousands.
That doesn't mean that I don't support copyright. I rather like the "death of the author" as a yardstick, since it recognizes the years of uncompensated labor that goes into any successful piece of art. That said, I think the clock should start running down a lot faster in any situation where the artist gives up rights to their work. That would disincentive the Motown situations where the art makes millions of dollars, while the artist lives in poverty because they were an artist and not a contract attorney.
Suffice it to say that it's awesome when society can replicate and consume valuable goods at zero marginal cost.
But you don't have exclusive control of anything without government intervention. If I build a chair but the government does not protect my claim, my possession is only exclusive to the extent that I can defend it with physical force. We don't want people self defending their property, and I see no reason why IP should be any different from physical property in that regard.
A tax would be fine with me. The relationship between an individual and the government is fundamentally different from the relationship between two private individuals.
Basically, there are people who buy X product and people who don't. Pirates exist in both groups. If you don't buy music, for example, every song/album you download doesn't translate into a lost sale because you never purchase music anyway. If you always/never pirate music and buy it, there is no problem. If you pirate and sometimes buy, each decision to purchase comes down to the perceived value of owning it. At no point, though, does piracy translate into a lost sale. You're either willing to pay for it, or you're not.
All that this will do is lower the value that they receive when they make a deal with a publisher. . .
I don't understand why you are writing off the pirate who would just consume less if he had to pay. I know people who buy console games but pirate PC games, for example, because its easy. Eliminate piracy, and they would buy PC games too, they would just play less of them.
I don't follow how a 23% tax on the sale of a copyrighted good would kill copyright.
This is kind of where I'm heading with this. People arguing the contrary are profoundly ignorant of how these industries actually work. 95% of people working in creative industries do not make any (see: $.01) from the sales of their creative work. People who purchase work thinking they are "supporting the artist" are buying a lie perpetuated by organizations like the RIAA, who by the way, have created exactly fucking nothing in their lifetime we would call music.
Because they're still not buying it either way, which is my point. People either buy things, or they don't. If we eliminated piracy, it doesn't change how people spend their money.
And really, that's never going to happen, eliminating piracy. Most people fall somewhere in the middle (pirate some, buy some). The people who are extreme about it will never pay for content because there will always be a way around it.
Companies would dump the fuck out of their copyrighted works when they feel the tax is too high compared to benefit received from the copyrighted works on a case by case basis. For example, the tax on the Silly Symphonies copyright would probably be more than it is worth to keep it. This happens with property taxes. They don't keep around shitloads of property just for the sake of it because paying the property tax on it would cost more than anything it would be worth.
It's different from normal property because you're having to ask for an additional level of government involvement. The copyright eventually expiring is the price you pay for this additional support and protection.
Someone who downloads and plays 10 games a year for free probably won't stop gaming if piracy goes away. Even if they only buy one game a year, that is a better situation.
I do not understand this distinction that you see. In both cases, I am asking for protection of my exclusive right to benefit from my work.
The manuscript you've written has as much protection as the chair you've made, or the grain you've grown. Your problem is that you don't think you can earn enough from reading it to people and want me to step in. Why should I?
Your view fetishizes property rights as an ends in itself.
You would do well to do actual research on this topic instead of presenting half-baked anecdotes.
http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/10/15/pirates-are-the-biggest-spenders-us-p2p-users-buy-30-more-music-than-their-non-p2p-counterparts/
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/24/researchers-find-megaupload-shutdown-had-a-negative-effect-on-box-office-revenues/
I can keep going, but until your bring actual evidence in here about how piracy hurts these industries, you do well to rescind that claim.
And look how he turned out.
Some limited copyright protection is clearly necessary to achieve that (or at least I'd say it is).
But SKFM can't wrap his mind around anything ever not costing money. It's alien to him. If the original artist has been compensated for the work they put in, and if no additional work is required of them to create the copy, why should they still get paid? Why should I still have to pay?
If I could push a button and make food appear, and if the farmer or manufacturer responsible for the creation of that button has long since been paid, is there something wrong with food being free?
We have to pay for food and medicine because additional work has to go into the creation of each unit. Not so with entertainment. There is only an upfront cost. There really, theoretically, need only be upfront payment. Which is where the idea of a limited copyright period comes from.
Eventually, the public gets to benefit from the zero marginal cost of additional units. That's, like, amazing and awesome. But SKFM recoils at the idea of the magic food button.
I'd really like an explanation of why this particular brand of work, or this particular brand of property, should be able to generate revenue without additional work in perpetuity. Why is the value of this labor, unlike all others, infinite?
People in general also like having things for themselves. If the food in the pantry where I live isn't in some way assigned for my use, I wouldn't have any left if a neighbour decided to eat it first, and there wouldn't be grounds to stop the neighbour or compensate me. It would be inconvenient, and make planning my week difficult.
It would require many adjustments to make things run smoothly, I suppose.
The short version, as could be gleaned from some of my other posts, is that I think a 70 year term fails miserably to spur progress at the same rate a shorter term would.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130221/08042322056/early-lessons-new-zealands-three-strikes-punishments.shtml
Thinking about the real world, I'd hate to see someone create a work, struggle to publish / sell it, and in ten - fifteen - twenty years when the copyright expires, have Disney snap it up and make it into a billion dollar blockbuster while the original creator starves.
At the same time, I hate the idea of a world where in eight hundred years, Disney owns all rights to Mickey Mouse's likeness, or any derivative works that include a mouse, a steamboat, or a character named 'Willie'.
The best idea I can come up with is giving the creator / original copyright owner exclusive rights for something akin to one generation. Roughly 20-25 years. Possibly guarantee the suggested 14 years from creation / initial publication, with the ability to extend those rights ten more years provided the work is still being distributed / sold.
Think about it...we could easily live in a world where we could freely exchange any movies, music, or TV shows made prior to...~1988. Public domain. Rolling Stones? Beatles? GI Joe? Transformers? Star Wars? You want to sell a complete 'Movies of the 70's'? Sure, you could...just package it up and sell it. The complete 'Beatles' collection? Go ahead.
Companies like Disney would be forced to offer something meaningful to get you to pay $30 for a DVD of Snow White, but they would probably still get plenty of business as 'the real Disney' collection. Yeah, they could steal someone's novel and make a screenplay, but Warner Brothers could do the same thing, and hire the original author as a consultant and sell 'the authorized movie'.
There's a core legal principle called "ignorance of the law is no excuse".
Your world sounds horribly unfair to me. If you didn't make the music or buy the right to distribute it, why should you ever profit from it?
Why do you assume one of the two goals must be "THE primary goal", and the other subservient to it? Why can't we treat them as equally important?
Yes, but willfulness of at least intent is another.
If you don't even know that your client is uploading, and distribution is what you're accused of....just sayin.