You also don't make a level society by robbing Peter to pay Paul. If you increase the number of creators, but in doing so make conditions worse for creators as a whole, you're not really improving the situation.
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
You also don't make a level society by robbing Peter to pay Paul. If you increase the number of creators, but in doing so make conditions worse for creators as a whole, you're not really improving the situation.
the average goes down when you add more at the bottom, this is inevitable
this was true in 2003 too. If I had to speculate, I would consider changes in state arts budgets instead.
"Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers" as a category rose between 2003 and 2012, by some 500%, but since these are estimates and the numbers even in 2012 are so small, one might be skeptical anyway. I do hope that you are as enthusiastic about that factoid as you were of the graph, though.
It is also the case that the BLS site gives different data from the graph, but that is a quibble since the graph seems irrelevant
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's liscenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
You also don't make a level society by robbing Peter to pay Paul. If you increase the number of creators, but in doing so make conditions worse for creators as a whole, you're not really improving the situation.
the average goes down when you add more at the bottom, this is inevitable
this was true in 2003 too. If I had to speculate, I would consider changes in state arts budgets instead.
"Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers" as a category rose between 2003 and 2012, by some 500%, but since these are estimates and the numbers even in 2012 are so small, one might be skeptical anyway. I do hope that you are as enthusiastic about that factoid as you were of the graph, though.
It is also the case that the BLS site gives different data from the graph, but that is a quibble since the graph seems irrelevant
Hmm. Let's look at the definition for that last one.
711130 Musical Groups and Artists
This industry comprises (1) groups primarily engaged in producing live musical entertainment (except theatrical musical or opera productions), and (2) independent (i.e., freelance) artists primarily engaged in providing live musical entertainment. Musical groups and artists may perform in front of a live audience or in a studio, and may or may not operate their own facilities for staging their shows.
Illustrative Examples:
Bands
Musical groups (except theatrical musical groups)
Drum and bugle corps (i.e., drill teams)
Orchestras
Independent musicians or vocalists
So, in other words, the majority of working musicians fall within the "performing arts company" category because, well, that's where they're categorized under the NACIS.
So, perhaps instead of trying to snarkily rebut someone when you clearly don't know what you're talking about, perhaps you should heed your own advice.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
. . . But they DO remove them on notice. If the Chinese government went ahead and shut down a DVD pirating factory, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm not sure what you are trying to demonstrate here.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
Your choices are rather interesting. MegaUpload is currently under prosecution, and considering that Dotcom has decided to try to fight his case in the court of public opinion, one has to wonder what his defense looks like. RapidShare has pushed for voluntary improvements by cyberlocker sites to combat piracy.
You also don't make a level society by robbing Peter to pay Paul. If you increase the number of creators, but in doing so make conditions worse for creators as a whole, you're not really improving the situation.
the average goes down when you add more at the bottom, this is inevitable
this was true in 2003 too. If I had to speculate, I would consider changes in state arts budgets instead.
"Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers" as a category rose between 2003 and 2012, by some 500%, but since these are estimates and the numbers even in 2012 are so small, one might be skeptical anyway. I do hope that you are as enthusiastic about that factoid as you were of the graph, though.
It is also the case that the BLS site gives different data from the graph, but that is a quibble since the graph seems irrelevant
Hmm. Let's look at the definition for that last one.
711130 Musical Groups and Artists
This industry comprises (1) groups primarily engaged in producing live musical entertainment (except theatrical musical or opera productions), and (2) independent (i.e., freelance) artists primarily engaged in providing live musical entertainment. Musical groups and artists may perform in front of a live audience or in a studio, and may or may not operate their own facilities for staging their shows.
Illustrative Examples:
Bands
Musical groups (except theatrical musical groups)
Drum and bugle corps (i.e., drill teams)
Orchestras
Independent musicians or vocalists
So, in other words, the majority of working musicians fall within the "performing arts company" category because, well, that's where they're categorized under the NACIS.
So, perhaps instead of trying to snarkily rebut someone when you clearly don't know what you're talking about, perhaps you should heed your own advice.
You really inhabit this weird world where arguments are won by point-scoring, so that insulting your opponent in one topic earns you victory in the other. You tried that in the [chat] post, too. But what on earth does me picking apart your abuse of the notion of socializing risks have to do with this...?
But: fine. I misinterpreted the table, because footnote (1) explicitly says that estimates do not include the self-employed, and many bands are only contracted to publishers, rather than employed. The graph is still, I am afraid, mysterious to me in where it got a 41% number.
But let's take it as given that the employment in US performing-arts-company working musicians over the decade has, indeed, moved from 27k in May 2003 to 22.5k in May 2012., incurring a loss of 4.5k.
Then I should point out that:
(1) the hourly mean wage seems to have increased, in inflation-adjusted terms, from ~$33 to ~$35. This sits uncomfortably with an argument from a decline in demand due to (presumably) piracy, which should reduce both employment and wages. This isn't completely problematic - it could merely be a substitution effect of some kind. I will leave it to you to propose what these may be.
(2) copyright reform didn't happen - Lessig et al have mostly fumbled there. So what happened here, pure unrestrained piracy? In 2008 Performing Arts Companies employment of 27-2042 Musicians and Singers was 28k, even higher than the 27.8k of 2003. Was piracy weaker in 2008? How much of the drop here is straightforwardly attributable to, say, the effects of the ongoing employment crisis in the US, and the associated decrease in consumer interest in superior goods like live performances? Note that this argument would easily generate a substitution effect, via Allen-Alchian; a uniform increase in costs shifts the basket toward more expensive substitute. This is harder to obtain w.r.t. a piracy model, where uniform increases in costs are not generally plausible nor consistent with zero-marginal-cost concepts of how piracy works.
If I had picked slightly different pre-financial-crisis dates, the graph would have shown an increase rather than decrease in 'working musicians'!
(3) ... is there some reason to consider only working musicians here? Music is only valid if one relies upon it as a primary income? I mean, all this quite aside from the points before.
In fact, my current impression of the literature on the economics of content piracy is that losses are substantial. I am hardly, ahem, hardline here. But your case involves the two steps where (1) something resembling copyright reform did occur from 2003 to 2012 - I presume you have piracy in mind (2) therefore copyright reform would continue whatever trends one can extrapolate. I think that you have established neither.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
Your choices are rather interesting. MegaUpload is currently under prosecution, and considering that Dotcom has decided to try to fight his case in the court of public opinion, one has to wonder what his defense looks like. RapidShare has pushed for voluntary improvements by cyberlocker sites to combat piracy.
And then there's this:
... what is your opinion on the SOPA episode, anyway? And I urge you to stop trying to taint arguments by association with monied men behind the curtain, if you are going to want to quote lobby group infographics. It's fair, as an argument. But I ask for consistency.
I am aware that MegaUpload got shut down; hence my use of 'was'. My point was that it took years for authorities to be able to assemble a case, even as it operated in full view and in the first world. This wasn't some operation hiding in darkest Eastern Europe. In the end it turned on the same point that the earlier generation of pirate sites died to: an argument that the site operator was deliberately contributing to the piracy, rather than merely informally profiting off brokering piracy that multiplies faster than takedown notices can be filed.
It remains the case that this latter cannot be prosecuted under existing US and EU copyright law. It is something that a future clever pirate broker will simply ostentatiously avoid, and short of further legislation, there is nothing which content owners can do. This is the hole that SOPA was intended to patch. But the obvious toe being stepped on here is that nobody wants to be legally liable for stuff that users post.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
. . . But they DO remove them on notice. If the Chinese government went ahead and shut down a DVD pirating factory, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm not sure what you are trying to demonstrate here.
That wasn't the Mega business model; by any account, they were consciously aware that they were hosting pirated material at a rate far greater than they had to take them down. It seems that they got greedy and tried to actively resist algorithmic attempts to file takedown notices.
The Chinese government regularly conducts anti-piracy raids. It winds up looking like this:
They are merely not very effective because the usual litany of corruption issues. But if you start complaining about shoddy legislation and policing enabling organized content piracy to operate brazenly, despite the spirit of the law, then my point is it isn't a plague of third-world counterfeit imports any more. Pirated content is openly hosted in servers located in the West.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
. . . But they DO remove them on notice. If the Chinese government went ahead and shut down a DVD pirating factory, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm not sure what you are trying to demonstrate here.
That wasn't the Mega business model; by any account, they were consciously aware that they were hosting pirated material at a rate far greater than they had to take them down. It seems that they got greedy and tried to actively resist algorithmic attempts to file takedown notices.
The Chinese government regularly conducts anti-piracy raids. It winds up looking like this:
They are merely not very effective because the usual litany of corruption issues. But if you start complaining about shoddy legislation and policing enabling organized content piracy to operate brazenly, despite the spirit of the law, then my point is it isn't a plague of third-world counterfeit imports any more. Pirated content is openly hosted in servers located in the West.
And I am the one who is advocating changes to our enforcement mechanisms to better police piracy (in all its forms). This is a bit different from the original topic of this thread, but only a bit. I think that we should be doing more to stop piracy everywhere, irrespective of why any might think piracy is ok or a net good in a particular case or region, I think that our laws need to be modernized to reflect our modern world where ideas are more important than objects and replication/distribution is so trivial.
Edit: incidentally, I was pro-SOPA, although it was not perfect. I am also increasingly thinking that Google has moved from the company that was not evil to one of the most dangerous companies ever to exist.
And I am the one who is advocating changes to our enforcement mechanisms to better police piracy (in all its forms)....
And there are costs to all enforcement techniques, and you seem shocked, shocked when it is asked that you weigh these against the costs of violations, or to take into account the distributive impact.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
Your choices are rather interesting. MegaUpload is currently under prosecution, and considering that Dotcom has decided to try to fight his case in the court of public opinion, one has to wonder what his defense looks like. RapidShare has pushed for voluntary improvements by cyberlocker sites to combat piracy.
And then there's this:
... what is your opinion on the SOPA episode, anyway? And I urge you to stop trying to taint arguments by association with monied men behind the curtain, if you are going to want to quote lobby group infographics. It's fair, as an argument. But I ask for consistency.
I am aware that MegaUpload got shut down; hence my use of 'was'. My point was that it took years for authorities to be able to assemble a case, even as it operated in full view and in the first world. This wasn't some operation hiding in darkest Eastern Europe. In the end it turned on the same point that the earlier generation of pirate sites died to: an argument that the site operator was deliberately contributing to the piracy, rather than merely informally profiting off brokering piracy that multiplies faster than takedown notices can be filed.
It remains the case that this latter cannot be prosecuted under existing US and EU copyright law. It is something that a future clever pirate broker will simply ostentatiously avoid, and short of further legislation, there is nothing which content owners can do. This is the hole that SOPA was intended to patch. But the obvious toe being stepped on here is that nobody wants to be legally liable for stuff that users post.
SOPA is pretty simple, actually - after Google got nailed on selling ads for illegal pharmacies to the tune of half a billion dollars, they did not want to face the liability issues that SOPA would have created. So, they created an astroturfmovement to kill it in the cradle. And actually, the hole that SOPA would have closed is that it would have made it possible to go after the money, which is what terrified Google and other ad networks. (I also think that Section 230 is overly broad, as the birth of "revenge porn" websites demonstrates.)
And, what, does Copyhype sprinkle its every other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
Are there large corporations opposed to copyright "reform"? Yes. But there are also many middle class professionals opposed as well. Meanwhile, you've tried to portray the other side as being a bunch of small, decentralized groups, while carefully avoiding the large interests that are aligned with them.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
. . . But they DO remove them on notice. If the Chinese government went ahead and shut down a DVD pirating factory, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm not sure what you are trying to demonstrate here.
That wasn't the Mega business model; by any account, they were consciously aware that they were hosting pirated material at a rate far greater than they had to take them down. It seems that they got greedy and tried to actively resist algorithmic attempts to file takedown notices.
The algorithms that led to NASA's own footage (which, being a work of the government, is automatically public domain) being taken down off Youtube?
Frankly, I've yet to hear of any algorithm that has anything approaching an acceptable false positive rate (especially when you consider how ridiculously one-sided the DMCA is on this - it sets a ridiculously high bar to get a court to rule that a takedown request shouldn't have been filed and that you are owed compensation... and even then the compensation is basically non-existent - there is, iirc, a case being pursued by the ACLU on this matter, and they don't even expect to get attorney's fees, IF they win, and they basically cherry-picked the most blatant abuse case they could find).
Also, the entire Megaupload case has devolved into a farce on both sides - people who have strong evidence of having legitimately uploaded files (that are their own work, even) can't access them, with (iirc) the government basically stonewalling them and pulling something akin to state secrets to ignore it, the raid in New Zealand that has since been ruled illegal, etc. Frankly, I think Megaupload was in the wrong, but the federal government has gone so overboard in the matter that the charges should be dismissed with prejudice as a result.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
. . . But they DO remove them on notice. If the Chinese government went ahead and shut down a DVD pirating factory, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm not sure what you are trying to demonstrate here.
That wasn't the Mega business model; by any account, they were consciously aware that they were hosting pirated material at a rate far greater than they had to take them down. It seems that they got greedy and tried to actively resist algorithmic attempts to file takedown notices.
The algorithms that led to NASA's own footage (which, being a work of the government, is automatically public domain) being taken down off Youtube?
Frankly, I've yet to hear of any algorithm that has anything approaching an acceptable false positive rate (especially when you consider how ridiculously one-sided the DMCA is on this - it sets a ridiculously high bar to get a court to rule that a takedown request shouldn't have been filed and that you are owed compensation... and even then the compensation is basically non-existent - there is, iirc, a case being pursued by the ACLU on this matter, and they don't even expect to get attorney's fees, IF they win, and they basically cherry-picked the most blatant abuse case they could find).
Still, you're not supposed to fight takedown requests. That's the nature of the DMCA for you. It's between the filer and the user.
Frankly, I've yet to hear of any algorithm that has anything approaching an acceptable false positive rate (especially when you consider how ridiculously one-sided the DMCA is on this - it sets a ridiculously high bar to get a court to rule that a takedown request shouldn't have been filed and that you are owed compensation... and even then the compensation is basically non-existent - there is, iirc, a case being pursued by the ACLU on this matter, and they don't even expect to get attorney's fees, IF they win, and they basically cherry-picked the most blatant abuse case they could find).
First off, the case is being pursued by the EFF.
Second, considering how pirates abuse the DMCA by turning it into a game of whack-a-mole, I find the complaints about takedown requests to be laughable, especially considering that the DMCA does allow for a quick response to an improper takedown.
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
Are there large corporations opposed to copyright "reform"? Yes. But there are also many middle class professionals opposed as well. Meanwhile, you've tried to portray the other side as being a bunch of small, decentralized groups, while carefully avoiding the large interests that are aligned with them.
... most of the thread has focused on somewhat hyperbolic notions of rich countries bombing developing countries into accepting stricter copyright law. Are you actually going to argue that there isn't a power disparity here? Is spacekungfuman right that Chad is positively bullying innocent middle-class Americans by not enforcing American copyrights to the satisfaction of American copyright owners? Those audacious, audacious Chadians thumbing their noses at helpless American corporations?
The nature of marginal change is marginal actors. If copyright become more restrictive, the largest winners are likewise the owners of vast amounts of accumulated copyright, not middle-class professionals, and the losers are those who are nearly indifferent between not using a copyrighted work or paying the licensing fees, not those who are leaning heavily toward either.
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
Are there large corporations opposed to copyright "reform"? Yes. But there are also many middle class professionals opposed as well. Meanwhile, you've tried to portray the other side as being a bunch of small, decentralized groups, while carefully avoiding the large interests that are aligned with them.
... most of the thread has focused on somewhat hyperbolic notions of rich countries bombing developing countries into accepting stricter copyright law. Are you actually going to argue that there isn't a power disparity here? Is spacekungfuman right that Chad is positively bullying innocent middle-class Americans by not enforcing American copyrights to the satisfaction of American copyright owners? Those audacious, audacious Chadians thumbing their noses at helpless American corporations?
The nature of marginal change is marginal actors. If copyright become more restrictive, the largest winners are likewise the owners of vast amounts of accumulated copyright, not middle-class professionals, and the losers are those who are nearly indifferent between not using a copyrighted work or paying the licensing fees, not those who are leaning heavily toward either.
And if copyright becomes less restrictive, the largest winners are going to be the corporations best positioned to exploit the now unprotected works. And the losers are going to be the people who relied on copyright to prevent that exploitation, who are by and large not large corporations, but professionals who used copyright to balance the scales.
And I am the one who is advocating changes to our enforcement mechanisms to better police piracy (in all its forms)....
And there are costs to all enforcement techniques, and you seem shocked, shocked when it is asked that you weigh these against the costs of violations, or to take into account the distributive impact.
I am doing no such thing. I have already said that I can't imagine a full blown military invasion to stop IP theft, and that, despite the reprehensible stances that India and China take on IP, I would not press the issue with them. I believe that our archaic laws could do with a thorough revamp here, and that things could change while still being a net positive. I do not think that any reason has been out forth in this thread for why our current system is the exact, optimal amount of IP enforcement. This is not who I think we should consult on whether IP enforcement is ideal now (although he will certainly agree with your position):
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
Are there large corporations opposed to copyright "reform"? Yes. But there are also many middle class professionals opposed as well. Meanwhile, you've tried to portray the other side as being a bunch of small, decentralized groups, while carefully avoiding the large interests that are aligned with them.
... most of the thread has focused on somewhat hyperbolic notions of rich countries bombing developing countries into accepting stricter copyright law. Are you actually going to argue that there isn't a power disparity here? Is spacekungfuman right that Chad is positively bullying innocent middle-class Americans by not enforcing American copyrights to the satisfaction of American copyright owners? Those audacious, audacious Chadians thumbing their noses at helpless American corporations?
The nature of marginal change is marginal actors. If copyright become more restrictive, the largest winners are likewise the owners of vast amounts of accumulated copyright, not middle-class professionals, and the losers are those who are nearly indifferent between not using a copyrighted work or paying the licensing fees, not those who are leaning heavily toward either.
And if copyright becomes less restrictive, the largest winners are going to be the corporations best positioned to exploit the now unprotected works. And the losers are going to be the people who relied on copyright to prevent that exploitation, who are by and large not large corporations, but professionals who used copyright to balance the scales.
Wait, so you are seriously going for the Chad-is-bullying-innocent-middle-class-corporations angle?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
Are there large corporations opposed to copyright "reform"? Yes. But there are also many middle class professionals opposed as well. Meanwhile, you've tried to portray the other side as being a bunch of small, decentralized groups, while carefully avoiding the large interests that are aligned with them.
... most of the thread has focused on somewhat hyperbolic notions of rich countries bombing developing countries into accepting stricter copyright law. Are you actually going to argue that there isn't a power disparity here? Is spacekungfuman right that Chad is positively bullying innocent middle-class Americans by not enforcing American copyrights to the satisfaction of American copyright owners? Those audacious, audacious Chadians thumbing their noses at helpless American corporations?
The nature of marginal change is marginal actors. If copyright become more restrictive, the largest winners are likewise the owners of vast amounts of accumulated copyright, not middle-class professionals, and the losers are those who are nearly indifferent between not using a copyrighted work or paying the licensing fees, not those who are leaning heavily toward either.
@ronya - come now. You know full well I am not talking about bombing other countries. I have been very explicit on this point, and you are better than this.
Isn't the most efficient enforcement effort one which convinces indifferent actors to choose to respect IP? If they are basically indifferent, they don't really lose anything by being forced to choose legitimate goods, so it is a win-tie situation, not win-lose.
@ronya - I'm not sure if you are taking a Devil's advocate position or are being sincere, but either way, what is the affirmative argument in favor of eroding copyright protections? Why would we prefer a world in which people rampantly infringe on IP (put drugs aside because they are apparently an acceptable infringement under the law)?
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's licenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
. . . But they DO remove them on notice. If the Chinese government went ahead and shut down a DVD pirating factory, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm not sure what you are trying to demonstrate here.
That wasn't the Mega business model; by any account, they were consciously aware that they were hosting pirated material at a rate far greater than they had to take them down. It seems that they got greedy and tried to actively resist algorithmic attempts to file takedown notices.
The algorithms that led to NASA's own footage (which, being a work of the government, is automatically public domain) being taken down off Youtube?
Frankly, I've yet to hear of any algorithm that has anything approaching an acceptable false positive rate (especially when you consider how ridiculously one-sided the DMCA is on this - it sets a ridiculously high bar to get a court to rule that a takedown request shouldn't have been filed and that you are owed compensation... and even then the compensation is basically non-existent - there is, iirc, a case being pursued by the ACLU on this matter, and they don't even expect to get attorney's fees, IF they win, and they basically cherry-picked the most blatant abuse case they could find).
Also, the entire Megaupload case has devolved into a farce on both sides - people who have strong evidence of having legitimately uploaded files (that are their own work, even) can't access them, with (iirc) the government basically stonewalling them and pulling something akin to state secrets to ignore it, the raid in New Zealand that has since been ruled illegal, etc. Frankly, I think Megaupload was in the wrong, but the federal government has gone so overboard in the matter that the charges should be dismissed with prejudice as a result.
The algorithms themselves have a remarkably good false-positive rate. They are fantastic at matching content, that's not the problem - the problem is identifying who is the copyright holder. In almost all cases, Youtube will assume that the larger partner organization is the copyright holder - which means that because CNN (or whoever) hosts more videos than NASA, Youtube will assume that if CNN uploads first that it is the holder. The same is true for smaller artists whose music or footage is used by a news organization. There are instances where the rights holder will upload first and still get served with an automatic takedown, because media organizations often withhold clips until after it has aired via pay channels and Youtube assumes this is the case.
There isn't an algorithm in the world that can correctly decide who is the rights holder if 2 people (or organizations) upload the same content, especially if it's within a similar timeframe. There are much better ways for Youtube to handle it (for example, sending a notice first asking the uploader to confirm that they are the rights holder within X days), but the algorithm itself is Working As Intended TM.
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
Are there large corporations opposed to copyright "reform"? Yes. But there are also many middle class professionals opposed as well. Meanwhile, you've tried to portray the other side as being a bunch of small, decentralized groups, while carefully avoiding the large interests that are aligned with them.
... most of the thread has focused on somewhat hyperbolic notions of rich countries bombing developing countries into accepting stricter copyright law. Are you actually going to argue that there isn't a power disparity here? Is spacekungfuman right that Chad is positively bullying innocent middle-class Americans by not enforcing American copyrights to the satisfaction of American copyright owners? Those audacious, audacious Chadians thumbing their noses at helpless American corporations?
The nature of marginal change is marginal actors. If copyright become more restrictive, the largest winners are likewise the owners of vast amounts of accumulated copyright, not middle-class professionals, and the losers are those who are nearly indifferent between not using a copyrighted work or paying the licensing fees, not those who are leaning heavily toward either.
And if copyright becomes less restrictive, the largest winners are going to be the corporations best positioned to exploit the now unprotected works. And the losers are going to be the people who relied on copyright to prevent that exploitation, who are by and large not large corporations, but professionals who used copyright to balance the scales.
Wait, so you are seriously going for the Chad-is-bullying-innocent-middle-class-corporations angle?
No, I'm going for the "stop ignoring the 2x4 in your eye" angle. The guys arguing for less copyright aren't doing so for the impoverished nations of the world.
And I am the one who is advocating changes to our enforcement mechanisms to better police piracy (in all its forms)....
And there are costs to all enforcement techniques, and you seem shocked, shocked when it is asked that you weigh these against the costs of violations, or to take into account the distributive impact.
I am doing no such thing. I have already said that I can't imagine a full blown military invasion to stop IP theft, and that, despite the reprehensible stances that India and China take on IP, I would not press the issue with them. I believe that our archaic laws could do with a thorough revamp here, and that things could change while still being a net positive. I do not think that any reason has been out forth in this thread for why our current system is the exact, optimal amount of IP enforcement. This is not who I think we should consult on whether IP enforcement is ideal now (although he will certainly agree with your position):
I'm still struggling on why it is important to aggressively use the military and economic power of the US government against tiny harmless nations who are violating our copyrights
And I am the one who is advocating changes to our enforcement mechanisms to better police piracy (in all its forms)....
And there are costs to all enforcement techniques, and you seem shocked, shocked when it is asked that you weigh these against the costs of violations, or to take into account the distributive impact.
I am doing no such thing. I have already said that I can't imagine a full blown military invasion to stop IP theft, and that, despite the reprehensible stances that India and China take on IP, I would not press the issue with them. I believe that our archaic laws could do with a thorough revamp here, and that things could change while still being a net positive. I do not think that any reason has been out forth in this thread for why our current system is the exact, optimal amount of IP enforcement.
You have disclaimed full-blown military invasion. But what about drone strikes and naval blockades? Do you still like those, too?
I replied to your question almost immediately: I said policing is going to become more rather than less flexible. The costs are gradually inching upward, because policing is becoming harder, so the optimal level of enforcement is gradually receding. Merely legislating that copyright terms should be another twenty years past the existing period is already consciously like sitting on the beach and commanding the tide to turn. It has been more than a decade since the primary constraints on casual piracy are what people will tolerate in their technology rather than what legislators can come up with.
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
Are there large corporations opposed to copyright "reform"? Yes. But there are also many middle class professionals opposed as well. Meanwhile, you've tried to portray the other side as being a bunch of small, decentralized groups, while carefully avoiding the large interests that are aligned with them.
... most of the thread has focused on somewhat hyperbolic notions of rich countries bombing developing countries into accepting stricter copyright law. Are you actually going to argue that there isn't a power disparity here? Is spacekungfuman right that Chad is positively bullying innocent middle-class Americans by not enforcing American copyrights to the satisfaction of American copyright owners? Those audacious, audacious Chadians thumbing their noses at helpless American corporations?
The nature of marginal change is marginal actors. If copyright become more restrictive, the largest winners are likewise the owners of vast amounts of accumulated copyright, not middle-class professionals, and the losers are those who are nearly indifferent between not using a copyrighted work or paying the licensing fees, not those who are leaning heavily toward either.
@ronya - come now. You know full well I am not talking about bombing other countries. I have been very explicit on this point, and you are better than this.
Isn't the most efficient enforcement effort one which convinces indifferent actors to choose to respect IP? If they are basically indifferent, they don't really lose anything by being forced to choose legitimate goods, so it is a win-tie situation, not win-lose.
You started with the drone bombing idea! It's what kicked off this thread!
If you want to bribe countries into enforcing favourable laws, I'm sure many will be quite receptive. But you may like to explain how the primary beneficiaries of this law will also foot the bill of all that bribery.
And I am the one who is advocating changes to our enforcement mechanisms to better police piracy (in all its forms)....
And there are costs to all enforcement techniques, and you seem shocked, shocked when it is asked that you weigh these against the costs of violations, or to take into account the distributive impact.
I am doing no such thing. I have already said that I can't imagine a full blown military invasion to stop IP theft, and that, despite the reprehensible stances that India and China take on IP, I would not press the issue with them. I believe that our archaic laws could do with a thorough revamp here, and that things could change while still being a net positive. I do not think that any reason has been out forth in this thread for why our current system is the exact, optimal amount of IP enforcement.
You have disclaimed full-blown military invasion. But what about drone strikes and naval blockades? Do you still like those, too?
I replied to your question almost immediately: I said policing is going to become more rather than less flexible. The costs are gradually inching upward, because policing is becoming harder, so the optimal level of enforcement is gradually receding. Merely legislating that copyright terms should be another twenty years past the existing period is already consciously like sitting on the beach and commanding the tide to turn. It has been more than a decade since the primary constraints on casual piracy are what people will tolerate in their technology rather than what legislators can come up with.
Policing is only becoming harder because there are entrenched interests that want to see it get harder.
And, what, Copyhype sprinkles its ever other post with the statement "I work for a lobby group funded by the RIAA"? Is that the standard of honest disclosure you are expecting here?
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
Are there large corporations opposed to copyright "reform"? Yes. But there are also many middle class professionals opposed as well. Meanwhile, you've tried to portray the other side as being a bunch of small, decentralized groups, while carefully avoiding the large interests that are aligned with them.
... most of the thread has focused on somewhat hyperbolic notions of rich countries bombing developing countries into accepting stricter copyright law. Are you actually going to argue that there isn't a power disparity here? Is spacekungfuman right that Chad is positively bullying innocent middle-class Americans by not enforcing American copyrights to the satisfaction of American copyright owners? Those audacious, audacious Chadians thumbing their noses at helpless American corporations?
The nature of marginal change is marginal actors. If copyright become more restrictive, the largest winners are likewise the owners of vast amounts of accumulated copyright, not middle-class professionals, and the losers are those who are nearly indifferent between not using a copyrighted work or paying the licensing fees, not those who are leaning heavily toward either.
And if copyright becomes less restrictive, the largest winners are going to be the corporations best positioned to exploit the now unprotected works. And the losers are going to be the people who relied on copyright to prevent that exploitation, who are by and large not large corporations, but professionals who used copyright to balance the scales.
Wait, so you are seriously going for the Chad-is-bullying-innocent-middle-class-corporations angle?
No, I'm going for the "stop ignoring the 2x4 in your eye" angle. The guys arguing for less copyright aren't doing so for the impoverished nations of the world.
I am, vis-a-vis the gentleman who was advocating drone strikes in Myanmar. You dragged it into domestic American politics.
Posts
the average goes down when you add more at the bottom, this is inevitable
but the occupational criteria that it cites as a source is overwhelmingly dominated by performing arts companies. you will understand if I am skeptical that Google is to blame for obsoleting dancing troupes.
this was true in 2003 too. If I had to speculate, I would consider changes in state arts budgets instead.
"Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers" as a category rose between 2003 and 2012, by some 500%, but since these are estimates and the numbers even in 2012 are so small, one might be skeptical anyway. I do hope that you are as enthusiastic about that factoid as you were of the graph, though.
It is also the case that the BLS site gives different data from the graph, but that is a quibble since the graph seems irrelevant
I'm taking a DA and I am trying to nudge you into realizing the inconsistencies that are generated by the crazily strong position you are trying to argue for
it's wandering into absurd extremes because reductios are that way
we "prefer" a world where people rampantly infringe on IP for the same reason we "prefer" a world where in the ballpark of ten thousand Americans are killed in car accidents as passengers or as pedestrians every year - that is, a number which is probably a good proxy for not being at fault. They die nonetheless. We do not revolt and burn the halls of the DMV.
and that is because the solution of bombing car-owners for driving carelessly, or bombing governments for failing to stop car-owners from driving carelessly, is frankly stupid. You are not even Javert, because you do not propose to bear all the costs of rigid enforcement yourself. You propose cheaply careless enforcement for the crime of careless enforcement.
That is a false dichotomy. There is also the option of punishing traffic offenses very seriously (i.e., taking people's liscenses if they drink and drive once). And for IP infringement, there is the option of cutting off trade ties, or doing any number of things other than bombing them.
and yet when I point out the practical reasons why those, too, might be costly - cutting off trade ties is a little like banning cars because people will crash them, in this analogy - for some reason you keep returning to "welllll... what happens if we just bombed Burma with drones."
I can reproduce quotes of your posts for you but I trust you can remember posting those.
I understand the difficulties, but you are taking the seemingly defeatist attitude that we literally cannot stop this behavior or sanction the bad actors. If that is true, then we can only choose upsetting the global order or accepting the current level of infringement. I find it very hard to believe that we are somehow at the perfectly optimal level of IP enforcement efforts, and believe that there must be changes that we can make short of abolishing the world order which would make it easier to police IP infringement on a global scale.
Quite. Policing is probably going to become more rather than less flexible in the near future, particularly with regards to media content piracy. It is simply becoming dramatically harder to fight. You may notice that the US went through an elaborate shift from direct downloads to increasing degrees of decentralization in peer-to-peer software piracy - which all abruptly reversed with the return of direct download, operating in full view of first-world authorities. MegaUpload was in Hong Kong. Rapidshare was, and is, in Germany. Mediafire is based in the lawless land of Shenandoah, Texas. These are not sites which are bothering to secret themselves in the depths of Russia. They are merely not sites which are liable for anything which users upload, as long they remove them on notice.
I so rarely get the chance to throw someone's words back into their teeth.
Let's actually take a look at that specific NAICS code for "performing arts companies". Underneath it, there are several subheadings:
Theater companies,
Dance companies,
Other performing arts companies, and last but certainly not least,
Musical groups and artists.
Hmm. Let's look at the definition for that last one.
So, in other words, the majority of working musicians fall within the "performing arts company" category because, well, that's where they're categorized under the NACIS.
So, perhaps instead of trying to snarkily rebut someone when you clearly don't know what you're talking about, perhaps you should heed your own advice.
. . . But they DO remove them on notice. If the Chinese government went ahead and shut down a DVD pirating factory, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm not sure what you are trying to demonstrate here.
Your choices are rather interesting. MegaUpload is currently under prosecution, and considering that Dotcom has decided to try to fight his case in the court of public opinion, one has to wonder what his defense looks like. RapidShare has pushed for voluntary improvements by cyberlocker sites to combat piracy.
And then there's this:
You really inhabit this weird world where arguments are won by point-scoring, so that insulting your opponent in one topic earns you victory in the other. You tried that in the [chat] post, too. But what on earth does me picking apart your abuse of the notion of socializing risks have to do with this...?
But: fine. I misinterpreted the table, because footnote (1) explicitly says that estimates do not include the self-employed, and many bands are only contracted to publishers, rather than employed. The graph is still, I am afraid, mysterious to me in where it got a 41% number.
But let's take it as given that the employment in US performing-arts-company working musicians over the decade has, indeed, moved from 27k in May 2003 to 22.5k in May 2012., incurring a loss of 4.5k.
Then I should point out that:
(1) the hourly mean wage seems to have increased, in inflation-adjusted terms, from ~$33 to ~$35. This sits uncomfortably with an argument from a decline in demand due to (presumably) piracy, which should reduce both employment and wages. This isn't completely problematic - it could merely be a substitution effect of some kind. I will leave it to you to propose what these may be.
(2) copyright reform didn't happen - Lessig et al have mostly fumbled there. So what happened here, pure unrestrained piracy? In 2008 Performing Arts Companies employment of 27-2042 Musicians and Singers was 28k, even higher than the 27.8k of 2003. Was piracy weaker in 2008? How much of the drop here is straightforwardly attributable to, say, the effects of the ongoing employment crisis in the US, and the associated decrease in consumer interest in superior goods like live performances? Note that this argument would easily generate a substitution effect, via Allen-Alchian; a uniform increase in costs shifts the basket toward more expensive substitute. This is harder to obtain w.r.t. a piracy model, where uniform increases in costs are not generally plausible nor consistent with zero-marginal-cost concepts of how piracy works.
If I had picked slightly different pre-financial-crisis dates, the graph would have shown an increase rather than decrease in 'working musicians'!
(3) ... is there some reason to consider only working musicians here? Music is only valid if one relies upon it as a primary income? I mean, all this quite aside from the points before.
In fact, my current impression of the literature on the economics of content piracy is that losses are substantial. I am hardly, ahem, hardline here. But your case involves the two steps where (1) something resembling copyright reform did occur from 2003 to 2012 - I presume you have piracy in mind (2) therefore copyright reform would continue whatever trends one can extrapolate. I think that you have established neither.
... what is your opinion on the SOPA episode, anyway? And I urge you to stop trying to taint arguments by association with monied men behind the curtain, if you are going to want to quote lobby group infographics. It's fair, as an argument. But I ask for consistency.
I am aware that MegaUpload got shut down; hence my use of 'was'. My point was that it took years for authorities to be able to assemble a case, even as it operated in full view and in the first world. This wasn't some operation hiding in darkest Eastern Europe. In the end it turned on the same point that the earlier generation of pirate sites died to: an argument that the site operator was deliberately contributing to the piracy, rather than merely informally profiting off brokering piracy that multiplies faster than takedown notices can be filed.
It remains the case that this latter cannot be prosecuted under existing US and EU copyright law. It is something that a future clever pirate broker will simply ostentatiously avoid, and short of further legislation, there is nothing which content owners can do. This is the hole that SOPA was intended to patch. But the obvious toe being stepped on here is that nobody wants to be legally liable for stuff that users post.
That wasn't the Mega business model; by any account, they were consciously aware that they were hosting pirated material at a rate far greater than they had to take them down. It seems that they got greedy and tried to actively resist algorithmic attempts to file takedown notices.
The Chinese government regularly conducts anti-piracy raids. It winds up looking like this:
They are merely not very effective because the usual litany of corruption issues. But if you start complaining about shoddy legislation and policing enabling organized content piracy to operate brazenly, despite the spirit of the law, then my point is it isn't a plague of third-world counterfeit imports any more. Pirated content is openly hosted in servers located in the West.
And I am the one who is advocating changes to our enforcement mechanisms to better police piracy (in all its forms). This is a bit different from the original topic of this thread, but only a bit. I think that we should be doing more to stop piracy everywhere, irrespective of why any might think piracy is ok or a net good in a particular case or region, I think that our laws need to be modernized to reflect our modern world where ideas are more important than objects and replication/distribution is so trivial.
Edit: incidentally, I was pro-SOPA, although it was not perfect. I am also increasingly thinking that Google has moved from the company that was not evil to one of the most dangerous companies ever to exist.
And there are costs to all enforcement techniques, and you seem shocked, shocked when it is asked that you weigh these against the costs of violations, or to take into account the distributive impact.
SOPA is pretty simple, actually - after Google got nailed on selling ads for illegal pharmacies to the tune of half a billion dollars, they did not want to face the liability issues that SOPA would have created. So, they created an astroturf movement to kill it in the cradle. And actually, the hole that SOPA would have closed is that it would have made it possible to go after the money, which is what terrified Google and other ad networks. (I also think that Section 230 is overly broad, as the birth of "revenge porn" websites demonstrates.)
As for the "men behind the curtain", I'll refer you to the listing of individuals Google funds to shape public opinion, which came out of the Oracle/Google trial.
The EFF, Public Knowledge, etc. are just as backed as the Copyright Alliance, yet they act as if they're not.
I don't care very much about who funds who here, but you sure as hell seem to.
Because the man who pays the piper gets to pick the tune, for one. Two, I'm tired of how the issue is always presented as the tech industry's David to the entertainment industry's Goliath, when the reality is that the tech industry is trying to reshape the legal landscape to its benefit.
And Hart does in fact do that by having his affiliation in his masthead.
and your response is to to present it as the tech industry's Goliath to the entertainment industry's David...?
My response is to point out that what is happening is a clash between two industries, and middle class professionals are the ones caught in the crossfire.
No, you don't. Your response is to reproduce infographics from CreativeAmerica.org. This is the first time in the thread that you have conceded that the interests opposing copyright reform are not middle-class nor, the vapours, working-class Real Americans.
Are there large corporations opposed to copyright "reform"? Yes. But there are also many middle class professionals opposed as well. Meanwhile, you've tried to portray the other side as being a bunch of small, decentralized groups, while carefully avoiding the large interests that are aligned with them.
The algorithms that led to NASA's own footage (which, being a work of the government, is automatically public domain) being taken down off Youtube?
Frankly, I've yet to hear of any algorithm that has anything approaching an acceptable false positive rate (especially when you consider how ridiculously one-sided the DMCA is on this - it sets a ridiculously high bar to get a court to rule that a takedown request shouldn't have been filed and that you are owed compensation... and even then the compensation is basically non-existent - there is, iirc, a case being pursued by the ACLU on this matter, and they don't even expect to get attorney's fees, IF they win, and they basically cherry-picked the most blatant abuse case they could find).
Also, the entire Megaupload case has devolved into a farce on both sides - people who have strong evidence of having legitimately uploaded files (that are their own work, even) can't access them, with (iirc) the government basically stonewalling them and pulling something akin to state secrets to ignore it, the raid in New Zealand that has since been ruled illegal, etc. Frankly, I think Megaupload was in the wrong, but the federal government has gone so overboard in the matter that the charges should be dismissed with prejudice as a result.
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Still, you're not supposed to fight takedown requests. That's the nature of the DMCA for you. It's between the filer and the user.
First off, the case is being pursued by the EFF.
Second, considering how pirates abuse the DMCA by turning it into a game of whack-a-mole, I find the complaints about takedown requests to be laughable, especially considering that the DMCA does allow for a quick response to an improper takedown.
... most of the thread has focused on somewhat hyperbolic notions of rich countries bombing developing countries into accepting stricter copyright law. Are you actually going to argue that there isn't a power disparity here? Is spacekungfuman right that Chad is positively bullying innocent middle-class Americans by not enforcing American copyrights to the satisfaction of American copyright owners? Those audacious, audacious Chadians thumbing their noses at helpless American corporations?
The nature of marginal change is marginal actors. If copyright become more restrictive, the largest winners are likewise the owners of vast amounts of accumulated copyright, not middle-class professionals, and the losers are those who are nearly indifferent between not using a copyrighted work or paying the licensing fees, not those who are leaning heavily toward either.
And if copyright becomes less restrictive, the largest winners are going to be the corporations best positioned to exploit the now unprotected works. And the losers are going to be the people who relied on copyright to prevent that exploitation, who are by and large not large corporations, but professionals who used copyright to balance the scales.
I am doing no such thing. I have already said that I can't imagine a full blown military invasion to stop IP theft, and that, despite the reprehensible stances that India and China take on IP, I would not press the issue with them. I believe that our archaic laws could do with a thorough revamp here, and that things could change while still being a net positive. I do not think that any reason has been out forth in this thread for why our current system is the exact, optimal amount of IP enforcement. This is not who I think we should consult on whether IP enforcement is ideal now (although he will certainly agree with your position):
Wait, so you are seriously going for the Chad-is-bullying-innocent-middle-class-corporations angle?
@ronya - come now. You know full well I am not talking about bombing other countries. I have been very explicit on this point, and you are better than this.
Isn't the most efficient enforcement effort one which convinces indifferent actors to choose to respect IP? If they are basically indifferent, they don't really lose anything by being forced to choose legitimate goods, so it is a win-tie situation, not win-lose.
The algorithms themselves have a remarkably good false-positive rate. They are fantastic at matching content, that's not the problem - the problem is identifying who is the copyright holder. In almost all cases, Youtube will assume that the larger partner organization is the copyright holder - which means that because CNN (or whoever) hosts more videos than NASA, Youtube will assume that if CNN uploads first that it is the holder. The same is true for smaller artists whose music or footage is used by a news organization. There are instances where the rights holder will upload first and still get served with an automatic takedown, because media organizations often withhold clips until after it has aired via pay channels and Youtube assumes this is the case.
There isn't an algorithm in the world that can correctly decide who is the rights holder if 2 people (or organizations) upload the same content, especially if it's within a similar timeframe. There are much better ways for Youtube to handle it (for example, sending a notice first asking the uploader to confirm that they are the rights holder within X days), but the algorithm itself is Working As Intended TM.
No, I'm going for the "stop ignoring the 2x4 in your eye" angle. The guys arguing for less copyright aren't doing so for the impoverished nations of the world.
I'm still struggling on why it is important to aggressively use the military and economic power of the US government against tiny harmless nations who are violating our copyrights
You have disclaimed full-blown military invasion. But what about drone strikes and naval blockades? Do you still like those, too?
I replied to your question almost immediately: I said policing is going to become more rather than less flexible. The costs are gradually inching upward, because policing is becoming harder, so the optimal level of enforcement is gradually receding. Merely legislating that copyright terms should be another twenty years past the existing period is already consciously like sitting on the beach and commanding the tide to turn. It has been more than a decade since the primary constraints on casual piracy are what people will tolerate in their technology rather than what legislators can come up with.
You started with the drone bombing idea! It's what kicked off this thread!
If you want to bribe countries into enforcing favourable laws, I'm sure many will be quite receptive. But you may like to explain how the primary beneficiaries of this law will also foot the bill of all that bribery.
Policing is only becoming harder because there are entrenched interests that want to see it get harder.
I am, vis-a-vis the gentleman who was advocating drone strikes in Myanmar. You dragged it into domestic American politics.