If there were a global apocalypse and only two people were left there would no longer be any government. Let's assume they're both the same sex so there's no possibility of repopulating humanity. Do you think it would be OK for one of them to kill the other for no particular reason? If not, why not if there aren't any natural rights?
There would be no obligation not to kill the other man. What would that even mean? The whole reason prohibitions on killing are so universal is that we don't want to spend our whole lives watching our backs. Doesn't apply here, because once you kill the other man, there is no one left to follow the precedent.
I'm going to add and replace a few words here.
There is no obligation not to infringe the other man's IP. What would that even mean? The whole reason international agreements on IP infringement exist is that we don't want to spend our whole lives having our IP infringed. Doesn't apply here, because some nations are ok with setting the precedent for IP infringement.
Why would your original argument be valid while the modified one is not?
You say you don't believe in natural rights, but the intensity of your anger about IP infringement make me suspect otherwise.
Eh. In some ways, SKFM has a point. Countries right now are empowered to be assholes in ways they weren't before. While a full-on return to Imperialism might not be the correct road, it would be nice if we as a global community were more efficient at putting such nonsense down.
They really, really aren't.
We've been over this, in this very thread. The weaker powers playing the stronger powers off against eachother, the stronger powers competing with eachother over influence of the weaker, did not - empirically - actually lead to a stable community of international actors who adhered to some code of honour which favoured peace, prosperity, freedom and justice for everyone.
It lead to goddamn world war. On the asshole scale, I'm going to rate "employed mustard gas" somewhere above "violating an artificial limited monopoly to provide medicine". That goes for handbags too. "Used mustard gas" is up here, "did not adequately combat counterfeit designer label handbags" is very much not up here.
edit: To be a bit more to the point about it: The Geneva Convention is a typical example of an international accord that very much deempowers nations when it comes to being assholes to other nations and people.
That you favor one form of asshole behavior (IP infringement) over another does not mean that they aren't both asshole behaviors. Just because we once lived in a world where strength of arms meant the weaker could not defy the stronger and bad things happened does not mean that it is ok for the weak to defy the strong now. I don't see why it is so unreasonable to despise the kids with the pea shooters taunting the tiger now that he is in a cage.
There are degrees here. This is a complex situation revolving around geopolitics. It isn't a matter of who's right and who's wrong entirely as much as we'd all like it to be. That said, the strong imposing on the weak can be a slippery slope. "Weak" countries exploiting IP law isn't significant an issue to your analogy that its akin to kids using pea shooters into a tiger cage* - it's an issue no "strong" country is ever going to war about.
* the analogy fails unless the tiger is released from its cage. Until then it poses no danger to anyone. Therefore it's the kids who are the stronger party in that scenario.
I don't understand why you keep responding to a theoretical discussion about the morality of IP infringement by talking about practicality. I already concede it isn't practical pages and pages ago. . .
That the tiger is in th cage is precisely the point. We caged him so that he would not eat all the children, not so that they could taunt him with pea shooters. The latter is an unintended side effect. My entire position is that we should work to fix the latter, and if that fix means making the bars wide enough to let the tiger reach the children with the pea shooters, then I am fine with that.
If there were a global apocalypse and only two people were left there would no longer be any government. Let's assume they're both the same sex so there's no possibility of repopulating humanity. Do you think it would be OK for one of them to kill the other for no particular reason? If not, why not if there aren't any natural rights?
There would be no obligation not to kill the other man. What would that even mean? The whole reason prohibitions on killing are so universal is that we don't want to spend our whole lives watching our backs. Doesn't apply here, because once you kill the other man, there is no one left to follow the precedent.
I'm going to add and replace a few words here.
There is no obligation not to infringe the other man's IP. What would that even mean? The whole reason international agreements on IP infringement exist is that we don't want to spend our whole lives having our IP infringed. Doesn't apply here, because some nations are ok with setting the precedent for IP infringement.
Why would your original argument be valid while the modified one is not?
You say you don't believe in natural rights, but the intensity of your anger about IP infringement make me suspect otherwise.
This is not a good faith argument. You have completely changed the last sentence and so totally broken the equivalence. In a world with two people, I would agree that IP infringement would not be prohibited, just like murder. But we don't live in that world, and with multiple people and societies, we should be prohibiting IP theft for the exact same reason as murder. An ordered, rule based society much protect people's interests so that they don't need to resort to self help.
Eh. In some ways, SKFM has a point. Countries right now are empowered to be assholes in ways they weren't before. While a full-on return to Imperialism might not be the correct road, it would be nice if we as a global community were more efficient at putting such nonsense down.
They really, really aren't.
We've been over this, in this very thread. The weaker powers playing the stronger powers off against eachother, the stronger powers competing with eachother over influence of the weaker, did not - empirically - actually lead to a stable community of international actors who adhered to some code of honour which favoured peace, prosperity, freedom and justice for everyone.
It lead to goddamn world war. On the asshole scale, I'm going to rate "employed mustard gas" somewhere above "violating an artificial limited monopoly to provide medicine". That goes for handbags too. "Used mustard gas" is up here, "did not adequately combat counterfeit designer label handbags" is very much not up here.
edit: To be a bit more to the point about it: The Geneva Convention is a typical example of an international accord that very much deempowers nations when it comes to being assholes to other nations and people.
That you favor one form of asshole behavior (IP infringement) over another does not mean that they aren't both asshole behaviors. Just because we once lived in a world where strength of arms meant the weaker could not defy the stronger and bad things happened does not mean that it is ok for the weak to defy the strong now. I don't see why it is so unreasonable to despise the kids with the pea shooters taunting the tiger now that he is in a cage.
There are degrees here. This is a complex situation revolving around geopolitics. It isn't a matter of who's right and who's wrong entirely as much as we'd all like it to be. That said, the strong imposing on the weak can be a slippery slope. "Weak" countries exploiting IP law isn't significant an issue to your analogy that its akin to kids using pea shooters into a tiger cage* - it's an issue no "strong" country is ever going to war about.
* the analogy fails unless the tiger is released from its cage. Until then it poses no danger to anyone. Therefore it's the kids who are the stronger party in that scenario.
I don't understand why you keep responding to a theoretical discussion about the morality of IP infringement by talking about practicality. I already concede it isn't practical pages and pages ago. . .
Fair enough.
That the tiger is in th cage is precisely the point. We caged him so that he would not eat all the children, not so that they could taunt him with pea shooters. The latter is an unintended side effect. My entire position is that we should work to fix the latter, and if that fix means making the bars wide enough to let the tiger reach the children with the pea shooters, then I am fine with that.
Only by widening the bars lets the animal escape hurting everybody not only children, who despite being assholes don't deserve to be maimed or killed for being idiots. They're kids - being an idiot is a learning process. They won't learn anything when they're dead. Its not even the tiger's job to punish them for doing that it's their parents and the zookeepers. A tiger is a wild animal that has no morality, no rules - it does what it wants and give no fuck's about society.
This is not a good faith argument. You have completely changed the last sentence and so totally broken the equivalence. In a world with two people, I would agree that IP infringement would not be prohibited, just like murder. But we don't live in that world, and with multiple people and societies, we should be prohibiting IP theft for the exact same reason as murder. An ordered, rule based society much protect people's interests so that they don't need to resort to self help.
That's a bad example. The world is never going to be in situation so the analogy is useless. IP theft is not equal to murder. Even murderers are let go when they're in countries while America wants them back to punish them for breaking the law on its soil. Countries don't go to war over murderers roaming freely in foreign nations. We are living in a rule based society and if you do try to fix it yourself you'll be going to jail for vigilantism.
Harry Dresden on
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SmasherStarting to get dizzyRegistered Userregular
If there were a global apocalypse and only two people were left there would no longer be any government. Let's assume they're both the same sex so there's no possibility of repopulating humanity. Do you think it would be OK for one of them to kill the other for no particular reason? If not, why not if there aren't any natural rights?
There would be no obligation not to kill the other man. What would that even mean? The whole reason prohibitions on killing are so universal is that we don't want to spend our whole lives watching our backs. Doesn't apply here, because once you kill the other man, there is no one left to follow the precedent.
I'm going to add and replace a few words here.
There is no obligation not to infringe the other man's IP. What would that even mean? The whole reason international agreements on IP infringement exist is that we don't want to spend our whole lives having our IP infringed. Doesn't apply here, because some nations are ok with setting the precedent for IP infringement.
Why would your original argument be valid while the modified one is not?
You say you don't believe in natural rights, but the intensity of your anger about IP infringement make me suspect otherwise.
This is not a good faith argument. You have completely changed the last sentence and so totally broken the equivalence. In a world with two people, I would agree that IP infringement would not be prohibited, just like murder. But we don't live in that world, and with multiple people and societies, we should be prohibiting IP theft for the exact same reason as murder. An ordered, rule based society much protect people's interests so that they don't need to resort to self help.
Question: In the two person murder situation why does it matter that there's no one left to follow the precedent? The answer is because the killer doesn't want to suffer harm by being killed. The reason they won't suffer the harm is incidental; it could be because nobody's left to harm them, or nobody else would be willing to, or any other reason. The important part is that they know they won't suffer that harm.
In the case of IP infringement if a person doesn't care about their IP being infringed they either judge that their IP being infringed wouldn't harm them or they decide they don't care enough about the harm to want to avoid it. In either case why would they be worried about setting a precedent of IP infringement?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
If there were a global apocalypse and only two people were left there would no longer be any government. Let's assume they're both the same sex so there's no possibility of repopulating humanity. Do you think it would be OK for one of them to kill the other for no particular reason? If not, why not if there aren't any natural rights?
There would be no obligation not to kill the other man. What would that even mean? The whole reason prohibitions on killing are so universal is that we don't want to spend our whole lives watching our backs. Doesn't apply here, because once you kill the other man, there is no one left to follow the precedent.
I'm going to add and replace a few words here.
There is no obligation not to infringe the other man's IP. What would that even mean? The whole reason international agreements on IP infringement exist is that we don't want to spend our whole lives having our IP infringed. Doesn't apply here, because some nations are ok with setting the precedent for IP infringement.
Why would your original argument be valid while the modified one is not?
You say you don't believe in natural rights, but the intensity of your anger about IP infringement make me suspect otherwise.
This is not a good faith argument. You have completely changed the last sentence and so totally broken the equivalence. In a world with two people, I would agree that IP infringement would not be prohibited, just like murder. But we don't live in that world, and with multiple people and societies, we should be prohibiting IP theft for the exact same reason as murder. An ordered, rule based society much protect people's interests so that they don't need to resort to self help.
Question: In the two person murder situation why does it matter that there's no one left to follow the precedent? The answer is because the killer doesn't want to suffer harm by being killed. The reason they won't suffer the harm is incidental; it could be because nobody's left to harm them, or nobody else would be willing to, or any other reason. The important part is that they know they won't suffer that harm.
In the case of IP infringement if a person doesn't care about their IP being infringed they either judge that their IP being infringed wouldn't harm them or they decide they don't care enough about the harm to want to avoid it. In either case why would they be worried about setting a precedent of IP infringement?
No, it's not just about precedent. It's also about not wanting to have sanctions imposed on you. That dynamic doesn't exist in the two person situation, but it absolutely does when there are more parties and even overarching governments/organizations. Also, in the IP situation there is more to fear than just having someone else infringe your IP. There are any number of other actions that can be taken against you. You really can't use your 2 people left, is murder wrong example to extrapolate anything about IP infringement in a world with multiple governments. It's totally inapplicable.
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SmasherStarting to get dizzyRegistered Userregular
We clearly have the ability enforce sanctions of various sorts on weaker countries for IP infringement. I don't think anybody's disputed that. We've been talking about whether we should, from both pragmatic and philosophical perspectives.
I've been focusing on the philosophical perspective, which is why I set up my example in a 2 person apocalypse. Obviously that situation isn't pragmatic or directly applicable to the world as is, but it simplifies the situation so we can focus on the philosophical issues in question.
I was attempting to discern what, if any, your philosophical justification for enforcement of IP rights on other nations was. Your response to my hypothetical showed that your objection to killing people is based on pragmatic grounds rather than philosophical ones, and indeed you denied that there even could be philosophical as opposed to pragmatic reasons not to kill someone.
That's a self-consistent position to take, as far as it goes, but the purpose of my modified version of your argument was to show that your same reasoning that denied a philosophical reasoning for not killing people can also be used to deny a philosophical reason for not infringing on IP. Attempting to dismiss that argument on pragmatic grounds is pointless because we're talking about a philosophical issue rather than a pragmatic one.
Absent such a philosophical justification for enforcing IP on other unwilling nations we'd need a pragmatic reason to do so. As has been previously discussed in the thread the cost of doing so outweighs the marginal additional revenues we would receive, and so there's no pragmatic justification for doing so either.
We clearly have the ability enforce sanctions of various sorts on weaker countries for IP infringement. I don't think anybody's disputed that. We've been talking about whether we should, from both pragmatic and philosophical perspectives.
I've been focusing on the philosophical perspective, which is why I set up my example in a 2 person apocalypse. Obviously that situation isn't pragmatic or directly applicable to the world as is, but it simplifies the situation so we can focus on the philosophical issues in question.
I was attempting to discern what, if any, your philosophical justification for enforcement of IP rights on other nations was. Your response to my hypothetical showed that your objection to killing people is based on pragmatic grounds rather than philosophical ones, and indeed you denied that there even could be philosophical as opposed to pragmatic reasons not to kill someone.
That's a self-consistent position to take, as far as it goes, but the purpose of my modified version of your argument was to show that your same reasoning that denied a philosophical reasoning for not killing people can also be used to deny a philosophical reason for not infringing on IP. Attempting to dismiss that argument on pragmatic grounds is pointless because we're talking about a philosophical issue rather than a pragmatic one.
Absent such a philosophical justification for enforcing IP on other unwilling nations we'd need a pragmatic reason to do so. As has been previously discussed in the thread the cost of doing so outweighs the marginal additional revenues we would receive, and so there's no pragmatic justification for doing so either.
:^:
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
We clearly have the ability enforce sanctions of various sorts on weaker countries for IP infringement. I don't think anybody's disputed that. We've been talking about whether we should, from both pragmatic and philosophical perspectives.
I've been focusing on the philosophical perspective, which is why I set up my example in a 2 person apocalypse. Obviously that situation isn't pragmatic or directly applicable to the world as is, but it simplifies the situation so we can focus on the philosophical issues in question.
I was attempting to discern what, if any, your philosophical justification for enforcement of IP rights on other nations was. Your response to my hypothetical showed that your objection to killing people is based on pragmatic grounds rather than philosophical ones, and indeed you denied that there even could be philosophical as opposed to pragmatic reasons not to kill someone.
That's a self-consistent position to take, as far as it goes, but the purpose of my modified version of your argument was to show that your same reasoning that denied a philosophical reasoning for not killing people can also be used to deny a philosophical reason for not infringing on IP. Attempting to dismiss that argument on pragmatic grounds is pointless because we're talking about a philosophical issue rather than a pragmatic one.
Absent such a philosophical justification for enforcing IP on other unwilling nations we'd need a pragmatic reason to do so. As has been previously discussed in the thread the cost of doing so outweighs the marginal additional revenues we would receive, and so there's no pragmatic justification for doing so either.
You brought up the two person scenario to try and argue that natural rights existed. My response should have indicated that I disagree, and that, as an example, I do not think that there is an objective prohibition on murder. Now you are trying to import the same argument to IP, and I don't see the connection. But I think I know what you are getting at, and so let me explain my position a bit more.
I do not believe in objective morality or natural rights, and think that any appeal to either is pretty nonsensical, since even if they exist they are of precisely no effect in the world, but I do believe that a society needs to recognize certain rights in order to avoid losing legitimacy. Personal safety (I.e., preventing murder, violence) is an important one, since it frees us from always watching our backs, but property rights are a close second in my mind, since you exchange a portion if your finite life in order to create/acquire said property, and when your property is taken or destroyed, it is really the time that it represents that was taken from you. If a government does not protect these rights, then the citizens would have to watch their property, just like they would their backs in a society that does not prohibit murder.
I see no distinction between mental and physical labor, and so see no distinction between the product of mental work (IP) and the product of physical labor. It is just an accident of reality that scarcity does not apply, and so governments need to correct for this accident or leave their citizens forced to seek self help or accept the theft of a portion of their limited time on Earth. This is why I believe that governments have a duty to protect IP rights.
Eh. In some ways, SKFM has a point. Countries right now are empowered to be assholes in ways they weren't before. While a full-on return to Imperialism might not be the correct road, it would be nice if we as a global community were more efficient at putting such nonsense down.
They really, really aren't.
We've been over this, in this very thread. The weaker powers playing the stronger powers off against eachother, the stronger powers competing with eachother over influence of the weaker, did not - empirically - actually lead to a stable community of international actors who adhered to some code of honour which favoured peace, prosperity, freedom and justice for everyone.
It lead to goddamn world war. On the asshole scale, I'm going to rate "employed mustard gas" somewhere above "violating an artificial limited monopoly to provide medicine". That goes for handbags too. "Used mustard gas" is up here, "did not adequately combat counterfeit designer label handbags" is very much not up here.
edit: To be a bit more to the point about it: The Geneva Convention is a typical example of an international accord that very much deempowers nations when it comes to being assholes to other nations and people.
That you favor one form of asshole behavior (IP infringement) over another does not mean that they aren't both asshole behaviors. Just because we once lived in a world where strength of arms meant the weaker could not defy the stronger and bad things happened does not mean that it is ok for the weak to defy the strong now. I don't see why it is so unreasonable to despise the kids with the pea shooters taunting the tiger now that he is in a cage.
We've repeated this so many times, and I think this is going to have to be the last: The idea that the weaker could not defy the stronger is fundamentally a fantasy, which, again, is something ronya pointed out pages and pages ago!
“If the Austro-Hungarian government is not going to abdicate forever as a great power, she has no choice but to enforce acceptance by the Serbian government of her demands by strong pressure and, if necessary, by resort to military measures."
Cue global war. Because the Austrian-Hungarian smackdown of the Weak Nation of Serbia pissed of another Great Power, and shit rapidly went downhill from there until trench warfare and mustard gas.
And your continued inability to distinguish between the degree of immorality in the usage of weapons of mass destruction and copying a handbag design is, as usual, ridicolous, if not unexpected.
If a government an international order does not protect these rights, then the citizens states would have to watch their property, just like they would their backs in a society that does not prohibit murder.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
If a government an international order does not protect these rights, then the citizens states would have to watch their property, just like they would their backs in a society that does not prohibit murder.
Which is precisely what is happening now, and the problem I want to correct. . .
I'd like you to reflect more carefully about what a society where everyone watches their backs actually looks like.
e: to be clear, you were and continue to be completely wrong as to what is happening "right now". I have battered you into conceding, twice, that in fact the current world order already works in favour of imposing first-world notions of intellectual property on the third world and that it merely does not do so to a rigour you find sufficient. And both times you have promptly forgotten this within a page and went back to wailing that some pissant Serbia dares defy your might.
There are multiple arbitration panels whereby IP disputes are negotiated today and, by and large, these work. The edge case you fear so much is where a country is not in a position to eliminate corruption, for reasons which would apply to an occupying government but multiplied by all the costs of projecting power. I think you readily agree to all this, but for some reason all this gets thrown out of the window when it is pointed out that this prohibits any more rigorous action, and then we return to the bloodthirsty scenario of threatening countries with war so that the US can drone strike their civilians, what the hell?
ronya on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I'd like you to reflect more carefully about what a society where everyone watches their backs actually looks like.
e: to be clear, you were and continue to be completely wrong as to what is happening "right now". I have battered you into conceding, twice, that in fact the current world order already works in favour of imposing first-world notions of intellectual property on the third world and that it merely does not do so to a rigour you find sufficient. And both times you have promptly forgotten this within a page and went back to wailing that some pissant Serbia dares defy your might.
There are multiple arbitration panels whereby IP disputes are negotiated today and, by and large, these work. The edge case you fear so much is where a country is not in a position to eliminate corruption, for reasons which would apply to an occupying government but multiplied by all the costs of projecting power. I think you readily agree to all this, but for some reason all this gets thrown out of the window when it is pointed out that this prohibits any more rigorous action, and then we return to the bloodthirsty scenario of threatening countries with war so that the US can drone strike their civilians, what the hell?
I accept all the premises, but do not come to the conclusion that we have arrived at the perfect balance of enforcement vs harmony. We are only disagreeing, as a practical matter, about whether the systems that are in place could safely and efficiently go further than they currently do. It's not a major dispute at all.
I'd like you to reflect more carefully about what a society where everyone watches their backs actually looks like.
e: to be clear, you were and continue to be completely wrong as to what is happening "right now". I have battered you into conceding, twice, that in fact the current world order already works in favour of imposing first-world notions of intellectual property on the third world and that it merely does not do so to a rigour you find sufficient. And both times you have promptly forgotten this within a page and went back to wailing that some pissant Serbia dares defy your might.
There are multiple arbitration panels whereby IP disputes are negotiated today and, by and large, these work. The edge case you fear so much is where a country is not in a position to eliminate corruption, for reasons which would apply to an occupying government but multiplied by all the costs of projecting power. I think you readily agree to all this, but for some reason all this gets thrown out of the window when it is pointed out that this prohibits any more rigorous action, and then we return to the bloodthirsty scenario of threatening countries with war so that the US can drone strike their civilians, what the hell?
I accept all the premises, but do not come to the conclusion that we have arrived at the perfect balance of enforcement vs harmony. We are only disagreeing, as a practical matter, about whether the systems that are in place could safely and efficiently go further than they currently do. It's not a major dispute at all.
The status quo already strays too far toward sacrificing harmony for enforcement. Prohibition of any kind creates a lucrative opportunity for crime; this is only an acceptable trade-off when there is appropriate civil-social bureaucracies in place that can prevent the opportunity from being used to fund other illicit activity. The costs of such activity are local and this is why the US does not care very much if DVD piracy in India goes toward funding Marxist insurgency. It opts for standards that it can easily enforce, even if other countries cannot.
ronya on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I'd like you to reflect more carefully about what a society where everyone watches their backs actually looks like.
e: to be clear, you were and continue to be completely wrong as to what is happening "right now". I have battered you into conceding, twice, that in fact the current world order already works in favour of imposing first-world notions of intellectual property on the third world and that it merely does not do so to a rigour you find sufficient. And both times you have promptly forgotten this within a page and went back to wailing that some pissant Serbia dares defy your might.
There are multiple arbitration panels whereby IP disputes are negotiated today and, by and large, these work. The edge case you fear so much is where a country is not in a position to eliminate corruption, for reasons which would apply to an occupying government but multiplied by all the costs of projecting power. I think you readily agree to all this, but for some reason all this gets thrown out of the window when it is pointed out that this prohibits any more rigorous action, and then we return to the bloodthirsty scenario of threatening countries with war so that the US can drone strike their civilians, what the hell?
I accept all the premises, but do not come to the conclusion that we have arrived at the perfect balance of enforcement vs harmony. We are only disagreeing, as a practical matter, about whether the systems that are in place could safely and efficiently go further than they currently do. It's not a major dispute at all.
The status quo already strays too far toward sacrificing harmony for enforcement. Prohibition of any kind creates a lucrative opportunity for crime; this is only an acceptable trade-off when there is appropriate civil-social bureaucracies in place that can prevent the opportunity from being used to fund other illicit activity. The costs of such activity are local and this is why the US does not care very much if DVD piracy in India goes toward funding Marxist insurgency. It opts for standards that it can easily enforce, even if other countries cannot.
But even the US cannot enforce its own rules. SOPA was supposed to address this, and part of that was to be a massive expansion in US power to deal with piracy from other countries that projects into the US. I actually think that was a good example of how the current world order could have been tweaked to improve enforcement efforts.
I'd like you to reflect more carefully about what a society where everyone watches their backs actually looks like.
e: to be clear, you were and continue to be completely wrong as to what is happening "right now". I have battered you into conceding, twice, that in fact the current world order already works in favour of imposing first-world notions of intellectual property on the third world and that it merely does not do so to a rigour you find sufficient. And both times you have promptly forgotten this within a page and went back to wailing that some pissant Serbia dares defy your might.
There are multiple arbitration panels whereby IP disputes are negotiated today and, by and large, these work. The edge case you fear so much is where a country is not in a position to eliminate corruption, for reasons which would apply to an occupying government but multiplied by all the costs of projecting power. I think you readily agree to all this, but for some reason all this gets thrown out of the window when it is pointed out that this prohibits any more rigorous action, and then we return to the bloodthirsty scenario of threatening countries with war so that the US can drone strike their civilians, what the hell?
I accept all the premises, but do not come to the conclusion that we have arrived at the perfect balance of enforcement vs harmony. We are only disagreeing, as a practical matter, about whether the systems that are in place could safely and efficiently go further than they currently do. It's not a major dispute at all.
The status quo already strays too far toward sacrificing harmony for enforcement. Prohibition of any kind creates a lucrative opportunity for crime; this is only an acceptable trade-off when there is appropriate civil-social bureaucracies in place that can prevent the opportunity from being used to fund other illicit activity. The costs of such activity are local and this is why the US does not care very much if DVD piracy in India goes toward funding Marxist insurgency. It opts for standards that it can easily enforce, even if other countries cannot.
But even the US cannot enforce its own rules. SOPA was supposed to address this, and part of that was to be a massive expansion in US power to deal with piracy from other countries that projects into the US. I actually think that was a good example of how the current world order could have been tweaked to improve enforcement efforts.
Well, that only makes the argument even worse! Your country cannot even sustain the political capital to do what you want it to do, and there is every reason to think it will be even harder elsewhere.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I'd like you to reflect more carefully about what a society where everyone watches their backs actually looks like.
e: to be clear, you were and continue to be completely wrong as to what is happening "right now". I have battered you into conceding, twice, that in fact the current world order already works in favour of imposing first-world notions of intellectual property on the third world and that it merely does not do so to a rigour you find sufficient. And both times you have promptly forgotten this within a page and went back to wailing that some pissant Serbia dares defy your might.
There are multiple arbitration panels whereby IP disputes are negotiated today and, by and large, these work. The edge case you fear so much is where a country is not in a position to eliminate corruption, for reasons which would apply to an occupying government but multiplied by all the costs of projecting power. I think you readily agree to all this, but for some reason all this gets thrown out of the window when it is pointed out that this prohibits any more rigorous action, and then we return to the bloodthirsty scenario of threatening countries with war so that the US can drone strike their civilians, what the hell?
I accept all the premises, but do not come to the conclusion that we have arrived at the perfect balance of enforcement vs harmony. We are only disagreeing, as a practical matter, about whether the systems that are in place could safely and efficiently go further than they currently do. It's not a major dispute at all.
The status quo already strays too far toward sacrificing harmony for enforcement. Prohibition of any kind creates a lucrative opportunity for crime; this is only an acceptable trade-off when there is appropriate civil-social bureaucracies in place that can prevent the opportunity from being used to fund other illicit activity. The costs of such activity are local and this is why the US does not care very much if DVD piracy in India goes toward funding Marxist insurgency. It opts for standards that it can easily enforce, even if other countries cannot.
But even the US cannot enforce its own rules. SOPA was supposed to address this, and part of that was to be a massive expansion in US power to deal with piracy from other countries that projects into the US. I actually think that was a good example of how the current world order could have been tweaked to improve enforcement efforts.
Well, that only makes the argument even worse! Your country cannot even sustain the political capital to do what you want it to do, and there is every reason to think it will be even harder elsewhere.
Cue AH. This one defeat does not mean that similar measures cannot pass in the future.
We clearly have the ability enforce sanctions of various sorts on weaker countries for IP infringement. I don't think anybody's disputed that. We've been talking about whether we should, from both pragmatic and philosophical perspectives.
I've been focusing on the philosophical perspective, which is why I set up my example in a 2 person apocalypse. Obviously that situation isn't pragmatic or directly applicable to the world as is, but it simplifies the situation so we can focus on the philosophical issues in question.
I was attempting to discern what, if any, your philosophical justification for enforcement of IP rights on other nations was. Your response to my hypothetical showed that your objection to killing people is based on pragmatic grounds rather than philosophical ones, and indeed you denied that there even could be philosophical as opposed to pragmatic reasons not to kill someone.
That's a self-consistent position to take, as far as it goes, but the purpose of my modified version of your argument was to show that your same reasoning that denied a philosophical reasoning for not killing people can also be used to deny a philosophical reason for not infringing on IP. Attempting to dismiss that argument on pragmatic grounds is pointless because we're talking about a philosophical issue rather than a pragmatic one.
Absent such a philosophical justification for enforcing IP on other unwilling nations we'd need a pragmatic reason to do so. As has been previously discussed in the thread the cost of doing so outweighs the marginal additional revenues we would receive, and so there's no pragmatic justification for doing so either.
You brought up the two person scenario to try and argue that natural rights existed. My response should have indicated that I disagree, and that, as an example, I do not think that there is an objective prohibition on murder. Now you are trying to import the same argument to IP, and I don't see the connection. But I think I know what you are getting at, and so let me explain my position a bit more.
I do not believe in objective morality or natural rights, and think that any appeal to either is pretty nonsensical, since even if they exist they are of precisely no effect in the world, but I do believe that a society needs to recognize certain rights in order to avoid losing legitimacy. Personal safety (I.e., preventing murder, violence) is an important one, since it frees us from always watching our backs, but property rights are a close second in my mind, since you exchange a portion if your finite life in order to create/acquire said property, and when your property is taken or destroyed, it is really the time that it represents that was taken from you. If a government does not protect these rights, then the citizens would have to watch their property, just like they would their backs in a society that does not prohibit murder.
I see no distinction between mental and physical labor, and so see no distinction between the product of mental work (IP) and the product of physical labor. It is just an accident of reality that scarcity does not apply, and so governments need to correct for this accident or leave their citizens forced to seek self help or accept the theft of a portion of their limited time on Earth. This is why I believe that governments have a duty to protect IP rights.
You don't see the perversion in having a strong military nation which is forced to endure rockets being fired over its borders for all time because it isn't allowed to remove them? This is honestly a concept that I can't quite grasp. Governments are able to subvert the usual "might makes right" course among their citizens because the government itself is so much stronger than any individual. That is not the case in the international community.
Lets say that President Obama was to read this thread and say "that Spacekungfuman is making a lot of sense. I'm branding all the knock off pill factories in Myanmar as terrorist cells and sending drones in to blow them up tomorrow." Would the US face effective sanctions? Would it face any sanctions at all? Can the UN even really sanction the US?
You'll pardon me if I did not read Burmese co-operation into this.
As for three-strikes laws, you may be interested to learn that ISPs are unenthusiastic instead. Might you be able to guess why?
It is my understanding that drones are used with the cooperation of the country they are used in in virtually every case, but regardless, I thought that was pretty clearly a hypothetical meant to show that even the strongest play against another country would not result in sanctions against the US.
ISPs already look for ways to stop pirates from using up all their bandwidth, so I am sure you could craft some law that they would be happy to cooperate with, even if it is based on them just sending notices to customers when a content holder complains.
New law: anyone caught using bit torrent or a site on a list of "pirate sites" gets 3 warnings, then gets hit with a huge fine. The ISPs will all gladly help with enforcement.
So you advocate fining everyone who plays World of Warcraft?
Bittorrent isn't exclusively for piracy, and is seeing a steady increase in it's use for pushing out legal material to consumers. Specifically large MMO patches and Linux ISOs, which are a legitimate use even if they are the go-to excuse. It's an excellent system for shifting bandwidth costs from the business to the end user, as the business will only have to upload it a couple of times and all the consumers will handle the rest.
And unless someone is going to be paying the ISPs, there's going to be no "gladly" in their assistance. They aren't going to want to pay for massive filitering arrangements or for dedicated staff to trawl through logs just so they can play copyright cop on somebody else's behalf. Not to mention how easy it would be for the ISPs, who do still have deep pockets, to spin it as "Obama wants to watch everything you do on the Internet!" and get it shot down in the court of public opinion.
It doesn't matter if there are legitimate uses. There are legitimate uses for lots of things that we make illegal. Remember, the goal here is increased enforcement without a large increase in cost. Giving ISPs the ability to crack down hard on major uses of their bandwidth by a small number of customers seems consistent with that goal.
The approach of banning the technology has been attempted before.
It didn't work. All banning bittorrent would do is the exact same thing as happened when Napster was killed - the creation of an even better protocol that pirates move to, whilst hurting legitimate users. To say nothing of the idea that ISPs should punish people using the bandwidth they have already paid for. Why should others become the police for media companies, instead of them doing the work, as any other civil case would entail?
You don't see the perversion in having a strong military nation which is forced to endure rockets being fired over its borders for all time because it isn't allowed to remove them? This is honestly a concept that I can't quite grasp. Governments are able to subvert the usual "might makes right" course among their citizens because the government itself is so much stronger than any individual. That is not the case in the international community.
Lets say that President Obama was to read this thread and say "that Spacekungfuman is making a lot of sense. I'm branding all the knock off pill factories in Myanmar as terrorist cells and sending drones in to blow them up tomorrow." Would the US face effective sanctions? Would it face any sanctions at all? Can the UN even really sanction the US?
You'll pardon me if I did not read Burmese co-operation into this.
As for three-strikes laws, you may be interested to learn that ISPs are unenthusiastic instead. Might you be able to guess why?
It is my understanding that drones are used with the cooperation of the country they are used in in virtually every case, but regardless, I thought that was pretty clearly a hypothetical meant to show that even the strongest play against another country would not result in sanctions against the US.
ISPs already look for ways to stop pirates from using up all their bandwidth, so I am sure you could craft some law that they would be happy to cooperate with, even if it is based on them just sending notices to customers when a content holder complains.
New law: anyone caught using bit torrent or a site on a list of "pirate sites" gets 3 warnings, then gets hit with a huge fine. The ISPs will all gladly help with enforcement.
So you advocate fining everyone who plays World of Warcraft?
Bittorrent isn't exclusively for piracy, and is seeing a steady increase in it's use for pushing out legal material to consumers. Specifically large MMO patches and Linux ISOs, which are a legitimate use even if they are the go-to excuse. It's an excellent system for shifting bandwidth costs from the business to the end user, as the business will only have to upload it a couple of times and all the consumers will handle the rest.
And unless someone is going to be paying the ISPs, there's going to be no "gladly" in their assistance. They aren't going to want to pay for massive filitering arrangements or for dedicated staff to trawl through logs just so they can play copyright cop on somebody else's behalf. Not to mention how easy it would be for the ISPs, who do still have deep pockets, to spin it as "Obama wants to watch everything you do on the Internet!" and get it shot down in the court of public opinion.
It doesn't matter if there are legitimate uses. There are legitimate uses for lots of things that we make illegal. Remember, the goal here is increased enforcement without a large increase in cost. Giving ISPs the ability to crack down hard on major uses of their bandwidth by a small number of customers seems consistent with that goal.
The approach of banning the technology has been attempted before.
It didn't work. All banning bittorrent would do is the exact same thing as happened when Napster was killed - the creation of an even better protocol that pirates move to, whilst hurting legitimate users. To say nothing of the idea that ISPs should punish people using the bandwidth they have already paid for. Why should others become the police for media companies, instead of them doing the work, as any other civil case would entail?
I don't think that invoking token legitimate users should serve as a shibboleth here to mark something as protected. There are many things that have legitimate uses, but which we prohibit because the infringing uses are damaging and common. In my mind, expanded powers to fight piracy are necessary, because we cannot win if we can't be flexible and proactive.
You don't see the perversion in having a strong military nation which is forced to endure rockets being fired over its borders for all time because it isn't allowed to remove them? This is honestly a concept that I can't quite grasp. Governments are able to subvert the usual "might makes right" course among their citizens because the government itself is so much stronger than any individual. That is not the case in the international community.
Lets say that President Obama was to read this thread and say "that Spacekungfuman is making a lot of sense. I'm branding all the knock off pill factories in Myanmar as terrorist cells and sending drones in to blow them up tomorrow." Would the US face effective sanctions? Would it face any sanctions at all? Can the UN even really sanction the US?
You'll pardon me if I did not read Burmese co-operation into this.
As for three-strikes laws, you may be interested to learn that ISPs are unenthusiastic instead. Might you be able to guess why?
It is my understanding that drones are used with the cooperation of the country they are used in in virtually every case, but regardless, I thought that was pretty clearly a hypothetical meant to show that even the strongest play against another country would not result in sanctions against the US.
ISPs already look for ways to stop pirates from using up all their bandwidth, so I am sure you could craft some law that they would be happy to cooperate with, even if it is based on them just sending notices to customers when a content holder complains.
New law: anyone caught using bit torrent or a site on a list of "pirate sites" gets 3 warnings, then gets hit with a huge fine. The ISPs will all gladly help with enforcement.
So you advocate fining everyone who plays World of Warcraft?
Bittorrent isn't exclusively for piracy, and is seeing a steady increase in it's use for pushing out legal material to consumers. Specifically large MMO patches and Linux ISOs, which are a legitimate use even if they are the go-to excuse. It's an excellent system for shifting bandwidth costs from the business to the end user, as the business will only have to upload it a couple of times and all the consumers will handle the rest.
And unless someone is going to be paying the ISPs, there's going to be no "gladly" in their assistance. They aren't going to want to pay for massive filitering arrangements or for dedicated staff to trawl through logs just so they can play copyright cop on somebody else's behalf. Not to mention how easy it would be for the ISPs, who do still have deep pockets, to spin it as "Obama wants to watch everything you do on the Internet!" and get it shot down in the court of public opinion.
It doesn't matter if there are legitimate uses. There are legitimate uses for lots of things that we make illegal. Remember, the goal here is increased enforcement without a large increase in cost. Giving ISPs the ability to crack down hard on major uses of their bandwidth by a small number of customers seems consistent with that goal.
The approach of banning the technology has been attempted before.
It didn't work. All banning bittorrent would do is the exact same thing as happened when Napster was killed - the creation of an even better protocol that pirates move to, whilst hurting legitimate users. To say nothing of the idea that ISPs should punish people using the bandwidth they have already paid for. Why should others become the police for media companies, instead of them doing the work, as any other civil case would entail?
I don't think that invoking token legitimate users should serve as a shibboleth here to mark something as protected. There are many things that have legitimate uses, but which we prohibit because the infringing uses are damaging and common. In my mind, expanded powers to fight piracy are necessary, because we cannot win if we can't be flexible and proactive.
There is no scenario where we'll "win," period. Crime is unfortunately a part of humanity, you can't stamp it out. All that'll happen will criminals will adapt to any new methods and the process continues forward.
Harry Dresden on
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
You don't see the perversion in having a strong military nation which is forced to endure rockets being fired over its borders for all time because it isn't allowed to remove them? This is honestly a concept that I can't quite grasp. Governments are able to subvert the usual "might makes right" course among their citizens because the government itself is so much stronger than any individual. That is not the case in the international community.
Lets say that President Obama was to read this thread and say "that Spacekungfuman is making a lot of sense. I'm branding all the knock off pill factories in Myanmar as terrorist cells and sending drones in to blow them up tomorrow." Would the US face effective sanctions? Would it face any sanctions at all? Can the UN even really sanction the US?
You'll pardon me if I did not read Burmese co-operation into this.
As for three-strikes laws, you may be interested to learn that ISPs are unenthusiastic instead. Might you be able to guess why?
It is my understanding that drones are used with the cooperation of the country they are used in in virtually every case, but regardless, I thought that was pretty clearly a hypothetical meant to show that even the strongest play against another country would not result in sanctions against the US.
ISPs already look for ways to stop pirates from using up all their bandwidth, so I am sure you could craft some law that they would be happy to cooperate with, even if it is based on them just sending notices to customers when a content holder complains.
New law: anyone caught using bit torrent or a site on a list of "pirate sites" gets 3 warnings, then gets hit with a huge fine. The ISPs will all gladly help with enforcement.
So you advocate fining everyone who plays World of Warcraft?
Bittorrent isn't exclusively for piracy, and is seeing a steady increase in it's use for pushing out legal material to consumers. Specifically large MMO patches and Linux ISOs, which are a legitimate use even if they are the go-to excuse. It's an excellent system for shifting bandwidth costs from the business to the end user, as the business will only have to upload it a couple of times and all the consumers will handle the rest.
And unless someone is going to be paying the ISPs, there's going to be no "gladly" in their assistance. They aren't going to want to pay for massive filitering arrangements or for dedicated staff to trawl through logs just so they can play copyright cop on somebody else's behalf. Not to mention how easy it would be for the ISPs, who do still have deep pockets, to spin it as "Obama wants to watch everything you do on the Internet!" and get it shot down in the court of public opinion.
It doesn't matter if there are legitimate uses. There are legitimate uses for lots of things that we make illegal. Remember, the goal here is increased enforcement without a large increase in cost. Giving ISPs the ability to crack down hard on major uses of their bandwidth by a small number of customers seems consistent with that goal.
The approach of banning the technology has been attempted before.
It didn't work. All banning bittorrent would do is the exact same thing as happened when Napster was killed - the creation of an even better protocol that pirates move to, whilst hurting legitimate users. To say nothing of the idea that ISPs should punish people using the bandwidth they have already paid for. Why should others become the police for media companies, instead of them doing the work, as any other civil case would entail?
I don't think that invoking token legitimate users should serve as a shibboleth here to mark something as protected. There are many things that have legitimate uses, but which we prohibit because the infringing uses are damaging and common. In my mind, expanded powers to fight piracy are necessary, because we cannot win if we can't be flexible and proactive.
There is no scenario where we'll "win," period. Crime is unfortunately a part of humanity, you can't stamp it out. All that'll happen will criminals will adapt to any new methods and the process continues forward.
But we can do a much better job at reacting. SOPA would have permitted much stronger and faster reactions to the changing ways that pirates infringe on rights.
So the best option going forwards is a perpetual arms race between media companies and pirates, with ISPs and other third parties slugged with the costs (and since SOPA required a tremendous amount of effort and money to enforce, these are costs large enough to outright sink many companies) of implementing these policies, and regular users progressively losing more and more useful technologies and consumer rights?
Could you please list out the examples you appear to have thought of when it comes to banned technologies with legitimate uses, and also, why bittorrent should be banned, but not others? Why not induce packet loss to disrupt any sizable download? After all, legitimate users aren't a concern when piracy is involved, correct? It amounts to the same thing, given bittorrent's widespread use to relable transfer large files without corruption.
The calculus here between a temporary reprieve from pirates (before they move onto newer, more anonymous networks) and pretty much everybody but the media companies being slugged with a bat, seems very far out of whack.
Should we ban hammers because they're used to crack open skulls sometimes?
Given a couple days, I can come home after work and bang out a working P2P protocol and application for it. The trick is in the distributions and getting others to use it... but the basic technology is there and relatively simple. I can even make it look like legitimate https traffic with some extra work. Or voip
Yeah, it's pretty trivial to make a P2P application. I shudder to think what would happen if bittorrent was meaningfully damaged as a protocol in some ways - it's great for downloading large files, but also very centralised and easy to track. If something were to happen that got users off bittorrent and onto a new protocol with the strengths of bittorrent but with an eye to masking the traffic type and identity of the downloader/uploader, it'd be a huge catastrophe for antipiracy efforts.
So the best option going forwards is a perpetual arms race between media companies and pirates, with ISPs and other third parties slugged with the costs (and since SOPA required a tremendous amount of effort and money to enforce, these are costs large enough to outright sink many companies) of implementing these policies, and regular users progressively losing more and more useful technologies and consumer rights?
Could you please list out the examples you appear to have thought of when it comes to banned technologies with legitimate uses, and also, why bittorrent should be banned, but not others? Why not induce packet loss to disrupt any sizable download? After all, legitimate users aren't a concern when piracy is involved, correct? It amounts to the same thing, given bittorrent's widespread use to relable transfer large files without corruption.
The calculus here between a temporary reprieve from pirates (before they move onto newer, more anonymous networks) and pretty much everybody but the media companies being slugged with a bat, seems very far out of whack.
Should we ban hammers because they're used to crack open skulls sometimes?
Many countries ban guns. We regulate useful chemicals pretty severely. You can't even just walk into a store and buy sudafed without giving them tons of personal information anymore.
If hammers were mostly used to crack skulls, then yes, I would say banning or regulating them would be reasonable.
You realize if we regulated like that from the begining much of the movie and music industries profit centers wouldn't exist? They constantly tried to ban things like the VCR, CD, DVD...hell even record players and the first recording devices.
So the best option going forwards is a perpetual arms race between media companies and pirates, with ISPs and other third parties slugged with the costs (and since SOPA required a tremendous amount of effort and money to enforce, these are costs large enough to outright sink many companies) of implementing these policies, and regular users progressively losing more and more useful technologies and consumer rights?
Could you please list out the examples you appear to have thought of when it comes to banned technologies with legitimate uses, and also, why bittorrent should be banned, but not others? Why not induce packet loss to disrupt any sizable download? After all, legitimate users aren't a concern when piracy is involved, correct? It amounts to the same thing, given bittorrent's widespread use to relable transfer large files without corruption.
The calculus here between a temporary reprieve from pirates (before they move onto newer, more anonymous networks) and pretty much everybody but the media companies being slugged with a bat, seems very far out of whack.
Should we ban hammers because they're used to crack open skulls sometimes?
Many countries ban guns. We regulate useful chemicals pretty severely. You can't even just walk into a store and buy sudafed without giving them tons of personal information anymore.
If hammers were mostly used to crack skulls, then yes, I would say banning or regulating them would be reasonable.
The regulation of sudafed is due to methamphetamine production, for which it is a major ingredient. From what I've seen in the local area (central Louisiana), the regulation hasn't curbed Meth production in a significant way, but it has made it more difficult for regular folks to buy some.
I mean, one box of sudafed isn't going to make very much Meth, and it's a hassle to buy it. Just like anything else, SOPA included, increased security comes at the price of freedom.
I would say that non-industrial application chemicals are not regulated severely. Just go to the cleaning supplies isle at any Wal-Mart. The majority of chemical regulation is applied to industries, and not individuals.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
So the best option going forwards is a perpetual arms race between media companies and pirates, with ISPs and other third parties slugged with the costs (and since SOPA required a tremendous amount of effort and money to enforce, these are costs large enough to outright sink many companies) of implementing these policies, and regular users progressively losing more and more useful technologies and consumer rights?
Could you please list out the examples you appear to have thought of when it comes to banned technologies with legitimate uses, and also, why bittorrent should be banned, but not others? Why not induce packet loss to disrupt any sizable download? After all, legitimate users aren't a concern when piracy is involved, correct? It amounts to the same thing, given bittorrent's widespread use to relable transfer large files without corruption.
The calculus here between a temporary reprieve from pirates (before they move onto newer, more anonymous networks) and pretty much everybody but the media companies being slugged with a bat, seems very far out of whack.
Should we ban hammers because they're used to crack open skulls sometimes?
Many countries ban guns. We regulate useful chemicals pretty severely. You can't even just walk into a store and buy sudafed without giving them tons of personal information anymore.
If hammers were mostly used to crack skulls, then yes, I would say banning or regulating them would be reasonable.
The regulation of sudafed is due to methamphetamine production, for which it is a major ingredient. From what I've seen in the local area (central Louisiana), the regulation hasn't curbed Meth production in a significant way, but it has made it more difficult for regular folks to buy some.
I mean, one box of sudafed isn't going to make very much Meth, and it's a hassle to buy it. Just like anything else, SOPA included, increased security comes at the price of freedom.
I would say that non-industrial application chemicals are not regulated severely. Just go to the cleaning supplies isle at any Wal-Mart. The majority of chemical regulation is applied to industries, and not individuals.
You don't see the perversion in having a strong military nation which is forced to endure rockets being fired over its borders for all time because it isn't allowed to remove them? This is honestly a concept that I can't quite grasp. Governments are able to subvert the usual "might makes right" course among their citizens because the government itself is so much stronger than any individual. That is not the case in the international community.
Lets say that President Obama was to read this thread and say "that Spacekungfuman is making a lot of sense. I'm branding all the knock off pill factories in Myanmar as terrorist cells and sending drones in to blow them up tomorrow." Would the US face effective sanctions? Would it face any sanctions at all? Can the UN even really sanction the US?
You'll pardon me if I did not read Burmese co-operation into this.
As for three-strikes laws, you may be interested to learn that ISPs are unenthusiastic instead. Might you be able to guess why?
It is my understanding that drones are used with the cooperation of the country they are used in in virtually every case, but regardless, I thought that was pretty clearly a hypothetical meant to show that even the strongest play against another country would not result in sanctions against the US.
ISPs already look for ways to stop pirates from using up all their bandwidth, so I am sure you could craft some law that they would be happy to cooperate with, even if it is based on them just sending notices to customers when a content holder complains.
New law: anyone caught using bit torrent or a site on a list of "pirate sites" gets 3 warnings, then gets hit with a huge fine. The ISPs will all gladly help with enforcement.
So you advocate fining everyone who plays World of Warcraft?
Bittorrent isn't exclusively for piracy, and is seeing a steady increase in it's use for pushing out legal material to consumers. Specifically large MMO patches and Linux ISOs, which are a legitimate use even if they are the go-to excuse. It's an excellent system for shifting bandwidth costs from the business to the end user, as the business will only have to upload it a couple of times and all the consumers will handle the rest.
And unless someone is going to be paying the ISPs, there's going to be no "gladly" in their assistance. They aren't going to want to pay for massive filitering arrangements or for dedicated staff to trawl through logs just so they can play copyright cop on somebody else's behalf. Not to mention how easy it would be for the ISPs, who do still have deep pockets, to spin it as "Obama wants to watch everything you do on the Internet!" and get it shot down in the court of public opinion.
It doesn't matter if there are legitimate uses. There are legitimate uses for lots of things that we make illegal. Remember, the goal here is increased enforcement without a large increase in cost. Giving ISPs the ability to crack down hard on major uses of their bandwidth by a small number of customers seems consistent with that goal.
The approach of banning the technology has been attempted before.
It didn't work. All banning bittorrent would do is the exact same thing as happened when Napster was killed - the creation of an even better protocol that pirates move to, whilst hurting legitimate users. To say nothing of the idea that ISPs should punish people using the bandwidth they have already paid for. Why should others become the police for media companies, instead of them doing the work, as any other civil case would entail?
I don't think that invoking token legitimate users should serve as a shibboleth here to mark something as protected. There are many things that have legitimate uses, but which we prohibit because the infringing uses are damaging and common. In my mind, expanded powers to fight piracy are necessary, because we cannot win if we can't be flexible and proactive.
Right but the statement wasn't "IT HURTS LEGITIMATE USERS!! CRY CRY!", it was "pirates don't give a fuck yo, and legitimate users are hurt". It's fucking silly to ignore the first part and draw some comparison to other shit that you can actually easily ban. The point is not that it hurts the legitimate users, it's that it hurts the legitimate users while being fucking ineffective. The fucking thing that ronya has been trying to hammer into your head these last tens of pages is not that we've just resigned to the current status quo, it's that we know that changing it isn't worth the fucking costs because it's expensive and ineffective. You're trying to ban cars to lower traffic deaths but in this case banning cars doesn't even lower traffic deaths!
I mean, shit dude, I didn't protest SOPA because it would actually keep me from pirating. I protested it because it would be annoying as fuck and some bullshit. Honestly the only actual way to prevent anyone from pirating for real is having someone look over their shoulder IRL at all times. I take it as given that you understand that that is not a thing that is going to ever happen but I'm not entirely sure you realise the consequence of it, that is: you can't actually ever stop piracy.
And it's not like legislative bodies actually know what they're doing. Recently a judge told the two main internet providers over here to ban thepiratebay. And they totally did! So now I can only access the pirate bay by using any of the million proxies/a plugin/hidemyass/TOR/VPN! Yeah sure that is an incredible barrier. It's not like typing "I want the pirate bay" into google leads you to a site that just tells you about these options with links to them. A four year old can do that! And sure, you can try banning p2p in it's entirety but that will take years and years and you can just switch to another way. It's the internet man.
My post a bit after also made the point that, if anything, banning bittorrent would make the situation far worse, as pirates would be driven to a system that's actually difficult to track. You're banning hammers, but the people cracking skulls will just pick up screwdrivers from the next shelf and keep on doing it.
Besieged by all sides those valiant rightholders must take the fight to the enemy, lest all content creation will forever cease.
Saw that. Can't imagine that would withstand constitutional scrutiny (4th amendment - installing spyware on every computer in the country definitely lacks probably cause), and given the history of such automated detection attempts, I figure I could get said software to trigger on me by format shifting something, at which point I'm wondering whether I could bring suit for blackmail or extortion.
This also demonstrates profound ignorance of the most basic tenets of computer security, in particular that physical access to a machine trumps everything (it's impossible to stop me from just removing the crap by formatting the drive).
I wouldn't be surprised to see Kapersky just publish a removal tool within a week - I sincerely doubt anyone writing this would have anything new, and Kapersky is, conveniently, a Russian company. And I can't imagine any such program like this not escaping into the wild, and thus pissing off every other country. I recall seeing some other stuff ranting about Chinese pirates too - which the US government can't really do anything about besides ask China nicely to deal with it anyways.
Disclaimer - this post operates under the assumption the government would be pushing the software, mainly because a distribution method akin to the Sony scandal would miss the proclaimed target entirely. And without obvious external labeling it would probably violate the CFAA too (if you don't disclose to someone that you're going to root their machine, that definitely falls afoul of the language in the law, though they'd probably argue contractual permissions or something)
Please excuse this rant, this suggestion is so inane (even worse in many ways than SOPA/PIPA) that I couldn't help myself.
Besieged by all sides those valiant rightholders must take the fight to the enemy, lest all content creation will forever cease.
Saw that. Can't imagine that would withstand constitutional scrutiny (4th amendment - installing spyware on every computer in the country definitely lacks probably cause), and given the history of such automated detection attempts, I figure I could get said software to trigger on me by format shifting something, at which point I'm wondering whether I could bring suit for blackmail or extortion.
This also demonstrates profound ignorance of the most basic tenets of computer security, in particular that physical access to a machine trumps everything (it's impossible to stop me from just removing the crap by formatting the drive).
I wouldn't be surprised to see Kapersky just publish a removal tool within a week - I sincerely doubt anyone writing this would have anything new, and Kapersky is, conveniently, a Russian company. And I can't imagine any such program like this not escaping into the wild, and thus pissing off every other country. I recall seeing some other stuff ranting about Chinese pirates too - which the US government can't really do anything about besides ask China nicely to deal with it anyways.
Disclaimer - this post operates under the assumption the government would be pushing the software, mainly because a distribution method akin to the Sony scandal would miss the proclaimed target entirely. And without obvious external labeling it would probably violate the CFAA too (if you don't disclose to someone that you're going to root their machine, that definitely falls afoul of the language in the law, though they'd probably argue contractual permissions or something)
Please excuse this rant, this suggestion is so inane (even worse in many ways than SOPA/PIPA) that I couldn't help myself.
SOPA was supposed to do more than just let the US ask nicely. That was the point. Force ISPs to block acces to the sites, etc.
I don't really have a good idea about how things like Tor work. Can ISPs see that you are using it, or is it impossible to detect that it is even in use? If the former, why not just ban their use altogether?
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Besieged by all sides those valiant rightholders must take the fight to the enemy, lest all content creation will forever cease.
Saw that. Can't imagine that would withstand constitutional scrutiny (4th amendment - installing spyware on every computer in the country definitely lacks probably cause), and given the history of such automated detection attempts, I figure I could get said software to trigger on me by format shifting something, at which point I'm wondering whether I could bring suit for blackmail or extortion.
This also demonstrates profound ignorance of the most basic tenets of computer security, in particular that physical access to a machine trumps everything (it's impossible to stop me from just removing the crap by formatting the drive).
I wouldn't be surprised to see Kapersky just publish a removal tool within a week - I sincerely doubt anyone writing this would have anything new, and Kapersky is, conveniently, a Russian company. And I can't imagine any such program like this not escaping into the wild, and thus pissing off every other country. I recall seeing some other stuff ranting about Chinese pirates too - which the US government can't really do anything about besides ask China nicely to deal with it anyways.
Disclaimer - this post operates under the assumption the government would be pushing the software, mainly because a distribution method akin to the Sony scandal would miss the proclaimed target entirely. And without obvious external labeling it would probably violate the CFAA too (if you don't disclose to someone that you're going to root their machine, that definitely falls afoul of the language in the law, though they'd probably argue contractual permissions or something)
Please excuse this rant, this suggestion is so inane (even worse in many ways than SOPA/PIPA) that I couldn't help myself.
SOPA was supposed to do more than just let the US ask nicely. That was the point. Force ISPs to block acces to the sites, etc.
I don't really have a good idea about how things like Tor work. Can ISPs see that you are using it, or is it impossible to detect that it is even in use? If the former, why not just ban their use altogether?
You can't ban TOR without it either being a paper tiger (i.e. little more than asking people not to use it), or breaking the internet. It functions using the very fundamentals of networking.
Besieged by all sides those valiant rightholders must take the fight to the enemy, lest all content creation will forever cease.
Saw that. Can't imagine that would withstand constitutional scrutiny (4th amendment - installing spyware on every computer in the country definitely lacks probably cause), and given the history of such automated detection attempts, I figure I could get said software to trigger on me by format shifting something, at which point I'm wondering whether I could bring suit for blackmail or extortion.
This also demonstrates profound ignorance of the most basic tenets of computer security, in particular that physical access to a machine trumps everything (it's impossible to stop me from just removing the crap by formatting the drive).
I wouldn't be surprised to see Kapersky just publish a removal tool within a week - I sincerely doubt anyone writing this would have anything new, and Kapersky is, conveniently, a Russian company. And I can't imagine any such program like this not escaping into the wild, and thus pissing off every other country. I recall seeing some other stuff ranting about Chinese pirates too - which the US government can't really do anything about besides ask China nicely to deal with it anyways.
Disclaimer - this post operates under the assumption the government would be pushing the software, mainly because a distribution method akin to the Sony scandal would miss the proclaimed target entirely. And without obvious external labeling it would probably violate the CFAA too (if you don't disclose to someone that you're going to root their machine, that definitely falls afoul of the language in the law, though they'd probably argue contractual permissions or something)
Please excuse this rant, this suggestion is so inane (even worse in many ways than SOPA/PIPA) that I couldn't help myself.
SOPA was supposed to do more than just let the US ask nicely. That was the point. Force ISPs to block acces to the sites, etc.
I don't really have a good idea about how things like Tor work. Can ISPs see that you are using it, or is it impossible to detect that it is even in use? If the former, why not just ban their use altogether?
Actually, the big thing that SOPA would have done is that it would have introduced liability on the part of ad networks - once a rightsholder got a ruling that a site was pirating material, they could then send the ad network a notice to force them to withdraw advertising. If they didn't, then the ad network could then be held liable.
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You say you don't believe in natural rights, but the intensity of your anger about IP infringement make me suspect otherwise.
Then make another topic for that. What we're discussing right now involves IP.
I don't understand why you keep responding to a theoretical discussion about the morality of IP infringement by talking about practicality. I already concede it isn't practical pages and pages ago. . .
That the tiger is in th cage is precisely the point. We caged him so that he would not eat all the children, not so that they could taunt him with pea shooters. The latter is an unintended side effect. My entire position is that we should work to fix the latter, and if that fix means making the bars wide enough to let the tiger reach the children with the pea shooters, then I am fine with that.
This is not a good faith argument. You have completely changed the last sentence and so totally broken the equivalence. In a world with two people, I would agree that IP infringement would not be prohibited, just like murder. But we don't live in that world, and with multiple people and societies, we should be prohibiting IP theft for the exact same reason as murder. An ordered, rule based society much protect people's interests so that they don't need to resort to self help.
Fair enough.
Only by widening the bars lets the animal escape hurting everybody not only children, who despite being assholes don't deserve to be maimed or killed for being idiots. They're kids - being an idiot is a learning process. They won't learn anything when they're dead. Its not even the tiger's job to punish them for doing that it's their parents and the zookeepers. A tiger is a wild animal that has no morality, no rules - it does what it wants and give no fuck's about society.
That's a bad example. The world is never going to be in situation so the analogy is useless. IP theft is not equal to murder. Even murderers are let go when they're in countries while America wants them back to punish them for breaking the law on its soil. Countries don't go to war over murderers roaming freely in foreign nations. We are living in a rule based society and if you do try to fix it yourself you'll be going to jail for vigilantism.
In the case of IP infringement if a person doesn't care about their IP being infringed they either judge that their IP being infringed wouldn't harm them or they decide they don't care enough about the harm to want to avoid it. In either case why would they be worried about setting a precedent of IP infringement?
No, it's not just about precedent. It's also about not wanting to have sanctions imposed on you. That dynamic doesn't exist in the two person situation, but it absolutely does when there are more parties and even overarching governments/organizations. Also, in the IP situation there is more to fear than just having someone else infringe your IP. There are any number of other actions that can be taken against you. You really can't use your 2 people left, is murder wrong example to extrapolate anything about IP infringement in a world with multiple governments. It's totally inapplicable.
I've been focusing on the philosophical perspective, which is why I set up my example in a 2 person apocalypse. Obviously that situation isn't pragmatic or directly applicable to the world as is, but it simplifies the situation so we can focus on the philosophical issues in question.
I was attempting to discern what, if any, your philosophical justification for enforcement of IP rights on other nations was. Your response to my hypothetical showed that your objection to killing people is based on pragmatic grounds rather than philosophical ones, and indeed you denied that there even could be philosophical as opposed to pragmatic reasons not to kill someone.
That's a self-consistent position to take, as far as it goes, but the purpose of my modified version of your argument was to show that your same reasoning that denied a philosophical reasoning for not killing people can also be used to deny a philosophical reason for not infringing on IP. Attempting to dismiss that argument on pragmatic grounds is pointless because we're talking about a philosophical issue rather than a pragmatic one.
Absent such a philosophical justification for enforcing IP on other unwilling nations we'd need a pragmatic reason to do so. As has been previously discussed in the thread the cost of doing so outweighs the marginal additional revenues we would receive, and so there's no pragmatic justification for doing so either.
:^:
You brought up the two person scenario to try and argue that natural rights existed. My response should have indicated that I disagree, and that, as an example, I do not think that there is an objective prohibition on murder. Now you are trying to import the same argument to IP, and I don't see the connection. But I think I know what you are getting at, and so let me explain my position a bit more.
I do not believe in objective morality or natural rights, and think that any appeal to either is pretty nonsensical, since even if they exist they are of precisely no effect in the world, but I do believe that a society needs to recognize certain rights in order to avoid losing legitimacy. Personal safety (I.e., preventing murder, violence) is an important one, since it frees us from always watching our backs, but property rights are a close second in my mind, since you exchange a portion if your finite life in order to create/acquire said property, and when your property is taken or destroyed, it is really the time that it represents that was taken from you. If a government does not protect these rights, then the citizens would have to watch their property, just like they would their backs in a society that does not prohibit murder.
I see no distinction between mental and physical labor, and so see no distinction between the product of mental work (IP) and the product of physical labor. It is just an accident of reality that scarcity does not apply, and so governments need to correct for this accident or leave their citizens forced to seek self help or accept the theft of a portion of their limited time on Earth. This is why I believe that governments have a duty to protect IP rights.
“If the Austro-Hungarian government is not going to abdicate forever as a great power, she has no choice but to enforce acceptance by the Serbian government of her demands by strong pressure and, if necessary, by resort to military measures."
Cue global war. Because the Austrian-Hungarian smackdown of the Weak Nation of Serbia pissed of another Great Power, and shit rapidly went downhill from there until trench warfare and mustard gas.
And your continued inability to distinguish between the degree of immorality in the usage of weapons of mass destruction and copying a handbag design is, as usual, ridicolous, if not unexpected.
Which is precisely what is happening now, and the problem I want to correct. . .
e: to be clear, you were and continue to be completely wrong as to what is happening "right now". I have battered you into conceding, twice, that in fact the current world order already works in favour of imposing first-world notions of intellectual property on the third world and that it merely does not do so to a rigour you find sufficient. And both times you have promptly forgotten this within a page and went back to wailing that some pissant Serbia dares defy your might.
There are multiple arbitration panels whereby IP disputes are negotiated today and, by and large, these work. The edge case you fear so much is where a country is not in a position to eliminate corruption, for reasons which would apply to an occupying government but multiplied by all the costs of projecting power. I think you readily agree to all this, but for some reason all this gets thrown out of the window when it is pointed out that this prohibits any more rigorous action, and then we return to the bloodthirsty scenario of threatening countries with war so that the US can drone strike their civilians, what the hell?
I accept all the premises, but do not come to the conclusion that we have arrived at the perfect balance of enforcement vs harmony. We are only disagreeing, as a practical matter, about whether the systems that are in place could safely and efficiently go further than they currently do. It's not a major dispute at all.
The status quo already strays too far toward sacrificing harmony for enforcement. Prohibition of any kind creates a lucrative opportunity for crime; this is only an acceptable trade-off when there is appropriate civil-social bureaucracies in place that can prevent the opportunity from being used to fund other illicit activity. The costs of such activity are local and this is why the US does not care very much if DVD piracy in India goes toward funding Marxist insurgency. It opts for standards that it can easily enforce, even if other countries cannot.
But even the US cannot enforce its own rules. SOPA was supposed to address this, and part of that was to be a massive expansion in US power to deal with piracy from other countries that projects into the US. I actually think that was a good example of how the current world order could have been tweaked to improve enforcement efforts.
Well, that only makes the argument even worse! Your country cannot even sustain the political capital to do what you want it to do, and there is every reason to think it will be even harder elsewhere.
Cue AH. This one defeat does not mean that similar measures cannot pass in the future.
That's so darkly cynical. Like, damn.
The approach of banning the technology has been attempted before.
It didn't work. All banning bittorrent would do is the exact same thing as happened when Napster was killed - the creation of an even better protocol that pirates move to, whilst hurting legitimate users. To say nothing of the idea that ISPs should punish people using the bandwidth they have already paid for. Why should others become the police for media companies, instead of them doing the work, as any other civil case would entail?
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I don't think that invoking token legitimate users should serve as a shibboleth here to mark something as protected. There are many things that have legitimate uses, but which we prohibit because the infringing uses are damaging and common. In my mind, expanded powers to fight piracy are necessary, because we cannot win if we can't be flexible and proactive.
There is no scenario where we'll "win," period. Crime is unfortunately a part of humanity, you can't stamp it out. All that'll happen will criminals will adapt to any new methods and the process continues forward.
But we can do a much better job at reacting. SOPA would have permitted much stronger and faster reactions to the changing ways that pirates infringe on rights.
Could you please list out the examples you appear to have thought of when it comes to banned technologies with legitimate uses, and also, why bittorrent should be banned, but not others? Why not induce packet loss to disrupt any sizable download? After all, legitimate users aren't a concern when piracy is involved, correct? It amounts to the same thing, given bittorrent's widespread use to relable transfer large files without corruption.
The calculus here between a temporary reprieve from pirates (before they move onto newer, more anonymous networks) and pretty much everybody but the media companies being slugged with a bat, seems very far out of whack.
Should we ban hammers because they're used to crack open skulls sometimes?
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Many countries ban guns. We regulate useful chemicals pretty severely. You can't even just walk into a store and buy sudafed without giving them tons of personal information anymore.
If hammers were mostly used to crack skulls, then yes, I would say banning or regulating them would be reasonable.
The regulation of sudafed is due to methamphetamine production, for which it is a major ingredient. From what I've seen in the local area (central Louisiana), the regulation hasn't curbed Meth production in a significant way, but it has made it more difficult for regular folks to buy some.
I mean, one box of sudafed isn't going to make very much Meth, and it's a hassle to buy it. Just like anything else, SOPA included, increased security comes at the price of freedom.
I would say that non-industrial application chemicals are not regulated severely. Just go to the cleaning supplies isle at any Wal-Mart. The majority of chemical regulation is applied to industries, and not individuals.
Is bit torrent an individual? Was napster?
Right but the statement wasn't "IT HURTS LEGITIMATE USERS!! CRY CRY!", it was "pirates don't give a fuck yo, and legitimate users are hurt". It's fucking silly to ignore the first part and draw some comparison to other shit that you can actually easily ban. The point is not that it hurts the legitimate users, it's that it hurts the legitimate users while being fucking ineffective. The fucking thing that ronya has been trying to hammer into your head these last tens of pages is not that we've just resigned to the current status quo, it's that we know that changing it isn't worth the fucking costs because it's expensive and ineffective. You're trying to ban cars to lower traffic deaths but in this case banning cars doesn't even lower traffic deaths!
I mean, shit dude, I didn't protest SOPA because it would actually keep me from pirating. I protested it because it would be annoying as fuck and some bullshit. Honestly the only actual way to prevent anyone from pirating for real is having someone look over their shoulder IRL at all times. I take it as given that you understand that that is not a thing that is going to ever happen but I'm not entirely sure you realise the consequence of it, that is: you can't actually ever stop piracy.
And it's not like legislative bodies actually know what they're doing. Recently a judge told the two main internet providers over here to ban thepiratebay. And they totally did! So now I can only access the pirate bay by using any of the million proxies/a plugin/hidemyass/TOR/VPN! Yeah sure that is an incredible barrier. It's not like typing "I want the pirate bay" into google leads you to a site that just tells you about these options with links to them. A four year old can do that! And sure, you can try banning p2p in it's entirety but that will take years and years and you can just switch to another way. It's the internet man.
My post a bit after also made the point that, if anything, banning bittorrent would make the situation far worse, as pirates would be driven to a system that's actually difficult to track. You're banning hammers, but the people cracking skulls will just pick up screwdrivers from the next shelf and keep on doing it.
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
Saw that. Can't imagine that would withstand constitutional scrutiny (4th amendment - installing spyware on every computer in the country definitely lacks probably cause), and given the history of such automated detection attempts, I figure I could get said software to trigger on me by format shifting something, at which point I'm wondering whether I could bring suit for blackmail or extortion.
This also demonstrates profound ignorance of the most basic tenets of computer security, in particular that physical access to a machine trumps everything (it's impossible to stop me from just removing the crap by formatting the drive).
I wouldn't be surprised to see Kapersky just publish a removal tool within a week - I sincerely doubt anyone writing this would have anything new, and Kapersky is, conveniently, a Russian company. And I can't imagine any such program like this not escaping into the wild, and thus pissing off every other country. I recall seeing some other stuff ranting about Chinese pirates too - which the US government can't really do anything about besides ask China nicely to deal with it anyways.
Disclaimer - this post operates under the assumption the government would be pushing the software, mainly because a distribution method akin to the Sony scandal would miss the proclaimed target entirely. And without obvious external labeling it would probably violate the CFAA too (if you don't disclose to someone that you're going to root their machine, that definitely falls afoul of the language in the law, though they'd probably argue contractual permissions or something)
Please excuse this rant, this suggestion is so inane (even worse in many ways than SOPA/PIPA) that I couldn't help myself.
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SOPA was supposed to do more than just let the US ask nicely. That was the point. Force ISPs to block acces to the sites, etc.
I don't really have a good idea about how things like Tor work. Can ISPs see that you are using it, or is it impossible to detect that it is even in use? If the former, why not just ban their use altogether?
You can't ban TOR without it either being a paper tiger (i.e. little more than asking people not to use it), or breaking the internet. It functions using the very fundamentals of networking.
The application is enough, no?
Actually, the big thing that SOPA would have done is that it would have introduced liability on the part of ad networks - once a rightsholder got a ruling that a site was pirating material, they could then send the ad network a notice to force them to withdraw advertising. If they didn't, then the ad network could then be held liable.