The copyright system does not exist to force any individual copyright holder to sell any individual work or lose his rights. It exists to generally encourage the creation and distribution of copyrighted works. Within that system, giving individual copyright holders the right not to distribute any particular work is part of that incentive.
This is a very narrow conception of harm that is not accepted by copyright law. The harm is the loss of control over the copying and distribution of a work. It is up to individual owners to decide whether and when distribution is in their interest, based on their own individual decisions.
I don’t know whether you’re being sarcastic, but under the current system, the trend is that higher quality information is being locked up for the use of those who can afford high subscription fees, which is exactly what the patronage system was before copyright law democratized creation and consumption. We’re already on the road where it is becoming less and less supportable to produce high-quality content for general distribution. So, those who want shit for free will get lower and lower quality content while high quality content will be locked up in private networks.
Wrong. The purpose of copyright is to enrich the culture by encouraging artists, writers, etc., to create and distribute their work. If they do not create and distribute their work, the culture is not enriched, in fact, it is made less rich. Not distributing a work is counter to the purpose of copyright, at Der Trihs pointed out. What’s more, current copyright law has been extended to seventy years, and may be extended further now that corporations pretty much own our government. Which means that people cannot use older works that have seeped into the culture as the basis for future works. 20 years seems like enough time to profit from a work. And copyright is also being used to prevent musical artists from “sampling” which further impoverishes our culture.
Copyright law will have to be drastically altered to return to its status as an enrichment of our culture, but with corporations in charge, I am afraid cultural poverty is where we are headed.
It’s not a tangible object, and it’s not for sale, so there is no loss. If anything it might ultimately benefit, as free promotion could lead eventually to enough interest to justify recommercialization.
As far as some vague notion of creative control, these works were previously public and the efforts of multiple people. It’s not like they were a secret novel an author wasn’t ready for anyone to see yet. And parody is already allowed so sacredness is not a factor.
I was responding to the poster’s contention that you do not have the right to take something just because you want it. Legally, that is true, and there’s a strong moral and ethical basis there, too. But there’s also a sense that information enriches people, and spreading it widely as possible makes for a richer, better culture. So there is a tension there, it’s not a simple black and white thing.
Yes, by creating a general infrastructure that encourages creators in general to create and distribute works, not by forcing any particular creator to distribute works or lose his rights. In fact, this system has worked magnificently, and continues to work. We have the wealth of works enriching our culture precisely because the creators have control over how and whether works are distributed. Overall, this system incentivizes a massive boatload of creation and distribution, but part of the key is that the decision is left in the hands of the individual copyright holder.
No, it’s not. The purpose of copyright, as I stated, is not to force any particular copyright holder to distribute any particular work. The purpose is to create incentives that broadly encourage creation and distribution, and that’s exactly what the system has done and still does. The wrench in the machinery is that now it is too easy to get around the copyright holder’s decision, which is a disincentive to creation and will result in fewer works being created and distributed overall. And that is what makes our culture less rich.
Creators have no dearth of basis for their works now. The main barrier to creation now is the prospect that piracy will take away control from the creator, not that there isn’t enough material available from which to create.
That’s not only a demonstrably false position, it’s also laughable. To the extent that cultural poverty is looming, the cause is that piracy disincentivizes creation, not that copyright holders are overprotected.
Let us put aside current legalities and simply focus on practical and ethical considerations for a moment. Law is nothing more than a reflection of the time it was enacted, and can be changed or repealed by a simple vote. It is not the arbiter of ethical behaviour, nor the determining factor in what is physically possible or real.
Pre-internet, content providers had a strong monopoly and control of the distribution of their material. The content itself was valuable because of this scarcity, and people would then pay for the right to own their very own copy of whatever it was. So went life until the advent of cassettes, as earlier models require significant recording equipment and knowledge to make copies of anything. Tapes nibbled away at the content model a bit but the crackdown failed. So we came up with a better model CD’s and people paid up again as the product was superiour. Of course shortly after that came CDRs and again the crackdown failed. Now we are seeing the same thing with the internet, only the net is non-physical and doesn’t require the difficulty of “making” a “thing”. This is where the content providers must realize that the content itself isn’t really worth that much. The music industry has started to move this way and is offering a legal, reasonable alternative to piracy that is very successful. It isn’t perfect, but the accommodation is working.
The money on *television *is made in advertising. NBC wants butts in seats to sell ads, so they provide content I want to watch. If I miss the show, the real revenue is lost, but my desire to see the episode has not gone away. NBC is smart though, and posts the episodes on their website for a week or two and sells ads to me that way allowing me to catch the (worthless) content I want, and reaping additional money via advertising. Why not just wait and put it out on a physical copy to sell me? because as I mentioned earlier, the content is essentially worthless. It is a shiny thing they give away over the air to keep me in my chair for the ads. Additionally, digital distribution has made the physical model obsolete to the pure consumer of content. I don’t want a thing. I don’t want to pay additional money for content I’ve already seen, or have to wait until NBC deigns to bow to the wishes of the fans and provide a dvd set years later. With the internet, I don’t have to. The monopoly is broken and can’t be repaired, no matter what the law currently states or how much content providers cry and whine. The moment you put something out there in one form, it will appear in others online. So the smart decision is to move with the times, provide a timely and legal method for the vast majority of consumers, and prosecute the real bad guys instead of attempting to turn back the clock.
If the content is worthless to you, then you don’t need to see it. If you don’t want to pay additional money for content you’ve already seen, you don’t have to. You just don’t get to see it again. It’s not about “monopolies”. There is no monopoly on content. Nothing is stopping you or anyone else from buying a camcorder and creating your own shows. Create your own characters, write your own scripts, hire some actors and film the shows. Now you have content that you own. Watch it to your heart’s content. If you think it’s worthless, just give it away to everyone you meet. If you think it does have value, you can decide how, when, and where to sell it. It’s yours, so you have the right to decide who can and can’t see it. You can control your content, and NBC still has control of their content. Everybody wins.
Well, one, already-printed copies would indicate that the owner has already made it available, so it’s available. I hope I don’t have to explain why that’s incompatible with my conditional ‘When the owner will not make the work commercially available…’ otherwise this is going to take more time than I have to explain.
Perhaps you’re hung up on the notion of ‘out of print’ materials - in which case I would point out that the owner has already sold all the copies produced, which means piracy cannot diminish the value of those already-sold materials for him.
And as for the notion of potential copies - it’s pretty easy to keep track of releases that are in production, coming down the pipeline. If the owner has no plans to release the material, then there are no potential copies until those plans change. You can’t seriously argue that there’s harm done when it’s “this might, maybe, someday in the far future, deprive someone of five dollars that they might have otherwise had, whenever that is.” It’d be like yelling at someone for moving a rock, complaining that someone might trip over it next year.
Further, in many cases, the owner/artist has announced that they specifically refuse to release the work in question. Certainly, they might change their mind - but one makes the best decision one can with the information available at the time.
And lastly, the people who practice this sort of ‘ethical piracy’ aren’t the sort who just don’t want to pay for things - they just want to have the material in question. And if it eventually gets a commercial release, many of them will then go and purchase the material. While we’re volleying hypotheticals, why not try to field that one? Has a pirate who acquires a copy of X (which is not commercially available) but then purchases X when it becomes available done something wrong? Do you see harm there?
So, yes. Zero harm. Zero harm now, and at-or-near-zero potential maybe possibly theoretical harm later.
Simply put, you don’t know. I never claimed otherwise. The ethical thing to do if you want the material, in my opinion, is to get the material now, and if the owner produces a legal copy in the future, purchase it then. But if the owner will not make the work commercially available, there will be no future copies.
That’s exactly what I’m arguing, except without the hyperbolic sarcasm.
You’re trying to argue that piracy is zero harm, but you can’t do that. You can quote anecdotal evidence about how some pirates are willing to pay for the work later, or how piracy sometimes raises interest in a product, but those aren’t guaranteed factors.
Then it follows that pirating the material and not remunerating the owner later is unethical?
I’m willing to concede that a person who pirates something and then later pays for a copy is doing zero harm (in fact you might infer that from my very first post in this thread), and I hope you’re willing to concede that the reverse is true.
You are missing the point. The content isn’t worthless because I say so, it’s rendered worthless by the business model of it’s creator. Not all content is the same; the sooner we wrap our heads around this and cease of thinking of it as a “shelfable product” or a “unit” the better we will be. Movies, or premium channels operate differently. Let’s use them as a contrast.
In a film or a premium channel, the content IS the product that makes money for the creator,(leaving aside merchandising etc). In other words, it is is the direct revenue generated from consumers that provides the funds to the film companies to make more movies. That is why it is generally unethical to pirate films. You are consuming a product that is otherwise* completely unavailable to you without paying for it*.
In television the model is different. We have the ad companies, and their clients acting as middlemen between the creators of content and the consumer. Networks sell ad space which finances shows. The shows are essentially a giveaway to get you, the consumer, to sit in your chair and watch the network (and the companies hope, their ads). You don’t pay for the shows, they are available free over the air to the* consumer*. This is fundamentally different from films where the content is pay-restricted. In the former, you are directly purchasing a creative product. In the latter you are being given a product in exchange for the hope that you will watch some advertising.
Now understanding that, smart companies, (like NBC in my previous post) have faced the technological reality and offer their shows online free,( just like the broadcast), to the consumer. They don’t do this just to be nice guys; it’s good business. Because they gave the content away in the first place they have rendered it worthless to the consumer, even though the consumer might really, really, want to watch it. Knowing that if they don’t offer it, someone else WILL, they put it up for free in exchange (again) for viewing a few ads and thus reaping them additional income that they would never have made had they tried to sit on the content. It’s kind of paradoxical, but that is how it really works.
Actually, the point is that it’s not your call or mine whether someone else’s content is worthless or not. The owner is the only one who gets to decide that. You can only decide if you are willing to pay what the owner wants. If you don’t want to pay what the owner is asking, then you don’t get to see the content. If the owner doesn’t want to sell it at all, you don’t get to see it. Doesn’t matter what the reason is. It’s the owner’s decision to make and not yours or mine. If the owner is just a mean, heartless jerk who wants to sit on it and yell “It’s MINE MINE MINE and you can’t have it! HAHAHAHAHAHA!”, well, we might not like it, but the owner has every legal and moral right to be that way.
Sure, but what do you do when the genie is already out of the bottle? That is the issue. A creator can set a price, but the market determines viability. When you give something away, then the market price is set at zero, and asking for money after the fact is futile; and a bit silly. Why would you pay for content that was given away already? In the past, creators could control supply through necessary physical copy media. That is no longer the case. Now, the moment you introduce something to the public in general, it will end up online in one form or another. The laws are not reflective of our reality any longer, and need to be changed or altered to deal with the issue.
There are really only two ways this can go: Copyright holders are paid either in advance or based on tracking of users’ internet usage. Given networks like the Apple Iphone system, I’m betting on the latter. If you want high quality works to be continued to be produced and made available on a broad basis, people are going to have to surrender anonymous consumption of content.
Very few people agree with me on this, but I don’t think an artist has a moral right (as opposed to a legal right) to make a work they previously released permanently unavailable.
However, that also doesn’t mean it would be morally right to start distributing a show right after it stops airing just because no dvd deal was announced yet. The time when it becomes clear that there is no alternative is hard to pinpoint.