The original post is completely wrong. Copyright is theft, it’s just a slightly different kind of theft than stealing physical property, but one with very similar moral and legal problems. All the stupid idiots here rationalizing their thievery by trying to convince themselves and others that it’s completely different are just guilty of spewing bullshit.
aaaaaaand there’s another one who hasn’t read the fucking thread.
Why do you say that Andros? Or is it that you consider the pissweak arguments of those that would disagree with Dan are such as to make it inconceivable that he has read those arguments but finds them unconvincing? Which is laughable.
Umm . . .
yes?
(Hope I got that right. 'Fraid I have no idea what you’re asking.)
Actually having now read more of your responses to this thread I am confused. Who were you suggesting had not read this thread? Why? Because it looks (from the order of posts) like you are saying this of Dan Norder, but he seems to agree with your stated position, so…
Nice exercise in name-calling, but that’s all it is. If copyright was dependent on the intellectual merit of posts like this, the response would be: “All your intellectual property are belong to us. When come back, bring argument.”
I already said I was OK with that. Of course, it should be administered in some more workable manner.
Copyrights provide no mechanism for distributing artwork. It’s piss poor. On background: I used to work as a magazine editor. Every so often we would want to reprint articles from elsewhere. I was working for a nonprofit, so I was generally able to negotiate to get permission to reprint for free, but I found that the difficulties involved varied greatly from publication to publication. For some, a simple phone call and a letter detailing the purposes for which the article would be used did the trick. Others would give you permission to reprint, but had rather byzantine hoops you had to jump throught to get it. Others wouldn’t give you permission, period.
Of course, when I was doing that I was doing it as part of my job, so if I spent a couple of hours playing phone tag and jumping through administrative hoops it was just part of the day’s work. It’s gotta be a lot tougher for someone who’s doing art or music on the side, as many of us must.
Having been through the hurdles myself, I was always glad to grant reprint permission for stuff in our publication over the phone, and would even fax out letters of permission if requested to do so.
And I doubt if most artists are as familiar with what’s involved with granting copyright as professional editors generally are.
What I’d like to see is something like the RIAA has set up for the music biz. Although they are WAAAAAY too restrictive in terms of what they want under copyright, they do have a nice system set up – as I understand it, they act as a middleman between artists and radio stations, and when you broadcast music, they charge a very moderate fee and collect it on behalf of the artists involved, which they then distribute to the artists, minus their cut.
I wouldn’t mind the establishment of sometnhing like that for visual media. If you want to use an image, you use it, pay the Graphic Industry Artists of America (a made up name) their cut, and move on.
What’s the matter with something like that? Doesn’t violate copyright, makes it easier for users to use stuff, keeps money flowing into the pockets of artists … is it too easy and intelligent, or what?
I answered this in my response to kidchameleon.
Then fuck 'em. There’s too many artists who like to make coin to fuck around with assholes like that – don’t you agree?
If they could alter it so that you couldn’t recognize it would it still have whatever merit it once had, that made them want to use it? Probably not. Frex, I HAVE used images in this way, but I’m not worried about anyone nailing me for copyright because 1) they’ll never know and 2) they wouldn’t have a case if they did know.
I think it’s a control thing. Fact is, when you create artwork and display/publish it, you’re tossing it into the soup of popular culture, and there’s know way of knowing if what you meant by it has anything at all to do with what others think you mean by it. Some artists can’t stand the thought of others “misappropriating” their ideas.
The big corps could give a flying fuck about you, and if they found a way to enrich themselves and their clients by shitting all over your ability to distribute your work, they’d do it in a heartbeat. That’s why so many publiishers hated the Internet when it first came out – they recognized it as a threat to their control over the distribution channels for intellectual property. I’m very glad the internet is did their control in. It’s made for a much richer, more varied culture and given people the chance to publiish their work who otherwise wouldnt have such a chance.
Ahh, I commend you for getting to the heart of the problem.
You see, all those who are defending their illegal violation of copyright keep hiding behind the arguments of ‘but it’s not theft,’ ‘but it’s not a felony,’ ‘but it’s not criminal.’ And they’re technically right.
But I post that it is illegal. Since I’m not using the technically incorrect titles of ‘theft,’ ‘felony,’ ‘criminality,’ there is no hiding behind the misdirection.
You, my dear Evil Captor, are the only defender of copy violation who addresses this honestly.
To all the other ones who’ve avoided the charge that ‘it is illegal’ because they’re misdirectional arguments have been taken away: Fuck you, you cowards.
However, my gentle adversary, you yourself are still misdirecting. You take the parts of copyright law which may be too restrictive of creativity or too protective of copyright and condemn all of the legal protection of copyright. Let’s face it, there are clear violations and infringements of people’s intellectual and creative property… where is your outrage over that?
Oh, yes, the outrage must be caught up in wild demagoguery likening too restrictive copyright protection to wholesale violation of human rights. What an ass.
Generally, when one has read a thread like this in its entirety before responding, one builds on the discussion. When one responds to the OP alone, and in a knee-jerk and inflammatory manner, without seemingly understanding the discussion that has taken place, it’s generally a signal that one has not read the thread.
That’s all’s I’m saying.
And of course, if you chack back on the first page, you’ll discover that while I personally find copyright infringement morally and ethically unsound at best, I have been persuaded that it is not, strictly speaking, theft.
And I have plenty more subordinate clauses where those came from.
Fine. Then what are we discussing? If the artists who don’t want their work “appropriated” aren’t worth bothering with, (since there are so many who will be happy to have their works used in exchange for a royalty) then why discuss those who are difficult about giving permission? They aren’t interested, move along, move along. Don’t bitch because they won’t give permission, then.
I’m mostly with you there. Except I’ve gotten the impression that some people would feel that they’d have a case. Perhaps I’m wrong. I’d like to think I am.
God Forbid people have some “control” over their own work. :rolleyes:
They don’t have to tolerate it, because, at least to a certain extent, copyright protects them from it. If they knew that when they released their work to the public, any jerk or sleazeball could do whatever with it, many would resist releasing a lot of their work. People shouldn’t* have* to worry about wanton and widespread (without any legal penalty) “appropriation” of their work. If that was something they had to consider before publishing their work, once again, many people would be hesitant to release it at all.
Of course they would, which is what the teachers and lawyers at my art school taught us. They educated us in our rights under copyright, which can help protect us from the big corporations.
There’s some truth in this. The Internet has opened channels for me, and made things easier for me on several levels.
Yeah, but look at all the time it’s costing you in threads like this!
Regards, SA 
Santa called and he wants his elves back.
Well, in the post that prompted me to start this thread, you clearly implied that buying a bootleg copy of an out of print work was morally equivalent to breaking and entering a person’s home and taking their belongings. I called “bullshit,” and laid out an argument for why the two aren’t the same in many ways (has anyone responded to my scalper analogy?). I never claimed that the bootleg was legal; I claimed that it was not immoral, and that it was very much different, in this case, from copyright violations of works that are still in print and from which the creators are still profiting.
There are a lot of things that are illegal. That does not make them de facto immoral IMO, nor does it end the discussion in this case. What I’m pitting is your (and many others’) reaction to the suggestion of a minor infraction that I argue causes no harm: flying off the handle and comparing it to things that, aside from content industry talking points, it bears utterly no relation to.
Wow. Thanks for illustrating (yet again) my point about mindless spouting of copyright dogma. Or would you care to address any of the points I actually made?
FWIW, most of the posters in this thread have not been guilty of the behavior I was pitting; they have actually provided arguments!
My God, idiots who post to threads without reading them is becoming epidemic on this board.
Since you started this thread as a pitting of me, it might have piqued your interest to read what I posted in response, namely, I apologized for calling it theft but left the ‘illegal’ charge intact.
That’s a whole other debate, better left for GD.
But, as it stands, whether one agrees with it or not, whether one is lobbying for a change in the law, whether one thinks the law is moral… it is the law.
Asking for where bootlegs can be found is asking for how to break the law. Some of us agree with the law mostly. So, if you’re going to ask publicly how to break the law, don’t be surprised if one is criticized for it (or even reprimanded by the mods/admins for breaking the law of this board).
The only times I have ever posted to a thread without reading it in its entirety are the few times I accidentally did not notice that there was more than one page. I will admit that I didn’t pay too much attention to your apology in this thread, couched as it was in qualifiers and immediately undone with the following justification for your idiotic argument
Replace the word “THEFT” with any other crime that isn’t copyright violation, capitalized, and see how fucking absurd it would be to argue that they’re the same.
Congratulations! It’s illegal! We all agree! You’ve completely won the argument against all the people in this thread who were posting that copyright violation was legal.
“Dogma” has a specific meaning in religious doctrine, and a pejorative usage, neither of which are applicable here.
In point of fact, the common law crime of “theft” is “the appropriation to one’s own use of that to which one has no legal right” – and the tort of “conversion” is the non-criminal-law parallel to it.
Let’s see: I own the right to decide whether or not someone may use or reproduce a work created by myself or to which I have acquired title (as in, I’m a publisher who will copyright works in behalf of the authors I publish, having them assign me their copyright rights in exchange for renumeration).
You decide to make a copy of something to which I own the copyright.
You cannot demonstrate that you have a right to do so, because that right does not exist. Contrariwise, I have a guarantee in statute law that I control the right to use or reproduce that work of which you’ve made a copy.
How, exactly, does this differ from your taking something of mine to which you have no right, i.e., theft?
I suppose a technical case can be made that in statute law they are two separate crimes. So, at least in New York, is “theft of services” – does that mean you can therefore decide to tap into the power grid without paying, and that’s OK so long as you don’t get caught?
I really want to see your case here. If all you’re trying to do is a technical distinction, which is all that I’ve been able to get out of this thread so far, fine. But people don’t do Pit rants on technical distinctions. So what is your point.
The problem is while you argue that no harm is caused, you’re wrong. Your arguments to that effect were trashed within the first few posts and have now been pounded into the dirt for the last three pages. You haven’t even substantively responded to (let alone refuted) the arguments against the proposition.