And also, I have the confidence that someone with more business savvy than I will think of a clever way to fund music, even without copyright. I mean, humans can think of some pretty weird ways to market entertainment, e.g. the technology for TV transmissions was scarcely out before someone got the idea of delivering advertisements to people by interspersing them with entertaining shows (I realize that this idea didn’t arise ex nihilo, but nothing ever really does). While people are right in pointing out that pure altruism is not going to successful and that government funding (gah!) would be a horrible way of going about it, those aren’t the only possible options.
The way I look at it, Lemur866, if society in general benefits from having X, and X is something that one single individual cannot create alone, then society should see that the creation of X is established, enabled, protected, or encouraged.
X could be “roads.” We all benefit from roads, but no one person or company could afford to build them all. X could be “an army.” X could be “science.” X could be “sports.”
We promote roads by collecting taxes, giving government the power to acquire land, and hiring construction crews. We promote armies by offering scholarships and building bases. We promote science by building universities, establishing a scientific community, and protecting patent rights. We promote sports by establishing physical education programs in schools.
Art and music cannot be created by a single person alone. It takes an artistic community. Writers read; musicians listen to music; artists look at art; actors watch actors act, and so on.
What is the difficulty in seeing that the creators are paid for their efforts? If we (as a society) discourage an environment where creators get paid, those creators will go somewhere that they do get paid. We would never allow (for instance) nuclear physicists or inventors to defect to another country to build bombs for the Other Side. Why should we not value artists?
You may value roads, but I may not. What gives you the right to use force to compel me to fund your roads, a product I do not want? Why should the government spend money to fund the NFL? Should they spend your money to fund, say, Hannah Montana or gangster rap? The only exception I find is the army, police, and courts: if those are not provided by a neutral entity with a monopoly on that service that everyone contributes to, then there is no incentive to respect others’ rights to property, life, etc.
Granted, we can’t dismantle all of these public services at once; that would disrupt the foundations of the economy and cause a collapse while things sort themselves out.
But on a different level I do agree with you. Yes, “society” should see to it that these things are done, but “society” not a synonym for “government”, the fundamental difference being that “society” does not have the ability to force you to comply by use of arms.
I hereby declare that I would prefer for creators to be paid for their efforts. We should value artists.
The problem is in figuring out a fair way to do so.
Once upon a time copyright was an imperfect but pretty good system for doing so. That time is now over. We need another system for compensating creators, because copying is so easy that restrictions on copying are impossible to enforce, and since they are impossible to enforce and widely flouted that means creators today are routinely not being compensated for their creations.
The system is broken. Loudly demanding that people stop pirating music is not going to fix the system, if it would work I’d be in favor of it, but since it won’t work it doesn’t make sense. If we could rely on everyone following their conscience to stop piracy copyright restrictions wouldn’t be needed, we could just ask everyone to follow their conscience and mail the creator fifteen bucks every time they copied a CD. Since no one believes that asking people to voluntarily pay every time they make a copy will work, neither will asking people to voluntarily stop copying.
Yes, if everyone does it then it makes professional music impossible, and therefore nothing new for pirates to copy. That doesn’t mean it’s rational for each pirate to stop copying, it’s a classic example of the tragedy of the commons where everyone’s individual self-interest means the destruction of the resource and nothing for anyone. We used to have a mechanism that prevented this, but the mechanism is lying on the floor twitching and thrashing. It doesn’t work and insisting it MUST work or artists won’t get fairly compensated won’t make it work. We need something else, whatever that may be.
it tells me that this again, is only a discussion about the margins and your beliefs are no different than 99% of the rest of us… no better no worse and no different. Nobody wants the government to do nothing. Nobody wants the government to do everything. Its only a minor discussion about the margins.
There is no philosophy at work here. Only practical limits of government and the citizenry.
Because society perceives a value. For instance, in the case of roads, roads enable internal movement of military forces and supply lines in the event of invasion; roads promote economic growth; roads enable movement of police and fire vehicles. The cost to maintain a system of roads so a fire engine can reach your neighborhood is perceived to be less than the cost of your entire neighborhood burning down.
In the case of the NFL, the government doesn’t specifically have an interest in that form of sports, but it does want a healthy populace. Healthy people cost the healthcare system less money; healthy people work longer, thus producing taxes; healthy people can be drafted into the military in time of need.
That is the job of government: to balance cost, benefit, duty, freedom, and need.
Only in that government is a tool wielded by society. If society wills there to be art, how do we wield government to make it so?
Art created by a corporation is a “commercial.” Art created by a government is “propaganda.” If we want art that speaks to the people, then the people must pay for it, yes?
No, that’s approaching the problem from the wrong direction. The government is not a tool wielded by society to make Cool Stuff Happen, but a device to keep people in line and from violating each other’s rights using force when all other options have been exhausted.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: Who makes up the corporations? Our new insectoid overlords?
While one can certainly argue that copyrights have the purpose of protecting a persons creativity and allowing them to continue to be creative, it can also be argued that copyrights can in many cases protect their rights far too much.
Consider an electrician, who uses his creativity and training to wire a house in a novel and creative way. He does a good job, is proud of it, the clients are happy, and he gets his paycheck, then is off to the next job.
Consider Harper Lee, who used her creativity and training to write the novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, and subsequently coasted for the rest of her life off of earnings from this novel, never publishing another book.
Something seems wrong here. If a band is talented, then they should be able to make a decent living playing gigs. If a writer is talented, they should be able to make a decent living writing new books. If an electrician is talented, they should be able to make a decent living wiring new houses. Doctors don’t get to copyright creative new procedures.
Now, I’m not a total chump, and I can recognize the need for some limited period of exclusivity, most especially for creative works that cannot be performed live and have monstrous production costs(movies and games come to mind), but something more like 3-5 years, instead of 50 or 90 or whatever it is.
CUtter
are you somehow objecting to Harper Lee being able to make money off this one book for an extended length of time?
In principle, what does it matter if she gets paid for a week, or a year, or thirty years or more? If she is legally entitled to the money, what does her further literary output have to do with it?
I could care less if people want to give her money. I care about being unable to legally copy a decades old book.
She shouldn’t be legally entitled to control the copying of a decades old book she wrote.
ETA: Blindly stating something is wrong is irritating, and unlikely to convince anyone of your position. I would recommend either making a case for it being wrong, or not bothering saying what your personal irrationalities are.
He has the right to state his opinion about what copyright law should be. And so do you, and so do I.
Intellectual property is a slippery concept, so expecting it to work exactly like tangible property is misguided. If Harper Lee owns a car, she can do what she wants with it. But “To Kill a Mockingbird” isn’t a car, it isn’t even a book, it’s a particular arrangement of words.
We are not talking about merely stating an opinion. I could not care less about someone merely stating an opinion.
What we are talking about is a group of people who violate the law and use their own violation of the law as proof that the law does not work and needs change.
That is a far different thing that blowing off some hot air about what you think. It is action and advocation for further action that will harm others.
The fact is that Harper Lee owns that particular arrangement of words known as TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. And under the law she is entitled to certain rights and protections because of that fact. When anyone comes along and says they sould be able to copy her book outside of the law, you are placing your right to that action above the legal right of Harper Lee as seen by the law of the land.
What gives anyone the right to do that? What gives anyone the right to institute a system to deprive Ms. Lee of the rights that flow from the legal ownership of her property that she produced legally under the law of the land?
The proof the law doesn’t work is that it is unenforceable, not that I violate it.
ETA: Regarding “That is a far different thing that blowing off some hot air about what you think. It is action and advocation for further action that will harm others.” No one is advocating copyright infringement. Doing so would violate board rules. We are advocating changing the law, which may or may not harm people, that is up to debate.
Ms. Lee’s rights derive from a system of law that the people implemented. It can be changed, or completely removed, by the people. I/we are simply arguing that said system should be changed/dismantled. Our ability to do this is, basically, democracy. I’m not sure what is complicated about this.
A lot of posters seem concerned that falling or even zero record sales will mean that musicians will struggle to earn as much as they do now.
However, it’s my impression (and I’d be happy for anyone to correct me, if I’m wrong) that few musicians make a good living from record sales alone. Record sales have been in free-fall for a long time (and this started long before the filesharing issue came up), and anyway artists typically receive only about 8% of the cost of a CD in the shops.
My understanding is that the really wealthy artists get wealthy through touring, licensing music, personal appearances, endorsing products etc.
So it may well be the case that it would be business-as-usual even if all music were free.
This isn’t a moral argument about filesharing of course.
OK, I can see that music could survive w/o record sales and we may just see the end of physical musical artifacts, with music being available solely for download (though of course one could burn one’s own CD’s for yourself and a friend. Music will survive on a much more amateur DIY level. I don’t think this needs to be a bad thing, though it will be different. The famous musician may become obsolete.
What about movies? (Something that for me, personally, is more important these days than music.) The local band down the street can pay out of pocket for instruments and recording time, and symphonies are pretty much supported by government/wealthy donors already. But to make a good movie, you need a lot of money. It’s my understanding that theatrical showings are a break even propostition with most profit coming from DVD sales. So what do you all think the future of film will be, when it’s impossible to make a profitable big budget film?
It’s true that the real profit in the music industry is in playing gigs, but only because those are private enterprises separate from the recording contract. The question is, how do you get a lucrative personal appearance as (for instance) a writer, if everybody steals your books? If you have no legal recourse to some jackass lifting your manuscript at the publisher and putting it out under his own name?
I think this is a false argument. No offense, but the newness of the work doesn’t automatically make the law more enforceable. It is entirely irrelevant. Arguably, the older a work is, the longer it has been available to the public, the easier it is to recognize.
The most important period of a new work is right before and after release. As with patents, you want to protect the ability of the creator to register his work as his own, and grant him the ability to profit from it — after all, like inventions, some works are costly to produce, and if the creator cannot sell it, he cannot recoup his costs.
In my opinion, copyright law is now structured to protect corporate middlemen more than the artists themselves. In particular: in order to protect your copyright, you must mount a vigorous legal challenge to all violations. What artist can afford that? Also: profits can be extracted 75 years after the death of the creator, but you can file for extensions almost indefinitely. Obviously this profits giants like Disney (who themselves blatantly steal stories from folklore and fairy tales, but heaven forbid anyone steal from them).
We may be approaching the kind of technology that will utterly remove the middlemen from the scenario. The Internet may make it possible for artists and authors to publish directly to their audiences at a greater profit (to themselves) and without expensive markups and middlemen. (In truth we would be exchanging one kind of middleman — the record company — for another one, the ISP.) It’s possible that if it were structured properly, more artists would have greater access to audience than before.
We will not have the technology to police it, unless people are willing to abide by it.
I have participated in many discussion like this over serveral years and on many different board. And, in the end, it all pretty much comes down to “I want it - I know how to get it, and I will no matter what some old fashioned out of date law says”.
Here is the latest
Go back to step one please: If you did not violate the law nobody would have to enforce it. You are using your and others illegal actions in breaking the law to justify why the law itself is broken. That defies commons sense and all logic.
Again, you are citing how simple it is to violate copyright law as proof by your own actions and others here and elsewhere. You do not have to advocate anything other than what you already support and have done. You want the law changed so you can take what you want without paying for it in the proper way to enrich yourself and deny others their rightful share.
Just look at the title of this thread. The words “COPYRIGHT VIOLATION: or THEFT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY” are not to be found because they imply a negative meaning. Instead we get the warm and fuzzy “filesharing”. Ahhhh, isn’t that cute? “Sharing is good right boys and girls. Bobby, you should share your toys with Sally. There - good boy.”
Its designed to be positive when it is actually you appropriating something which you have no legal right to. So you have no right to “share” what is not yours in the first place.
Ms. Lee’s rights, and everyone else covered by the law, comes from a mandate to Congress contained in the original section of the US Constitution. That is how important it was considered.
You are right that the people can change the law. Here is a news flash for you… outside of these discussions, mostly among young techies without much money, I see precious little political will to change the law in this reagard. Quite the opposite. You should be afraid that the system will indeed hear your complaint about the law not being easty to enforce. I strongly suspect that before we give you what you want under your Christmas tree like a free present from Santa, the government will find a way to bring the hammer of Thor down upon your head in an effort to make those laws much more enforcable.