MP3s. . . Cable descramblers. . . Care to witness?

Great Debates
21

manhattan wrote

Amen. A simple look at IP as a % of all assets over time is a pretty clear indicator of this.

WhiteNight wrote

WhiteNight, the problem is you’re looking in the wrong book. The dictionary definition is irrelevant. You should be looking in law books. And theft of Intellectual Property is theft. This isn’t some silly opinion, as you state. It’s codified law, and accepted pretty universally around the world.

Your acting on that value system makes you a thief plain and simple. The only remaining issue is whether you feel guilt. And you’re pretty insistent that you don’t.

22

Sheesh. You sound like one of those fundies who claims that evolution is “only” a theory because of how the dictionary defines “theory.”

To my knowledge, you have said nowhere on these boards that you yourself misappropriate intellectual property, and I therefore can not and will not call you personally a thief. So candidly, I don’t understand your stubbornness on this issue. Because it seems to me that only a thief would try to assuage one’s guilt by claiming that stealing is somehow not theft in the face of the evidence presented. With Black’s Law Dictionary, the title of several state statutes, and I dare say even the titles of the statutes of your country disagreeing with you, I submit that you are perhaps the only person in the free world who can read the facts and still maintain that stealing intellectual property does not make one a thief. C’mon, Blacks made up a new term to make things more clear for Ghod’s sake! Feel free to argue until you’re blue in the face (fingers?) that stealing shouldn’t equal theft, and that statutes should be reworded to reflect that. Heck, argue if you want that “all information should be free” or whatever it is that the cyber-commie-hacker community is spouting these days. But for now, it is theft and it is illegal. The only “emotional charge” here is by you, so upset that the legal systems of our countries refuse to submit to your tortured definition of theft that you throw around words like “liar” to compensate. Speaking of which…

If you intend to continue to call me a liar, something you have done more than once, please do so in the Pit, so that I may respond appropriately. For now, I’ll simply say that I believe that I have made the case that stealing equals theft and that at this point you’re simply whining about being proven demonstrably wrong beyond any doubt whatsoever.

Apparently, “anyone” can not be made to understand. But I’m willing to be proven wrong on this point. It’s up to you. Prove me wrong. Prove billehunt wrong. Renounce, here, today, in this very forum, the practice of misappropriating intellectual property. Of any kind. Call it theft or not; my give-a-crap factor about what you call it will actually drop off a whole lot if you will simply spread the word to stop stealing.

23

Someone committed theft and stole a slash from one of my UBB codes. Stick this one / in the right place, please.

24

And I should look to a law book for a definition of non-legal language? The language existed before the law books.

Give it up. The dictionary defines language, the law books define law. If this is a law discussion, the law books are relevant. It’s not. This is a semantics discussion and the dictionary is the authority.

And your insistence on something untrue makes you stupid. Your refusal to learn makes you ignorant.

See, anyone can throw insults. But they don’t change reality.

I really don’t care what you think, because as long as you’re wrong, you’re irrelevant. And as long as you disagree with the proven authority on the subject and are unable to provide any relevant new information, you’ll be wrong.

Over what, not agreeing that a law is the same as morals?

I’ll feel guilty if I think my actions hurt others. If I don’t feel that they do, I won’t feel guilty.

Whine about that if you like, but if the law defines your morals you’re a pathetic follower and a danger to your fellow man. All you need is a law saying “—s are no longer considered human” and you’d happily kill them, guilt free. I analyze my actions, and I don’t accept anyone else’s moral authority.

I think you’re dangerous… The phrase “but I was just following orders” could easily come from your mouth.

25

Hmm… so the fact every thing you steal hurts everyone else besides you doesent hurt anyone. Corporations dont just shrug off the profit loss, they charge more to make up for people stealing.

Lets put it another way. Would you be willing to write a 400 page book and give it away after publishing it? I think not :slight_smile:

Or for a closer example, if you spent 20 days on a song would you be willing to put it on a homesite so everyone could get it for free after selling it?

Thief. :slight_smile:

26

Asmodean brings up a good point.

I’m an artist, and while none of my work will make millions, occasionally someone has published one of my portraits or illustrations in a private, small publication. I always copyright my work - put the © by my name - and it is MINE. It is MY choice only to give permission to who gets to publish it, in what context it is published. Now, obviously, people are not breaking down my door to publish my work, but I have heard of a few instances where (supposedly) someone published something of mine without telling me. And yeah, I was pissed. It’s not a good feeling.

WhiteNight - do you write, do artwork - make music? Would you like this done to you?
(Yeah, I know I have an MP3 site, but I think my site is pretty low-key, is not taking any revenue from the artist(s), and is actually promoting and encouraging people to buy the artist(s’) work. And I’m putting up mostly excerpts of out-of-print music. I feel like I’m more like a library! ;))

Polydactyl Cats Unlimited
“A Cat Cannot Have Too Many Toes”

27

WhiteNight wrote

Completely, entirely 100% irrelevant.

Please re-read my quote. I picked the words carefully. I did not say that you, WhiteNight are a thief. I said that acting on the value system that you espouse makes you a thief. If you don’t act on that value system you are not.

I refuse to stoop to your level and dignify your extensive name calling. Frankly, it really makes you look silly.

And, the two facts that a) you bring nothing relevant to the discussion in the way of references or expertise, and b) you accuse people who have brought references and expertise of their lack makes you look sillier.

Semantics. Hmmmm. The nations of the world, with overwhelming support of the people of the world have defined in clear-cut, non-ambiguous language that intellectual property is real property, like land or money or cows, and that the act of using intellectual property against the wishes of it’s owner is theft.

Again, the only question that remains is if you feel guilt.

28

I don’t think that’s a very good argument. Just because doing something harms someone’s business doesn’t make it wrong. If everyone decided to stop driving cars that would destroy the car companies but does that mean it’s wrong?

29

Konrad wrote

True. My point was that the cost isn’t hypothetical to those of us on the receiving end of IP theft.

As I say, that’s not my argument, but there is plenty of good argument I’ve made in above posts.

30

WhiteNight wrote

Gee, could you come just a little closer to calling me a Nazi.

31

Wow. I missed a couple days. Manhattan, on 4-10, you gave a great post that started “::sigh::”, and I’d like to respond. At great length. (Your opinion is one I can respect, even if I don’t agree.)

Here’s where I’m coming from. I’m a big fan of NegativLand. If you don’t know anything about them, you should find out as much as you can (imho). Like them, I support a revamping of copyright laws, for 2 reasons.

(1) Copyright law is not enforced. People buy lots and lots of blank tapes every year (I don’t remember the stats, but it’s a big number), and they’re not being used for dictation. As you yourself said, downloading MP3s is so easy, people don’t feel guilty about it. And it’s bad to foster an environment where laws are routinely broken. People quit respecting the law in general when the law says it’s “wrong” to do things that most reasonable people don’t think of as “wrong.” If there were a law on the book claiming it’s “wrong” to juggle on Sundays, and you had people running around chastizing Sunday jugglers, saying “That’s wrong! It’s illegal, just like murder!”, then you’d get widespead disrespect for the law. Heck, this weekend, I was at a friend’s house who has an illegal MP3 server set up. He wired some LEDs to flash on whenever a download is made, and they hang on his wall. We sat on the couch and watched their hypnotic blinking for a few minutes (several blinks a second), and he said “every time that light flashes, I’m breaking the law.” See how ridiculous that is? Data is being transfered across a wide area network. Blink blink. Songs are being distributed in the most simple and popular method. Blink blink. No one is getting hurt. Neither the artists (generally) nor the listeners object.

Now the solution is sometimes to crack down on law-breakers, and sometimes to modify the law to be more in touch with the people’s understanding of what’s right and wrong. I’d say this case begs for the latter, for the reason that intellectual “theft” for private use is culturally ingrained as being acceptable. And there’s another reason as well, and it’s the second reason I think copyright law should be reformed.

(2) Current copyright law hurts the artist. There is no longer the possibility of folk music in America. There’s music that calls itself “folk”, but to take someone else’s song, play your own version of it, and let the song be passed from person to person (which is what defines “folk” music) is impossible now due to copyright. If I hold copyright on a tune, I own it, regardless of how silly it seems on face value to claim ownership of music. Now that music can be owned, it’s not usually owned by the authors, but by the distributers, the record companies, those who handle the business end and not the artistic end of music. You rarely see artists upset by MP3’s, because it doesn’t hurt them. It only upsets those who claim “ownership”, and they neither create nor enjoy (necessarily) the music they “own”.

All music is stolen in one sense or another. As Chumbawumba sang, “You can’t write a song that’s never been sung.” Music is like smells or feelings or other intangibles. It isn’t natural to think of owning it.

Okay, okay. So I think Copyright law should be changed. But it’s not. IP theft is still theft. True. So why do I listen to MP3’s, when it’s against the law?

Because I don’t think the law is right. Most people don’t respect that law, and I think it’s because it isn’t worthy of our respect. The more it’s openly broken, the more it will become obvious that that law is ridiculous, and needs to be changed.

(As to how I would change copyright law, that’s another topic, and this post is long enough already. Suffice it to say I understand that we still need the incentive to create new music.)

Thoughtfully,
Your Quadell

32

Are you sure about that?

I am an artist. I create images and put them on the web. Once they’re there, anyone can take them without my permission. I don’t think it’s right for them to do so.

You may say, it doesn’t hurt me, since maybe these people wouldn’t have ever bought my art anyhow. But someone who likes my art, and would have paid for it…if they can get it for free, why should they pay me, ever? I can create art for the fun of it, yes; but if I want to make a living at this I need to be able to say “this is mine, and you can’t use it unless you pay me.”

I used to have pirated MP3 on my computer. I deleted 'em. A friend of mine gave me access to a private server with hundreds of MP3’s. I’ve never even looked at it. I’m not trying to paint myself as a saint; I don’t lecture all my friends about their MP3 collections. But not denying another artist a commission seems the very least I can do without being hypocritical if I get upset when someone takes my art without paying or asking. Can those of you who have hundreds or thousands of MP3s truly say that you would have never bought the CDs if you couldn’t get all those songs for free? And if you would have bought those songs, and thereby given the artist a commission, how can you say that you’re not hurting anybody by your actions?

You’re allowed to take a song and parody it, or use it as a jumping-off point for your own. But would you want to spend months on a song, only to have someone else re-record your exact song as soon as you play it and make the money that could have been yours? Or simply record your performance and sell that?

The site you linked to says that not allowing artists to re-use and re-record music is hampering creativity. But I don’t see how this can be used to justify pirated MP3’s; you’re not making art with the songs, you just find it convenient to have the song without having to pay for it. Nor do they seem to agree with pirating MP3s in their suggestions for revision of copyrights:

“This would fully protect the owner’s undisputed right not to be bootlegged, and it’s NOT difficult to determine! Think of any past or present examples of unauthorized bootlegging, and any past or present examples of artistic appropriation, and you will find it is always perfectly obvious which is which. The difference between any kind of fragmentary transformation of existing work, and the unmanipulated presentation of whole works by others, which is required for successful bootlegging, would be as clear to courts and jurys as it is to us.”

Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that She is pink; logically, we know She is invisible because we can’t see Her.

33

Thanks for responding, quadell. An honest disagreement is a whole lot more fun than banging one’s head against the wall. NegativLand was an interesting site, but I only have had the chance to look at it briefly. I’ll take a closer look this weekend if [unrelated job rant] someone can get the companies I cover to stop having freakin’ unexpected financial crises for a day or two. [/job rant]

But I do want to reply specifically to some of the points you raise.

You ain’t kidding! The music industry has always had a problem with blank tapes for precisely the reasons you mentioned; they lost that battle IIRC. But a few points have to be made. First, there are other uses for tapes, and many people engage the tapes for dictation, recording of one’s own speeches, etc. Second, the law does recognize one of the major ways that people use tapes. It is fair use to record one’s purchased albums for personal use. That is, once you own the album, it’s OK to have a copy for your car. Third, even in the case of a pirated tape, there is some marginal investment in stealing it (the tape itself). Most importantly, most people would not intentionally purchase a pirated tape. So yes, it’s pretty easy to steal with tapes, but most people don’t because they know it’s wrong. I submit that that attitude does not yet exist for internet-based forms of theft, or even for normal software. (I swear, the next person who asks to “borrow” my TurboTax CD-ROM…)

I disagree with this. Using your folk example, I daresay you misunderstand how the music industry works. As Gaudere points out, once someone publishes a song in sheet music form, it is completely legal for the next artist to perform the song any way s/he sees fit. There are conditions. First, s/he must pay a royalty to the original artist. Second, s/he may not republish the music using the new interpretation without the original author’s permission.

You’re right about the recording most often being owned by a studio rather than the author. But the song almost always stays with the artist. One of the reasons that I’m such a zealot on the copyright thing is that I firmly believe that if we can resolve the issue in a way that ensures that owners get paid, more and more musicians will be freed from the studio system and able to own both the recording and the music. This, I submit, will encourage the creation of more and better intellectual property. (My point holds for other forms of intellectual property, but since we’re talking about music, I have decided to stick to that for now.) I suggest that the reason one seldom sees artists complaining about MP3’s is that under the current system they are either not harmed or not badly harmed. But as the technology spreads, sometime there will be an artist with top-10 radio airplay but only 200K units moved and large arenas unwilling to book the act because there is no album-sales history and no chance of ancillary merchandise sales. Then I rather think artists’ attitudes will change.

I am pleased to hear that Chumbawumba did a song besides that annoying whiskey/vodka/beer song. :wink:

Whilst I believe that civil law is the least worst arbiter of how we should conduct ourselves, I also firmly believe that each of us has to make our own moral decisions about which laws to follow (subject, of course, to us not whining about it when we get caught). I didn’t used to obey the drug laws, I jaywalk, and [more serious law violations deleted until the statute of limitations has expired]. What I hope to do is convince people that this law is right until such time as a consensus develops on exactly what should be done about all this easy access to intellectual property.

34

well, one author on an instructional technology list i was on did just that. the publisher evidently got all the money they thought they could out of the book (it was a year old, i think), and the publisher gave up the rights to it. so the author let anyone d/l it who wanted to.

oh yeah. ** quadell **, i love you.

have you ever heard of Escape Mechanism? the cd is great, and i think his page is at http://www.detritus.net everything on it is ‘recycled’, from beatles to bert and ernie…

for people like escape mechanism and other artists who sample anything and everything, many times they don’t make money off of their work. they either distribute mp3s, or sell their cds for $6 or less.

35

Wow, a real debate! Good, meaty responses. I’m leaving work now, but Gaudere, Manhattan, and Ubermench, IOU a response when I get a chance.

Your Quadell

36

I look at things like this/most anything you buy these days is overpriced. Not all but most. I think if prices were more reasonable then I would have more of a problem with it then I do. I always think about cars and there costs. If you take a care and melt it down how much does the raw product cost.?

Now i understand about production costs and such but somwhere along the line somone is getting skrewed and somone else is sitting on a huge pile o’ money somwhere.

The thing that bothers me is it’s not just the cunsumers that get skrewed but the people who actually make the product er service. I don’t mind spending money but that’s different then throwing away witch is what producers of products and service want. If I could get free cable I probably would.

37

Sorry to bring this thread back up before quadell gets a chance to respond, but I just had to share this unconfirmed anecdote I heard last week. I was at an investor presentation for 360 Communications, Inc, which used to be known as Worldwide Fiber. CEO Greg Maffei (the former Microsoft CFO and strategic investments guy) said that 60% of the bandwidth usage on college campuses is used for transmission of MP3 files.

And while I certainly believe that a person schooled at Microsoft is in favor of strong protection of intellectual property rights, now that he’s a bandwidth salesman, he didn’t sound too unhappy about it. (In fairness, he was talking broadly about new uses for all the damn bandwidth being built and only mentioned the MP3 stuff as an illustrative aside.)