Maybe not. Maybe I buy a lot more than most people who download music… or a lot less. I don’t know which, but neither do you.
I’ve been thinking of putting together a poll, where people can categorize their music as “downloaded but wouldn’t buy”, “downloaded, would buy song, wouldn’t buy CD”, “downloaded then bought”, “bought, regretted, would not have bought if I listened to it first”, etc.
An ordinary hammer is pretty unoriginal by now, and if either should be protected, clearly LotR is more deserving than the hammer. But I don’t think you want to get into comparing patents and copyrights - any movie, song, photo, or poem is protected nearly 10 times as long as any invention, no matter how original they are.
Nonsense! Legal and technical measures like copy protection, the DMCA, and lawsuits have nothing to do with morality.
I may not believe that artists’ ability to control distribution of their work deserves protection in the first place (that is a question of morality), but copy protection and the DMCA are not the best ways to protect that ability. They harm consumers more than they help artists, and if I had a choice between the laws and technical measures we have today, and other measures that made illegal copying absolutely impossible, but preserved consumers’ rights to enjoy the media and hardware they paid for, I’d gladly choose the latter.
So unless you have a cite that shows me claiming that the morality of file sharing depends on how it affects the artist’s bottom line, I expect you to retract your insinuation, and refrain from making false claims about my beliefs in the future.
That poll would contain automatic bias, because people who download don’t want to believe they are hurting others by what they do, they are as aware of the politics of the situation as much as you are, and so they will tend to answer in a particular way.
Clearly. Did you know this all along (what does that make you?) or are you just so stupid you actually thought your hammer argument meant something?
What is this? Some sort of second order red herring? Red herring spawn, I suppose. First you mouth of with some bullshit example using a hammer, then off the back of that you raise some total bullshit about the relative protections of patent as opposed to copyright as if I was the one who brought hammers into the argument in the first place.
The most worthy members of this board are able to defend their positions using reason. Some, such as yourself, simply spray out a wall of shit, hoping that no one will see through that to notice that inside is a turd.
Yada, yada yada. What does all this mean?
All from that other thread:
Someone else said:
To which you replied:
In other words downloading without buying should “give them pause” and will be “on their conscience” but since he is not harming anyone, he is at worst a cheapskate. Necessary implication: if it was harming someone, it would be significantly immoral.
But anyway, on reviewing that whole other thread what I noticed was that your position varies, in precisely the way I described earlier in this thread. You began by ferociously defending your position that there was nothing wrong with leaching because it did no harm to copyright holders.
Then you started to get cornered on that, and had to admit that actually, leaching did diminish copyright holder’s rights. So then you simply retreated to “I don’t care, it’s just not immoral to leach, so there”
And that’s where your bizarre position remains. You care desperately about the rights of the owners of physical property. The slightest inconvenience to a hardwarestore, the merest possibility that a concert venue owner might be put out, justify in your moral universe your position that any form of leaching from them is immoral.
But the total destruction of the ability of an IP holder to exploit their work is to you not immoral at all.
I understand your position. I just think it’s laughably inconsistent and commercially totally naive. I have nothing further to say to you except I can’t help but twist the knife on this:
For the third frickin’ time, you were going to tell me how entertainers were going to make money without selling copyable IP. So far you’ve come up with a scheme for musicians who can play live. When am I going to get your proposals for the rest of the entertainment industry, particularly movies?
Hmmm, nobody picked up on my comparison of various copyright and patent laws with the Enclosure Acts. Strangely enough, though, they are going on and on confusing legality with morality. Buncha’ Mammon worshippers I guess.
“Stan Liebowitz (2003) tries to assess the effect of online piracy on the music industry. He
looks at a 30-year time series of sales in the U.S. record industry using numbers by the **RIAA
(Recording Industry Association of America) **until 2002.”
Nice, unbiased source for his data.
I think I’ll call Dean’s campaign headquarters to see if he’s the best candidate. Whatcha think they’ll say?
Balle_M you dill, the part of the paper that you quote is from the literature review (ie it is describing the work other people have done in the field).
Bagkitty, the reason no one has picked up your comparison with the Enclosure Acts is that it is too silly to bother with. If you care to set out in point by point form what the salient similarities are, I will take pleasure in pointing out where you’re going wrong.
Well then, what a nice catch-22 you’ve set up. The only people who know which files they would’ve bought are the downloaders themselves, and you refuse to believe a word they say. I guess you’ll never know how file sharing affects their purchases.
You were the one comparing hammers to Hollywood blockbusters, buddy. I chose two creations of about the same originality.
Exactly what I wrote. There’s a dictionary at www.m-w.com if you need any help.
First off, that’s describing a different situation: “download[ing] copyrighted material that he knows he would buy at face value if it weren’t available for free”. I would argue that most files people download are the ones they wouldn’t buy at face value if they weren’t available for free (at least not without trying them out first), but of course you refuse to consider that possibility.
Second, you must have missed this part of the quote: “He isn’t harming anyone by choosing not to buy a product when he can use it for free at no cost to anyone else.” Doesn’t say “… as long as he buys it later”. If he were taking something away from them, rather than making a copy of it (which can do no more than dimish their market, in the worst case), then it would be stealing, they would be harmed, and it would be immoral. The quote does not show any change in my position.
shrug I don’t think that ability is being destroyed, because I don’t think it requires a monopoly. But even if it did become entirely unprofitable for anyone to sell information (content, intellectual property, whatever you want to call it), I wouldn’t consider that immoral. You got that part right.
After you retract the false accusations you’ve made against me. You can use your imagination until then; imagination seems to be the only support for what you’ve claimed about my beliefs, so I know yours is working fine.
It’s not a catch-22 I have to worry about. I side with the sensible majority that says it is utterly obvious that most people who leach stuff most of the time aren’t also going to buy what they have already obtained free of charge, even if they would have if they had no other option but to do so to get what they want. If you want to prove some other bizarre position, up to you to do so. If you can’t do so, well too bad, how sad.
From earlier (first time hammers mentioned):
I’d give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest that maybe you have a short memory, only this bullshit of yours happens too often for it to be an accident. There is no avoiding the conclusion that you are a lying sack of shit
Clap clap, you can string irrelevant words together. Big deal.
You’ve lost the plot. You are once again affirming that your position is that if there was any harm to the copyright holder, you would consider it immoral, but because there is no harm it is not immoral. It is precisely this position that I accused you of having, but which accusation you are presently indignantly demanding that I retract.
What a surprise… you still have no evidence that my position has changed, and now you have to resort to claiming that my quote meant something other than it actually did. You choose to call it “harm” when someone makes a copy without paying for it (before or after copying), but you should know by now that I don’t, and didn’t in that thread.
The difference between my original hammer metaphor and the strawman you came up with is clear from context. I was comparing the pattern of bits and the size as attributes (it’s as ludicrous to say I own a pattern of bits as to say I own a size) and you were comparing the complexity of attributes (I can own this one because it’s complex and original, but you can’t own that one because it isn’t).
Speaking of lying sacks of shit, I’ll have to bookmark this thread; it’s a prime example of your tactics of putting words in my mouth and lying about my positions. Thanks for making your dishonesty so obvious.
Go ahead and retract that accusation if you want to continue this discussion. If not, well, it’s been a blast.
You have lost the plot. I know you do not consider copying to be harmful. That is not the point.
This all started when I said:
To which you replied.
There is no single post where you have said that. But it is a conclusion open to be made by combining several aspects of your position.
Firstly, it is your position that leaching is not immoral because it is not harmful to copyright owners, the obvious inverse of which must be that if it was harmful, leaching would be immoral.
Secondly, when blowero earlier contended that leaching was harmful, you said no, it’s more complex than that, as if complexity was some sort of complete answer to blowero’s point.
Conclusion, you think that complexity leads to lack of harm which leads to morality.
There is no need for me to retract anything.
Sure you were. Let’s have it again:
That is what you said. You compared CD’s with hammers
Subsequently, when your comparison had gone all to shit, you said:
You did not qualify your comparison in any way (ie you did not limit yourself to CD’s consisting of white noise or something stupid). So there are only two possibilities. Firstly, you actually think that a CD of Beethoven has “the same originality” has “a hammer of a certain size” (ie you have lost all sense of reality and proportion) or you are a sack of shit who thought he could get away with a a Big Lie strategy.
Your call.
Very convenient that you have found a way to get all indignant and leave the discussion at just the point that I have put to you a question that you can’t answer.
Gee, how amazing it is to see you continue to dodge a perfectly valid question. Is that the best you can do? I, for one, am all anticipation, awaiting your answer.
Or are you going to continue to avoid answering the question?
My favourite example of this is the South Park movie. It’s rated R in the US, 18 in Ireland, 15 in the UK and so on in most countries. In Sweden it was rated 7 years and older.
Actually, Mr. 2001, I’d be very interested in your answer to Princhester’s question, as well. Since I have neither insulted you nor misrepresented your position (I still don’t even have 100 posts hereabouts; I don’t think I’ve had the chance to insult anyone yet!), would you be willing to answer it from me instead?
The thing is, I am a professional writer by trade, and have been a fervent supporter of existing IP laws for the simple reason that without them, I’d have no way of getting paid for my efforts - anyone to whom I showed my work would be free to reprint it, modify it, do almost anything to it they wished, without my permission and without paying me. Absent such protection, I would probably be working in a very different field. Without IP laws, how would I go about getting paid for my work? What of, as Princhester asks, filmmakers?
Sorry for the delay… I’ve been busy with some computer upgrades that are still in progress, so I’ll make this quick.
One business model that may work for both filmmakers and authors is sponsorship. It already exists in movies and TV - six feet from my desk, there’s a sticker sheet commemorating Reese’s Pieces’ appearance in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. Sponsorship doesn’t have to mean product placement, though; it could mean incorporating a sponsor’s themes into your work, or even just selling ad space on screen or along the bottom of a page.
Another model is serialization. You give away the first chapter, then ask people to pay you to write the next one. When you’ve collected a certain amount, you release the second chapter, and so on. Stephen King tried something similar a few years ago and gave up, but I believe it could still work.
That sounds simply awful. Just what movies need—more blatant commercialism. And do you think that sponsorship will be able to single-handedly fund these several million dollar blockbusters (like LOTR)? Obviously product placement is pretty much out with a film like LOTR.
So you think that filmmaking in general would be improved by big banner ads streaming at the bottom of the screen, all through the movie? This is a good idea to you?
How will that work for non-fiction, or poetry? And what about certain kinds of novels which don’t “translate” well to the serial format? They’ll just never get funded, right?
You surely must realize that these solutions are very limited and certainly will not enable the vast majority of filmmakers or writers to still earn a living, or fund their works.
A hint, Mr2001: My question is how, without selling copyable IP, could certain existing and very popular artforms make money. My question is not how, without selling copyable IP, could certain very limited types of inferior, commercialised, degraded, advertisements-masquarading-as-entertainment make money.
