Nope. And all this concern about intellectual property is interesting from a man whose username is infringing on a trademark. 
Disagreed on all counts. Once a work has been publicized, it is a part of history. However the creator feels about it in years to come, they should not be able to simply white-wash the past and say it never happened. I am not saying they’re required to promote the work, mind you - simply saying that piracy of a work that the creator is purposefully withholding is entirely justified.
And there’s a legitimate tension there, and no good legal framework I can think of would resolve it to my satisfaction. Namely :
[ul]
[li]You have the right to profit from your work.[/li][li]Everyone else has the right to be able to access that work.[/li][/ul]
…why should everyone have the right to access work I’ve created?
They shouldn’t unless you’ve already released it to the public in some format. That is part of the argument that many of us make against certain aspects of copyright law in the digital age. “Copies” of things are basically impossible to control any longer. The only sure-fire method is to not release something in the first place. Once it’s out, there really is no going back, and our law should reflect that practicality and not an abstract notion that suits our ethical senses. It is like making a law against the color green, or the bad old sodomy laws. It might feel nice to have them on the books, It might have been voted on and is all nice and legal,but there isn’t any way to enforce them fairly, if at all. Thant makes it bad law, and we waste time and resources enforcing it.
So instead of pounding our chests and crying until the pirates simply overwhelm us Again, why not have a realistic discussion?
So how do you deal with people making copies of work? For starters we take a hard look at how the content or intellectual property plays into the pay model. Is the consumer paying directly for content like a film or book? Is it promotional material like a television show? Is it visual art which needs to be protected against unauthorized reproduction for profit; or other material like music which can be complicated and cross many categories. Then we start to develop a policy which will provide protection to the creators while acknowledging the simple reality of the world.
So for content like visual art and music, we could start with a definition that any derivative work must be substantially and immediately recognizable as different, separate, and the individual work of a separate artist. No more drawing moustaches on someone elses’ photos and calling it your own work. Keep samples limited to a certain length etc… I would also suggest a sliding scale of time in this area. Privately held copyright by the artist should hold the longest, held by their estate after death much shorter, and one held by a record company not long at all. If we truly are interested in protecting artists then this is logical.
Film should remain basically where it is, though I would shorten the copyright time to 25 years. That is more than enough time for the studio to recoup it’s costs and provide a legitimate outlet to consumers to purchase a copy of their product. In the digital age there is no excuse for failing to provide this option as there is little to no cost in offering a digital file. No real overhead, manufacturing or shipping etc. I would also issue an order that any non-released material older than 35 years in age be provided for digital download. Hollywood had it’s chance for a good long time, and has failed miserably to deal with issue of piracy. Since piracy IS inevitable, providing a legitimate, paid, source of content is both ethically preferable and more economically feasible than clogging the courts up with absurd lawsuits for someone trying to find a lost film. This ought to free up resources to chase the real pirates down.
Authors should hold rights to their work for the length of their life. Their estate should be able to hold it a further 25 years, allowing that they, or their representatives provide a legitimate source, and then all rights are terminated. Post the death of an author *derivative *rights should fall into the public domain.
Promotional content like television shows and sporting events that air freely should have no protections other than the right against unauthorized reproduction for profit. They should have to show that the pirates are charging for copies. Outside of that, the content was distributed freely to the world and thus is part of our shared culture, regardless of how obscure or banal. If they want to protect their content then they should move to pay for content model like film.
The law reflects that practicality by making it explicit that it’s against the law to make unauthorized copies. If it was impossible to make copies, there would be no need for such a law. If laws were based on 100% compliance being possible, there would be no laws against anything.
Almost, but not quite. A good law ensures compliance over a large swath of the population; either through direct enforcement or through secondary controls in conjunction with the law. So when a physical copy was a necessity, the secondary control of having to produce an actual thing to trade kept piracy down. It was expensive and difficult to do that at home. Other controls included material costs, shipping issues, etc. Once that became fairly cheap and accessible, piracy exploded again. We saw it happen with cassette, VHS, CD, DVD, and currently digitally. Every time, the pirates won, because of a refusal on the part of large content producers and holders to work with new technology and face a changing business model.
Now anyone can make a copy of any media nearly instantly and trade or send it *anywhere *in the same amount of time. So the secondary control systems that inhibited piracy in past no longer exist. The law then is all that is left, but it is impossible to enforce it with any real effect on any percentage of the population as a whole.
Just because something is against the law doesn’t make it impossible, unethical or even difficult to do. A good law is necessary, fair, and enforceable. The current laws as written reflect none of those principles.
This makes no sense. Just because someone did something in the past doesn’t mean they owe it to you in perpetuity. If it did I’d have a list of ex’s I’d be banging every weekend.
Attitudes like that are just going to strengthen the movement on the part of content owners to license everything and sell nothing.
True, but you have to compare apples to apples. Content isn’t a “thing” or a “service”. It is an Idea. That is why we call it “intellectual property” in an effort to shoehorn into an easily understood legal box. The problem with that, is that ideas are transient, incorporeal, fleeting and are spread around uncontrollably. They affect and are affected by the people they come into contact with. That is how we learn from one another, share ideas, and form a culture. How can you take back the memory of a song, or the thoughts provoked by a film or book? You can’t. Even if it WAS possible to round up every copy of a given work and destroy it, *(as is your current legal right) *nothing can stop me or anyone else from singing the tune again once learned, or discussing or even re-creating the contents of the lost work. Once it’s out, that’s it; there isn’t any going back from it.
As long as we can communicate with one another we WILL spread information about creative work and generate the desire to experience what we were told about. That is the single biggest ethical issue in this debate. IP laws and the like, while necessary in some form to protect the creative rights of the creators, are antithetical to the way our culture works. As long as there is a need that is not being met legally, the pirates will exist. Does it not make more sense then to form laws that do the greatest good for society as whole rather than insisting on outdated, unenforceable legislation that is doomed to repeat the unlearned lessons of history?
Nonsense. If they want to make a living on their creative works, then they will have to sell a certain amount of work. Otherwise all work will be by definition created for the private consumption of the creator. As a creative type myself, I can tell you that none of the artists I know, ( and I know a lot) would ever dream of sitting on their work like Scrooge Mcduck on his pile of gold. What they, (and I) want is to communicate with those ideas. Oh, we want to be sure that others don’t simply steal our work, claim it as their own and profit, certainly; but that doesn’t mean that we want to live in a world where everything is so tightly controlled that you cannot breathe either.
Seriously, how in the world can people believe this tripe? The law is 100% about morality. We decide something is immoral, so we made it against the law so that the minority who don’t think it immoral will be forced to do the moral thing anyways.
The entire concept of self-governance is that the law changes when the morality of the society changes. Right now, the younger generation, the one that is not going to die off like the defenders here, doesn’t believe there is anything wrong with it. The law is currently working to force the morality of a minority on a majority. And that is anti-democratic.
You can argue until you are blue in the face that piracy is stealing. The fact remains that, unlike stealing physical property, it does not remove the ability of the owner to still sell their work. This fact makes it different than stealing, and thus, if you keep on saying they are the same, you have admitted that your opinion contradicts fact, and thus can be discounted.
That’s not mental gymnastics, that’s critical thinking.
As I’ve said before, if someone needs money, I give them money if I have it. If I buy something, the money does not go to them, so I am not helping them. I’m helping individuals who are trying to hold on to an old system at best, and exploiters at worse. Distributors and publishers no longer produce value because I can get the same thing for free. It is thus not ethical to pay them for a service you don’t use.
Plus, if you only create in order to get a paycheck, then I don’t give a fuck if you no longer create. There is absolutely no shortage of creative content produced for free or for the right price.
The only argument that piracy is wrong is that it deprives the owners of revenue. That’s how it’s like stealing. And a company like UKNova which was not depriving people of revenue thus was not stealing. It might be doing something that the owners don’t want you to do, but that is not inherently unethical. Just like I’m sure Ed wishes this place were less hostile, based on the rules he made in the pit. Doesn’t make it wrong to be hostile.
No, content is not an idea. Ideas, in fact, are not protected by copyright law. Content is expression. And, indeed, copyright law protects only expression that is fixed in a perceivable medium, so it does not protect things that are transient, incorporeal, or fleeting.
And it’s interesting that copyright law seeks to curtail none of these things.
Exactly. In fact copyright law explicitly allows people making their own recordings of songs as long as they pay the statutory royalty. It’s called a mechanical license. You don’t need explicit permission as long as you pay the royalty. And since the idea can’t have a copyright, you can write your own song about a guy running from a jealous husband with a gun and Lynyrd Skynyrd can’t do anything about it.
And that will just strengthen the desires of others to use their content without a license. Which will strengthen the copyright owners to try to stop this, which will repeat, ever escalating until a compromise is met, or until there is another revolution.
Appeals to emotion or shame are not going to make people believe the way you want. And, as I stated above, the actual logic in this thread is severely lacking.
Bollocks. There is no difference in reality between the two. Music is an excellent example. Copyright doesn’t just cover someone ripping the original recording and selling it as their own work, it covers anyone else doing their own version (covers), an original arrangement, even occasionally live performances, etc. It’s perfectly clear that the law does not make a clear distinction of what part of the “expression” is original and needs to be protected. It makes a blanket protection of the entire idea, regardless of how or by whom it is expressed. Mechanical license isn’t good enough, since it exists at the sole discretion of the holder. It doesn’t address the issue of cultural dissemination properly.
With music, the melody and words are the expression. You can write your own song about a man telling his mother he’s going to prison for murder. You can write a whole album about a man who dreams he’s died and gone to Hell. Those are the ideas, and are not protected by copyright. You just have to use your own words and your own melody. Or if you do want to use Queen’s or Alice’s music you can pay for a mechanical license and record your own version.
What an idiotic slogan.
Information doesn’t want things. It’s not human.
People want to be paid for the information they create. If they don’t get paid for it, many will stop creating it.
Enough of this nonsense. You can’t steal stuff. Grow up.
Bullshit.
It has nothing to do with morality. Copyrights, like patents, are designed to encourage people to produce things - books, recordings, inventions, etc. - for the benefit of all. Since they can easily be copied for free, copyright and patents puts a property right in place to pay the creator. Nothing to do with morality or all that crap.
What’s more, why don’t people understand that if you couldn’t, you might quit photography, making them not have access to your photos anyway?