Please try to follow the context. This was Princhester’s claim: “The first [fallacy] is to compare a decision not to purchase a product you don’t want to a decision to obtain, by copying, something that you do want (which is clearly an invalid comparison)”.
What I don’t understand is why he thinks the album is “something that [ I ] do want”, but the Italian meal is “a product [ I ] don’t want”, even though I feel exactly the same way about them: I want them both, but not so much that I’ll pay $13 for them.
From both the restaurant’s perspective and the record label’s perspective, the two decisions have exactly the same effect: I’m not giving Olive Garden any money for food, and I’m not giving the record label any money for CDs.
Yes, I understand the context. I’m saying that the comparison is not (obviously) between something you don’t want and something you do, rather between something you don’t want badly enough to take without paying, and something you do.
You’re saying “I don’t want the meal badly enough to pay for it, and so I don’t. I don’t want the album badly enough to pay for it, and so I don’t.” What you mean to say is, “I don’t want the meal badly enough to pay for it, and so I don’t pay for it AND I don’t take it. I don’t want the album badly enough to pay for it, and so I don’t pay for it BUT I take it anyway.”
Obtaining it without paying is not a function of how much I want it, it’s a function of availability. If a cart outside Olive Garden were offering meals identical to the ones offered inside, for free, then of course I’d take one.
The only difference between downloading the music and doing without it altogether is that in one case, I listen to music, but in the other, I sit in silence. The fact that I’m listening to music has no effect on anyone but me, so I think it’s fair to ignore it for this comparison, which if you recall, was about financial harm to others: “It can indirectly result in a lack of financial gain, but (1) a lack of financial gain is not financial damage, unless you believe you’re damaging Olive Garden when you decide to go out for Chinese food instead of Italian”.
Well, you’re right there – that’s pretty weak. Surely you have some opinion? Author’s death? 20 years? 500 years?
As near as I can tell, it is factually incorrect only in light of the legal implementation, so there’s nary a difference there. And the legal implementation misses the forrest for the trees, IMO. More on that in a moment. And a warning: this goes on for much longer than I intended when I started it.
Yes, there is no restraint (of which I am aware); of course I think copyright should promote useful art and science (more on that in a moment also). And I’ve never denied that it “already occurs”, have I? In fact, I’ve explicitly said over and over again that copyright – even as it now stands – provides incentives and benefits. However, commercial profitability is not the only measure of copyright’s use, and I don’t believe it to be the correct measure either. Against my better judgment – not only have I tried this earlier to no effect, but the time I’m devoting to this is really impacting my work – I’ll try and lay out my case.
To begin, when I explicitly state “copyright provides benefits”, but also argue against the view of copyright presented by others, is it that difficult to see these statements as arguing the middle between the extremes? You’re a lawyer; surely you can connect the two? Do I have to keep stating that I’m not denying the benefits that you and others cite, but that I don’t view these benefits as the be-all and end-all?
Which leads to an explanation of the forrest/trees line from above. My opinion is not simply what I believe; it’s what The Constitution states (sorry for the U.S.-centric view that follows). While I’m sure you have no need for me to provide the quote, here it is for everyone’s reference:
What is Congress empowered to do? To promote the progress of science and useful arts. How can it do this? By securing exclusive rights to authors and inventors for a limited time. (Oh, BTW – Mr2001, this is the point Princhester keeps presenting to you. Until you weaken the notion of “exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”, you’ll get no traction with certain arguments you make.) The reason I bring this up is to point out the primacy / subservience relationship of the two – the ultimate goal is the “promotion of progress”; copyright, as it currently stands, is merely one possible set of rules to do so. Commercial exploitation, which seems so near and dear to your heart, is but one aspect of copyright implementation and is thus twice removed from the stated objective.
To me, one cannot seriously debate copyright without raising the questions: (1) What does “progress” mean? (2) How is it measured? (3) How can it be maximized? To (1), I can venture a few things (although I’m sure there are others): further monetary investment in potential works, a cohesive and prospering cultural identity, a synergy of ideas that leads to innovation. To (2), a short list includes finanical gain by the copyright holder, the number of works being produced, and the number of “new types” of work (for lack of a better way to express it). Ultimately, IMO, it is question (3) that should drive the debate. It seems a necessity to me that determining maximization has to include at least a discussion of balancing personal and commercial use, the appropriate length of time needed for creator incentive, the inspiration of original (but possibly derivative) work, the quality of work being produced, etc. Exclusively focussing on financial gain ignores many of these things, unnecessarily constraining the possible avenues of progress.
Stepping back for a moment to better fill out the context, it’s clear to me that the necessity of explicitly granting an exclusive “right to copy” is due to the fundamental difference between physical and intangible “property”. It is silly on its face to consider an exclusive right to copy physical property – one either possesses something or does not. Intangibles, on the other hand, are fundamentally different and are “property” only by analogy (i.e., “copyright infringement is not theft”). This is inherent in the nature of “copying” – more than one instance of a work can exist, be used at the same time, and provide benefit to everyone using it. Copyright is a convenient legal fiction that allows us to apply the already existing and well-understood “property” framework (that is, force functional equivalence). The fact that it is only a legal fiction is borne out by the fact that exclusivity is recognized as not being strictly exclusive, as the Betamax case shows.
Furthermore, exclusive control of material can only serve to limit some of the things concerning progress promotion that I mentioned above. In an earlier post, I noted that “a symbiotic relationship exists between the creator and others (i.e., without copies, the creator derives no benefit)”. The more exposure a work receives, the more it adds to and influences other creation. In the case of commercially available works, this explains the need for marketing. Admittedly, there is some weird tension here between financial gain (via exclusive control) and propagation of a work (via public domain) – one extreme focusses on benefit to the creator (or copyright holder), the other on the audience. I refer to it as “weird” because somewhere in the middle, there seems to be a point at which loosened control actually increases returns exactly due to increased propagation.
So, where does that leave us? In summary: copyright (or something like it) should exist. The reason it should exist is to promote progress in the useful arts and science. One way it does so is through monetary investment and reward. But money, while being one method, is not the sole measure of progress – a balance must be struck between individual gain and societal gain. Which end you gravitate towards, it seems to me, is where “morality” enters. A capitalist pig will claim absolute rights soley for their financial benefit. A tree-hugging hippy will claim that sharing is the thing and that the notion of ownership is counterproductive and flawed. A more reasonable person says that effort and ingenuity deserves reward, but recognizes that we all “stand on the shoulders of giants” and should make concessions because of it. IMO, the most reasonable position is to question the meaning of “progress” and strive for its maximization, which entails sacrificing, for the average case, some individual gain for the benefit of all.
I don’t believe I’ve strayed from that position at any point.
Meh. Perhaps it would be wise for you to invest in some reading comprehension lessons. His response starts with an obvious misrepresentation of my stance that makes me tired and less than willing to put effort into a rejoinder. How many times do I have to state that I’m not saying copyright should “magically vanish”? How difficult is it, given the number of times that I’ve explicitly stated that copyright provides benefits, to understand that I’m saying exactly that copyright should be modified and not abolished? It’s clear to me that both you and Pochacco are bright enough chaps; I assume that you can at the very least parse two sentences to obtain a single coherent idea. And yet, you successfully ignore any context I give and return snide remarks. Besides all that, you’ve given me an indication of how you treat my use of the phrase “has some merit”.
Ummm…yeah, OK. I think I’m done with this after asking one question: which post in particular (and I assume you can give me many examples) do I not qualify my statements? There was the little spat with Walloon about lobbyists, which was tangential and not worth pursuing. Sure, post #66. But you explicitly agreed with that. Perhaps you’re referring to my point about Evil Captor? Again, IMO, the broad point is clear when not reduced to a Republican-size talking point. I could cover the others, but have little desire to waste any more of my time.
Oh, and thanks rayh. It’s good to know that someone is paying attention.
You’re the one trying to change the fundamental basis of ownership, not me.
Of course not. The barber performed a service and got paid for it.
Think about your argument for a moment. Who is going to pay an author to produce something that everyone else is free to use? Would Wiley pay you $10,000 to write “Copyright for Dummies” if they could just print Alpha’s “Idiot’s Guide to Copyright” for free? Of course not. If publishers didn’t own the content (or have contractual rights to content owned by authors), the publishers wouldn’t pay the writers. What your proposing makes it impossible for a writer to earn a living by salary, hourly wage, royalty, or any other method.
So under this wonderful “money” system you’re hypothesizing, people like you would magically start sending money to those very same musicians whose work you steal today? How does that work?
You don’t even pretend to read what you’re responding to, do you? I already answered this in the very paragraph you’re quoting. What if you were the best songwriter in the world, but only a mediocre performer. In your copyrightless society, you’d put on a concert, but some hotshot with a better voice would sing the very same songs (which you wrote) at the same time down the street. Who would show up to hear you?
Once again, you didn’t read what you’re responding to. I already acknowledged that it can work on a very small scale.
I keep saying I’m not going to keep arguing with you unless you actually take the trouble to read and try to comprehend what everyone else says. You keep throwing out silly strawman arguments (theft isn’t really harm–blowing people up with homemade bombs–that’s harm!) and trying to justify a position that’s simply not justifiable. I’m giving up on you.
So let me get this straight. An artist who produces unpopular work and pays the rent by working at McDonald’s has integrity, but an artist who produces popular work and gets paid for it doesn’t? Is that what you’re saying?
Hey, joke.
But really, people can say what they want about the subjectivity of art, and they’re free to like whatever they want, but who do you think makes the most profound art:
someone motivated by money, or driven by passion?
Even though a lot of the art/entertainment/massmedia today is immensely popular, and people do enjoy it, which would seem to be a good thing, we ARE getting dumbed down, in no small part thanks to contemporary art.
Now, you might say I’ve no right to decide what people should like, and if people want to get dumbed down, that’s fine, but it has a LOT larger impact on society than artists not getting money they might not have gotten anyway, so if you’re gonna care, I’m gonna care.
I’m drifting a bit off, as seems to be my habbit, but to steer back to topic: The kind of art society needs, the intellectual one (yes, it’s elitist, but just open your history books and see what incredible contributions artist have made to society in the past, and I’m not talking about the forgetable ones) will survive even without money. AND I think you’re being very, very pessimistic about their opportunities to make money without copyright laws, but you’d probably want a cite for that, and I wouldn’t know where to find one (I don’t doubt plenty could be found, but where, I don’t know)
Actually, no. Putting effort into something generally doesn’t give you ownership of it. You’re the one saying it does, remember?
So, if a barber came up to you and cut your hair without getting paid, then he’d own it until you paid him?
I know you want to say no, but remember: “The right to own what you create is fundamental!” Your hair wasn’t cut before, and now thanks to his effort, it is cut. He created that state of affairs by arranging your hair, just like a poet arranges words. So he must own it, just like a poet who borrows a piece of paper from you “owns” the words he writes on it.
The barber might not own your individual hairs, but surely he must own the style, right? If you take a shower and then try to arrange your hair back into the way he made it, you’re a dirty hippie thief, right? And if you try to arrange your friend’s hair into the same style your barber created, well, that just shows how little respect you have for the hard-working barber. How can he possibly make money if he can’t own what he creates?
Sure, if they think my version is going to be better than his. Of course, the funding would more likely come from potential readers, not publishers.
You seem to be stuck on the idea that only publishers can pay writers. Everyone else’s money is just as green, you know.
Here’s one possibility: the musician puts out an announcement of his next, unrecorded, album, describing the ideas he has in mind for it. He says “This will probably take me X months to finish, and I’ll need $Y to do it.” People who are familiar with his work or are intrigued by the description send a few bucks, because they’d like to listen to it someday. Political candidates use essentially the same system to raise millions of dollars from small individual donations.
If you’re a crappy performer, obviously no one. (That’s a great trick, singing them at exactly the same time, BTW. Surely you’d get in at least one show before anyone else had a chance to pick up your lyrics.)
That doesn’t mean songwriters are screwed, though. Let’s say you’re a great performer but you can’t write a decent song. Hardly anyone comes to your shows, because all your performance talent can’t make a turd into a gem. You could sing covers, but people have heard those all before; you want to stand out. What do you do? Find a good songwriter and pay him to come up with something original for you to sing.
Ah yes, just like the creationists who accept “microevolution” but refuse to believe in “macroevolution”. Not because the two are really any different, but because admitting it can work on a large scale would conflict with their preconceived beliefs.
Aww, that’s a shame. I’ll miss your name-calling and loaded phrases, but thanks for leaving me with one last example of how you dishonestly twist my words. Strawman, indeed.
Basically, the reason I’m confident artists and authors will be able to get paid no matter what happens is that people value originality, and people are willing to spend money on the things they value - that’s how we measure how much they value them. Today, the avenue they have for spending that money is to buy a premade copy from the store shelf. In a world without copyright, the avenue would be paying artists and authors directly for original work. The free market doesn’t solve everything, but it is quite good at transferring money from the people who want something to the people who can provide it.
It can’t be both? I selected my profession by passion. I write some of my stuff because it interests me and I really enjoy doing it. I write some of it because it pays well. And sometimes, “profound” pays the bills just fine
I see the ;), so I guess you’re partly joking.
But it’s not making art for profit that disqualifies it from being good, it’s that art almost never has any merit if there isn’t at least some passion involved. So both is just fine.
What exactly is your profession, by the way?
