Are you one of those people who believes that the damage done by intellectual property "piracy" exceeds its benefits?
How is the Pirate Bay screwing anyone over more than draconian copyright laws which have been extended decades and decades beyond what the law originally intended while criminal enforcement is provided by free thanks to taxpayers?
If someone creates content it is their choice whether or not it's given away for free or if people must pay for it. If you create a song you can give it away for free, sell it for $0.99 or sell it for $900, that's your choice. I agree some of the copyright laws that exist are silly, but it should still be the content creators choice what happens with that content (or if they sell the rights then the new rights holder etc etc). Your desire, my desire or anyone else's desire for that content (be it music, video, game, program, image) is not more important than the wants of the person who created it.
Anyway my point was just that TPB is not a good voice against this, it would be like having Hitler being against anti-freespeech laws, it would make it much easier to justify those laws because of Hitler.
Society has long recognized that there is a tradeoff between benefits to the creator and benefits to society. As evidenced by e.g. the US copyright clause which says that Congress can (not must) extend copyrights to further the progress of the sciences and the useful arts (not to reward content creators, that's a means, not an end).
You mean your right to tell other people what they can or cannot do.
Copyright does not give you a right to do any more than you can anyway. It removes the normal rights of everyone else.
Without copyright you are still entirely free to sell copies of 'your' things. It is just that everyone else can too, so the normal functioning of the market will drive down the price so it will not suit you individually.
Copyright is really a privilege. It is something bestowed by the public, for the benefit of everyone.
> see how long I continue to make my new creations available
I suggest that might be a risky or weak strategy. People will create and communicate things anyway -- as they have been evolved to do. You will just be removing yourself from the cultural gene-pool.
As has been pointed out you can always do what you want with your work, the question is whether you should be able to control copies of your work.
While there is some romantic appeal to the notion of a Galt's Gulch where the special creative people retreat, one should be cautious about the approach of holding your breath until other people's faces turn blue. It leads to dubious hyperbole like the member of the US House of Representatives who insisted that if we didn't extend Disney merchandising rights, we would be depriving society of its next Shakespeare. Ahem.
For a more scholarly discussion of the dubious merits of intellectual property, you can read Bodrin & Levine's book[1] "Against Intellectual Monopoly" -- it's available free on their site and other places.
Are you making creations available right now? In that case, why? Surely you are aware that currently, others can use your work under fair use and that your copyright has an expiration date?
I don't think anyone is (seriously) suggesting doing away with copyrights entirely. The real question is: how much incentive do you really need? Would you really say "well, if I put work into this, after 50 years anyone can make money off of my effort, so f..k it!"? I have a feeling 20 or even 10 years would be sufficient payback time. After all, patents are limited to fairly short times and it's not like there's a shortage of patent applications.
Your response reminds me very much of Atlas Shrugged. That idea is central to the book. I recommend it as an interesting read, though not everyone cares for Aynn Rand's style.
> Society has long recognized that there is a tradeoff between benefits to the creator and benefits to society. As evidenced by e.g. the US copyright clause which says that Congress can (not must) extend copyrights to further the progress of the sciences and the useful arts (not to reward content creators, that's a means, not an end).
Yes, and society has decided that the proper balance in that tradeoff is to give creators the choice in deciding when particular copies of their works are made available to the public, which means that it is in fact their choice.
I did not want to get into this debate but oh well.
>Yes, and society has decided that the proper balance in >that tradeoff is to give creators the choice in deciding >when particular copies of their works are made available to >the public, which means that it is in fact their choice.
Not true. There is a fixed length to which copyright on your work lasts. Its not forever and you don't decide the length.
Why do you think the society puts a limit on it? Because in essence copyright is a restrictive right. It tells you what you CANNOT do. Copyright is not a right but a privilege in the sense that it tells others not to make copies of the work that you created first.
The real reason of having a copyright is not 'for the advancement of science (and culture)'. It is to incentivize the copyright owners to share their creation so in that sense the copyright law is actually created to promote sharing.
You don't decide the length, but while copyright is still in effect for your work, society has decreed that you get to decide when particular copies are first made available to the public.
So, basically--you create a work, copyright attaches at the moment of creation (not actually correct, but close enough for this discussion), and then you get to do whatever you want with it. Society lets the creator decide.
Isn't that my position? You seem to be arguing the same side as me. Shouldn't one of us take the opposite side--I believe that is the customary way to argue. :-)
There is no arguing with the facts. Copyright does attach itself at the moment of creation and that limits other people's free speech right when it comes to using your work.
However, as I was pointing out, there's a limit on your rights, like for how long you get it, what is restrictive and what isn't (fair use etc.) It is not a free ride. Especially since it is a restriction on 1st amendment, the American courts have taken a fairly narrow view on what you can restrict people from doing.
There are restrictions exactly because its a limitation on other people's free speech. And thats my point.
Well, yes. If your point is that you are not compelled to share your songs you've composed in your basement, you are correct. That, however, has nothing to do with copyright and won't really help you with incentivizing either.
Once you have shared it with someone, you can only control what is done with those copies under certain circumstances. And in that question, the balance decided by society is decidedly not that you have complete say in what is done.
If what you're selling is just a long string of bits, securing it against copy (not theft) is your problem, not the state's.
IP is just a way for established players to be lazy and avoid finding business models that acknowledge reality. Unfortunately, their laziness and greed also cost us civil liberties since freedom to copy a string of bits is indistinguishable from free speech.
Since were going with the "songs and music and anything digital are just bits...".
What about identity theft? It's just words on a piece of paper representing you as a person. Should we say the same thing when someone "steals" (just like with digital items, nothing is actually stolen) your identity?
What about your bank account? In most banks it's just numbers representing money...but it's just 'bits'..right?
Currency is also just ink and paper. Like digital goods, it's only as valuable as what people are willing to pay. Why should I be put in jail for copying ink that is on a piece of paper?
"IP is just a way for established players to be lazy and avoid finding business models that acknowledge reality. Unfortunately, their laziness and greed also cost us civil liberties since freedom to copy a string of bits is indistinguishable from free speech."
You want to talk about greed? The greedy people are the ones that download music and movies for free and devalue the work of people that put hundreds and thousands of hours to make it.
If something tangible is stolen as a result of copying, that is an issue of fraud, not IP. 'Potential profits' are not tangible.
The people who put hundreds and thousands of hours into making content aren't the ones who benefit from IP laws. It's the big cartel-ish companies with a zillion lawyers and friends in government who own rights to the IP and pay artists small royalties that rake in all the cash. IP is not necessary for artists and content-producers to make money. This should be fairly obvious by now after the success of the Grateful Dead, the rise of the indie recording industry, free and open source software, etc.
I'm not necessarily arguing that copying content isn't a skeevy thing to do in some circumstances. It's definitely a lot more noble to support an artist. But IP laws inject the state's jurisdiction deep into our private lives, and the result is things like continent-sized firewalls and searching of laptops at borders. In this case the solution to the problem is much, much worse than the problem itself. It doesn't even have to be a problem at all--a smart producer can use copying as an advantage.
"The people who put hundreds and thousands of hours into making content aren't the ones who benefit from IP laws. It's the big cartel-ish companies with a zillion lawyers and friends in government who own rights to the IP and pay artists small royalties that rake in all the cash."
hmm..so who gives the big cartels the rights to their music? that's right...the artists. If the artists are getting scraps and you are illegally copying their stuff and as a result, they lose contracts, it's hurting them in the process.
Copyright infringement is not theft, it's closer to counterfeiting. If it's not stopped, the value will eventually be $0 because people will not be willing to pay for it. see: music, newspapers, books, and eventually movies. Its happening to anything that can be digitized.
"IP is not necessary for artists and content-producers to make money. This should be fairly obvious by now after the success of the Grateful Dead, the rise of the indie recording industry, free and open source software, etc."
Free and open source software is a bad example. OSS uses copyright law to protect it from being used in proprietary software. With no IP laws, most big companies would either create very expensive software (so anyone that buys it would not be willing to share it) or they would all go to service based apps (this is already starting to happen).
The grateful dead has had a following for many decades. What about new artists that want to make a living? Bar gigs don't pay anything, so the only real way to make a living is to sign with a recording company. In some ways, sharing music forces artists to go with a recording company, because they don't have a chance at making a living any other way.
After 10 years of popularized piracy (I know it's been available for much longer than this, but Napster mainstreamed it), the youth of today feels entitled to free things on the Internet and are becoming less and less likely to pay for digital media.
This is the danger of piracy and why all of those industries wanted to stop it.
"It doesn't even have to be a problem at all--a smart producer can use copying as an advantage."
I no longer make applications, only services. So the direct result of piracy is that people that normally would have to pay a one-time fee for my software now have to pay me every month.
"hmm..so who gives the big cartels the rights to their music? that's right...the artists. If the artists are getting scraps and you are illegally copying their stuff and as a result, they lose contracts, it's hurting them in the process."
More artists go with indie studios every year, and for the most part these studios have learned to use copying to their advantage instead of fighting it.
There's never been any definitive research that shows artists lose money from copying, even the big studio artists. The math isn't simple--even if you grant that fewer albums are purchased due to copying, a wider fan base could lead to higher concert and merchandise sales. Of course, this may also mean that copying can increase album sales if it boosts popularity enough through network effect. One copier who likes an album may tell 10 of his friends, 2 of whom buy the album; that is profit directly attributable to copying.
"With no IP laws, most big companies would either create very expensive software (so anyone that buys it would not be willing to share it) or they would all go to service based apps (this is already starting to happen)."
If this is really how it would play out, I don't see the problem. If copying bits makes shrink wrapped software untenable (which I question), then so be it. Business models change all the time. It's not the end of the world.
"The grateful dead has had a following for many decades. What about new artists that want to make a living?"
The Grateful Dead started small like any band. One of the factors that led to their explosive growth was letting people freely distribute recordings of their live shows.
"After 10 years of popularized piracy (I know it's been available for much longer than this, but Napster mainstreamed it), the youth of today feels entitled to free things on the Internet and are becoming less and less likely to pay for digital media."
I see it more as people feeling entitled to communicate and share with each other freely, which is a good thing. I hope the trend continues.
"I no longer make applications, only services. So the direct result of piracy is that people that normally would have to pay a one-time fee for my software now have to pay me every month."
So? You adapted to the circumstances and are still providing the world value and getting paid for it. What's the problem?
I find it odd that you would think piracy was popularized 10 years ago. First off, commercially pirated publication has been popular ever since publication was invented. Pirate editions of books have been widely available for hundreds of years.
Individual copying of music has been popular since home taping became available from the early 60's on. My friends and I had lots of home recorded compact cassettes in the 80s. The youth of that day felt perfectly entitled to tape whatever they wanted. The coming of CD's meant that the first generation tape was perfect with no additional hiss.
Digital copying became popular as soon as home CD-R came along. I remember being amazed when $1.50 blank CD-Rs and $500 burners came along in the mid 90s. I soon had a pile of bit for bit perfect copies. No generational loss, nothing missing but the cover art.
Even if the internet or peer-to-peer had never come into use, there would today be a huge casual piracy scene based on MP3s, FLACs, portable hard drives and burned discs. If the publishing industry somehow manages to stuff the P2P genie back in the bottle, that's where we'll end up.
By that argument propagation of child pornography (at least in digital form) should be legal since it is just bits--copying child porn bits is indistinguishable from free speech.
Your argument fails, of course, because it is NOT indistinguishable. These same issues arose with pre-digital media. After all, you could say all print media is just blobs of ink on paper, and and freedom to copy print media is indistinguishable from free speech. Yet we manage to distinguish just find. The same works just fine for information in bit string form.
Child porn falls into 'reasonable limit on free speech' category because kids are harmed in the making of it. Has nothing to do with IP.
I think non-digital IP is a bad idea as well and serves established publishers, not content producers. Trying to pass off someone's work as your own is already frowned upon socially. There's no need to make it a legal issue. It's sad that we as a society feel that we need the state to referee every single transaction. If you are able to produce something of value, you can find a way to profit from it whether others can copy it or not. If a lot of people want to copy your work, that is actually a good sign and gives you more opportunity for profit. You just have to be a bit more creative than the RIAA.
But if you go down the road of leaving it up to suppliers to secure against copying, you end up with ridiculous DRM systems.
Would you rather receive an un-DRM'ed mp3 in exchange for the promise that you won't make copies of it for everyone else, or receive a DRM'ed file that you are free to try and circumvent? Particularly for less tech-savvy people I think the unDRMed option is better.
(the third option is an unDRMed mp3 that we can legally copy and give to our friends, which you can have already as long as you stay away from the major record labels, but I don't see why the big industry players shouldn't be allowed to continue to use IP laws - no-one is forcing you to listen to their music/play their games/watch their movies).
If the state is left out of it, the market will select against crappy DRM systems and either the whole concept will go away, or producers will find a non-crappy way to implement DRM.
No one is forcing me to watch their movies, but laws that get passed stop me from copying a string of bits when absolutely no harm is done to the producer if I do so. This basically presumes that everything I say or do should be monitored by the state, since I could be breaking IP laws in the process. How about instead, the law protects actual property from actual theft, meaning something has only been 'stolen' from you if you don't have it anymore, and industries that create easily copied content get with the 21st century and stop bitching.
> How about instead... industries that create easily copied content get with the 21st century and stop bitching.
I like the ideal of what you're saying, but I worry about the practicality of it. I don't see how you could finance a huge blockbuster movie without having some guarantee that you would have exclusive rights to exploit that content for some limited period (which is effectively what copyright is about).
Sure, the harm to the producer isn't measurable if you download a movie from the internet. But I don't think that would scale to the wider population - if downloading for free became the standard way of getting movies, how would they recoup the production costs (I guess if you can answer that question then you could become very wealthy!).
Maybe there's some painful expectation realignment due from those whose salaries are paid by making movies (I don't think we'd be short of good actors if they were paid thousands instead of millions per movie). Could they produce the same quality of movie at a massively lower cost? Another question that if you could answer you could make yourself a lot of money.
I don't feel like any of those things are problems. If it really isn't possible to make a profit making blockbuster movies without invasive liberty-destroying laws, then so be it. There are lots of potentially great things that just aren't profitable to produce in practice. Why are movies so special? That said, there would still be huge demand without IP--I think people could figure something out.
I'm pretty much in your corner--I think copyrights and patents have been extended and abused and need major reform. But let me play devil's advocate for a moment.
It sounds like you are happy to sacrifice Hollywood movies. Fine. But there are so many other creative activities that do require some form of copyright or patent protection and enforcement in order to generate revenue. Do you really think we would still have professional studio musicians and recording engineers, journalists, fiction writers, critics, copy editors, if all copying were legal? Do you want to ditch all of that and be left with only amateur work? Or maybe we can have extensive product placement in all creative works, so there's some revenue source.
Linux and Wikipedia are amazing but I don't think their model applies to everything.
Don't mean to put words in his mouth, but I believe he's saying the laws are draconian. Few argue for the outright abolition of IP, and the content you talk about should be protected to encourage the producer to prosper. Its just the "Life + 70 Years" that is draconian.
You're right about the what but not about the why - IP laws should be protected to encourage the progress of Arts and Sciences. The producer's prosperity is secondary and not the goal, it is merely an effective means to that goal.
What is the 'correct' level of progress in Arts and Sciences? It's completely arbitrary.
Apples are good. I think there should be more apples. I hereby decree that every man shall plant four apple trees in his yard. Ruling the world is easy!
How is the Pirate Bay screwing anyone over more than draconian copyright laws which have been extended decades and decades beyond what the law originally intended while criminal enforcement is provided by free thanks to taxpayers?