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The potential moral issue is that the creator of the work (author, photographer, artist, musician) receives no compensation for widespread use of their work. On

by snazz 8y ago

The potential moral issue is that the creator of the work (author, photographer, artist, musician) receives no compensation for widespread use of their work. On the other hand, the publishing company or record label or other middleman almost always makes most of the money anyway. An illegal but morally somewhat right thing I’ve seen people do is to pirate the work and pay the artist directly, cutting out most of the expense while still benefiting the creator.

betterunix2 8y ago
There is no moral obligation for people to be paid for their work, even if other people enjoy that work, even if it is widespread. Are you going to track down every person who told you a funny joke at a bar that you go around repeating to your friends, or perhaps feel guilty about repeating that joke? The idea that there is moral obligation to pay authors for their writing was itself a tactic used by the publishing industry to establish copyright law when it was first being debated. As you point out, publishers almost always receive the bulk of the money while creators receive little if any compensation. Copyright has always been about business interests and not about morality.
- Angostura 8y ago
  > There is no moral obligation for people to be paid for their work Make sure to tell your boss.
  - randallsquared 8y ago
    He and his boss have a contract. That’s the difference.
    - eksemplar 8y ago
      So do you and the content creator. I mean, we've all laughed at the "you wouldn't steal a car" commercials, and the truth is, if you could download and 3D print a car, risk free, you probably would steal it. The underlying social part of that statement is both true and interesting though. Because the reason you wouldn't steal a car is because of the social contract you have with other members of society. We don't steal from each other, and if we do, society punishes us. That's basically what the EU is doing with this legislation, and sure, its annoying, but I have a hard time seeing how it's wrong.
      - phreack 8y ago
        There is a very hard difference between stealing something from someone, which deprives them from having access to it, and copying it, which doesn't. The first one is considered morally wrong by everyone here, the second one is argued not to be.
        criddell 8y ago
        I think it's worth being careful with your language, but then you are talking about whether or not it's okay to infringe on the rights of another and I don't think it's any easier to say it is.
        betterunix2 8y ago
        Copyrights are not "rights" the way most other "rights" are understood. The term "right" in this context is an abstraction and it is becoming increasingly strained in the modern world. Copyright is a "right" the way that minerals rights are "rights" -- in reality it is a regulation on an industry.
        criddell 8y ago
        You're right that there are a range of rights, but Copyright is very closely tied to the rights of speech and expression. Usurping somebody's mineral rights sounds like straight up theft.
        betterunix2 8y ago
        Copyright is tied to speech and expression the way speed limits are tied to driving: copyright is a restriction on what a person can say and how they can say it. As for mineral rights, "theft" is not so clear at least based on the history of oil exploration. If I drill a well on my property to tap reserves that span the ground beneath both of our properties, is it really "theft" if I do not pay you a share? Historically the problem was that people were generally incentivized to drill their own land, which led to over-exploitation of petroleum reserves and giant messes in places like Los Angeles. Mineral rights were created to solve that problem by regulating the petroleum industry in a way that minimally disrupts property rights as they are generally understood. In both cases there is nothing fundamental underlying the regulations. There would be nothing particularly wrong with a system that ignores the ownership of land above a petroleum reserve -- that is how air traffic is regulated in the US (nobody can demand compensation for the airplanes that fly over their property above a certain height). Copyright law has been changed many times since the Statute of Anne, and the original motivation for copyrights was to restore the publishing monopoly that had existed under a previous regulation system (the Licensing of the Press act, which was actually intended to enforce censorship). The rules are mostly arbitrary, and I would argue that in the case of copyright the goal of the regulation is also arbitrary (i.e. copyright was not established to solve an actual problem facing society).
  - tylerl 8y ago
    So is it immoral to eat a holiday dinner at Grandma's house without paying Grandma for cooking? Not likely. In fact, it would probably be immoral to offer payment. But it IS immoral to skip out on your bill at a restaurant, even if your grandma was the cook. Why? The morality around payment for work is an attribute of the work having been done "for hire". It has nothing to do with the type of work, the effort involved, the skill of the worker, or the value of the benefit received. Everything is contingent on whether the work was done as a this-for-that exchange. Copyright has nothing at all to do with work, or payment for work. Copyright turns the expression of your thoughts into property, and allows you to make rules about how that expression of ideas can be used, including selling that expression as if it were a good, or even selling the right to make the rules. It's a weird system when you think about it. Whether or not you think this system is reasonable depends on whether or not you think that the expression of thoughts is itself property, independent of the tangible objects you create in the process. What is NOT part of the discussion is whether or not people can or should get paid for being creative. Work-for-hire does not depend on intellectual property rights; people have been getting paid to write and draw and paint and sculpt for thousands of years before copyright ever was even a concept.
    - xcn1222 8y ago
      You are an idiot.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vcxxx 8y ago
  Oh cool. Let's stop paying Google and Reddit employees. Why should the packagers and distributors of other people's work always have the power? Google is the ultimate middleman.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  On the flip side, the newspapers I subscribe to have high paywalls and publish content I can't find elsewhere for free. If I could reliably find FT content for free on Reddit, I'm not sure I'd be a subscriber.
  - betterunix2 8y ago
    What is your point? That FT's business model might fail if they could not rely on copyrights? I think they need a business model that is better suited to the modern world if that is the case (or we need to own the fact that when it comes to newspapers etc. we are not interested in a market-based approach).
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > they need a business model that is better suited to the modern world The model that works under such constraints is a hard, high paywall guarding differentiated content. A consequence of such regulation is one having to pay for content with dollars, not eyeballs.
    - microtherion 8y ago
      Such business models "better suited to the modern world" were actually developed. Click here to read 5 reasons why the result might shock you!
dcow 8y ago
I want to help articulate the point even though I don’t know how I feel about it: Reddit makes money when users post popular things with no regard to how those things were acquired. Often this happens via the inner circle of power posters and meme-trend setters and not actually original content authors. And reddit is perfectly okay with this because it makes them money. If you believe it’s immoral to treat content creators this way it’s a moral issue. I tend to agree more with the GP because I’m pretty copyleft, but I also don’t like the fact that the “reddit machine” is basically an internet link record label where the payout is zero...
- michaelmrose 8y ago
  Why would anyone pay you for linking to your site? Presumably you can charge money for the content, solicit donations on the site or run ads.
  - 3d-avid 8y ago
    But what if the link text itself contains the most important part of the content? For example the title of a news article?.
    - visarga 8y ago
      When copyright was invented, the bulk of communication was personal and free. Now it is captured into electronic silos on the internet. Creators can't have priority over the interest of the population. They have to cede that public interest in discussing news is more important than their 'right' to monetise even the headlines themselves. When balancing rights, we have to take a larger perspective that includes more than the creators interests.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Lets break it down. You intrepid reporter have discovered that Chairman John Smith has been embezzling from the company coffers and lying to shareholders and even now is preparing to abscond with his ill gotten gains to an island paradise. Your release a blistering expose on this titled Mr Smith goes to Jamaica... with all your money. Robbery and shame at foo corp. You might think that your title communicates the most import part of your hard work but 99.9% of the value consists of the fact that you have no right no NOT your clever presentation of such.
code777777 8y ago
It's worth noting that in the US there is already the DMCA that content creators can use to take down their work. Most content owners even big companies like Disney choose to allow (or maybe just ignore) the memes and likenesses because it's free advertising. So in a way they are getting value.
- pitaj 8y ago
  Memes and whatnot are almost always protected under fair use, which the EUCD does not have.
Asooka 8y ago
You can also say that it is immoral to receive compensation for not working, i.e. rent-seeking. The creator should be compensated for his or her work, but that's not what copyright is about, it's about being compensated at the time of information exchange. Further confounding the moral issue is the fact that copyright can be assigned, so now a third party is charging rent for the information exchange of a product that they didn't create. In practical terms, this leads to the creation of entities - media companies, that do not care for morality and are entirely built to maximise profits from the rents they control. Which in turn creates other problems, since those same entities can amass enough wealth and power in order to bend our information exchange technologies in amoral ways, all in the pursuit of perfect rent exploitation. So while the concept of "artist gets paid a fair sum for creating art" is commendable, the current implementation has very detrimental side effects. And you can't fight the side-effects with policy, because free information exchange generates less revenue than the rent on information exchange the media companies seek to extract, so you have less money to lobby for laws against the people trying to restrict your freedom of speech.
wvenable 8y ago
> The potential moral issue is that the creator of the work (author, photographer, artist, musician) receives no compensation for widespread use of their work. Just because something has widespread use doesn't mean it's actually worth anything.

by snazz 8y ago

betterunix2 8y ago

There is no moral obligation for people to be paid for their work, even if other people enjoy that work, even if it is widespread. Are you going to track down every person who told you a funny joke at a bar that you go around repeating to your friends, or perhaps feel guilty about repeating that joke? The idea that there is moral obligation to pay authors for their writing was itself a tactic used by the publishing industry to establish copyright law when it was first being debated. As you point out, publishers almost always receive the bulk of the money while creators receive little if any compensation. Copyright has always been about business interests and not about morality.

Angostura 8y ago
> There is no moral obligation for people to be paid for their work Make sure to tell your boss.
- randallsquared 8y ago
  He and his boss have a contract. That’s the difference.
  - eksemplar 8y ago
    So do you and the content creator. I mean, we've all laughed at the "you wouldn't steal a car" commercials, and the truth is, if you could download and 3D print a car, risk free, you probably would steal it. The underlying social part of that statement is both true and interesting though. Because the reason you wouldn't steal a car is because of the social contract you have with other members of society. We don't steal from each other, and if we do, society punishes us. That's basically what the EU is doing with this legislation, and sure, its annoying, but I have a hard time seeing how it's wrong.
    - phreack 8y ago
      There is a very hard difference between stealing something from someone, which deprives them from having access to it, and copying it, which doesn't. The first one is considered morally wrong by everyone here, the second one is argued not to be.
      - criddell 8y ago
        I think it's worth being careful with your language, but then you are talking about whether or not it's okay to infringe on the rights of another and I don't think it's any easier to say it is.
        betterunix2 8y ago
        Copyrights are not "rights" the way most other "rights" are understood. The term "right" in this context is an abstraction and it is becoming increasingly strained in the modern world. Copyright is a "right" the way that minerals rights are "rights" -- in reality it is a regulation on an industry.
        criddell 8y ago
        You're right that there are a range of rights, but Copyright is very closely tied to the rights of speech and expression. Usurping somebody's mineral rights sounds like straight up theft.
        betterunix2 8y ago
        Copyright is tied to speech and expression the way speed limits are tied to driving: copyright is a restriction on what a person can say and how they can say it. As for mineral rights, "theft" is not so clear at least based on the history of oil exploration. If I drill a well on my property to tap reserves that span the ground beneath both of our properties, is it really "theft" if I do not pay you a share? Historically the problem was that people were generally incentivized to drill their own land, which led to over-exploitation of petroleum reserves and giant messes in places like Los Angeles. Mineral rights were created to solve that problem by regulating the petroleum industry in a way that minimally disrupts property rights as they are generally understood. In both cases there is nothing fundamental underlying the regulations. There would be nothing particularly wrong with a system that ignores the ownership of land above a petroleum reserve -- that is how air traffic is regulated in the US (nobody can demand compensation for the airplanes that fly over their property above a certain height). Copyright law has been changed many times since the Statute of Anne, and the original motivation for copyrights was to restore the publishing monopoly that had existed under a previous regulation system (the Licensing of the Press act, which was actually intended to enforce censorship). The rules are mostly arbitrary, and I would argue that in the case of copyright the goal of the regulation is also arbitrary (i.e. copyright was not established to solve an actual problem facing society).
- tylerl 8y ago
  So is it immoral to eat a holiday dinner at Grandma's house without paying Grandma for cooking? Not likely. In fact, it would probably be immoral to offer payment. But it IS immoral to skip out on your bill at a restaurant, even if your grandma was the cook. Why? The morality around payment for work is an attribute of the work having been done "for hire". It has nothing to do with the type of work, the effort involved, the skill of the worker, or the value of the benefit received. Everything is contingent on whether the work was done as a this-for-that exchange. Copyright has nothing at all to do with work, or payment for work. Copyright turns the expression of your thoughts into property, and allows you to make rules about how that expression of ideas can be used, including selling that expression as if it were a good, or even selling the right to make the rules. It's a weird system when you think about it. Whether or not you think this system is reasonable depends on whether or not you think that the expression of thoughts is itself property, independent of the tangible objects you create in the process. What is NOT part of the discussion is whether or not people can or should get paid for being creative. Work-for-hire does not depend on intellectual property rights; people have been getting paid to write and draw and paint and sculpt for thousands of years before copyright ever was even a concept.
  - xcn1222 8y ago
    You are an idiot.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vcxxx 8y ago
Oh cool. Let's stop paying Google and Reddit employees. Why should the packagers and distributors of other people's work always have the power? Google is the ultimate middleman.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
On the flip side, the newspapers I subscribe to have high paywalls and publish content I can't find elsewhere for free. If I could reliably find FT content for free on Reddit, I'm not sure I'd be a subscriber.
- betterunix2 8y ago
  What is your point? That FT's business model might fail if they could not rely on copyrights? I think they need a business model that is better suited to the modern world if that is the case (or we need to own the fact that when it comes to newspapers etc. we are not interested in a market-based approach).
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > they need a business model that is better suited to the modern world The model that works under such constraints is a hard, high paywall guarding differentiated content. A consequence of such regulation is one having to pay for content with dollars, not eyeballs.
  - microtherion 8y ago
    Such business models "better suited to the modern world" were actually developed. Click here to read 5 reasons why the result might shock you!

dcow 8y ago

I want to help articulate the point even though I don’t know how I feel about it: Reddit makes money when users post popular things with no regard to how those things were acquired. Often this happens via the inner circle of power posters and meme-trend setters and not actually original content authors. And reddit is perfectly okay with this because it makes them money. If you believe it’s immoral to treat content creators this way it’s a moral issue. I tend to agree more with the GP because I’m pretty copyleft, but I also don’t like the fact that the “reddit machine” is basically an internet link record label where the payout is zero...

michaelmrose 8y ago
Why would anyone pay you for linking to your site? Presumably you can charge money for the content, solicit donations on the site or run ads.
- 3d-avid 8y ago
  But what if the link text itself contains the most important part of the content? For example the title of a news article?.
  - visarga 8y ago
    When copyright was invented, the bulk of communication was personal and free. Now it is captured into electronic silos on the internet. Creators can't have priority over the interest of the population. They have to cede that public interest in discussing news is more important than their 'right' to monetise even the headlines themselves. When balancing rights, we have to take a larger perspective that includes more than the creators interests.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Lets break it down. You intrepid reporter have discovered that Chairman John Smith has been embezzling from the company coffers and lying to shareholders and even now is preparing to abscond with his ill gotten gains to an island paradise. Your release a blistering expose on this titled Mr Smith goes to Jamaica... with all your money. Robbery and shame at foo corp. You might think that your title communicates the most import part of your hard work but 99.9% of the value consists of the fact that you have no right no NOT your clever presentation of such.

code777777 8y ago

It's worth noting that in the US there is already the DMCA that content creators can use to take down their work. Most content owners even big companies like Disney choose to allow (or maybe just ignore) the memes and likenesses because it's free advertising. So in a way they are getting value.

pitaj 8y ago
Memes and whatnot are almost always protected under fair use, which the EUCD does not have.

Asooka 8y ago

You can also say that it is immoral to receive compensation for not working, i.e. rent-seeking. The creator should be compensated for his or her work, but that's not what copyright is about, it's about being compensated at the time of information exchange. Further confounding the moral issue is the fact that copyright can be assigned, so now a third party is charging rent for the information exchange of a product that they didn't create. In practical terms, this leads to the creation of entities - media companies, that do not care for morality and are entirely built to maximise profits from the rents they control. Which in turn creates other problems, since those same entities can amass enough wealth and power in order to bend our information exchange technologies in amoral ways, all in the pursuit of perfect rent exploitation. So while the concept of "artist gets paid a fair sum for creating art" is commendable, the current implementation has very detrimental side effects. And you can't fight the side-effects with policy, because free information exchange generates less revenue than the rent on information exchange the media companies seek to extract, so you have less money to lobby for laws against the people trying to restrict your freedom of speech.

wvenable 8y ago

> The potential moral issue is that the creator of the work (author, photographer, artist, musician) receives no compensation for widespread use of their work. Just because something has widespread use doesn't mean it's actually worth anything.