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> Copyright infringement is not stealing. ... [it] happens when I don't follow your artificial scarcity rules." These artificial scarcity rules help make creat

by dctoedt 16y ago

> Copyright infringement is not stealing. ... [it] happens when I don't follow your artificial scarcity rules." These artificial scarcity rules help make creativity economically possible. Yes, copying is a good thing; it's how the human race makes progress. But life is a movie, not a snapshot; even in the not-so-long run, it would be counterproductive to elevate copying to the status of an absolute, preemptive Good Thing. Consider: 1. Someone has to invest money in creating intellectual property. At a minimum, the actual creators have to come up with enough money to buy food, shelter, etc., for themselves and perhaps their families while they're doing their creative thing. (I won't even get into whether the creators' investment of their time is deserving of compensation; I happen to think it is, but that's not important here.) 2. The harsh reality is that investors normally will not make such investments unless they have at least a reasonable expectation of getting their money back (purely-altruistic motives being rare). 3. If prospective investors know that copiers will quickly destroy the ability to charge money for the fruits of the creative process, they're highly likely to give a thumbs-down to that particular request for their money. (As an analogy, imagine the effect that Hugo Chavez's 'nationalization' -- read: confiscation -- of foreign oil companies' interests in Venezuela has had on the willingness of those and other companies to risk any more money there.) 4. So while copyright infringement may not seem like stealing, it can have a remarkably similar economic effect. 5. That's why intellectual property law tries to strike a reasonable balance between the interests of creators and their backers and the interests of the public. EXAMPLE: The U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to give authors and inventors exclusive rights, but only for limited times. EXAMPLE: Copyright is limited by the fair-use doctrine. 6. There's often room for argument about whether any particular aspect of IP law is productive in supporting creativity. For example, it can be legitimately debated whether patents for business methods are a net positive or a net negative. 7. But a blanket statement, implying that egregious copyright infringement should never be punished as criminal behavior, is short-sighted.

ataggart 16y ago
>These artificial scarcity rules help make creativity economically possible. This is the common utilitarian refrain, though utilitarian arguments usually include some cost-benefit analysis. In the IP debate, it is simply (and erroneously) assumed to be a net positive. >3. If prospective investors know that copiers will quickly destroy the ability to charge money... Then perhaps it's not a sustainable business model. Perhaps that's why they spend money on such things as DRM, or making online-only services. Perhaps, in the absence of state coercion, some other things will be invented to deal with the potential loss of profit. >4. So while copyright infringement may not seem like stealing, it can have a remarkably similar economic effect. What "effect" would that be, less profit? And thus activities of others which result in less profit for you should be illegal? I'm sure you don't think that, but it necessarily falls out of your utilitarian position. The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
jacquesm 16y ago
> 1. Someone has to invest money in creating intellectual property. Most intellectual property takes the form of time invested rather than a monetary investment, and plenty of 'art' as we know it today was just commissioned work ('work for hire') when it was first produced. > At a minimum, the actual creators have to come up with enough money to buy food, shelter, etc., for themselves and perhaps their families while they're doing their creative thing. This is true, but between the stereotypical 'starving artist' and the 'rockstar milionaire' there is a broad range of normalcy that plenty of artists can aspire to. Britney wouldn't be one of those though. > (I won't even get into whether the creators' investment of their time is deserving of compensation; I happen to think it is, but that's not important here.) I think it is, but only if they can sell their product the first time out. The ransom model is an interesting concept that has a direct measurement of perceived value to a group of fans or some other form of market or audience. Once released the product becomes part of the public domain. > 2. The harsh reality is that investors normally will not make such investments unless they have at least a reasonable expectation of getting their money back (purely-altruistic motives being rare). This is true. So the quantity of works will go down, hopefully the quality would go up. That remains to be seen of course, but I'm fairly sure that if it were not for subsidized art we'd see either a larger unemployment level or more people in the workforce (where I live). > 3. If prospective investors know that copiers will quickly destroy the ability to charge money for the fruits of the creative process, they're highly likely to give a thumbs-down to that particular request for their money. No, they may have to find a way to get their moneys worth at the moment of release knowing that if they don't do it then they will never do it. This will reduce the avenues available to them, and will likely result in a lower margin but that does not mean that it won't happen at all. It's a matter of degree, not an absolute. > (As an analogy, imagine the effect that Hugo Chavez's 'nationalization' -- read: confiscation -- of foreign oil companies' interests in Venezuela has had on the willingness of those and other companies to risk any more money there.) Contrary to your view on this in the longer term this may actually benefit Venezuela more than it may hurt it in the shorter term. Oil will likely get more valuable, if Chavez' antics cause Venezuela to be one of the last oil reserves on the American continent that might work out very well for them. I'm cynical enough to suspect that being the people in charge of a valuable resource is probably a health risk because a 'war of liberation' is a viable option when you're sitting on a resource that someone else wants badly. > 4. So while copyright infringement may not seem like stealing, it can have a remarkably similar economic effect. No, it does not have a similar economic effect. Copyright infringement in any particular case could only be shown to have an economic effect if you can actually prove that a sale would have been made and as far as I know that is not possible without visiting alternative universes. You can make a statement to that effect by observing aggregates but you'll never be sure of it. > 5. That's why intellectual property law tries to strike a reasonable balance between the interests of creators and their backers and the interests of the public. Right, which is why Mickey Mouse is still not in the public domain and singing 'happy birthday' is copyright infringement. The interests of the public went out the window as soon as the various organizations realized that copyrights (and patents) are licenses to print money in very large amounts. > EXAMPLE: The U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to give authors and inventors exclusive rights, but only for limited times. Which have since been extended multiple times, and which now can be assumed to be extended indefinitely until the opposite is proven. > EXAMPLE: Copyright is limited by the fair-use doctrine. Which is further and further eroded. > 6. There's often room for argument about whether any particular aspect of IP law is productive in supporting creativity. For example, it can be legitimately debated whether patents for business methods are a net positive or a net negative. Try to argue they're a net positive, I'm really interested in how that could ever be the case. > 7. But a blanket statement, implying that egregious copyright infringement should never be punished as criminal behavior, is short-sighted. No, I think that's just fine. Criminal laws are supposed to be used to weed out the 'worst' people and to protect the 'good' people. We have civil laws for everything else and this should be a civil matter, after all, you don't have a time machine, you can't visit that other universe, any damage assessment is purely speculative, there is no victim, there are no bodies, there are no crimes. Just some people that may have received less money than they assumed they were going to make. And most of those people are not the 'starving artists' who routinely get shafted by the exact same groups that pretend to have their best interests (and ours!) at heart.
smokeyj 16y ago
Here's a good TED talk about IP in other industries, it's pretty interesting. http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashio...
- jules 16y ago
  That's not really relevant to other industries though, for several reasons: - It doesn't cost zero dollars and almost zero effort to copy a piece of clothing. - It's not even allowed to make a perfect copy of a piece of clothing, because of trademarks. - People decide which clothes to buy primarily based on the brand. Much of the value to a lot of people of a piece of clothing is in the little brand name on it, which you are not allowed to replicate. If everyone could copy and distribute her clothes verbatim including the brand name instantly and for free, and distribute them to millions of people, then I think her opinion might be just a tad different.
baddox 16y ago
I'm going to mostly ignore your claims that intellectual property protection are required for innovation, and just mention these: quicksort, most network protocols, loads of page replacement algorithms, tons of programming languages and implementations, etc. I disagree with your claim that intellectual property laws are a continuum and that a reasonable balance can to be found. When it comes to digital software/media, any intellectual property protection at all boils down to authorizing the ownership of an integer. I don't mean this metaphorically or rhetorically, I mean that a patent/copyright/etc. on a piece of software or a digital media file is quite literally a claim of ownership of a natural number. If someone else wants simply to distribute a list of the natural numbers in order, they would legally have to omit the numbers which represented patented/copyrighted works. You might brush off this argument by saying "that's silly, since the numbers representing a song or operating system would be so large that it's highly unlikely for anyone to accidentally stumble on such a number." That's not good enough for me. People have constructed (discovered) proofs of concept of several illegal numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number
- dctoedt 16y ago
  > I'm going to mostly ignore your claims that intellectual property protection are required for innovation, and just mention these: quicksort, most network protocols, loads of page replacement algorithms, tons of programming languages and implementations, etc. IP protection might not always be required for innovation, but if you compare countries that have "fair and balanced" IP protection -- really, property rights generally -- against those that don't, you find that the former seem to do better in fostering innovation. Certainly there are people and companies who create things for the joy of it, for reputation, for the indirect benefits that come from the existence of a widely-adopted standard, for purely-altruistic reasons, etc. Good for them; the world needs more of them. But sometimes creators need to get actual money, from others who don't necessarily share the joy, to buy equipment, travel, hired help, and other things. And that usually entails a legal system that helps innovation investors recoup the 'capital' they put at risk. -------------------- > ... a patent/copyright/etc. on a piece of software or a digital media file is quite literally a claim of ownership of a natural number. Does that mean that JK Rowling is claiming ownership of the letters A, B, etc.?

by dctoedt 16y ago

ataggart 16y ago

>These artificial scarcity rules help make creativity economically possible. This is the common utilitarian refrain, though utilitarian arguments usually include some cost-benefit analysis. In the IP debate, it is simply (and erroneously) assumed to be a net positive. >3. If prospective investors know that copiers will quickly destroy the ability to charge money... Then perhaps it's not a sustainable business model. Perhaps that's why they spend money on such things as DRM, or making online-only services. Perhaps, in the absence of state coercion, some other things will be invented to deal with the potential loss of profit. >4. So while copyright infringement may not seem like stealing, it can have a remarkably similar economic effect. What "effect" would that be, less profit? And thus activities of others which result in less profit for you should be illegal? I'm sure you don't think that, but it necessarily falls out of your utilitarian position. The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

jacquesm 16y ago

> 1. Someone has to invest money in creating intellectual property. Most intellectual property takes the form of time invested rather than a monetary investment, and plenty of 'art' as we know it today was just commissioned work ('work for hire') when it was first produced. > At a minimum, the actual creators have to come up with enough money to buy food, shelter, etc., for themselves and perhaps their families while they're doing their creative thing. This is true, but between the stereotypical 'starving artist' and the 'rockstar milionaire' there is a broad range of normalcy that plenty of artists can aspire to. Britney wouldn't be one of those though. > (I won't even get into whether the creators' investment of their time is deserving of compensation; I happen to think it is, but that's not important here.) I think it is, but only if they can sell their product the first time out. The ransom model is an interesting concept that has a direct measurement of perceived value to a group of fans or some other form of market or audience. Once released the product becomes part of the public domain. > 2. The harsh reality is that investors normally will not make such investments unless they have at least a reasonable expectation of getting their money back (purely-altruistic motives being rare). This is true. So the quantity of works will go down, hopefully the quality would go up. That remains to be seen of course, but I'm fairly sure that if it were not for subsidized art we'd see either a larger unemployment level or more people in the workforce (where I live). > 3. If prospective investors know that copiers will quickly destroy the ability to charge money for the fruits of the creative process, they're highly likely to give a thumbs-down to that particular request for their money. No, they may have to find a way to get their moneys worth at the moment of release knowing that if they don't do it then they will never do it. This will reduce the avenues available to them, and will likely result in a lower margin but that does not mean that it won't happen at all. It's a matter of degree, not an absolute. > (As an analogy, imagine the effect that Hugo Chavez's 'nationalization' -- read: confiscation -- of foreign oil companies' interests in Venezuela has had on the willingness of those and other companies to risk any more money there.) Contrary to your view on this in the longer term this may actually benefit Venezuela more than it may hurt it in the shorter term. Oil will likely get more valuable, if Chavez' antics cause Venezuela to be one of the last oil reserves on the American continent that might work out very well for them. I'm cynical enough to suspect that being the people in charge of a valuable resource is probably a health risk because a 'war of liberation' is a viable option when you're sitting on a resource that someone else wants badly. > 4. So while copyright infringement may not seem like stealing, it can have a remarkably similar economic effect. No, it does not have a similar economic effect. Copyright infringement in any particular case could only be shown to have an economic effect if you can actually prove that a sale would have been made and as far as I know that is not possible without visiting alternative universes. You can make a statement to that effect by observing aggregates but you'll never be sure of it. > 5. That's why intellectual property law tries to strike a reasonable balance between the interests of creators and their backers and the interests of the public. Right, which is why Mickey Mouse is still not in the public domain and singing 'happy birthday' is copyright infringement. The interests of the public went out the window as soon as the various organizations realized that copyrights (and patents) are licenses to print money in very large amounts. > EXAMPLE: The U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to give authors and inventors exclusive rights, but only for limited times. Which have since been extended multiple times, and which now can be assumed to be extended indefinitely until the opposite is proven. > EXAMPLE: Copyright is limited by the fair-use doctrine. Which is further and further eroded. > 6. There's often room for argument about whether any particular aspect of IP law is productive in supporting creativity. For example, it can be legitimately debated whether patents for business methods are a net positive or a net negative. Try to argue they're a net positive, I'm really interested in how that could ever be the case. > 7. But a blanket statement, implying that egregious copyright infringement should never be punished as criminal behavior, is short-sighted. No, I think that's just fine. Criminal laws are supposed to be used to weed out the 'worst' people and to protect the 'good' people. We have civil laws for everything else and this should be a civil matter, after all, you don't have a time machine, you can't visit that other universe, any damage assessment is purely speculative, there is no victim, there are no bodies, there are no crimes. Just some people that may have received less money than they assumed they were going to make. And most of those people are not the 'starving artists' who routinely get shafted by the exact same groups that pretend to have their best interests (and ours!) at heart.

smokeyj 16y ago

Here's a good TED talk about IP in other industries, it's pretty interesting. http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashio...

jules 16y ago
That's not really relevant to other industries though, for several reasons: - It doesn't cost zero dollars and almost zero effort to copy a piece of clothing. - It's not even allowed to make a perfect copy of a piece of clothing, because of trademarks. - People decide which clothes to buy primarily based on the brand. Much of the value to a lot of people of a piece of clothing is in the little brand name on it, which you are not allowed to replicate. If everyone could copy and distribute her clothes verbatim including the brand name instantly and for free, and distribute them to millions of people, then I think her opinion might be just a tad different.

baddox 16y ago

I'm going to mostly ignore your claims that intellectual property protection are required for innovation, and just mention these: quicksort, most network protocols, loads of page replacement algorithms, tons of programming languages and implementations, etc. I disagree with your claim that intellectual property laws are a continuum and that a reasonable balance can to be found. When it comes to digital software/media, any intellectual property protection at all boils down to authorizing the ownership of an integer. I don't mean this metaphorically or rhetorically, I mean that a patent/copyright/etc. on a piece of software or a digital media file is quite literally a claim of ownership of a natural number. If someone else wants simply to distribute a list of the natural numbers in order, they would legally have to omit the numbers which represented patented/copyrighted works. You might brush off this argument by saying "that's silly, since the numbers representing a song or operating system would be so large that it's highly unlikely for anyone to accidentally stumble on such a number." That's not good enough for me. People have constructed (discovered) proofs of concept of several illegal numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number

dctoedt 16y ago
> I'm going to mostly ignore your claims that intellectual property protection are required for innovation, and just mention these: quicksort, most network protocols, loads of page replacement algorithms, tons of programming languages and implementations, etc. IP protection might not always be required for innovation, but if you compare countries that have "fair and balanced" IP protection -- really, property rights generally -- against those that don't, you find that the former seem to do better in fostering innovation. Certainly there are people and companies who create things for the joy of it, for reputation, for the indirect benefits that come from the existence of a widely-adopted standard, for purely-altruistic reasons, etc. Good for them; the world needs more of them. But sometimes creators need to get actual money, from others who don't necessarily share the joy, to buy equipment, travel, hired help, and other things. And that usually entails a legal system that helps innovation investors recoup the 'capital' they put at risk. -------------------- > ... a patent/copyright/etc. on a piece of software or a digital media file is quite literally a claim of ownership of a natural number. Does that mean that JK Rowling is claiming ownership of the letters A, B, etc.?