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I’ll play devils advocate for you: Imagine I write something entertaining on my personal blog. Is it okay for somebody or some company to copy that content to

I’ll play devils advocate for you: Imagine I write something entertaining on my personal blog. Is it okay for somebody or some company to copy that content to their own website without my permission? If it is, is isn’t, why or why not?

falcor84 7y ago
I'll bite. I don't see any problem with the copying itself. Indeed that's what the Internet Archive does, and I don't see anything wrong with that. There only relevant problem I see here would be if they attributed the text to themselves, which is an entirely separate issue.
michaelmrose 7y ago
It's OK because it's their computer and the electrons in their machine didn't become yours when the became configured so as to represent different words. In the same fashion if I write your words on my paper with my pen the common sense ownership of pen and paper doesn't change. Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing that derived its legitimacy solely from utility derived from paying for creativity. Turns out that we are already rich enough as a society to pay for a decent life for everyone and most of the money sticks to the hands of greedy people with lumps of coal for souls and zero creativity. The kind of morons who would try to take down a dictionary.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing So are all property rights. The "common sense" ownership of pen and paper that you mentioned is that if I'm bigger than you, or I have a better weapon, or I have more friends, then your pen and paper are now mine. Fortunately for almost everyone, as a society we have learned to cooperate better than that.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    We can't both eat the same sandwich we can both read the same epub.
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      Only if someone wrote that epub in the first place, though.
      - michaelmrose 7y ago
        True and the equipment required to create the book in most cases is now down to about $200. Access to the internet comes at a comparatively princely $60 a month. In a lot of first world nations education and health are gratis. Donations can be solicited to fund the creation of desirable works. I wonder if copyright went away people would still write books?
        Silhouette 7y ago
        I wonder if copyright went away people would still write books? I respectfully suggest that you're asking the wrong question. Obviously some books would still be written. More insightful questions might be whether people would still write as many books, whether the books written would be as good, and whether books would reach as large an audience as happens under copyright. I contend that it is utterly implausible that an entirely voluntary or even patronage-based system would come anywhere close to our current situation by any of those metrics. The vast majority of the cost of making a book has nothing to do with buying a laptop or paying for an Internet connection. It comes from the time and skill and creativity and understanding of the author. Depending on the nature of the book, it also comes from the time and skill and creativity and understanding of proofreaders, editors, illustrators, graphic designers, researchers...
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing that derived its legitimacy solely from utility derived from paying for creativity. All property rights are invented rights drawn from nothing justified (if at all) solely by the resulting utility of providing the exclusivity they grant.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    The rivulrous nature of physical goods is inherent
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > The rivulrous nature of physical goods is inherent As is the rivalrous nature of all subjects of non-physical property. Otherwise, there'd be no advantage to exclusive privileges. Exclusive access being more valuable to the exclusive holder than shared access would be is exactly rivalry. But the rivalrous nature of the subject of property doesn't make property rights natural, it just provides the basis by which such rights create incentives which drive behavior which may or may not produce social utility.
      - michaelmrose 7y ago
        > In economics, a good is said to be rivalrous or a rival if its consumption by Satvik consumer prevents simultaneous consumption by other consumers, or if consumption by one party reduces the ability of another party to consume it. You aren't the red queen and words don't mean what you want them to mean. It makes property rights a reasonable answer to a question that had to be resolved one way or another because we can't all eat the same sandwich. Because we can all ready the same epub or build the same machine intellectual property rights are an answer to a much higher level question of how do we as a society achieve success. Conflating this higher level abstract question with a low level physical question confuses the issue and makes it impossible to arrive at some potential solutions because of the baggage provided by the lower level question. Because we already know we can't all eat the same sandwich we refuse to ask if the world is better off if we make information free of constraints. We act as if we were ripping a sandwich out of somebodies mouth instead of asking if that particular sandwich actually ought to exist in the first place.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
> Is it okay for somebody or some company to copy that content to their own website without my permission? Sure. Why not? It's just data and it doesn't actually belong to anyone. By reproducing your work and making it more widely available, I'd even say they're helping you by propagating your ideas. The most common problems with this is the subversion of the creator's business model and reputation. If people get your content via someone else's website, they won't look at your ads and might think someone else wrote it. We need alternative business models that don't depend on artificial scarcity. Advertising is becoming more and more unacceptable so we'll have to come up with something better one way or another. As for reputation, I think the way academia handles plagiarism is much more sane: misrepresenting authorship causes damage to one's own reputation. Even if the work did belong to you and someone did copy it without permission, would you sue them? Would you spend thousands of dollars and years of your life fighting against them in court? Most people wouldn't. This intellectual property stuff disproportionally benefits rich corporations with lots of expensive lawyers at their disposal.
takeda 7y ago
Imagine instead of writing it in your blog, telling it someone. Does he/she have right to tell it to others? This is how we, humans, functioned for ages, you are basing your opinion on already artificial constructs. We as humanity, achieved most thanks to copying information and constantly improving and building on top of it. Copyright was meant to provide short time for the authors to make money, before releasing it to pubic domain. Initially copyright, protected the work only for 14 years, now it is 100 years after the death of the author and it is extended perpetually, because our constitution says that copyright needs to expire, it doesn't specify when, which is being exploited. Company like Disney, built their empire on public domain works, but fiercely fights to prevent them to become public domain. Every time copyright for Mickey Mouse is about to expire, our Congress extends it. We need to get back to sensible time frame. 14 years was more than enough to make profit from your works.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  I completely agree with you. The original idea behind copyright was "we'll pretend your intellectual work is scarce for a couple decades so you can turn a profit and then it'll enter the public domain". When was the last time something entered the public domain? Probably the early 20th century. All the great films we grew up with? They were supposed to have entered the public domain a long time ago but Netflix still has to pay for them and as a result they're unavailable. After all these extensions, we'll probably be long dead by the time they become public property. If it ever happens -- I have no doubt they'll try to make their copyrights last forever. The copyright industry isn't really keeping up their end of the deal. People should respond by voiding the social contract. There is no reason to recognize copyright as a legitimate concept much less lose any sleep over any infringement.

falcor84 7y ago

I'll bite. I don't see any problem with the copying itself. Indeed that's what the Internet Archive does, and I don't see anything wrong with that. There only relevant problem I see here would be if they attributed the text to themselves, which is an entirely separate issue.

michaelmrose 7y ago

It's OK because it's their computer and the electrons in their machine didn't become yours when the became configured so as to represent different words. In the same fashion if I write your words on my paper with my pen the common sense ownership of pen and paper doesn't change. Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing that derived its legitimacy solely from utility derived from paying for creativity. Turns out that we are already rich enough as a society to pay for a decent life for everyone and most of the money sticks to the hands of greedy people with lumps of coal for souls and zero creativity. The kind of morons who would try to take down a dictionary.

Silhouette 7y ago
Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing So are all property rights. The "common sense" ownership of pen and paper that you mentioned is that if I'm bigger than you, or I have a better weapon, or I have more friends, then your pen and paper are now mine. Fortunately for almost everyone, as a society we have learned to cooperate better than that.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  We can't both eat the same sandwich we can both read the same epub.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    Only if someone wrote that epub in the first place, though.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      True and the equipment required to create the book in most cases is now down to about $200. Access to the internet comes at a comparatively princely $60 a month. In a lot of first world nations education and health are gratis. Donations can be solicited to fund the creation of desirable works. I wonder if copyright went away people would still write books?
      - Silhouette 7y ago
        I wonder if copyright went away people would still write books? I respectfully suggest that you're asking the wrong question. Obviously some books would still be written. More insightful questions might be whether people would still write as many books, whether the books written would be as good, and whether books would reach as large an audience as happens under copyright. I contend that it is utterly implausible that an entirely voluntary or even patronage-based system would come anywhere close to our current situation by any of those metrics. The vast majority of the cost of making a book has nothing to do with buying a laptop or paying for an Internet connection. It comes from the time and skill and creativity and understanding of the author. Depending on the nature of the book, it also comes from the time and skill and creativity and understanding of proofreaders, editors, illustrators, graphic designers, researchers...
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Copyright is an invented right drawn from nothing that derived its legitimacy solely from utility derived from paying for creativity. All property rights are invented rights drawn from nothing justified (if at all) solely by the resulting utility of providing the exclusivity they grant.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  The rivulrous nature of physical goods is inherent
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > The rivulrous nature of physical goods is inherent As is the rivalrous nature of all subjects of non-physical property. Otherwise, there'd be no advantage to exclusive privileges. Exclusive access being more valuable to the exclusive holder than shared access would be is exactly rivalry. But the rivalrous nature of the subject of property doesn't make property rights natural, it just provides the basis by which such rights create incentives which drive behavior which may or may not produce social utility.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      > In economics, a good is said to be rivalrous or a rival if its consumption by Satvik consumer prevents simultaneous consumption by other consumers, or if consumption by one party reduces the ability of another party to consume it. You aren't the red queen and words don't mean what you want them to mean. It makes property rights a reasonable answer to a question that had to be resolved one way or another because we can't all eat the same sandwich. Because we can all ready the same epub or build the same machine intellectual property rights are an answer to a much higher level question of how do we as a society achieve success. Conflating this higher level abstract question with a low level physical question confuses the issue and makes it impossible to arrive at some potential solutions because of the baggage provided by the lower level question. Because we already know we can't all eat the same sandwich we refuse to ask if the world is better off if we make information free of constraints. We act as if we were ripping a sandwich out of somebodies mouth instead of asking if that particular sandwich actually ought to exist in the first place.

matheusmoreira 7y ago

> Is it okay for somebody or some company to copy that content to their own website without my permission? Sure. Why not? It's just data and it doesn't actually belong to anyone. By reproducing your work and making it more widely available, I'd even say they're helping you by propagating your ideas. The most common problems with this is the subversion of the creator's business model and reputation. If people get your content via someone else's website, they won't look at your ads and might think someone else wrote it. We need alternative business models that don't depend on artificial scarcity. Advertising is becoming more and more unacceptable so we'll have to come up with something better one way or another. As for reputation, I think the way academia handles plagiarism is much more sane: misrepresenting authorship causes damage to one's own reputation. Even if the work did belong to you and someone did copy it without permission, would you sue them? Would you spend thousands of dollars and years of your life fighting against them in court? Most people wouldn't. This intellectual property stuff disproportionally benefits rich corporations with lots of expensive lawyers at their disposal.

takeda 7y ago

Imagine instead of writing it in your blog, telling it someone. Does he/she have right to tell it to others? This is how we, humans, functioned for ages, you are basing your opinion on already artificial constructs. We as humanity, achieved most thanks to copying information and constantly improving and building on top of it. Copyright was meant to provide short time for the authors to make money, before releasing it to pubic domain. Initially copyright, protected the work only for 14 years, now it is 100 years after the death of the author and it is extended perpetually, because our constitution says that copyright needs to expire, it doesn't specify when, which is being exploited. Company like Disney, built their empire on public domain works, but fiercely fights to prevent them to become public domain. Every time copyright for Mickey Mouse is about to expire, our Congress extends it. We need to get back to sensible time frame. 14 years was more than enough to make profit from your works.

matheusmoreira 7y ago
I completely agree with you. The original idea behind copyright was "we'll pretend your intellectual work is scarce for a couple decades so you can turn a profit and then it'll enter the public domain". When was the last time something entered the public domain? Probably the early 20th century. All the great films we grew up with? They were supposed to have entered the public domain a long time ago but Netflix still has to pay for them and as a result they're unavailable. After all these extensions, we'll probably be long dead by the time they become public property. If it ever happens -- I have no doubt they'll try to make their copyrights last forever. The copyright industry isn't really keeping up their end of the deal. People should respond by voiding the social contract. There is no reason to recognize copyright as a legitimate concept much less lose any sleep over any infringement.