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> it definitely hurts the bottom line of indie musicians, writers, moviemakers, etc. One could argue that open-source hurts the bottom line of plenty of people

> it definitely hurts the bottom line of indie musicians, writers, moviemakers, etc. One could argue that open-source hurts the bottom line of plenty of people building similar things that aren't free. And that if we'd spent hundreds of years making open-source illegal, there would by now exist many industries and professionals whose jobs are only possible due to that fact, and who would therefore suffer financially if we removed that artificial protection. Ofc this analogy isn't perfect, but you get the idea: "People relying on business model X will make less money if you do Y" isn't on its own a strong moral argument against Y. Why does X warrant unique protection? Sure, we've all gotten used to X, and we enjoy the creations of many who make their living that way, but who's to say the world wouldn't be better and more creative without it? Again, in a world without open source, I think it'd be tough to guess that millions of developers could come together to share massive amounts of code and work for free.

Silhouette 7y ago
I think the essential distinction that your analogy doesn't include is that the independents making and releasing new works under copyright did so with the prior promise that they would be protected against someone copying their work and distributing it without compensating them, as the law states. There is no law, nor any reasonable expectation, that just because you wrote a piece of software to do something then no-one else can ever independently create other software that competes with you, open source or otherwise. There is also no law that just because an independent made a song or a film about a love story, no-one else can make another (original) song or movie about a love story in a similar style that the same listeners or viewers might also like. That seems like a fairer analogy between your open source scenario and works from small, independent creators.
- csallen 7y ago
  You're right, which makes this situation tricky to reverse. But the least we could do is stop continually extending and strengthening copyright terms, which at this point are encouraging loads of rent-seeking behavior and quite possibly disincentivizing innovation and creativity on the whole. And culturally, imo we should fight against propaganda like "intellectual property" and the equating of copyright violations to theft. The moral argument against theft exists because it only applies to rivalrous goods.
  - WilTimSon 7y ago
    I want to chime in that I absolutely agree that copyright terms need to be shortened and copyright laws need some fixing. Their current state is absolutely for the benefit of big corporations and doesn't help small authors as much.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    You're right, which makes this situation tricky to reverse. But the least we could do is stop continually extending and strengthening copyright terms I'm entirely with you on almost all of this. I see no economic or moral argument for granting the longer-than-human-lifetimes durations of copyright that we have in most places today. There is no good argument that I can see not to reduce the guaranteed period of exclusivity for new works to something much more reasonable, still enough to provide a robust economic incentive to create and share new work in the first place (which I note could be very different depending on the nature of each work, its creator(s) and its intended audience) but not completely disproportionate to that goal. For the record, I also see few good arguments against retrospectively reversing copyright term extensions that apply to works that were originally created and distributed when lesser incentives were in effect, and none at all if the rights haven't been transferred since such an extension was introduced in law. I'm in two minds on the theft question. Yes, intellectual and physical property are different things and have different characteristics, but ultimately both are artificial legal constructs anyway, as are the rights to control them that the law provides. Copyright infringement very often is done in a way that ultimately denies the rightsholder real money or other compensation to which they would have been entitled had the same actions been taken in a legal way, and in that situation I see little moral distinction between ripping the work without paying the money or stealing the same amount of money from someone's bank account after the fact. Clearly not all copyright infringement falls into this category, because of the usual (reasonable) arguments that not every illegal copy represents a lost sale, etc. However, it has been my experience that most of the time when people start raising the "copyright infringement is not theft" point in an argument, they're really attempting to use sophistry to shift the argument away from what was otherwise a straightforward case of them knowingly breaking the law and ripping someone off, and which is in fact still exactly that regardless of what label is used.

Silhouette 7y ago

I think the essential distinction that your analogy doesn't include is that the independents making and releasing new works under copyright did so with the prior promise that they would be protected against someone copying their work and distributing it without compensating them, as the law states. There is no law, nor any reasonable expectation, that just because you wrote a piece of software to do something then no-one else can ever independently create other software that competes with you, open source or otherwise. There is also no law that just because an independent made a song or a film about a love story, no-one else can make another (original) song or movie about a love story in a similar style that the same listeners or viewers might also like. That seems like a fairer analogy between your open source scenario and works from small, independent creators.

csallen 7y ago
You're right, which makes this situation tricky to reverse. But the least we could do is stop continually extending and strengthening copyright terms, which at this point are encouraging loads of rent-seeking behavior and quite possibly disincentivizing innovation and creativity on the whole. And culturally, imo we should fight against propaganda like "intellectual property" and the equating of copyright violations to theft. The moral argument against theft exists because it only applies to rivalrous goods.
- WilTimSon 7y ago
  I want to chime in that I absolutely agree that copyright terms need to be shortened and copyright laws need some fixing. Their current state is absolutely for the benefit of big corporations and doesn't help small authors as much.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  You're right, which makes this situation tricky to reverse. But the least we could do is stop continually extending and strengthening copyright terms I'm entirely with you on almost all of this. I see no economic or moral argument for granting the longer-than-human-lifetimes durations of copyright that we have in most places today. There is no good argument that I can see not to reduce the guaranteed period of exclusivity for new works to something much more reasonable, still enough to provide a robust economic incentive to create and share new work in the first place (which I note could be very different depending on the nature of each work, its creator(s) and its intended audience) but not completely disproportionate to that goal. For the record, I also see few good arguments against retrospectively reversing copyright term extensions that apply to works that were originally created and distributed when lesser incentives were in effect, and none at all if the rights haven't been transferred since such an extension was introduced in law. I'm in two minds on the theft question. Yes, intellectual and physical property are different things and have different characteristics, but ultimately both are artificial legal constructs anyway, as are the rights to control them that the law provides. Copyright infringement very often is done in a way that ultimately denies the rightsholder real money or other compensation to which they would have been entitled had the same actions been taken in a legal way, and in that situation I see little moral distinction between ripping the work without paying the money or stealing the same amount of money from someone's bank account after the fact. Clearly not all copyright infringement falls into this category, because of the usual (reasonable) arguments that not every illegal copy represents a lost sale, etc. However, it has been my experience that most of the time when people start raising the "copyright infringement is not theft" point in an argument, they're really attempting to use sophistry to shift the argument away from what was otherwise a straightforward case of them knowingly breaking the law and ripping someone off, and which is in fact still exactly that regardless of what label is used.