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I feel like we should unify the copyright and privacy laws. If I copy a Disney movie without their knowledge and then extract value from it, for example by wat

I feel like we should unify the copyright and privacy laws. If I copy a Disney movie without their knowledge and then extract value from it, for example by watching the movie without paying, everyone agrees that this is theft. And punishment is generally strong to excessive. If a website copies my private data without my knowledge or even after I decline permission by sending DNT headers, that is somehow considered completely fine. But to me, the value of my private data is vastly higher than the value of watching a copied movie. And the potential for financial damages stemming from a stolen identity is also much highest than the real damages from someone downloading an mp4. I suggest that we classify the secret collection of private data as theft. Edit: With my wording, I was referring to this old pro-copyright ad: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU

Semaphor 6y ago
> everyone agrees that this is theft No.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  I'm not aware of any court case where downloading and watching movies without the rights owner's permission was considered OK. Instead, the downloader always had to pay a fine.
  - _jal 6y ago
    That does not make it theft. Copyright infringement is not theft. Theft is legally distinct. It is also morally distinct - the 'owner' of the 'intellectual property' is not deprived of their ownership if someone violates the transactional model by looking without permission. Copyright infringement is not theft. It is interference with a business model. Please stop saying obviously incorrect things.
    - hairofadog 6y ago
      Respectfully, fxtentacle’s point didn’t hinge on the technical definition of theft. I think they’re trying to point out that illicit data transfers are punished harshly when an individual does it but are considered standard practice and even (by some) praised when corporations do it.
    - fxtentacle 6y ago
      While I agree with you, public opinion probably does not agree with you. And the rhetoric by rights owners has always been downloading==theft. I've added a link to one such propaganda video to my original comment.
      - Semaphor 6y ago
        I’m not sure public opinion doesn’t agree. I mean I could believe it, but I wouldn’t take it as a given.
      - _jal 6y ago
        If you agree, why are you repeating it? > And the rhetoric by rights owners has always been downloading==theft. Do you echo every pressure group's rhetoric?
      - unishark 6y ago
        Not to pile on here, but you did claim 'everyone'. Apparently people took it more literally than you meant it.
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    That’s not what you said. And FWIW, it’s very often an uploader who has to pay a fine for distributing copyrighted work (not theft). Fines for downloading are pretty rare.
  - hairofadog 6y ago
    While I agree with you in spirit, I believe penalties for downloading usually have to do with redistribution via BitTorrent. People sometimes forget (or never know in the first place) that when you download via BitTorrent you’re also distributing. However, I totally agree with the sentiment, and I’ve long felt this way about petty crimes like shoplifting, which are harshly punished and shamed, while on the flip-side you have crimes like wage theft which goes effectively unpunished and is even defended as legitimate by some.
  - jeroenhd 6y ago
    In many jurisdictions, "theft" specifically implies the taking of goods. When you copy a file, the original file still exists. No items get taken, therefore no theft took place. I am not familiar with American law, but I don't expect it to have a definition where watching illegal movies is considered actual theft. IP companies such as media companies and patent holders often try to spin unlicensed access to media or information as theft because it sounds worse, but in practice the actual crime is "illegal access to intellectual property" or something similar to that.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Moru 6y ago
    In Sweden everyone pays a tax on all media like empty DVD's, harddrives, phones and so on. This tax covers the private copying of media like movies and music. It is not illegal in Sweden to borrow a DVD from your friend and copy it. We actually pay a fine to be allowed to do this. The money gets distributed to the content owners by some organisation owned by the record companies. However it is illegal to mass distribute movies on the net, like bittorrent-style to people you do not know personally. Yes it's a bit hard to define friends but if you find yourself burning copies of CD's in bulk, it's most likely not ok. Usually the act of copying is not the problem, distribution is.
  - algieg 6y ago
    That's actually legal in my homeland. There are specific conditions (e.g. personal use without economic goals) but it's generally OK. Note however that this applies to downloading from a server where the transfer goes one way. Torrenting would constitute copyright infringement as it is a two way transfer and counts as sharing copyrighted works.
  - DanBC 6y ago
    > Instead, the downloader always had to pay a fine. No. In many places simple copyright violation is not a crime, and so there are no fines. The rights holders can sue for losses. But this isn't a criminal case between the state and an alleged criminal, it's a case between two citizens (although one of them may be a corporate person). There are things that tip copyright violation into a criminal offence: doing it as part of business (selling the DVDs that you've downloaded), doing it so much it materially affects the rights holders.
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    > I'm not aware of any court case where downloading and watching movies without the rights owner's permission was considered OK. Instead, the downloader always had to pay a fine. In Poland downloading music, movies and images is legal. (software is treated specially and just downloading may be illegal) And I suspect that "always" is untrue also after limiting to USA.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    That isn't true at all. No one has ever been sued for DOWNLOADING a movie. They get sued for UPLOADING a movie. Important distinction. Mere possession is not a crime - everything is copyrighted, and it isn't the responsibility of someone holding a copy to know if the person that gave them that copy was authorized to to so.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  If you scope "everyone" to "everyone who matters" - courts, legislators, law enforcement - it's a pretty accurate statement.
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    Sure, if you also scope "theft" to something that is "not theft".
mhaberl 6y ago
> If I copy a Disney movie without their knowledge and then extract value from it, for example by watching the movie without paying What value would that be? Fun? If it is a bad movie and I have no fun what value did I extract from it then? > everyone agrees that this is theft Oh, how I wish I could download a car
- markbnine 6y ago
  Be patient. . . there's people working on that.
kube-system 6y ago
Copyright protects the creator of a work, not the subject of it. Additionally, it applies to creative works, not bare facts. The fact that "John Smith's IP address is 127.0.0.1" is neither creative, nor something John Smith created.
- 0goel0 6y ago
  So you're saying we can't change the law?
  - kube-system 6y ago
    We can certainly make new one (or potentially modify consumer protection law) to protect privacy. There's no part of copyright law that makes sense to change that would do the thing GP is asking for. It is an entirely different concept.
- woadwarrior01 6y ago
  I understand that bare facts cannot be copyrighted but IMO, a better test in this case is to ask whether the information has any monetary value? Because once it is under the posession of the data brokers, it's aggregated and traded like chattel.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    If you were to add to title 17: "facts are subject to copyright protection if they have monetary value" -- you still have not solved the problem. Again, copyright doesn't apply to the subject of a work, it applies to the one who created it. Also, your proposed change has made most of Wikipedia illegal.
- beagle3 6y ago
  There are all sorts of “likeness rights” though, which are often lumped with copyrights and trademarks. A model has rights for her likeness not to be used to promote something without her or him getting paid. It could be put under the same umbrella that no one has rights for my data.
raspyberr 6y ago
Why would you unify two unrelated things? I think privacy is a right and copyright is so overstretched it literally works against its original intention. As an aside, the only part of "Intellectual Property" as an idea that I agree with is the right for an author to claim that they authored something. It shoudln't give them a right to control how its distributed or what people do with it. Why would you compare the rights of people to the "rights" of companies? Why would you defend enormous corporations? Disney doesn't have "knowledge". It's not a person.
- specialist 6y ago
  To simplify the bookkeeping. When all data about me is mine, everything else falls into place.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    This doesn't simply it, it complicates it. With privacy, you are generally looking to prevent the redistribution of facts, but only in specific circumstances. Copyright does a very different thing, where it only prevents the redistribution of more creative expressions, but does so in broad circumstances. If you take the typical data elements that you want to keep private and apply copyright law to them, I think you'll end up with more problems than solutions. Facts -- like your name -- are something that people need to reproduce just to do basic things, like have a conversation with you. I don't think we need to start all conversations with: "By starting a conversation with me, you hereby grant and will grant me and affiliated discussion participants a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to reproduce, mention, perform, vocalize, remember and otherwise use your name for purposes of this conversation" It sounds silly, but copyright is this broad in scope. It applies to everyone. For the purposes of privacy, you really need a much more narrow paradigm -- something that applies to strangers but not people who you expect to know things about you, like friends, family, or people you are voluntarily sharing with. This is probably why every privacy law on the planet is not an extension of copyright. They are two very different things.
    - 6y ago
arp242 6y ago
What is "private data"? Is your hair colour private data? Is the browser you use private data? Why? Or why not? Does it matter if I only record hair colour and the browser you use, or if I combine it with other data? These kind of things may sound okay superficially, but once you start defining things clearly in a way that can be incorporated in a workable law things get very hard very fast. Copyright, on the other hand, is much easier.
- specialist 6y ago
  Privacy is real simple: Control over my public persona. Property rights is real simple: Pay me. If you're making a buck off my data, I want my cut.
  - arp242 6y ago
    That doesn't define "privacy" or "public persona". This is the tricky bit.
- ignoramous 6y ago
  There are two different privacy issues at play. 1. You consent to being tracked in exchange for services consumed (Google Maps Navigation, for example). 2. You don't consent to it but you're still being tracked. Not only that, the data is then sold to any and every buyer. For example: https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2019/07/superhuman-is-spying-on-you https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2019/07/superhuman-i... OP has problems with #2. > Copyright, on the other hand, is much easier. Sure, no reason why privacy can't be too. Here's a simple framework to think about Privacy online: Provide an opt-out for tracking, selling / sharing data etc etc.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    Actuall, I feel most strongly about those cases where data about me is being saved and I don't even know about it. Because those data collectors who don't even dare to ask for permission are probably the worst ones.
  - 6y ago
sandworm101 6y ago
>> for example by watching the movie without paying, everyone agrees that this is theft. No. Very few would equate this to theft, especially lawyers. There is even a debate to be had as to what "watching a movie" even means. How about a youtube review of the movie? What about a clip incorporated into something else? What about my IronMan costume for halloween? Intellectual property is not like land or objects. That is why it is subject to very special and very specific limitations on when and where it can be applied. There are even a few disney movies that, soon, will be out of copyright. Steamboat Willy falls out in 2024. Superman in 2031. 'Sherlock Holmes' fell out of UK copyright in 2000, so too 'Gone With the Wind'. Brits can print those books all they want. Americans ... will have to wait a few decades. Copyright violates are a totally different game than traditional understandings of "theft".
shajznnckfke 6y ago
If you knock on my door and ask me what time it is while wearing a button that says “don’t remember me!” but I remember you anyway, was that theft?
missosoup 6y ago
> Edit: With my wording, I was referring to this old pro-copyright ad: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU Or the better version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXkxSl4f6vw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXkxSl4f6vw

Semaphor 6y ago

> everyone agrees that this is theft No.

fxtentacle 6y ago
I'm not aware of any court case where downloading and watching movies without the rights owner's permission was considered OK. Instead, the downloader always had to pay a fine.
- _jal 6y ago
  That does not make it theft. Copyright infringement is not theft. Theft is legally distinct. It is also morally distinct - the 'owner' of the 'intellectual property' is not deprived of their ownership if someone violates the transactional model by looking without permission. Copyright infringement is not theft. It is interference with a business model. Please stop saying obviously incorrect things.
  - hairofadog 6y ago
    Respectfully, fxtentacle’s point didn’t hinge on the technical definition of theft. I think they’re trying to point out that illicit data transfers are punished harshly when an individual does it but are considered standard practice and even (by some) praised when corporations do it.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    While I agree with you, public opinion probably does not agree with you. And the rhetoric by rights owners has always been downloading==theft. I've added a link to one such propaganda video to my original comment.
    - Semaphor 6y ago
      I’m not sure public opinion doesn’t agree. I mean I could believe it, but I wouldn’t take it as a given.
    - _jal 6y ago
      If you agree, why are you repeating it? > And the rhetoric by rights owners has always been downloading==theft. Do you echo every pressure group's rhetoric?
    - unishark 6y ago
      Not to pile on here, but you did claim 'everyone'. Apparently people took it more literally than you meant it.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  That’s not what you said. And FWIW, it’s very often an uploader who has to pay a fine for distributing copyrighted work (not theft). Fines for downloading are pretty rare.
- hairofadog 6y ago
  While I agree with you in spirit, I believe penalties for downloading usually have to do with redistribution via BitTorrent. People sometimes forget (or never know in the first place) that when you download via BitTorrent you’re also distributing. However, I totally agree with the sentiment, and I’ve long felt this way about petty crimes like shoplifting, which are harshly punished and shamed, while on the flip-side you have crimes like wage theft which goes effectively unpunished and is even defended as legitimate by some.
- jeroenhd 6y ago
  In many jurisdictions, "theft" specifically implies the taking of goods. When you copy a file, the original file still exists. No items get taken, therefore no theft took place. I am not familiar with American law, but I don't expect it to have a definition where watching illegal movies is considered actual theft. IP companies such as media companies and patent holders often try to spin unlicensed access to media or information as theft because it sounds worse, but in practice the actual crime is "illegal access to intellectual property" or something similar to that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Moru 6y ago
  In Sweden everyone pays a tax on all media like empty DVD's, harddrives, phones and so on. This tax covers the private copying of media like movies and music. It is not illegal in Sweden to borrow a DVD from your friend and copy it. We actually pay a fine to be allowed to do this. The money gets distributed to the content owners by some organisation owned by the record companies. However it is illegal to mass distribute movies on the net, like bittorrent-style to people you do not know personally. Yes it's a bit hard to define friends but if you find yourself burning copies of CD's in bulk, it's most likely not ok. Usually the act of copying is not the problem, distribution is.
- algieg 6y ago
  That's actually legal in my homeland. There are specific conditions (e.g. personal use without economic goals) but it's generally OK. Note however that this applies to downloading from a server where the transfer goes one way. Torrenting would constitute copyright infringement as it is a two way transfer and counts as sharing copyrighted works.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > Instead, the downloader always had to pay a fine. No. In many places simple copyright violation is not a crime, and so there are no fines. The rights holders can sue for losses. But this isn't a criminal case between the state and an alleged criminal, it's a case between two citizens (although one of them may be a corporate person). There are things that tip copyright violation into a criminal offence: doing it as part of business (selling the DVDs that you've downloaded), doing it so much it materially affects the rights holders.
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  > I'm not aware of any court case where downloading and watching movies without the rights owner's permission was considered OK. Instead, the downloader always had to pay a fine. In Poland downloading music, movies and images is legal. (software is treated specially and just downloading may be illegal) And I suspect that "always" is untrue also after limiting to USA.
- TylerE 6y ago
  That isn't true at all. No one has ever been sued for DOWNLOADING a movie. They get sued for UPLOADING a movie. Important distinction. Mere possession is not a crime - everything is copyrighted, and it isn't the responsibility of someone holding a copy to know if the person that gave them that copy was authorized to to so.
ceejayoz 6y ago
If you scope "everyone" to "everyone who matters" - courts, legislators, law enforcement - it's a pretty accurate statement.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  Sure, if you also scope "theft" to something that is "not theft".

mhaberl 6y ago

> If I copy a Disney movie without their knowledge and then extract value from it, for example by watching the movie without paying What value would that be? Fun? If it is a bad movie and I have no fun what value did I extract from it then? > everyone agrees that this is theft Oh, how I wish I could download a car

markbnine 6y ago
Be patient. . . there's people working on that.

kube-system 6y ago

Copyright protects the creator of a work, not the subject of it. Additionally, it applies to creative works, not bare facts. The fact that "John Smith's IP address is 127.0.0.1" is neither creative, nor something John Smith created.

0goel0 6y ago
So you're saying we can't change the law?
- kube-system 6y ago
  We can certainly make new one (or potentially modify consumer protection law) to protect privacy. There's no part of copyright law that makes sense to change that would do the thing GP is asking for. It is an entirely different concept.
woadwarrior01 6y ago
I understand that bare facts cannot be copyrighted but IMO, a better test in this case is to ask whether the information has any monetary value? Because once it is under the posession of the data brokers, it's aggregated and traded like chattel.
- kube-system 6y ago
  If you were to add to title 17: "facts are subject to copyright protection if they have monetary value" -- you still have not solved the problem. Again, copyright doesn't apply to the subject of a work, it applies to the one who created it. Also, your proposed change has made most of Wikipedia illegal.
beagle3 6y ago
There are all sorts of “likeness rights” though, which are often lumped with copyrights and trademarks. A model has rights for her likeness not to be used to promote something without her or him getting paid. It could be put under the same umbrella that no one has rights for my data.

raspyberr 6y ago

Why would you unify two unrelated things? I think privacy is a right and copyright is so overstretched it literally works against its original intention. As an aside, the only part of "Intellectual Property" as an idea that I agree with is the right for an author to claim that they authored something. It shoudln't give them a right to control how its distributed or what people do with it. Why would you compare the rights of people to the "rights" of companies? Why would you defend enormous corporations? Disney doesn't have "knowledge". It's not a person.

specialist 6y ago
To simplify the bookkeeping. When all data about me is mine, everything else falls into place.
- kube-system 6y ago
  This doesn't simply it, it complicates it. With privacy, you are generally looking to prevent the redistribution of facts, but only in specific circumstances. Copyright does a very different thing, where it only prevents the redistribution of more creative expressions, but does so in broad circumstances. If you take the typical data elements that you want to keep private and apply copyright law to them, I think you'll end up with more problems than solutions. Facts -- like your name -- are something that people need to reproduce just to do basic things, like have a conversation with you. I don't think we need to start all conversations with: "By starting a conversation with me, you hereby grant and will grant me and affiliated discussion participants a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to reproduce, mention, perform, vocalize, remember and otherwise use your name for purposes of this conversation" It sounds silly, but copyright is this broad in scope. It applies to everyone. For the purposes of privacy, you really need a much more narrow paradigm -- something that applies to strangers but not people who you expect to know things about you, like friends, family, or people you are voluntarily sharing with. This is probably why every privacy law on the planet is not an extension of copyright. They are two very different things.
  - 6y ago

arp242 6y ago

What is "private data"? Is your hair colour private data? Is the browser you use private data? Why? Or why not? Does it matter if I only record hair colour and the browser you use, or if I combine it with other data? These kind of things may sound okay superficially, but once you start defining things clearly in a way that can be incorporated in a workable law things get very hard very fast. Copyright, on the other hand, is much easier.

specialist 6y ago
Privacy is real simple: Control over my public persona. Property rights is real simple: Pay me. If you're making a buck off my data, I want my cut.
- arp242 6y ago
  That doesn't define "privacy" or "public persona". This is the tricky bit.
ignoramous 6y ago
There are two different privacy issues at play. 1. You consent to being tracked in exchange for services consumed (Google Maps Navigation, for example). 2. You don't consent to it but you're still being tracked. Not only that, the data is then sold to any and every buyer. For example: https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2019/07/superhuman-is-spying-on-you https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2019/07/superhuman-i... OP has problems with #2. > Copyright, on the other hand, is much easier. Sure, no reason why privacy can't be too. Here's a simple framework to think about Privacy online: Provide an opt-out for tracking, selling / sharing data etc etc.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  Actuall, I feel most strongly about those cases where data about me is being saved and I don't even know about it. Because those data collectors who don't even dare to ask for permission are probably the worst ones.
- 6y ago

sandworm101 6y ago

>> for example by watching the movie without paying, everyone agrees that this is theft. No. Very few would equate this to theft, especially lawyers. There is even a debate to be had as to what "watching a movie" even means. How about a youtube review of the movie? What about a clip incorporated into something else? What about my IronMan costume for halloween? Intellectual property is not like land or objects. That is why it is subject to very special and very specific limitations on when and where it can be applied. There are even a few disney movies that, soon, will be out of copyright. Steamboat Willy falls out in 2024. Superman in 2031. 'Sherlock Holmes' fell out of UK copyright in 2000, so too 'Gone With the Wind'. Brits can print those books all they want. Americans ... will have to wait a few decades. Copyright violates are a totally different game than traditional understandings of "theft".

shajznnckfke 6y ago

If you knock on my door and ask me what time it is while wearing a button that says “don’t remember me!” but I remember you anyway, was that theft?

missosoup 6y ago

> Edit: With my wording, I was referring to this old pro-copyright ad: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZm8vNHBSU Or the better version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXkxSl4f6vw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXkxSl4f6vw