6 ms·

Don't confuse copyright infringement, aka. pirating, to stealing. You may well believe that they are morally the same thing, but they are not legally the same t

by steve19 15y ago

Don't confuse copyright infringement, aka. pirating, to stealing. You may well believe that they are morally the same thing, but they are not legally the same thing. Theft has existed as long as man, copyright infringement was invented about 100 years ago. copyright infringement varies wildly in penalties. In some countries it is a serious offense, in others it is legal.

roel_v 15y ago
I'm a lawyer, thank you very much, I know perfectly well about the difference, and this is another thing I'm sick and tired of - people making minute semantic arguments that have nothing to do with the substance of the matter. Note that nowhere I equated piracy with stealing, exactly because I know that when I do somebody will come with this remark. While we're nitpicking, your second sentence contradicts itself - if copyright infringement is legal, it's not infringement any more. Also you're wrong about the history of copyright and intellectual property. Although not named as such and part of a broader concept of exclusive rights on information, guilds in Medieval times had privileges granted to them that would nowadays be called, amongst others, copyright. You're trying to make it sound as if copyright is something that was just made up out of thin air 100 years ago and that it has no relationship to physical property law at all; that argument is misleading as the actual history and relationship is much more nuanced.
- ericd 15y ago
  Ah that might explain why your moral code seems to draw from legality. It's not nitpicking to separate theft from copyright infringement - they have very different effects on the owner, and to conflate the two is basically spreading FUD to confuse the argument. They should not be treated the same way by the law, despite what the rightsholders might like.
  - roel_v 15y ago
    Oh no it doesn't, if anything it just makes that I have been confronted with and thought about the orthogonality between 'legal' and 'moral' more than 'average' (I hate to use this phrase because it makes it sound like I'm arguing from authority there - I'm not) and I am highly aware of the difference. The reason I didn't respond to the post above saying a similar thing is that it's very boring to discuss personal opinions and circumstances that lead to them; and if personal opinions of certain people are interesting, I'm not one of those people. Rest assured though that I do not conflate the two, nor derive one from the other. The matter is that morality is based on a small set of axioms - personal sovereignty, strong property rights, and the moral binding power of contracts (not in the legal sense - in the sense that if two people agree to something, they are morally bound to following through on those commitments). Intellectual property is just as much property as physical property is; without going into too much detail here, it quite naturally follows from more traditional, physical property ideas like Locke's labor theory. To simplify (so disregarding subordinate issues like ownership of ownership of base products, work-for-hire etc), when a person puts his efforts into creating something, he owns it, regardless if that what he creates is physical or not. It's painfully obvious and intuitive; if not (to use a very crude argument), then why does CC with attribution even exist? Most everybody instinctively recognizes this concept, and no sophistic constructs about maximum social utility or information as an oppression mechanism (cough crazy man Stallman cough) can do away with that. Anyway, I'm not saying intellectual property and 'regular' property rights should be treated the same under the law; there are valid technical and conceptual reasons to separate them. That's not the issue I contend; what I contend is the pervasive cognitive dissonance in the 'geek' community (of which, to be clear, I am part) that somehow they should have the right to download whatever they want because there is at the moment no effective way for creators to enforce their will on what happens to their creations.
    - hxa7241 15y ago
      > Intellectual property is just as much property as physical property is That is wrong. And it is easy to see there must be a problem with it. If you copy my stuff, you benefit and I am unaffected. If I in return copy your stuff, we both lose nothing and end up with twice as much as we started with. That does not sound like taking property at all, in fact it sounds good! That really ought to be enough to seriously undermine the illusion of IP . . . First ask: why do we have property? which is as much as to ask: why is it moral? Property is not an axiom of morality, it must be justified. Even more clearly so with IP, since it invents a kind of restriction where there is none in physical fact. Property is moral because it gives a group/community as a whole a good way of managing things. Property is good not because it gives to someone what is 'theirs', but because as a whole system, in aggregate, it is good for all. (If we want a rational principal of morality, it is universalisation. Morals are codes of cooperation. They are justified as to how they affect some group. That is what is distinctive in moral rules: they are not rules for individual purpose, they are rules for all (if they do not suit all, why should all consent to them?).) The Lockean proposition of copyright really only establishes attribution: it 'attaches' a particular thing to a particular creator/author. But attribution alone does not justify anything much. I may have made a shovel, but that does not then give me a right to dig anyone and everyone's garden with it. Attribution of authorship is merely the 'location' of some possible rights; it is insufficient to set the limits of those rights on its own. Locke understood this, which is why, when we look at the source of this argument, we find he clearly included the condition of "at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others". For a rule to be moral it must make sense more widely than for its primary participant. It must work overall for everyone. That is what sets the limits to rights. 'Abstract goods' (i.e. the subjects of copyright) are nonrival. They behave fundamentally differently to material things. Use by one person does not deny another. It means the tacit assumption that some restriction similar to normal property is implied immediately falters. And that puts an end to the Lockean 'argument'. And if even that is not enough, reconsider from your own view: those proposed 'axioms' of morality. Either personal sovereignty and property rights are equal or, more likely, personal sovereignty has precedence. Well, IP imposes a direct physical restriction on others' personal freedom: telling someone they cannot copy something is telling them they cannot do as they please with themselves and their own property (and even though the IP 'owner' may be completely unaffected). Now either you have a deep conflict in those axioms or, more reasonably, IP must be overruled. The only reasonable argument for IP is the orthodox economic one of supporting and sustaining a market. This is a pragmatic moral argument: one that is a matter of evidence and practicality, not of any kind of 'natural right'.

by steve19 15y ago

roel_v 15y ago

I'm a lawyer, thank you very much, I know perfectly well about the difference, and this is another thing I'm sick and tired of - people making minute semantic arguments that have nothing to do with the substance of the matter. Note that nowhere I equated piracy with stealing, exactly because I know that when I do somebody will come with this remark. While we're nitpicking, your second sentence contradicts itself - if copyright infringement is legal, it's not infringement any more. Also you're wrong about the history of copyright and intellectual property. Although not named as such and part of a broader concept of exclusive rights on information, guilds in Medieval times had privileges granted to them that would nowadays be called, amongst others, copyright. You're trying to make it sound as if copyright is something that was just made up out of thin air 100 years ago and that it has no relationship to physical property law at all; that argument is misleading as the actual history and relationship is much more nuanced.

ericd 15y ago
Ah that might explain why your moral code seems to draw from legality. It's not nitpicking to separate theft from copyright infringement - they have very different effects on the owner, and to conflate the two is basically spreading FUD to confuse the argument. They should not be treated the same way by the law, despite what the rightsholders might like.
- roel_v 15y ago
  Oh no it doesn't, if anything it just makes that I have been confronted with and thought about the orthogonality between 'legal' and 'moral' more than 'average' (I hate to use this phrase because it makes it sound like I'm arguing from authority there - I'm not) and I am highly aware of the difference. The reason I didn't respond to the post above saying a similar thing is that it's very boring to discuss personal opinions and circumstances that lead to them; and if personal opinions of certain people are interesting, I'm not one of those people. Rest assured though that I do not conflate the two, nor derive one from the other. The matter is that morality is based on a small set of axioms - personal sovereignty, strong property rights, and the moral binding power of contracts (not in the legal sense - in the sense that if two people agree to something, they are morally bound to following through on those commitments). Intellectual property is just as much property as physical property is; without going into too much detail here, it quite naturally follows from more traditional, physical property ideas like Locke's labor theory. To simplify (so disregarding subordinate issues like ownership of ownership of base products, work-for-hire etc), when a person puts his efforts into creating something, he owns it, regardless if that what he creates is physical or not. It's painfully obvious and intuitive; if not (to use a very crude argument), then why does CC with attribution even exist? Most everybody instinctively recognizes this concept, and no sophistic constructs about maximum social utility or information as an oppression mechanism (cough crazy man Stallman cough) can do away with that. Anyway, I'm not saying intellectual property and 'regular' property rights should be treated the same under the law; there are valid technical and conceptual reasons to separate them. That's not the issue I contend; what I contend is the pervasive cognitive dissonance in the 'geek' community (of which, to be clear, I am part) that somehow they should have the right to download whatever they want because there is at the moment no effective way for creators to enforce their will on what happens to their creations.
  - hxa7241 15y ago
    > Intellectual property is just as much property as physical property is That is wrong. And it is easy to see there must be a problem with it. If you copy my stuff, you benefit and I am unaffected. If I in return copy your stuff, we both lose nothing and end up with twice as much as we started with. That does not sound like taking property at all, in fact it sounds good! That really ought to be enough to seriously undermine the illusion of IP . . . First ask: why do we have property? which is as much as to ask: why is it moral? Property is not an axiom of morality, it must be justified. Even more clearly so with IP, since it invents a kind of restriction where there is none in physical fact. Property is moral because it gives a group/community as a whole a good way of managing things. Property is good not because it gives to someone what is 'theirs', but because as a whole system, in aggregate, it is good for all. (If we want a rational principal of morality, it is universalisation. Morals are codes of cooperation. They are justified as to how they affect some group. That is what is distinctive in moral rules: they are not rules for individual purpose, they are rules for all (if they do not suit all, why should all consent to them?).) The Lockean proposition of copyright really only establishes attribution: it 'attaches' a particular thing to a particular creator/author. But attribution alone does not justify anything much. I may have made a shovel, but that does not then give me a right to dig anyone and everyone's garden with it. Attribution of authorship is merely the 'location' of some possible rights; it is insufficient to set the limits of those rights on its own. Locke understood this, which is why, when we look at the source of this argument, we find he clearly included the condition of "at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others". For a rule to be moral it must make sense more widely than for its primary participant. It must work overall for everyone. That is what sets the limits to rights. 'Abstract goods' (i.e. the subjects of copyright) are nonrival. They behave fundamentally differently to material things. Use by one person does not deny another. It means the tacit assumption that some restriction similar to normal property is implied immediately falters. And that puts an end to the Lockean 'argument'. And if even that is not enough, reconsider from your own view: those proposed 'axioms' of morality. Either personal sovereignty and property rights are equal or, more likely, personal sovereignty has precedence. Well, IP imposes a direct physical restriction on others' personal freedom: telling someone they cannot copy something is telling them they cannot do as they please with themselves and their own property (and even though the IP 'owner' may be completely unaffected). Now either you have a deep conflict in those axioms or, more reasonably, IP must be overruled. The only reasonable argument for IP is the orthodox economic one of supporting and sustaining a market. This is a pragmatic moral argument: one that is a matter of evidence and practicality, not of any kind of 'natural right'.