4 ms·

As a complete remorseless pirate (as in, I download stuff but I never uploaded anything I purchase) and as someone whose software was pirated (causing me to go

As a complete remorseless pirate (as in, I download stuff but I never uploaded anything I purchase) and as someone whose software was pirated (causing me to go out of business, for that specific venture), I think piracy is bad purely because someone is infringing on a contract. If customer A buys my software and accepts a contract which say not to redistribute, he can't go and break that contract unpunished. I should be able to legally persecute customer A, if I can prove a breach of contract happened. If someone is re-sharing that content or if they're downloading it, they never had a contract with me and they should be able to do what they please. Sure, that's bad for me, but that's part of doing business. Eventually the price of things will go up to account for people pirating. Also, if I'm selling so much of my software that I can't possibly trace and persecute all the users leaking my software, I think we should accept a certain amount of piracy and loss of revenue. Call it, a natural tax on my software being so successful. Still, the government shouldn't be able to intrude on customer A privacy, internet providers shouldn't be compelled to release data on customer A. DMCA is absolute cancer and the proof that the government is not doing the people's interest but the interest of big media corporations.

kmeisthax 5y ago
This is a strange argument that I've heard repeated often: "repeal copyright and just treat it as an NDA". I personally would consider that worse than the status quo. NDA-based copyright-like ownership has three different problems: - If the group of people with the software is large - like most mass-market works - enforcing the NDA will be absolutely impossible. Someone will leak, and that someone will not have the financial means to remunerate you for your subsequent loss of exclusive ownership. Making an example of them will not work. Once leaked, people will be able to legally republish without repercussion, so such NDAs are far weaker than even the weakest copyright. - If the group of people with the software is small - like most specialized software - enforcing the NDA will be so successful that the software will effectively never enter the public domain (in both the intelligence and copyright lawyer sense of the word). Archival of old works will be impossible purely because the NDA did it's job too well. Such NDAs would be far stronger than even today's life+70 monster terms. - In either case, traditional exceptions to copyright such as fair use, first sale, the merger doctrine, scene a faire, and so on will not apply. The NDA will prevent disclosure of even things that would not be considered copyrightable. Want to benchmark the software? Sorry, you can't, it's all under NDA - just take our performance claims as gospel. The underlying problem is that copyright is supposed to be a bargain: the public agrees to respect a limited monopoly over publication of the work in exchange for creating a market that encourages more works to be made, as well as unlimited access to the work once the monopoly expires. In a sense, this bargain has been broken. Copyright owners lobbied for hilariously long ownership terms, right around the same time that individuals got access to commercial-grade publication tools that made piracy easy and interesting to do. "Just NDA everything" proposes abandoning the bargain entirely in favor of extremely authoritarian yet difficult to enforce controls on all works; something that we should not accept if we want to continue to have a market for works of mass culture.
- LocalH 5y ago
  Copyright should return to its original term length, or if anything a single extension (so some combination of 14 and 28 years between original filing and renewal). If "you" as a business can't make enough money from a work in 56 years then fuck off, based on copyright you owe us the work. Their rent-seeking behavior enrages me.
  - kmeisthax 5y ago
    You're not wrong, but you're talking about something different from what I'm responding to. I fully support term length reductions, as the current copyright system is poorly bargained for. What I'm responding to is the idea of using NDAs as a copyright substitute, which would enable all sorts of new rent-seeking behavior that copyright currently prohibits.

kmeisthax 5y ago

This is a strange argument that I've heard repeated often: "repeal copyright and just treat it as an NDA". I personally would consider that worse than the status quo. NDA-based copyright-like ownership has three different problems: - If the group of people with the software is large - like most mass-market works - enforcing the NDA will be absolutely impossible. Someone will leak, and that someone will not have the financial means to remunerate you for your subsequent loss of exclusive ownership. Making an example of them will not work. Once leaked, people will be able to legally republish without repercussion, so such NDAs are far weaker than even the weakest copyright. - If the group of people with the software is small - like most specialized software - enforcing the NDA will be so successful that the software will effectively never enter the public domain (in both the intelligence and copyright lawyer sense of the word). Archival of old works will be impossible purely because the NDA did it's job too well. Such NDAs would be far stronger than even today's life+70 monster terms. - In either case, traditional exceptions to copyright such as fair use, first sale, the merger doctrine, scene a faire, and so on will not apply. The NDA will prevent disclosure of even things that would not be considered copyrightable. Want to benchmark the software? Sorry, you can't, it's all under NDA - just take our performance claims as gospel. The underlying problem is that copyright is supposed to be a bargain: the public agrees to respect a limited monopoly over publication of the work in exchange for creating a market that encourages more works to be made, as well as unlimited access to the work once the monopoly expires. In a sense, this bargain has been broken. Copyright owners lobbied for hilariously long ownership terms, right around the same time that individuals got access to commercial-grade publication tools that made piracy easy and interesting to do. "Just NDA everything" proposes abandoning the bargain entirely in favor of extremely authoritarian yet difficult to enforce controls on all works; something that we should not accept if we want to continue to have a market for works of mass culture.

LocalH 5y ago
Copyright should return to its original term length, or if anything a single extension (so some combination of 14 and 28 years between original filing and renewal). If "you" as a business can't make enough money from a work in 56 years then fuck off, based on copyright you owe us the work. Their rent-seeking behavior enrages me.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  You're not wrong, but you're talking about something different from what I'm responding to. I fully support term length reductions, as the current copyright system is poorly bargained for. What I'm responding to is the idea of using NDAs as a copyright substitute, which would enable all sorts of new rent-seeking behavior that copyright currently prohibits.