10 ms·

Long-time lurker who just had to jump into the fray about this nonsense and non-story. Reading tech-dirt I came across quite a few comments equating copyright

by twainer 15y ago

Long-time lurker who just had to jump into the fray about this nonsense and non-story. Reading tech-dirt I came across quite a few comments equating copyright with censorship. You folks need to take a deep breath and then ask yourself if your support for your 'civil right' to consume something trumps the right of the person who produced the work in question to decided for themselves how the work should enter and survive in the marketplace. Because all I hear these days is that your desire to consume without renumeration is all that matters. Any deviation from that tucks into some part of the copyright conspiracy boogeyman. The most important right is that an individual should get to decide how their own works are treated - want to give it away for free? Want to set up your own torrent? Want to charge for it? It should be an individual's choice what they do with their work; you have no right to make that choice for them and it is a painfully shameful that capitalism's consumerist end has come to long polemics on why stealing something isn't - and now watching torrents of The Office is a civil right. There is an important statue being dedicated tomorrow in Washington DC - some of you folks should turn off Pirate Bay and pay attention to things that are actually worth caring about. By the way, I lost my single karma point to bring up the issue of individual control. The issue of piracy affects developers deeply - it's important to discuss it, not down-vote it.

prodigal_erik 15y ago
This isn't about copyright so much as giving not just any private party, but one with a demonstrated history of reckless abuse of the legal system, the power to exile you from our civilization without so much as an impartial judge seeing probable cause. And for this system to function, it will obviously require tight control over anyone allowed to sell connectivity to the Internet, and zero tolerance for anonymous access. Sorry, a chance to pat ourselves on the back about MLK's victory two generations ago rings a little hollow now, especially when the same struggle today would probably end with him being disappeared.
- twainer 15y ago
  I do get your frustration. And we probably agree on quite a lot. I think copyright has lots of problems - but people not paying for anything isn't one of them. My frustration is that the people who don't like the old structure won't allow a new structure to monetize itself. The greatest thing that could have come about out of the shell of the music industry was a way to pay artists directly. Pirate Bay could put that system in place tomorrow if they cared to. But it hasn't happened and won't happen if people don't actually pay. The app store and iTunes are the closest we've got to that. But it doesn't make any difference that devs are independent - people crack their stuff and seed torrents all the same. So there is another better model that could have existed. But it is 'disappeared'. There could also be respect for the individual's right to mind their own creation. But that is also disappeared. Truth is the anonymous mob of the internet is another sort of unaccountable and unelected government. I wish it were different.
  - alexqgb 15y ago
    "Consume" is an interesting word choice, @twainer. Unlike making a ham sandwich for lunch, you don't actually consume anything when you copy a file (except a bit of electricity, of course). Any chance you could come up with more appropriate language? Or does your position weaken once you start thinking about it a bit more precisely?
    - twainer 15y ago
      "Don't actually" is also an interesting word choice. It supports a scenario where the action of copying and distributing copies is meaningless. If it were so - as with any meaningless action - one would expect it to have no real effect on the system as a whole. If that were the case - if that unlimited copying and sharing didn't have an effect or even much of an effect - there would be no piracy problem to discuss. But the reality is rather different. Those actions actually have huge effects. I would much prefer a system where those huge effects are channeled into a win-win system. At any level such a marketplace would be preferable to denying that such effects even exist.
      - alexqgb 15y ago
        I didn't say "don't actually" in the general sense with which you used "consume". I said - very specifically - that copying doesn't consume resources in the way people consume physical resources (e.g. ham sandwiches). Only by removing the context (idiotic, given that the context was immediately available to any reader) could you establish an equivalence between my criticism of you and my own position. Anyone with an honest interest in these debates knows that tangible goods and intangible goods are fundamentally different. More importantly, the desire to confuse this distinction is one of the favorite tactics of people on either side of the debate who wish to justify obviously self-serving behavior. Just to reiterate, I never said that copying was meaningless. Indeed, any honest assessment would conclude that it is far from meaningless. But that doesn't mean that, in listening to files (copied with our without authorization from the copyright holder) that I am "consuming" anything in the material sense. And I maintain that you will never come to any clarity about the optimal way to handle intangible goods if you can't grasp the most characteristic properties of intangibility. For what it's worth, I fully appreciate the economic effect of dilution. In a situation where a legal monopoly is enforceable, and some baseline measure of demand can be identified, then yes, unauthorized copying diminishes the value that could otherwise be realized by the copyright holder. At the same time, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that this projected value exists ONLY in situations where a legalized monopoly exists. It cannot exist in situations where the impossibility of two parties maintaining full possession of the same physical object (like our sandwich) forces some sort of negotiation and trade. Indeed, copyright is an attempt to make the intangible function as though it were tangible. In that sense, it is a deliberate fiction. Historically, this valuable fiction could be maintained when the intangible good was wedded to a tangible wrapper. But once the physical component of media became something that folks on the buy side already owned our controlled outright (i.e. disk space, bandwidth, and electricity), the fiction became unsustainable. I'll be the first to agree that we need a new system. Unlike you, I don't think we can define it by continuing to use language and concepts that are utterly obsolete. And more importantly, I think folks having these conversations need to maintain a degree of personal integrity when having them. Deflecting criticism through false equivalence fails that test.
uriel 15y ago
Copyright is a (supposedly temporary) government granted monopoly. It is very often used for censorship, and its origins are in the censorship system (ie., requirement for publishers to be licensed by the king) of the middle ages. Authors that publish their works have no god-given right to control how others use their work, if I'm an sculptor and I sell an sculpture, whoever buys it can do whatever the hell wants with it, they can smash it, put it in their toilet, or whatever else. The point of copyright was supposedly to encourage the creation of art, but it clearly has been stifling both the creation and enjoyment of art for a long time now.
- twainer 15y ago
  What I see here is a desire to prevent any bad outcome by denying the legitimacy of a whole system. 'Copyright can be used for evil so it must not be a good thing, nor allowed to exist'. As I am sure most here would agree, any complex system has both positive and negative effects. I will leave it to others to describe the negative effects of patent and copyright. For me, one of the positive effects of copyright is how it allows a personal innate skill and drive to translate directly into social and economic mobility. It's how a poor boy from Gary, Indiana becomes Michael Jackson. Now, some people may say - who cares about Michael Jackson - but we are all human: there are thousands of people who have drawn inspiration from the progress of others - progress in arts and business - to better themselves and their communities. Why should I sacrifice all the good of a system that allows that? In my world view, the total disrespect for individual creative rights is that huge step back to a Royalist world of serfdom. Most importantly: it doesn't have to be either/or. Systems that respect both the artist and the consumer can exist. I find it hard to understand why asking to meet in the middle is asking for too much. Not only does that not make sense to me, the denying of a right to meet in the middle feels very much to me, as a creative person, that I am simply being forced to trade one overlord for another.
pessimizer 15y ago
That an individual gets to decide how their own works should be treated is not the most important right, it's not a right at all. It's a limitation on other people's rights to imitate or reproduce things that they hear, read, or understand, that has within many legal systems been granted to various degrees in order to encourage the creation of new things. Freedom of expression is a civil right, and one which we may see fit to limit in order to encourage development. Dismissing it as wanting "torrents of The Office [as] a civil right" is about as offensive to the people you're having the discussion with as dismissing the Catholic church as 'using a so-called mandate from God to get away with getting drunk' during Prohibition. People are having a real discussion about the limits of government, and you're dismissing it with hand-waving assertions of non-existent rights, and accusations of shallowness and greed towards anyone who would dare to find anything there to discuss. The dedication of statues may be important to you, but it's as important to me as the record of the Windward Islands cricket team last year.
- twainer 15y ago
  My point about The Office is a legitimate one - and I did not mean to cause offense. The language to support piracy is often couched in terms of civil rights - and I can understand that side of it. In practice though piracy is used for consumption that mirrors almost exactly what people consume in the 'un-pirated' world. I won't use this fact to damn piracy. For me, it is a clear recognition that the 'pirate' model would flow quite naturally into a mutually-beneficial marketplace if given the chance. The best way to get the government or governing powers out of the way is to support a legitimate marketplace of one's own. If that lower threshold can't even be met, the argument that a 'fairer' governing power exists falls on deaf ears.
- twainer 15y ago
  By way of a more pointed reply to your specifics: you express that an individual getting to decide how their work is treated is not a 'right' at all. You see it actually as a limitation on other people's right to use that work. So, do you support a minimum wage? An average worker has only their 'labor' to contribute; that is their basic, creative work. It is also fundamental to all sectors of the economy. So, should laborers have a right to a basic level of recompense for their work? Is their demand/desire for recompense such a limitation on those who benefit from their work that that desire for recompense is illegitimate?

by twainer 15y ago

prodigal_erik 15y ago

This isn't about copyright so much as giving not just any private party, but one with a demonstrated history of reckless abuse of the legal system, the power to exile you from our civilization without so much as an impartial judge seeing probable cause. And for this system to function, it will obviously require tight control over anyone allowed to sell connectivity to the Internet, and zero tolerance for anonymous access. Sorry, a chance to pat ourselves on the back about MLK's victory two generations ago rings a little hollow now, especially when the same struggle today would probably end with him being disappeared.

twainer 15y ago
I do get your frustration. And we probably agree on quite a lot. I think copyright has lots of problems - but people not paying for anything isn't one of them. My frustration is that the people who don't like the old structure won't allow a new structure to monetize itself. The greatest thing that could have come about out of the shell of the music industry was a way to pay artists directly. Pirate Bay could put that system in place tomorrow if they cared to. But it hasn't happened and won't happen if people don't actually pay. The app store and iTunes are the closest we've got to that. But it doesn't make any difference that devs are independent - people crack their stuff and seed torrents all the same. So there is another better model that could have existed. But it is 'disappeared'. There could also be respect for the individual's right to mind their own creation. But that is also disappeared. Truth is the anonymous mob of the internet is another sort of unaccountable and unelected government. I wish it were different.
- alexqgb 15y ago
  "Consume" is an interesting word choice, @twainer. Unlike making a ham sandwich for lunch, you don't actually consume anything when you copy a file (except a bit of electricity, of course). Any chance you could come up with more appropriate language? Or does your position weaken once you start thinking about it a bit more precisely?
  - twainer 15y ago
    "Don't actually" is also an interesting word choice. It supports a scenario where the action of copying and distributing copies is meaningless. If it were so - as with any meaningless action - one would expect it to have no real effect on the system as a whole. If that were the case - if that unlimited copying and sharing didn't have an effect or even much of an effect - there would be no piracy problem to discuss. But the reality is rather different. Those actions actually have huge effects. I would much prefer a system where those huge effects are channeled into a win-win system. At any level such a marketplace would be preferable to denying that such effects even exist.
    - alexqgb 15y ago
      I didn't say "don't actually" in the general sense with which you used "consume". I said - very specifically - that copying doesn't consume resources in the way people consume physical resources (e.g. ham sandwiches). Only by removing the context (idiotic, given that the context was immediately available to any reader) could you establish an equivalence between my criticism of you and my own position. Anyone with an honest interest in these debates knows that tangible goods and intangible goods are fundamentally different. More importantly, the desire to confuse this distinction is one of the favorite tactics of people on either side of the debate who wish to justify obviously self-serving behavior. Just to reiterate, I never said that copying was meaningless. Indeed, any honest assessment would conclude that it is far from meaningless. But that doesn't mean that, in listening to files (copied with our without authorization from the copyright holder) that I am "consuming" anything in the material sense. And I maintain that you will never come to any clarity about the optimal way to handle intangible goods if you can't grasp the most characteristic properties of intangibility. For what it's worth, I fully appreciate the economic effect of dilution. In a situation where a legal monopoly is enforceable, and some baseline measure of demand can be identified, then yes, unauthorized copying diminishes the value that could otherwise be realized by the copyright holder. At the same time, it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that this projected value exists ONLY in situations where a legalized monopoly exists. It cannot exist in situations where the impossibility of two parties maintaining full possession of the same physical object (like our sandwich) forces some sort of negotiation and trade. Indeed, copyright is an attempt to make the intangible function as though it were tangible. In that sense, it is a deliberate fiction. Historically, this valuable fiction could be maintained when the intangible good was wedded to a tangible wrapper. But once the physical component of media became something that folks on the buy side already owned our controlled outright (i.e. disk space, bandwidth, and electricity), the fiction became unsustainable. I'll be the first to agree that we need a new system. Unlike you, I don't think we can define it by continuing to use language and concepts that are utterly obsolete. And more importantly, I think folks having these conversations need to maintain a degree of personal integrity when having them. Deflecting criticism through false equivalence fails that test.

uriel 15y ago

Copyright is a (supposedly temporary) government granted monopoly. It is very often used for censorship, and its origins are in the censorship system (ie., requirement for publishers to be licensed by the king) of the middle ages. Authors that publish their works have no god-given right to control how others use their work, if I'm an sculptor and I sell an sculpture, whoever buys it can do whatever the hell wants with it, they can smash it, put it in their toilet, or whatever else. The point of copyright was supposedly to encourage the creation of art, but it clearly has been stifling both the creation and enjoyment of art for a long time now.

twainer 15y ago
What I see here is a desire to prevent any bad outcome by denying the legitimacy of a whole system. 'Copyright can be used for evil so it must not be a good thing, nor allowed to exist'. As I am sure most here would agree, any complex system has both positive and negative effects. I will leave it to others to describe the negative effects of patent and copyright. For me, one of the positive effects of copyright is how it allows a personal innate skill and drive to translate directly into social and economic mobility. It's how a poor boy from Gary, Indiana becomes Michael Jackson. Now, some people may say - who cares about Michael Jackson - but we are all human: there are thousands of people who have drawn inspiration from the progress of others - progress in arts and business - to better themselves and their communities. Why should I sacrifice all the good of a system that allows that? In my world view, the total disrespect for individual creative rights is that huge step back to a Royalist world of serfdom. Most importantly: it doesn't have to be either/or. Systems that respect both the artist and the consumer can exist. I find it hard to understand why asking to meet in the middle is asking for too much. Not only does that not make sense to me, the denying of a right to meet in the middle feels very much to me, as a creative person, that I am simply being forced to trade one overlord for another.

pessimizer 15y ago

That an individual gets to decide how their own works should be treated is not the most important right, it's not a right at all. It's a limitation on other people's rights to imitate or reproduce things that they hear, read, or understand, that has within many legal systems been granted to various degrees in order to encourage the creation of new things. Freedom of expression is a civil right, and one which we may see fit to limit in order to encourage development. Dismissing it as wanting "torrents of The Office [as] a civil right" is about as offensive to the people you're having the discussion with as dismissing the Catholic church as 'using a so-called mandate from God to get away with getting drunk' during Prohibition. People are having a real discussion about the limits of government, and you're dismissing it with hand-waving assertions of non-existent rights, and accusations of shallowness and greed towards anyone who would dare to find anything there to discuss. The dedication of statues may be important to you, but it's as important to me as the record of the Windward Islands cricket team last year.

twainer 15y ago
My point about The Office is a legitimate one - and I did not mean to cause offense. The language to support piracy is often couched in terms of civil rights - and I can understand that side of it. In practice though piracy is used for consumption that mirrors almost exactly what people consume in the 'un-pirated' world. I won't use this fact to damn piracy. For me, it is a clear recognition that the 'pirate' model would flow quite naturally into a mutually-beneficial marketplace if given the chance. The best way to get the government or governing powers out of the way is to support a legitimate marketplace of one's own. If that lower threshold can't even be met, the argument that a 'fairer' governing power exists falls on deaf ears.
twainer 15y ago
By way of a more pointed reply to your specifics: you express that an individual getting to decide how their work is treated is not a 'right' at all. You see it actually as a limitation on other people's right to use that work. So, do you support a minimum wage? An average worker has only their 'labor' to contribute; that is their basic, creative work. It is also fundamental to all sectors of the economy. So, should laborers have a right to a basic level of recompense for their work? Is their demand/desire for recompense such a limitation on those who benefit from their work that that desire for recompense is illegitimate?