5 ms·

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.

by 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.
    - twainer 15y ago

by twainer 15y ago

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.
  - twainer 15y ago