4 ms·

There's two issues here. 1. Pirating other peoples work is morally wrong. 2. You're kidding yourself if you think the economics that ruin labels and retailers

by Tycho 15y ago

There's two issues here. 1. Pirating other peoples work is morally wrong. 2. You're kidding yourself if you think the economics that ruin labels and retailers are not going to just as quickly ruin independent acts. As is painfully obvious from the example of authors - they rely entirely on people honouring their intellectual property and would have basically no income without selling 'copies.' Just because musicians have a few alternative options, eg. live performances, doesn't change the underlying argument. What goes for authors, or filmmakers, should go for musicians or any other artists. Why do you keep talking vaguely about alternative business models? There are none. Nobody's going to invent an ingenious new way of making money out of music. There's live performance or there's selling intellectual property. That's it.

joebadmo 15y ago
Ah, so it's two separate arguments, a moral one and an economic one. 1. I disagree. I'm curious as to the precise moral dimension you're talking about here. 2. You're kidding yourself if you think you can stop it, or that by plugging your ears and closing your eyes you can make it all go away. Most of your argument seems to be that because artists rely on selling copies now, that it must always be so. The fact is, artistic expression predates copying technology. Art fits into the technological capabilities that exist, not the other way around. Before image copying tech, artists made paintings, drawings, and sculptures, and sold them. There were other business models as well, like private and religious patronage. In ancient times, oral poets travelled and essentially gave live concerts. Dramatists had state sponsorship. Many of these business models and even entire mediums died out as our technology changed. That's what happens. Maybe authors as we know them will figure out a way to survive, or maybe they'll die out. Same goes for filmmakers, musicians or any other artists. There's nothing special about the particular art forms we have now. I keep talking vaguely about alternative business models because we're at a transition point. They haven't been invented yet. "Nobody's going to invent an ingenious new way of making money out of music. There's live performance or there's selling intellectual property. That's it." That's the spirit! You'd better tell Amanda Palmer, though, I don't think she got that memo.
- Tycho 15y ago
  1. We could go on for several pages about the 'precise moral dimensions' but we both know that taking somebody's work, for nothing, against their wishes, is not cool. If you don't want to pay for it, do without it. Civilisation is built on mutual respect of rights. 2. Maybe piracy is here to stay. I just resent the sneaky suggestion that its only the lumbering, dinosaur labels with their outmoded industrial apparatus that are going to suffer. It's not true at all. The people with the most to lose are the artists themselves - especially the more intellectual ones, eg. authors. In your brave new world, The Beatles would have continued touring pub venues and only the lucky few who got to see them would realise how much they stood out from the 10,000 other bands doing the same thing. Oh and religious and aristocratic patronage as a primary 'business model' royally sucked - that's basically why the copyright model and the arts have thrived over the last few hundred years. Its why we get to watch 100MM budget movies. It's a bloody good system and it's a crying shame to throw it away just because of piracy.
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    1. "we both know that taking somebody's work, for nothing, against their wishes, is not cool." I'm really not sure I agree with that. "Civilisation is built on mutual respect of rights." Which rights are you talking about in this case exactly? The only one I can detect from your position is the right to be compensated for your work, which doesn't sound like a natural right at all. 2. Well, my position is that a lot of artists are suffering now, under the thumbs of the dinosaurs (to mix metaphors) you're trying to defend. In the future, those artists (as well as those industry players) who cannot or will not adapt will suffer. "In your brave new world, The Beatles would have continued touring pub venues and only the lucky few who got to see them would realise how much they stood out from the 10,000 other bands doing the same thing." But in my brave new world, I actually get to take part in deciding who stands out and who doesn't, instead of waiting for big labels to tell me, and I can rapidly communicate my decision to many other people very quickly. I take a more direct, decentralized stake in my cultural heritage. I find this pleasing. "religious and aristocratic patronage as a primary 'business model' royally sucked" I wasn't saying it was great. I was saying that artists adapt to the circumstances. They will continue to do so. "why the copyright model and the arts have thrived over the last few hundred years" I neither grant this premise, nor understand the causal connection you present. "Its why we get to watch 100MM budget movies." I've found that by my own measure, in the last couple of decades, the quality of a movie has had a generally inversely proportional relationship with the size of its budget. My theory explaining this is that with a larger investment, you need a broader base audience and relatively "safe" content, which translates to bland, soulless, lowest common denominator fare. I'll be happy to see this die. "It's a bloody good system and it's a crying shame to throw it away just because of piracy." I really don't think it's a good system at all. Its primary purpose was to promote continued innovation and creation. I've yet to see convincing evidence that it has done so, or that innovation and creation would suffer in its absence. BTW: Thanks for indulging the argument without resorting to the ugliness that so many of these threadsd tend to devolve into. Even if neither of us convince the other, I find this exchange meaningful and clarifying of my own thoughts. I hope you feel the same.
learc83 15y ago
You can argue the morality of it all you like, but practically, piracy (or free distribution) isn't going anywhere. It's too easy to copy digital goods. The entire internet is built on copying. Everything you use is copied several times just to get it to you. You're not going to stop it, so if you are an artist or author you should try to find new ways to make money. Crowd-sourcing is one way. Hell I'd pay several hundred dollars to George R. R. Martin to get him to hurry up on his next book. Edit: Accidentally wrote Robert Jordan instead of George R. R. Martin
- henrikschroder 15y ago
  Robert Jordan is dead, so I'm not so sure what you expect to happen through that donation...
  - learc83 15y ago
    Oops.. Not sure why I typed that, I was thinking of George R. R. Martin. Thanks for pointing that out.
- nooneelse 15y ago
  > "Hell I'd pay several hundred dollars to George R. R. Martin to get him to hurry up on his next book." Put me down for a wad of cash too, maybe not that much though. But you/we don't need to appeal to a hypothetical on these things, the crew of SMBC Theater got 5 times the capital they asked for from their fans using Kickstarter to produce a movie.
muuh-gnu 15y ago
> 1. Pirating other peoples work is morally wrong. No it isn't. It's your word against mine, who's right? There is no other way to find out what the majority of people think about copying than to let them vote on it. Copyright policy should be decided in a democratic manner. If the people want copyright to exist and be enforced, enforce it. If they dont want it to exist and want to copy stuff, just let them. This is how democracy works. > 1. Pirating other peoples work is morally wrong. This (you making a proclamation) isnt how democracy works.
- Tycho 15y ago
  The reason I pointed out that it was morally wrong was so we could separate that from the economic argument. I could go into detail about why it's morally wrong but what's the point. People are just looking for excuses to justify their behaviour. Imagine you pass an artist with a stall on the street. You say you like one of his paintings, but it's £500. You say that's too much for you, so he shows you a print you can buy for a modest price. You then say you won't buy the print, but then proceed to take a picture of it, make your own copy, and then start selling copies to other people. All against the express wishes of the artist. Does that strike you as a decent thing to do?
  - muuh-gnu 15y ago
    > People are just looking for excuses to justify their behaviour. You're right. My point was that if the majority of people want to copy stuff, it should be legal. > but then proceed to take a picture of it, make your own copy, and then start selling copies to other people. (...) Does that strike you as a decent thing to do? You are intentionally conflating filesharing and "selling copies" with the intent to make filesharing be in the same category. But these two imho are different things. In my experience, a large number of people who consider filesharing not morally objectionable, _do_ consider selling copies objectionable. > All against the express wishes of the artist. What the artist wants is irrelevant. The point of a democratic vote on copyright policy is not to fulfill artist's wishes, but to have people vote how _they_ want copyright to be. Democracy. Not just some bribeable politicans deciding whats best for authors and the industry. > Does that strike you as a decent thing to do? I consider selling copies without the author's consent wrong and I would vote for it to stay illegal. I consider non-commercial, private filesharing not wrong, even if authors oppose it because it may leads to less sales, and I would vote it to be fully legalized. I just want me and millions of other interested people to be _able_ to directly influence copyright policy by directly voting on it in a fine grained way. I dont want to just give a party my vote and then let them allegedly "represent" me, because at least with respect to copyright, they dont. I want direct democracy.

by Tycho 15y ago

joebadmo 15y ago

Ah, so it's two separate arguments, a moral one and an economic one. 1. I disagree. I'm curious as to the precise moral dimension you're talking about here. 2. You're kidding yourself if you think you can stop it, or that by plugging your ears and closing your eyes you can make it all go away. Most of your argument seems to be that because artists rely on selling copies now, that it must always be so. The fact is, artistic expression predates copying technology. Art fits into the technological capabilities that exist, not the other way around. Before image copying tech, artists made paintings, drawings, and sculptures, and sold them. There were other business models as well, like private and religious patronage. In ancient times, oral poets travelled and essentially gave live concerts. Dramatists had state sponsorship. Many of these business models and even entire mediums died out as our technology changed. That's what happens. Maybe authors as we know them will figure out a way to survive, or maybe they'll die out. Same goes for filmmakers, musicians or any other artists. There's nothing special about the particular art forms we have now. I keep talking vaguely about alternative business models because we're at a transition point. They haven't been invented yet. "Nobody's going to invent an ingenious new way of making money out of music. There's live performance or there's selling intellectual property. That's it." That's the spirit! You'd better tell Amanda Palmer, though, I don't think she got that memo.

Tycho 15y ago
1. We could go on for several pages about the 'precise moral dimensions' but we both know that taking somebody's work, for nothing, against their wishes, is not cool. If you don't want to pay for it, do without it. Civilisation is built on mutual respect of rights. 2. Maybe piracy is here to stay. I just resent the sneaky suggestion that its only the lumbering, dinosaur labels with their outmoded industrial apparatus that are going to suffer. It's not true at all. The people with the most to lose are the artists themselves - especially the more intellectual ones, eg. authors. In your brave new world, The Beatles would have continued touring pub venues and only the lucky few who got to see them would realise how much they stood out from the 10,000 other bands doing the same thing. Oh and religious and aristocratic patronage as a primary 'business model' royally sucked - that's basically why the copyright model and the arts have thrived over the last few hundred years. Its why we get to watch 100MM budget movies. It's a bloody good system and it's a crying shame to throw it away just because of piracy.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  1. "we both know that taking somebody's work, for nothing, against their wishes, is not cool." I'm really not sure I agree with that. "Civilisation is built on mutual respect of rights." Which rights are you talking about in this case exactly? The only one I can detect from your position is the right to be compensated for your work, which doesn't sound like a natural right at all. 2. Well, my position is that a lot of artists are suffering now, under the thumbs of the dinosaurs (to mix metaphors) you're trying to defend. In the future, those artists (as well as those industry players) who cannot or will not adapt will suffer. "In your brave new world, The Beatles would have continued touring pub venues and only the lucky few who got to see them would realise how much they stood out from the 10,000 other bands doing the same thing." But in my brave new world, I actually get to take part in deciding who stands out and who doesn't, instead of waiting for big labels to tell me, and I can rapidly communicate my decision to many other people very quickly. I take a more direct, decentralized stake in my cultural heritage. I find this pleasing. "religious and aristocratic patronage as a primary 'business model' royally sucked" I wasn't saying it was great. I was saying that artists adapt to the circumstances. They will continue to do so. "why the copyright model and the arts have thrived over the last few hundred years" I neither grant this premise, nor understand the causal connection you present. "Its why we get to watch 100MM budget movies." I've found that by my own measure, in the last couple of decades, the quality of a movie has had a generally inversely proportional relationship with the size of its budget. My theory explaining this is that with a larger investment, you need a broader base audience and relatively "safe" content, which translates to bland, soulless, lowest common denominator fare. I'll be happy to see this die. "It's a bloody good system and it's a crying shame to throw it away just because of piracy." I really don't think it's a good system at all. Its primary purpose was to promote continued innovation and creation. I've yet to see convincing evidence that it has done so, or that innovation and creation would suffer in its absence. BTW: Thanks for indulging the argument without resorting to the ugliness that so many of these threadsd tend to devolve into. Even if neither of us convince the other, I find this exchange meaningful and clarifying of my own thoughts. I hope you feel the same.

learc83 15y ago

You can argue the morality of it all you like, but practically, piracy (or free distribution) isn't going anywhere. It's too easy to copy digital goods. The entire internet is built on copying. Everything you use is copied several times just to get it to you. You're not going to stop it, so if you are an artist or author you should try to find new ways to make money. Crowd-sourcing is one way. Hell I'd pay several hundred dollars to George R. R. Martin to get him to hurry up on his next book. Edit: Accidentally wrote Robert Jordan instead of George R. R. Martin

henrikschroder 15y ago
Robert Jordan is dead, so I'm not so sure what you expect to happen through that donation...
- learc83 15y ago
  Oops.. Not sure why I typed that, I was thinking of George R. R. Martin. Thanks for pointing that out.
nooneelse 15y ago
> "Hell I'd pay several hundred dollars to George R. R. Martin to get him to hurry up on his next book." Put me down for a wad of cash too, maybe not that much though. But you/we don't need to appeal to a hypothetical on these things, the crew of SMBC Theater got 5 times the capital they asked for from their fans using Kickstarter to produce a movie.

muuh-gnu 15y ago

> 1. Pirating other peoples work is morally wrong. No it isn't. It's your word against mine, who's right? There is no other way to find out what the majority of people think about copying than to let them vote on it. Copyright policy should be decided in a democratic manner. If the people want copyright to exist and be enforced, enforce it. If they dont want it to exist and want to copy stuff, just let them. This is how democracy works. > 1. Pirating other peoples work is morally wrong. This (you making a proclamation) isnt how democracy works.

Tycho 15y ago
The reason I pointed out that it was morally wrong was so we could separate that from the economic argument. I could go into detail about why it's morally wrong but what's the point. People are just looking for excuses to justify their behaviour. Imagine you pass an artist with a stall on the street. You say you like one of his paintings, but it's £500. You say that's too much for you, so he shows you a print you can buy for a modest price. You then say you won't buy the print, but then proceed to take a picture of it, make your own copy, and then start selling copies to other people. All against the express wishes of the artist. Does that strike you as a decent thing to do?
- muuh-gnu 15y ago
  > People are just looking for excuses to justify their behaviour. You're right. My point was that if the majority of people want to copy stuff, it should be legal. > but then proceed to take a picture of it, make your own copy, and then start selling copies to other people. (...) Does that strike you as a decent thing to do? You are intentionally conflating filesharing and "selling copies" with the intent to make filesharing be in the same category. But these two imho are different things. In my experience, a large number of people who consider filesharing not morally objectionable, _do_ consider selling copies objectionable. > All against the express wishes of the artist. What the artist wants is irrelevant. The point of a democratic vote on copyright policy is not to fulfill artist's wishes, but to have people vote how _they_ want copyright to be. Democracy. Not just some bribeable politicans deciding whats best for authors and the industry. > Does that strike you as a decent thing to do? I consider selling copies without the author's consent wrong and I would vote for it to stay illegal. I consider non-commercial, private filesharing not wrong, even if authors oppose it because it may leads to less sales, and I would vote it to be fully legalized. I just want me and millions of other interested people to be _able_ to directly influence copyright policy by directly voting on it in a fine grained way. I dont want to just give a party my vote and then let them allegedly "represent" me, because at least with respect to copyright, they dont. I want direct democracy.