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> 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 le

> 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.

Tycho 15y ago
Having a copyright law that allows consumers to make copies but prohibits the sale of those copies doesn't seem very workable to me. You'd be saying that making money from other peoples work is wrong/illegal, but at the same time saving money by copying without permission is right/legal. In both cases one party is extracting value from the work of another, against their wishes. Seems that the copyright system we have now where the creator is the 'owner' of the intellectual property and sets the conditions for its disposal has a much stronger foundation. At any rate, surely you'd have to agree that if we changed copyright laws, it would only apply to work created from that point onwards. You couldn't reasonably shift the goalposts for works already published under the guarantee of copyright protection - that would be like raising income tax then applying it retrospectively. So what it seems to me is that people want to have their cake and eat it. They want free access to the works of a copyright funded/enabled culture, but they'd rather not be left with the lacklustre non-protected output. At any rate, let me rephrase my question. Would taking a picture of the print an artist was trying to sell you and then making a copy strike you as a decent thing to do? Would you happily say to their face, 'I'm not going to buy your print, but I'm going to take a photo of it so I can make my own copy?' (we could go a bit further and mention distributing other copies to all your friends so none of them will buy it either, but I don't think that's even necessary)
- muuh-gnu 15y ago
  > we could go a bit further and No, sorry, I dont think you make any point worth further discussing.
  - Tycho 15y ago
    Nice way to dodge the question again. First time you said it was because it conflates two issues, second time you said it was because I asked you already. I'll ask you one last time. Do you think it's decent behaviour to turn down the purchase of a print that you like, and tell the artist that instead you are going to take a photo and make your own copy for free?
- deleted 15y ago
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Tycho 15y ago

Having a copyright law that allows consumers to make copies but prohibits the sale of those copies doesn't seem very workable to me. You'd be saying that making money from other peoples work is wrong/illegal, but at the same time saving money by copying without permission is right/legal. In both cases one party is extracting value from the work of another, against their wishes. Seems that the copyright system we have now where the creator is the 'owner' of the intellectual property and sets the conditions for its disposal has a much stronger foundation. At any rate, surely you'd have to agree that if we changed copyright laws, it would only apply to work created from that point onwards. You couldn't reasonably shift the goalposts for works already published under the guarantee of copyright protection - that would be like raising income tax then applying it retrospectively. So what it seems to me is that people want to have their cake and eat it. They want free access to the works of a copyright funded/enabled culture, but they'd rather not be left with the lacklustre non-protected output. At any rate, let me rephrase my question. Would taking a picture of the print an artist was trying to sell you and then making a copy strike you as a decent thing to do? Would you happily say to their face, 'I'm not going to buy your print, but I'm going to take a photo of it so I can make my own copy?' (we could go a bit further and mention distributing other copies to all your friends so none of them will buy it either, but I don't think that's even necessary)

muuh-gnu 15y ago
> we could go a bit further and No, sorry, I dont think you make any point worth further discussing.
- Tycho 15y ago
  Nice way to dodge the question again. First time you said it was because it conflates two issues, second time you said it was because I asked you already. I'll ask you one last time. Do you think it's decent behaviour to turn down the purchase of a print that you like, and tell the artist that instead you are going to take a photo and make your own copy for free?
deleted 15y ago
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