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> It might make you feel better about it, but it really > doesn't change the fact that you're stealing something > of value Copyright infringement is

by cturner 15y ago

> It might make you feel better about it, but it really > doesn't change the fact that you're stealing something > of value Copyright infringement is not stealing. Separately, the person who worked hard to produce whatever you're buying is reaping a fraction of a percentage point of whatever you're spending, and that's only if the distributor hasn't found a way to screw them out of that entirely (or else they've been long since dead).

tomp 15y ago
> Copyright infringement is not stealing. I assume there will be counter-arguments/downvotes, so to elaborate on this point using my own arguments: If you steal something from me, I don't have it (as in "steal a car"), so you're putting me in a worse-off position. If you copy/pirate something that is mine (properly copy, with attribution, and not out of context), I am not worse-off (possibly even better-off, as I get more widely known, more famous). Some compare pirating a DVD with going to a masseuse/prostitute and not paying her/him afterwards. This analogy is not correct - the expectation/social contract is that I have to pay you after I receive a service, and if I don't pay you, you are worse-off because you don't have money that you would otherwise have. However, people that pirate movies/music are not automatically lost revenue - probably they would buy less than 10% (just a guess) of entertainment content that they download/consume through piracy.
- wladimir 15y ago
  Exactly. A prostitute performs a personal service for you. Not paying directly hurts him/her. When copying information on the other hand, nothing happens, you don't feel it when your information is copied. (yes, you can say it does indirectly through some convoluted story, but that's always debatable) The future economy will be more about directly personalized experiences and services that cannot be copied, or are much less interesting when copied, instead of trivial fan-outs of information. It is all about scarcity. Better to let that sink in than try to preserve what is already lost, at the cost of freedom. (edit: why do I say future? It is already the present for many of us)
  - Silhouette 15y ago
    > When copying information on the other hand, nothing happens, you don't feel it when your information is copied. But you surely felt the months of work that went into writing your book in the first place, or the months of practice that allowed you to give that one great performance in the recording studio. > It is all about scarcity. Some of us prefer quality to quantity. Sadly, producing good quality usually requires a significant amount of hard work, and that isn't going to change any time soon.
    - wladimir 15y ago
      Some of us prefer quality to quantity. Sadly, producing good quality usually requires a significant amount of hard work, and that isn't going to change any time soon. You just validated my point. The people that prefer quality still pay for people to work (hard?) for them. Without needing any violent enforcement or censorship. Don't fetishize information, focus on what you (and other people) can do with it. Until brain patterns can be copied (if ever), skill and experience will still be scarce.
      - Silhouette 15y ago
        > You just validated my point. Perhaps I don't really understand your point, then. It seems to me that most of the works being ripped off via TPB and the like are the products that many people have worked on to get to a high level of quality, which of course are also the ones that are expensive to make because of that, and yet clearly a lot of people aren't paying for them.
        wladimir 15y ago
        My point is that a work that is just information, no matter how high quality, will be copied. There is no scarcity. Throughout history, work has always been either about making physical objects, food, or services rendered to either a person or a group interactively. Those are scarce. That's still the case. Yes, the market for cookie-cutter experiences "make once, sell zillion times" will become smaller (or at least, stop growing). I'm not sure whether that's something laudable or something sad, but it is happening before our eyes. Things are changing, let's try to make the transition less painful instead of more painful as we move into the post-information age.
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  "Copyright infringement is not stealing." Sure, let's have a very pedentic notion of stealing and keeping framing the debate around 'stealing'. OK... "taking something which isn't yours and/or you don't have permission to take". In most minds, that's the same as stealing, hence the standard use of the word 'stealing'. But substitute the phrase above for 'stealing' and, imo, it becomes harder to justify. Just because I an not doing an actual verifiable economic harm to someone doesn't mean it's right. Doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but doesn't make it right either.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    Here's a history of copyright law: - Copyright Act of 1790 - established U.S. copyright with term of 14 years with 14-year renewal - Copyright Act of 1831 - extended the term to 28 years with 14-year renewal - Copyright Act of 1909 - extended term to 28 years with 28-year renewal - Copyright Act of 1976 - extended term to either 75 years or life of author plus 50 years - Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 removed the requirement for renewal - Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) of 1994 restored U.S. copyright for certain foreign works - Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended terms to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years - Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 criminalized some cases of copyright infringement So let's get this straight, from 14 years the copyright period was extended to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years. And there's reason to believe that as long as Disney (and the like) exists, the concept of public domain is obsolete. So you can talk about right versus wrong, good versus evil and so on, but clearly something stinks about this picture, which is why I don't blame "pirates" for justifying their acts, as their acts are justified. And, how fucked up is it that restaurants are afraid of singing "Happy Birthday to You"? Are those singing it thieves?
    - mgkimsal 15y ago
      Again, not really saying anything about the "right" or "wrong" aspects, but continually using the word "stealing" in the debate, then debunking it by comparing it to a car, is, at best, a strawman argument. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's a better/easier one word description people can use (for soundbiteness) that adequately gets the point across that the major industries are trying to get across.
- stevecooperorg 15y ago
  There's an economic concept called 'club goods', which describe the way copyrighted materials are supposed to work -- you pay for access and get the same rights that everyone else who pays gets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_good -- shut down today in SOPA protest
  - cturner 15y ago
    No. Club goods are different. With a club good there is a tangible thing such as a running machine. By my use of it, you are unable to use it. But we judge the tradeoff to be worth it because we don't each want to go out and buy a gym. That is unlike copyright where the cost of making a copy is nothing, and may even increase the value of the copied data through network effects.
    - stevecooperorg 15y ago
      I was using the definition on wikipedia. Quoting from that page; > Examples of club goods include private golf courses, cinemas, cable television, access to copyrighted works, and the services provided by social or religious clubs to their members. Also this definition on econport.org; > Club Goods: Goods that are excludable but non-rival, or non-subtractable. This means that while certain people can be excluded from the consumption of a good, one person's consumption of it does not diminish another person's. The point is; people say copyright violation is stealing, is isn't stealing, and arguments occur. To have a good conversation about it, it's useful to distinguish club good from private goods, because then we can talk about the difference between "unauthorised access to a club good" (piracy) and "unauthorised posession of a private good" (theft).
      - prodigal_erik 15y ago
        By "access to copyrighted works" they may be talking about going to the club's library and reading the copy they already have (which may occasionally conflict with other members' use) rather than making more copies.
- Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
  OK, how would you feel if the person who owned your apartment before you came in with a key he still had while you were out and sat in your bedroom in the dark (not using power) playing with himself? You're not using your flat, it's there anyway, you've not lost anything, nothing has been broken or damaged, he's gone before you're back so it's fine right?
  - tomp 15y ago
    This is more a question of privacy than of "stealing"/"not paying". In a world where privacy didn't exist (i.e. there would be no "reasonable expectations of privacy", I wouldn't mind. Let's use another example. I order food, but don't eat all I get. If you will eat it, I would be very glad, as it wouldn't go to waste.
    - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
      Why is your expectation of a right to privacy an issue but not the creators expectation of payment for their work? After all, at the time they created it the legal and commercial framework, as well as the social norms, said that they could expect payment from anyone who consumed their work. Why are you allowed to override their expectations yet someone using your property without your permission isn't allowed to override yours?
- city41 15y ago
  If they are not willing to pay for it, then they have no right to enjoy it. In the end, it always boils down to pirates being spoiled. People never pirate to make ends meet. There is no digital content that is essential to anyone's life. People pirate because they want to be entertained but they don't want to pay for it.
  - njs12345 15y ago
    What's the difference? In both cases the pirate is deriving an economic benefit without directly causing an economic cost.
    - al_james 15y ago
      There is an economic cost. If even one person pirates a digital work who WOULD have paid for it had pirating not been an option, it causes a cost to the producer of the media. So there is a real cost.
      - drcube 15y ago
        And if one person buys a digital work due to piracy who otherwise would not have even known the artist existed, there is a benefit. Do you have any evidence that the costs outweigh the benefits?
        nirvdrum 15y ago
        Who is pirating works from artists they've never heard of? Everyone I know who pirates stuff is actively looking for something.
        burgerbrain 15y ago
        Everybody I know... They download in bulk and sift through it looking for things they like. And without exception, all of those "pirates" that I know have much larger legal bluray and record collections than I do.
- olavk 15y ago
  Consider this: You commision a composer to write a personal song to celebrate you at your anniverseray. You use the song, but decline to pay because the composer can keep a copy of the song, and therefore you are not really taking anything from him. But clearly you have put him in a worse position by using his work without pay - after all he could have done something else with his time and talent.
  - natep 15y ago
    Interesting hypothetical, but I think there is a difference between specifically asking for a service (and possibly creating a contract) and not paying vs sharing a copy of a work already produced. Otherwise, there are loads of services you can argue against paying for in that way.
    - olavk 15y ago
      Perhaps it was a bad example, but my point was that the argument that "piracy is not taking anyting away" assumes that IP is created in a vaccuum without consideration of the potential audience. This is rarely the case. Production of movies, music etc. is a risky investment with the expectation that if people enjoy the product they will pay. If nobody enjoys it, fair enough, bad investment. But if people do enjoy it, but still don't pay, clearly this is harming the creators.
  - cturner 15y ago
    That's primarily a contract law issue rather than copyright.
- koko775 15y ago
  This argument evaporates when you consider services that offer all-you-can-eat for a flat monthly fee. If you only have to pay the price of one day's lunch for access to a library of content, then downloading a title rather than watching it on its official outlet will reduce subscription fees and thus impact revenue sharing. So rather than buying less than 10%, there may in fact be no threshold at which pirating becomes more practical, once the initial monetary threshold (being able to afford the subscription fee) is met. Therefore, copyright infringement can result in a much stronger loss in revenue than you presume, even though I personally agree that it doesn't constitute "stealing", as no physical good has been removed and appropriated illegally. However, what that copyright infringement can do is impede or obstruct certain consumer-favoring (IMO) business models from being viable. It's possibly true, in my opinion, that sharing in a gray area of material whose market has not yet matured may increase visibility and have future benefits, but no company which deals with content producers and the platform to deliver content can afford to acknowledge this to the content producers or to the audience without risking legitimizing copyright infringement and therefore delegitimizing their own business (which is why I'm not disclaiming where I work, other than it is familiar with these issues). Not that I'm arguing that there should be no such thing as sharing, but making the moral argument to justify it that stealing isn't putting the company in a worse position is a poor rationale. It's not true and it's not something that can be defended against in public. Nor am I arguing that piracy will make or break a business. If it's big enough to be popular, it may be big enough to grow a legitimate market faster than the illegitimate alternative. However, this also relies on cooperative content producers and an audience willing to pay for the content. It's a tricky balance but the reality is that while violation of copyright may not produce economic devastation on its own, neither is it devoid of any impact. tl;dr: Reasonable people should pay for content available to them that they enjoy, especially when affordable.
fauigerzigerk 15y ago
If authors aren't getting their fair share of the proceeds, wouldn't that be a perfect opportunity for a competing media company to enter the market and crush all existing publishers?
- cturner 15y ago
  Getting access to good content producers is the easy part of running a traditional media company. The challenges are about control of limited distribution and promotion channels. This is a vicious territory and a zero-sum game. This helps to explain why that space cultivates nasty people. The sort of person who would have no qualms about grinding an artist down as much as possible. There's an endless supply of naive, highly skilled, high-ego artists who will do anything to get a 'contract' to get access to distribution. Money is not a key motivator to these people, but some might like the traditional media model if it gives their produce an advantage over equally skilled but less connected mindshare competitors. This is particularly true where the performing artist is just a front for a composition and marketing team. Fasion is an industry with a similar dynamic to media, but even less emphasis on the quality of content. And - surprise surprise - it's famously dominated by a nasty kind of person.
  - fauigerzigerk 15y ago
    What are these "distribution and promotion channels" limited by? What you're saying sounds to me like artists don't deserve to get a larger share because what they do simply isn't the most difficult part of actually making money. At the end of the day it may just be a completely normal function of supply and demand. Many people can easily supply what mainstream radio stations play all day long.
    - cturner 15y ago
      > What are these "distribution and promotion channels" limited by? Limited radio spectrum, limited television stations, somewhat limited music distribution chains/relationships, somewhat limited magazine readership.
Silhouette 15y ago
> Copyright infringement is not stealing. No, it's more akin to various kinds of fraud. So that's OK then, I guess. > Separately, the person who worked hard to produce whatever you're buying is reaping a fraction of a percentage point of whatever you're spending, and that's only if the distributor hasn't found a way to screw them out of that entirely (or else they've been long since dead). That is simply nonsense. Even musicians signed to the big record labels or authors whose books are distributed by major publishers do a lot better than that if their work is a success. Artists using small-time/independent distributors can do better, and these days plenty of works are self-published and self-promoted, sending the lion's share of the profit back to the artist.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - Silhouette 15y ago
    If an author doesn't earn out their advance, they are almost certainly making a lot more than "a fraction of a percentage point" of the revenue. A few new music artists do sign contracts so one-sided it's absurd, I agree, and they wind up never making any money at all or even paying some of the costs themselves. But that's usually because they let a big record label screw them, which would have happened regardless of the cut they thought they were going to get. Those same big record labels are still paying several percent to any successful artists who have a half-decent agent/lawyer. More importantly, for the purposes of this discussion, small/indie record labels don't have the power to play those kinds of legal games even if they want to. Again, anyone signed to one is probably getting a lot more than that "fraction of a percentage point". So, while I agree with you that the major distributors often offer little value today while taking far more of a cut than they deserve, I stand by my original point that it's silly to attack copyright because the original artists only get <1% as a cut. That just isn't true for anyone successful who doesn't let themselves get played.
- bartl 15y ago
  I agree that the separation of stealing vs. copyright infringement is an unimportant distinction. But artists do get just a tiny part of the money people pay. Take TLC as a well known example: they were a huge seller, yet they got bankrupt, largely because of how their record company treated them: >CrazySexyCool eventually sold over 11 million copies in the US, and became one of the first albums to ever receive a diamond certification from the RIAA, and won a 1996 Grammy Award for Best R&B Album and a 1996 Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group for "Creep". However, in the midst of their apparent success, the members of TLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 3, 1995. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLC_%28band%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLC_%28band%29) Take Courtney Love's rant about where the money goes as another (well known) example: http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ I agree with the OP: I'm sure that if they could get away with it, the record companies would most definitely prefer to pay the artist nothing at all.
gavinballard 15y ago
I agree with mgkimsal's comments above/below. Let's not muddy the debate with pedantic discussions over the definition of "stealing". You knew what I meant when I used the word. With regard to your second point, I again argue that there needs to be a separation between the debate over how copyright holders operate and the legalities of piracy. Failure to do that means that the analysis breaks down when we're not talking about the big evil conglomerate music companies that screw artists over and everybody loves to hate. Do you feel comfortable with your assertions above if we're talking about an indie game developer, or TextMate author Allan Odgaard?
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  I don't really see it as pedantic. It's important to oppose persons who characterize copyright infringement (at least as it relates to filesharing) as "stealing" because that misinformation is the argument that the pushers of SOPA/PIPA and other bad things hide behind. We cannot tolerate the analog because when it promulgates across techie lines into the mass of "normal people", they don't have the context necessary to consider the implications and judge independently whether the event constitutes a legitimate theft or not. We need to emphasize that filesharing is a form of sampling for most people, and that they would never buy 99% of the content that they fileshare for free, and that they often do buy that 1%, and that even if the consumer doesn't buy your content/distribution, you're still better off for the potential word-of-mouth promotion and other exposure facilitated. In reality, filesharing operates on the same principles as YouTube, which the studios and record companies also attempted to kill as just another pirate avenue before it was legitimized by Google and entered mainstream acceptance; they now (mostly) see YouTube as a promotional platform with the same understanding that it's about "sampling", that most people won't buy 99% of the stupid videos they watch on YouTube, but that some people will buy that 1%. The RIAA/MPAA members use YouTube in hopes that their content will be that 1% that provokes individuals to go purchase related merchandise. The only difference is that YouTube makes the "filesharing" piece invisible and people feel that they are sharing videos instead of files, and this makes YouTube tenable for mainstream use. BitTorrent and other filesharing networks operate on the same set of principles, but they are harder to use and control, so they remain targeted when there is essentially no difference from a consumer standpoint other than barrier to entry.
waxjar 15y ago
This is something everyone that talks about this topic needs to understand. Basic economics teach us that an infinite supply comes at the price of (near) zero. The amount of music, movies, software (products) that can be distributed is only limited by technical issues, such as the amount of bandwidth and hard drive space. So naturally distributors should expect their product to have a lower price than it once had, especially when selling online. Of course this leaves out the production costs entirely and probably a whole lot more. I'm not an economist, but I think this is a fatal flaw in the business model of most entertainment companies.
- Czarnian 15y ago
  You probably shouldn't have skipped the day when they talked about market saturation. Infinite supply does not imply infinite demand.
  - waxjar 15y ago
    Can you elaborate on that? If there's an infinite supply of something and say, a demand for that product with 20% of the people, wouldn't the situation be worse for the entertainment companies? I left the costs etc out of the equation, which is obviously a wrong thing to do.
    - Czarnian 15y ago
      The supply and demand curves are independent variables derived from distinct data sets. From Wikipedia: . . . supply is determined by marginal cost. Firms will produce additional output as long as the cost of producing an extra unit of output is less than the price they will receive. . . . demand curves are determined by marginal utility curves. Consumers will be willing to buy a given quantity of a good, at a given price, if the marginal utility of additional consumption is equal to the opportunity cost determined by the price, that is, the marginal utility of alternative consumption choices. The demand schedule is defined as the willingness and ability of a consumer to purchase a given product in a given frame of time. In my experience, the pro-piracy argument from economics is at best an imperfect understanding of supply and demand and at worst, the person making the argument just heard the words "supply and demand" and filled in the rest from his own imagination. The "Law of Supply and Demand" is not an actual thing. It's the juxtaposition of "Law of Supply" and the "Law of Demand" Supply (as opposed to the supply curve) is dictated by demand, not the other way around. If the demand for a good rises, then supply will be increased to meet the demand. If demand for a good drops, supply will be decreased to the level of demand. To your question, the entertainment companies are under no illusions that the demand curve for any particular product is going to stay the same. They expect that over time, the demand for any given thing will decrease. They know that Britney Spears new album will sell a shit-ton of copies for the first week after it drops and by the same time the following year, everyone who wanted it will have it and sales will be virtually non-existant. Their business model is geared toward a limited lifecycle for any given product, which is why they make continual investments in new products.
paulhauggis 15y ago
It's not stealing, it's counterfeiting, which is much worse. Here is why: When you steal a car, that one car is stolen. No big deal. If piracy goes unchecked, over time, the perceived value of that item will go down. This is because most people will quickly and easily be able to get it for free. Revenue will go down as a result of this and instead of having the loss of an individual copy of that product, the entire product line loses money. Something that just doesn't happen with physical products. The same principal can be applied to the news: Many newspapers are going out of business because you can get the exact same info for free from many other sources.
- guga31bb 15y ago
  >If piracy goes unchecked, over time, the perceived value of that item will go down Do you have any evidence to support this? Both the movie [0] and gaming [1] industries are making record profits. >Many newspapers are going out of business because you can get the exact same info for free from many other sources. Well, not exactly. I assume you're referring to consuming news online, which is supported by advertising -- it's not "free". The decline of the newspaper has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with the advantages of online distribution. [0] -- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/piracy-once-again-fails-to-get-in-way-of-record-box-office.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/piracy-once-... [1] -- http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/06/gaming-expected-to-be-a-68-billion-business-by-2012.ars http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/06/gaming-expected-t...
  - paulhauggis 15y ago
    "If piracy goes unchecked, over time, the perceived value of that item will go down" Being involved in multiple small companies. When we allowed cracks to work, sales slowly went down to nothing. When the cracks were stopped, low-and-behold, sales went back up because people weren't able to get it for free. I've seen it too many times to think it's a coincidence. Huge companies like Microsoft and Adobe can take the hit, but a small company will be destroyed. "it's not "free". The decline of the newspaper has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with the advantages of online distribution." So you are telling me that the fact that I can get pretty much all my news for free (from hundreds of sources) has no effect on a company that tries to sell me the same thing for a few dollars? I never said it was piracy. I was saying that it's an example of the same effect: When something is easily available for free, less people will end up purchasing it. In addition to this, when piracy goes unchecked it creates a culture of acceptance (IE: it's not a bad thing) and less people will end up buying. Everyone loves to defend piracy and yet many of those same people hate big corporations. It's a funny thing because eventually, that's all that will be left. I no longer get involved with apps. I only do web services. It's better for me because I now get monthly reoccurring income. Eventually, I think most companies will go this route and piracy will be a non-issue.
vph 15y ago
I don't buy this argument. Instead of buying a piece of music or a movie, you download it without paying, then you are in some small or large way, you are stealing it.
- cturner 15y ago
  There's a branch in the tree of replies here that I open "I recommend you think about this: where does property come from?" I recommend reading this.

by cturner 15y ago

tomp 15y ago

> Copyright infringement is not stealing. I assume there will be counter-arguments/downvotes, so to elaborate on this point using my own arguments: If you steal something from me, I don't have it (as in "steal a car"), so you're putting me in a worse-off position. If you copy/pirate something that is mine (properly copy, with attribution, and not out of context), I am not worse-off (possibly even better-off, as I get more widely known, more famous). Some compare pirating a DVD with going to a masseuse/prostitute and not paying her/him afterwards. This analogy is not correct - the expectation/social contract is that I have to pay you after I receive a service, and if I don't pay you, you are worse-off because you don't have money that you would otherwise have. However, people that pirate movies/music are not automatically lost revenue - probably they would buy less than 10% (just a guess) of entertainment content that they download/consume through piracy.

wladimir 15y ago
Exactly. A prostitute performs a personal service for you. Not paying directly hurts him/her. When copying information on the other hand, nothing happens, you don't feel it when your information is copied. (yes, you can say it does indirectly through some convoluted story, but that's always debatable) The future economy will be more about directly personalized experiences and services that cannot be copied, or are much less interesting when copied, instead of trivial fan-outs of information. It is all about scarcity. Better to let that sink in than try to preserve what is already lost, at the cost of freedom. (edit: why do I say future? It is already the present for many of us)
- Silhouette 15y ago
  > When copying information on the other hand, nothing happens, you don't feel it when your information is copied. But you surely felt the months of work that went into writing your book in the first place, or the months of practice that allowed you to give that one great performance in the recording studio. > It is all about scarcity. Some of us prefer quality to quantity. Sadly, producing good quality usually requires a significant amount of hard work, and that isn't going to change any time soon.
  - wladimir 15y ago
    Some of us prefer quality to quantity. Sadly, producing good quality usually requires a significant amount of hard work, and that isn't going to change any time soon. You just validated my point. The people that prefer quality still pay for people to work (hard?) for them. Without needing any violent enforcement or censorship. Don't fetishize information, focus on what you (and other people) can do with it. Until brain patterns can be copied (if ever), skill and experience will still be scarce.
    - Silhouette 15y ago
      > You just validated my point. Perhaps I don't really understand your point, then. It seems to me that most of the works being ripped off via TPB and the like are the products that many people have worked on to get to a high level of quality, which of course are also the ones that are expensive to make because of that, and yet clearly a lot of people aren't paying for them.
      - wladimir 15y ago
        My point is that a work that is just information, no matter how high quality, will be copied. There is no scarcity. Throughout history, work has always been either about making physical objects, food, or services rendered to either a person or a group interactively. Those are scarce. That's still the case. Yes, the market for cookie-cutter experiences "make once, sell zillion times" will become smaller (or at least, stop growing). I'm not sure whether that's something laudable or something sad, but it is happening before our eyes. Things are changing, let's try to make the transition less painful instead of more painful as we move into the post-information age.
mgkimsal 15y ago
"Copyright infringement is not stealing." Sure, let's have a very pedentic notion of stealing and keeping framing the debate around 'stealing'. OK... "taking something which isn't yours and/or you don't have permission to take". In most minds, that's the same as stealing, hence the standard use of the word 'stealing'. But substitute the phrase above for 'stealing' and, imo, it becomes harder to justify. Just because I an not doing an actual verifiable economic harm to someone doesn't mean it's right. Doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but doesn't make it right either.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Here's a history of copyright law: - Copyright Act of 1790 - established U.S. copyright with term of 14 years with 14-year renewal - Copyright Act of 1831 - extended the term to 28 years with 14-year renewal - Copyright Act of 1909 - extended term to 28 years with 28-year renewal - Copyright Act of 1976 - extended term to either 75 years or life of author plus 50 years - Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 removed the requirement for renewal - Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) of 1994 restored U.S. copyright for certain foreign works - Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 extended terms to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years - Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 criminalized some cases of copyright infringement So let's get this straight, from 14 years the copyright period was extended to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years. And there's reason to believe that as long as Disney (and the like) exists, the concept of public domain is obsolete. So you can talk about right versus wrong, good versus evil and so on, but clearly something stinks about this picture, which is why I don't blame "pirates" for justifying their acts, as their acts are justified. And, how fucked up is it that restaurants are afraid of singing "Happy Birthday to You"? Are those singing it thieves?
  - mgkimsal 15y ago
    Again, not really saying anything about the "right" or "wrong" aspects, but continually using the word "stealing" in the debate, then debunking it by comparing it to a car, is, at best, a strawman argument. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's a better/easier one word description people can use (for soundbiteness) that adequately gets the point across that the major industries are trying to get across.
stevecooperorg 15y ago
There's an economic concept called 'club goods', which describe the way copyrighted materials are supposed to work -- you pay for access and get the same rights that everyone else who pays gets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_good -- shut down today in SOPA protest
- cturner 15y ago
  No. Club goods are different. With a club good there is a tangible thing such as a running machine. By my use of it, you are unable to use it. But we judge the tradeoff to be worth it because we don't each want to go out and buy a gym. That is unlike copyright where the cost of making a copy is nothing, and may even increase the value of the copied data through network effects.
  - stevecooperorg 15y ago
    I was using the definition on wikipedia. Quoting from that page; > Examples of club goods include private golf courses, cinemas, cable television, access to copyrighted works, and the services provided by social or religious clubs to their members. Also this definition on econport.org; > Club Goods: Goods that are excludable but non-rival, or non-subtractable. This means that while certain people can be excluded from the consumption of a good, one person's consumption of it does not diminish another person's. The point is; people say copyright violation is stealing, is isn't stealing, and arguments occur. To have a good conversation about it, it's useful to distinguish club good from private goods, because then we can talk about the difference between "unauthorised access to a club good" (piracy) and "unauthorised posession of a private good" (theft).
    - prodigal_erik 15y ago
      By "access to copyrighted works" they may be talking about going to the club's library and reading the copy they already have (which may occasionally conflict with other members' use) rather than making more copies.
Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
OK, how would you feel if the person who owned your apartment before you came in with a key he still had while you were out and sat in your bedroom in the dark (not using power) playing with himself? You're not using your flat, it's there anyway, you've not lost anything, nothing has been broken or damaged, he's gone before you're back so it's fine right?
- tomp 15y ago
  This is more a question of privacy than of "stealing"/"not paying". In a world where privacy didn't exist (i.e. there would be no "reasonable expectations of privacy", I wouldn't mind. Let's use another example. I order food, but don't eat all I get. If you will eat it, I would be very glad, as it wouldn't go to waste.
  - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
    Why is your expectation of a right to privacy an issue but not the creators expectation of payment for their work? After all, at the time they created it the legal and commercial framework, as well as the social norms, said that they could expect payment from anyone who consumed their work. Why are you allowed to override their expectations yet someone using your property without your permission isn't allowed to override yours?
city41 15y ago
If they are not willing to pay for it, then they have no right to enjoy it. In the end, it always boils down to pirates being spoiled. People never pirate to make ends meet. There is no digital content that is essential to anyone's life. People pirate because they want to be entertained but they don't want to pay for it.
- njs12345 15y ago
  What's the difference? In both cases the pirate is deriving an economic benefit without directly causing an economic cost.
  - al_james 15y ago
    There is an economic cost. If even one person pirates a digital work who WOULD have paid for it had pirating not been an option, it causes a cost to the producer of the media. So there is a real cost.
    - drcube 15y ago
      And if one person buys a digital work due to piracy who otherwise would not have even known the artist existed, there is a benefit. Do you have any evidence that the costs outweigh the benefits?
      - nirvdrum 15y ago
        Who is pirating works from artists they've never heard of? Everyone I know who pirates stuff is actively looking for something.
        burgerbrain 15y ago
        Everybody I know... They download in bulk and sift through it looking for things they like. And without exception, all of those "pirates" that I know have much larger legal bluray and record collections than I do.
olavk 15y ago
Consider this: You commision a composer to write a personal song to celebrate you at your anniverseray. You use the song, but decline to pay because the composer can keep a copy of the song, and therefore you are not really taking anything from him. But clearly you have put him in a worse position by using his work without pay - after all he could have done something else with his time and talent.
- natep 15y ago
  Interesting hypothetical, but I think there is a difference between specifically asking for a service (and possibly creating a contract) and not paying vs sharing a copy of a work already produced. Otherwise, there are loads of services you can argue against paying for in that way.
  - olavk 15y ago
    Perhaps it was a bad example, but my point was that the argument that "piracy is not taking anyting away" assumes that IP is created in a vaccuum without consideration of the potential audience. This is rarely the case. Production of movies, music etc. is a risky investment with the expectation that if people enjoy the product they will pay. If nobody enjoys it, fair enough, bad investment. But if people do enjoy it, but still don't pay, clearly this is harming the creators.
- cturner 15y ago
  That's primarily a contract law issue rather than copyright.
koko775 15y ago
This argument evaporates when you consider services that offer all-you-can-eat for a flat monthly fee. If you only have to pay the price of one day's lunch for access to a library of content, then downloading a title rather than watching it on its official outlet will reduce subscription fees and thus impact revenue sharing. So rather than buying less than 10%, there may in fact be no threshold at which pirating becomes more practical, once the initial monetary threshold (being able to afford the subscription fee) is met. Therefore, copyright infringement can result in a much stronger loss in revenue than you presume, even though I personally agree that it doesn't constitute "stealing", as no physical good has been removed and appropriated illegally. However, what that copyright infringement can do is impede or obstruct certain consumer-favoring (IMO) business models from being viable. It's possibly true, in my opinion, that sharing in a gray area of material whose market has not yet matured may increase visibility and have future benefits, but no company which deals with content producers and the platform to deliver content can afford to acknowledge this to the content producers or to the audience without risking legitimizing copyright infringement and therefore delegitimizing their own business (which is why I'm not disclaiming where I work, other than it is familiar with these issues). Not that I'm arguing that there should be no such thing as sharing, but making the moral argument to justify it that stealing isn't putting the company in a worse position is a poor rationale. It's not true and it's not something that can be defended against in public. Nor am I arguing that piracy will make or break a business. If it's big enough to be popular, it may be big enough to grow a legitimate market faster than the illegitimate alternative. However, this also relies on cooperative content producers and an audience willing to pay for the content. It's a tricky balance but the reality is that while violation of copyright may not produce economic devastation on its own, neither is it devoid of any impact. tl;dr: Reasonable people should pay for content available to them that they enjoy, especially when affordable.

fauigerzigerk 15y ago

If authors aren't getting their fair share of the proceeds, wouldn't that be a perfect opportunity for a competing media company to enter the market and crush all existing publishers?

cturner 15y ago
Getting access to good content producers is the easy part of running a traditional media company. The challenges are about control of limited distribution and promotion channels. This is a vicious territory and a zero-sum game. This helps to explain why that space cultivates nasty people. The sort of person who would have no qualms about grinding an artist down as much as possible. There's an endless supply of naive, highly skilled, high-ego artists who will do anything to get a 'contract' to get access to distribution. Money is not a key motivator to these people, but some might like the traditional media model if it gives their produce an advantage over equally skilled but less connected mindshare competitors. This is particularly true where the performing artist is just a front for a composition and marketing team. Fasion is an industry with a similar dynamic to media, but even less emphasis on the quality of content. And - surprise surprise - it's famously dominated by a nasty kind of person.
- fauigerzigerk 15y ago
  What are these "distribution and promotion channels" limited by? What you're saying sounds to me like artists don't deserve to get a larger share because what they do simply isn't the most difficult part of actually making money. At the end of the day it may just be a completely normal function of supply and demand. Many people can easily supply what mainstream radio stations play all day long.
  - cturner 15y ago
    > What are these "distribution and promotion channels" limited by? Limited radio spectrum, limited television stations, somewhat limited music distribution chains/relationships, somewhat limited magazine readership.

Silhouette 15y ago

> Copyright infringement is not stealing. No, it's more akin to various kinds of fraud. So that's OK then, I guess. > Separately, the person who worked hard to produce whatever you're buying is reaping a fraction of a percentage point of whatever you're spending, and that's only if the distributor hasn't found a way to screw them out of that entirely (or else they've been long since dead). That is simply nonsense. Even musicians signed to the big record labels or authors whose books are distributed by major publishers do a lot better than that if their work is a success. Artists using small-time/independent distributors can do better, and these days plenty of works are self-published and self-promoted, sending the lion's share of the profit back to the artist.

deleted 15y ago
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- Silhouette 15y ago
  If an author doesn't earn out their advance, they are almost certainly making a lot more than "a fraction of a percentage point" of the revenue. A few new music artists do sign contracts so one-sided it's absurd, I agree, and they wind up never making any money at all or even paying some of the costs themselves. But that's usually because they let a big record label screw them, which would have happened regardless of the cut they thought they were going to get. Those same big record labels are still paying several percent to any successful artists who have a half-decent agent/lawyer. More importantly, for the purposes of this discussion, small/indie record labels don't have the power to play those kinds of legal games even if they want to. Again, anyone signed to one is probably getting a lot more than that "fraction of a percentage point". So, while I agree with you that the major distributors often offer little value today while taking far more of a cut than they deserve, I stand by my original point that it's silly to attack copyright because the original artists only get <1% as a cut. That just isn't true for anyone successful who doesn't let themselves get played.
bartl 15y ago
I agree that the separation of stealing vs. copyright infringement is an unimportant distinction. But artists do get just a tiny part of the money people pay. Take TLC as a well known example: they were a huge seller, yet they got bankrupt, largely because of how their record company treated them: >CrazySexyCool eventually sold over 11 million copies in the US, and became one of the first albums to ever receive a diamond certification from the RIAA, and won a 1996 Grammy Award for Best R&B Album and a 1996 Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group for "Creep". However, in the midst of their apparent success, the members of TLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 3, 1995. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLC_%28band%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLC_%28band%29) Take Courtney Love's rant about where the money goes as another (well known) example: http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ I agree with the OP: I'm sure that if they could get away with it, the record companies would most definitely prefer to pay the artist nothing at all.

gavinballard 15y ago

I agree with mgkimsal's comments above/below. Let's not muddy the debate with pedantic discussions over the definition of "stealing". You knew what I meant when I used the word. With regard to your second point, I again argue that there needs to be a separation between the debate over how copyright holders operate and the legalities of piracy. Failure to do that means that the analysis breaks down when we're not talking about the big evil conglomerate music companies that screw artists over and everybody loves to hate. Do you feel comfortable with your assertions above if we're talking about an indie game developer, or TextMate author Allan Odgaard?

cookiecaper 15y ago
I don't really see it as pedantic. It's important to oppose persons who characterize copyright infringement (at least as it relates to filesharing) as "stealing" because that misinformation is the argument that the pushers of SOPA/PIPA and other bad things hide behind. We cannot tolerate the analog because when it promulgates across techie lines into the mass of "normal people", they don't have the context necessary to consider the implications and judge independently whether the event constitutes a legitimate theft or not. We need to emphasize that filesharing is a form of sampling for most people, and that they would never buy 99% of the content that they fileshare for free, and that they often do buy that 1%, and that even if the consumer doesn't buy your content/distribution, you're still better off for the potential word-of-mouth promotion and other exposure facilitated. In reality, filesharing operates on the same principles as YouTube, which the studios and record companies also attempted to kill as just another pirate avenue before it was legitimized by Google and entered mainstream acceptance; they now (mostly) see YouTube as a promotional platform with the same understanding that it's about "sampling", that most people won't buy 99% of the stupid videos they watch on YouTube, but that some people will buy that 1%. The RIAA/MPAA members use YouTube in hopes that their content will be that 1% that provokes individuals to go purchase related merchandise. The only difference is that YouTube makes the "filesharing" piece invisible and people feel that they are sharing videos instead of files, and this makes YouTube tenable for mainstream use. BitTorrent and other filesharing networks operate on the same set of principles, but they are harder to use and control, so they remain targeted when there is essentially no difference from a consumer standpoint other than barrier to entry.

waxjar 15y ago

This is something everyone that talks about this topic needs to understand. Basic economics teach us that an infinite supply comes at the price of (near) zero. The amount of music, movies, software (products) that can be distributed is only limited by technical issues, such as the amount of bandwidth and hard drive space. So naturally distributors should expect their product to have a lower price than it once had, especially when selling online. Of course this leaves out the production costs entirely and probably a whole lot more. I'm not an economist, but I think this is a fatal flaw in the business model of most entertainment companies.

Czarnian 15y ago
You probably shouldn't have skipped the day when they talked about market saturation. Infinite supply does not imply infinite demand.
- waxjar 15y ago
  Can you elaborate on that? If there's an infinite supply of something and say, a demand for that product with 20% of the people, wouldn't the situation be worse for the entertainment companies? I left the costs etc out of the equation, which is obviously a wrong thing to do.
  - Czarnian 15y ago
    The supply and demand curves are independent variables derived from distinct data sets. From Wikipedia: . . . supply is determined by marginal cost. Firms will produce additional output as long as the cost of producing an extra unit of output is less than the price they will receive. . . . demand curves are determined by marginal utility curves. Consumers will be willing to buy a given quantity of a good, at a given price, if the marginal utility of additional consumption is equal to the opportunity cost determined by the price, that is, the marginal utility of alternative consumption choices. The demand schedule is defined as the willingness and ability of a consumer to purchase a given product in a given frame of time. In my experience, the pro-piracy argument from economics is at best an imperfect understanding of supply and demand and at worst, the person making the argument just heard the words "supply and demand" and filled in the rest from his own imagination. The "Law of Supply and Demand" is not an actual thing. It's the juxtaposition of "Law of Supply" and the "Law of Demand" Supply (as opposed to the supply curve) is dictated by demand, not the other way around. If the demand for a good rises, then supply will be increased to meet the demand. If demand for a good drops, supply will be decreased to the level of demand. To your question, the entertainment companies are under no illusions that the demand curve for any particular product is going to stay the same. They expect that over time, the demand for any given thing will decrease. They know that Britney Spears new album will sell a shit-ton of copies for the first week after it drops and by the same time the following year, everyone who wanted it will have it and sales will be virtually non-existant. Their business model is geared toward a limited lifecycle for any given product, which is why they make continual investments in new products.

paulhauggis 15y ago

It's not stealing, it's counterfeiting, which is much worse. Here is why: When you steal a car, that one car is stolen. No big deal. If piracy goes unchecked, over time, the perceived value of that item will go down. This is because most people will quickly and easily be able to get it for free. Revenue will go down as a result of this and instead of having the loss of an individual copy of that product, the entire product line loses money. Something that just doesn't happen with physical products. The same principal can be applied to the news: Many newspapers are going out of business because you can get the exact same info for free from many other sources.

guga31bb 15y ago
>If piracy goes unchecked, over time, the perceived value of that item will go down Do you have any evidence to support this? Both the movie [0] and gaming [1] industries are making record profits. >Many newspapers are going out of business because you can get the exact same info for free from many other sources. Well, not exactly. I assume you're referring to consuming news online, which is supported by advertising -- it's not "free". The decline of the newspaper has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with the advantages of online distribution. [0] -- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/piracy-once-again-fails-to-get-in-way-of-record-box-office.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/piracy-once-... [1] -- http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/06/gaming-expected-to-be-a-68-billion-business-by-2012.ars http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/06/gaming-expected-t...
- paulhauggis 15y ago
  "If piracy goes unchecked, over time, the perceived value of that item will go down" Being involved in multiple small companies. When we allowed cracks to work, sales slowly went down to nothing. When the cracks were stopped, low-and-behold, sales went back up because people weren't able to get it for free. I've seen it too many times to think it's a coincidence. Huge companies like Microsoft and Adobe can take the hit, but a small company will be destroyed. "it's not "free". The decline of the newspaper has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with the advantages of online distribution." So you are telling me that the fact that I can get pretty much all my news for free (from hundreds of sources) has no effect on a company that tries to sell me the same thing for a few dollars? I never said it was piracy. I was saying that it's an example of the same effect: When something is easily available for free, less people will end up purchasing it. In addition to this, when piracy goes unchecked it creates a culture of acceptance (IE: it's not a bad thing) and less people will end up buying. Everyone loves to defend piracy and yet many of those same people hate big corporations. It's a funny thing because eventually, that's all that will be left. I no longer get involved with apps. I only do web services. It's better for me because I now get monthly reoccurring income. Eventually, I think most companies will go this route and piracy will be a non-issue.

vph 15y ago

I don't buy this argument. Instead of buying a piece of music or a movie, you download it without paying, then you are in some small or large way, you are stealing it.

cturner 15y ago
There's a branch in the tree of replies here that I open "I recommend you think about this: where does property come from?" I recommend reading this.