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Fairness/cheating: It violates reciprocal altruism with respect to the artist. The act of taking without compensation implies the work has no value. Authority

• csallen 15y ago
  Thanks for responding. Fairness/cheating What about the open source movement? I code using a lot of free technology. Rather than implying the tech is of no value, I think the fact that I (and millions of others) use it is a testament to its value. We hold the creators in high regard. The stated purpose of copyright law in the Constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If anything, invoking copyright law for nothing other than personal financial gain is immoral. Authority/subversion I may be misinterpreting your point here, but I have no problem with paying artists indirectly through representatives. If they want to enter into a contract, that's their right. Liberty/oppression My neighbor buys a book from Borders, reads it, and gives it to me. At this point, I'm entering into a transaction with my neighbor, not with the author of the book, and not with Borders. This is perfectly legal behavior in accordance to the doctrine of first sale, which prevents owners from retaining control over copyrighted material after it's been bought. This is also a very moral doctrine, in my opinion, because it's excessively greedy to try to maintain control over something even after you've sold it. Where the confusion comes into play is with digital goods. Digital goods are MUCH easier to manipulate (copy, trade, give, etc) than physical goods. Theoretically, ONE person can buy a CD, then make it available to everyone else on earth in a matter of minutes. This destroys business models that worked with physical goods, but I would argue that destroying business models is not immoral in a capitalist society. We don't condemn Henry Ford for ruining the businesses of horse-and-wagon sellers. The stated purpose of copyright law in the Constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If anything, invoking copyright law for nothing other than personal financial gain is immoral. Instead, the law should be used to stop those who would hinder scientific and artistic progress; for example, by creating knockoffs and masquerading them as the original, thus preventing the original creators from ever reaping rewards. File-sharing does indeed make some forms of art a lot less profitable than they could be. And you may be tempted to argue that this equates to hindering progress. However, I'd respond by pointing out that profit is not the same as progress. There is no evidence to suggest that art has stopped progressing due to file-sharing. If anything, it's only gotten better in the last 10 years. Sanctity/degradation Haha, well I wouldn't agree that it's immoral to modify art or music. In fact, that's kind of the purpose. It's about expression, speech, creativity, and the flow of ideas. This behavior is explicitly allowed by the fair use doctrine.
  • SteveJS 15y ago
    With open source both the producer and consumer sides are agreeing to share. There's nothing wrong with that, it implies nothing about the value of what is shared, and it is not piracy. Piracy is where the consumer side of a transaction takes without permission. That's cheating. It is immoral. >invoking copyright law for nothing other than personal financial gain is immoral. >This is also a very moral doctrine, in my opinion, because it's excessively greedy to try to maintain control over something even after you've sold it. >invoking copyright law for nothing other than personal financial gain is immoral It sounds like you believe personal financial gain is inherently immoral. Many people do feel this way. Many people don't. You should assume the opposite of your bias and form your argument on that basis. It will make for a stronger argument.
    • csallen 15y ago
      > Piracy is where the consumer side of a transaction takes without permission. That's cheating. It is immoral. That's not what piracy is, actually. Piracy is simply "an infringement of copyright". And copyright is the exclusive right to copy a work, distribute it for sale to the public, perform it publicly, display it publicly, or create derivatives from it. It's not really comparable to a normal transaction. > It sounds like you believe personal financial gain is inherently immoral. Many people do feel this way. Many people don't. Well, that's not really what I believe. I do own a company after all. It doesn't get much more financial gain-seeking than that :) The original intention of copyright was as follows: Ideas, expression, and information have no owners. They belong to the public because of free speech and all. However, this discouraged their creation, because if you wrote a book someone could just put their name on it and mass-produce it, giving you no credit. So lawmakers said how about we give authors a limited time to benefit financially from copyright. That will be a great incentive for them to create new works. However, after that time ends, the public should enjoy unrestricted use. That way we don't create monopolies on free speech and expression. My problem is that we're straying from this original intent. The entire purpose was to prevent monopolies* on information. You used to only have copyrights for 28 years, max, before the public got full control over it. Since then, content companies and artists have endlessly lobbied Congress to give them more power, and today copyrights last an entire lifetime PLUS 70 years. Nothing ever enters the public domain. So the real question is: How can you argue that copyright infringers are immoral, when the reality is that copyright holders are the ones who've violated the original intent of the law purely for personal gain? Their actions are ion violation of almost every moral foundation you listed (fairness, liberty, authority, betrayal, degradation). > You should assume the opposite of your bias and form your argument on that basis. It will make for a stronger argument. Thanks for the feedback.