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To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument for justification of piracy. If the copyright industry side can just replace the social agreement (
by praptak 14y ago
To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument for justification of piracy. If the copyright industry side can just replace the social agreement (protection of works in exchange for them going public after a reasonable amount of time) with one they like more, why would it be immoral for the content consumers to to the same?
I'm talking about the ethical side, not legalities. The fact that said consumers lack the lobbying power only makes their actions illegal, not immoral.
- martincmartin 14y agoBecause two wrongs don't make a right.
- TheAmazingIdiot 14y agoAnd trite sayings don't mean they are correct, either. The social contract in the constitution was to grant people with limited exclusivity for works they created. Patents have roughly stayed within that parameter (with exception to patent abuses on design and software). For copyright, it was originally 17 years, extendable another 17 years. Works released in 1981 (my date of birth) will expire in 120 years. I will be dead before they are in public domain. The social contract was 'reneogiated' by campaign donations, without input from the people. The supreme court found that forever extensions the way congress is implementing them as 'constitutional' and it was Congress's problem. So yes, I believe that should open up the debate on piracy as a legitimate solution.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoThere's been plenty of input from the people. The people vote every 2 years for representatives and every 6 years for senators. By and large, the people's input has been to keep the congresspeople who voted for these extensions. The reality is that most of "the people" just don't care about this issue. But they've had their input.
- TheCapn 14y agoYou can't oversimplify this. The issue goes beyond simple voting because in the grand scheme of things copyright isn't as important as other representative factors. Would you honestly say that you would vote for a representative who agreed with you on copyright agenda but disagreed on all other aspects (or at the very least, most of the categories that are directly important to you)? That's the choice we're asked to make. Should I re-elect Senator Y if he is copyright lobbyist's bitch? He does however take strong stances on the issues A, B and C which I do like though.
- jlgreco 14y ago> The issue goes beyond simple voting because in the grand scheme of things copyright isn't as important as other representative factors. Exactly. Due to the imperfect nature of our democracy, copyright has never been voted on by the general public. The general public has effectively voted for foreign policy, the economy, numerous social issues including the right to vote, reproductive rights, marriage rights, etc. However the public has never effectively voted for more minor issues like copyright. The only people who are effectively voicing their opinions are politicians themselves and the corporations who pay them. It has never been a large enough issue for the general population dictate on, one way or the other.
- CodeMage 14y agoThere's been plenty of input from the people. The people vote every 2 years for representatives and every 6 years for senators. By and large, the people's input has been to keep the congresspeople who voted for these extensions. I'll never understand why people think this is a valid argument. We're being asked to conflate topics that are not closely related and, by voting, make unnecessary compromises. An overhaul of democracy is pretty much overdue.
- wpietri 14y agoAbsolutely. For example, Americans have come to realize that the wrong of British tyranny was not made right by the wrongs of rebellion and war.
- CoffeeDregs 14y ago>To me the whole copyright extension issue is a good argument >for justification of piracy. There's very little pirating of content that is over 20 years old, so I'm not sure how the copyright extension thing would justify piracy...
- StavrosK 14y agoPeople grant protection to works on the provision that these works become freely available after N years. The copyright industry just goes ahead and extends this unilaterally, just because they want to. Why should the public keep up its end of the deal when the copyright industry doesn't?
- CoffeeDregs 14y agoI still don't see what this has to do with grandparent's point that this was affecting piracy. I certainly agree with your point. I just don't see how it's relevant to the points of either parent or grandparent.
- StavrosK 14y agoHe didn't say it affects it, he said it justifies it.
- darkarmani 14y agoYou mean because there were no good music artists like Elvis and the Beatles 20 years ago? Or even Michael Jackson for that matter?
- CoffeeDregs 14y agoAh. Perhaps DHH was right... We're heading OT, but perhaps that I didn't make obvious that my comparison was relative is what caused your confusion. Relative to new stuff, there is very little pirating of stuff over 20 years old (probably even over 1 year old since content is ephemeral). While I don't have the numbers to hand, I'm willing to assert that the amount of pirating of Elvis, The Beatles, etc is tiny relative to the pirating of Sky Fall, The Hobbit, Gangnam Style, Call Me Maybe, Games Of Thrones, etc.
- ovi256 14y agoI can see how you can land in trouble as a pirate when you travel to a country with longer copyright. For Canadians, Hemingway for example is already public domain. Would a Canadian travelling with a Kindle full of Project Guttenberg downloads of Hemingway land in trouble with the US, EU or other customs ? It would be in the publishers interest to obtain a few scary convictions for the chilling effect. I could see how auditing software would become useful: software that would tell you what content to take off your iPod when travelling to a certain country. Such software would need an accurate database of copyright status for each content in each country. I predict an open source source database of this type will be created in the future.
- officemonkey 14y agoThe issue isn't ownership of the file, it's the act of copying. If the Kindle owner made copies of Hemingway's works in the U.S., then he would get in trouble.
- OGinparadise 14y ago"The issue isn't ownership of the file, it's the act of copying." On top of my head I can't see how you own a book if others can copy and distribute it. For practical purposes, the point of owning is that you can control distribution, charge for it or, say, not allow someone to do a movie based on it.
- argv_empty 14y agoWhen you say "own," do you mean "legitimately posess" or "hold copyright on"? I think GP is talking about the former.
- OGinparadise 14y ago" When you say "own," do you mean "legitimately posess" or "hold copyright on"? I think GP is talking about the former." Let's leave theories aside. I own a book when I decide when /how /where /if to print. If you can legally get it, modify and distribute it for free, I lose sales. That's almost certain. So if the government doesn't protect my book /song /movie the same way it protects your iPhone or vacation home, how do I own it? (I understand what the law and constitution say, I just disagree, especially for certain works.)
- orionblastar 14y agoWell first I would argue that modern copyright law is Unconstitutional and eventually it will go to the Supreme Court and will be struck down. Then we'll be back to the original copyright laws. As for the justification of piracy, I suppose it is some form of protest? Instead of paying for copyrighted materials, just pirate them in protest of unfair and Unconstitutional copyright laws? Wouldn't it just be better to do a boycott of organizations that lobbied government to pass such laws and only buy from organizations that oppose those laws? Not only that but there is enough free and open source software, media, and ebooks and materials that ones doesn't need to buy the commercial copyrighted stuff anymore and still not pay much. Stuff older than 20 years still gets pirated, old DOS apps, old 8 bit computer ROMs and Disk files for emulators, old movies and TV shows. Most of the older stuff lacks DRM malware and runs really fast as compared to the modern stuff that is bloated with rootkits and phone-home activation code checkers.
- goodcanadian 14y ago> Well first I would argue that modern copyright law is Unconstitutional and eventually it will go to the Supreme Court and will be struck down. Then we'll be back to the original copyright laws. It has gone to the supreme court and was upheld: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft
- MartinCron 14y agoa good argument for justification of piracy Which, by the way, is indistinguishable from rationalizing the sentiment of "I want stuff without having to pay for it"
- paganel 14y ago> "I want stuff without having to pay for it" I don't want to rationalize stuff, but I've just finished reading Locke's "Two Treatises on Government", one of the guys that started all this "the only true freedom is the protection of property"-thingie, and I just want to add that irrespective of the fact that one might agree or not with Locke's views you have to take into consideration that it has not always been like this (i.e. private property being "sacred" etc). In fact, Locke starts by arguing against people (Filmer and others) who were saying something of the like that the monarchs of the time had an irrevocable right to rule (and presumably to own everything under the skies), handed down (the right to rule) to them from generation to generation since Adam (the Genesis Adam). To say nothing of the 20th century madness that afflicted almost half of the known world, I'm talking about the Marxist/Leninist views on property. What I want to say is that what constitutes "property", "to own stuff" etc. has not always been "set in stone" as a "moral" thingie (whatever definition of "moral" you want to come up with). So people for whom piracy is "immoral" are taking a very short view of the whole thing, and possibly also deluding themselves into thinking that what is "moral" is almost by definition "immortal" and forever. They should take a more pragmatic view.
- pfedor 14y agoYou could similarly defend any kind of stealing. The communists said "грабь награбленное", which means "steal what has been stolen". Here's the English-version of an article from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Expropriation+of+the+Expropriators http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Expropriation+of+... which advocates an equivalent of praptak's point of view applied to other kinds of property than the copyright.
- jlgreco 14y agoHow is that so different from "I want to keep the rights to a cartoon I drew for ever and ever and ever.."?
- MarkMc 14y agoWhere do you draw the line? "I am poor and rich people pay too little tax so it is ethically OK for me to steal from rich people" "I am a native American and white people robbed my ancestors so it is ethically OK for me to steal from white people" ...etc
- anigbrowl 14y agowhy would it be immoral for the content consumers to to the same? Because they have nothing to lose. I only ever hear this argument from people who have no IP of their own in the market. I think shortened copyright terms would be good public policy, but the fact is that as a consumer you don't have any kind of moral claim on others' work.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y agoActually we do. The social contract is "we will protect your works, but in exchange everyone gets them after a time." This is true for patents and copyright. We did our part, we protected their works for the period agreed, but instead of them doing their part (releasing them freely) they changed the rules at the last minute. You make it sound like this is some small business or individual we're dealing with, which is simply a mis-characterisation. The people who made these works are dead, these are corporations.
- GFischer 14y agoI've seen plenty of IP holders arguing otherwise. A prominent example is Notch, the creator of Minecraft, which is also a member of the Pirate Party.