4 ms·

Good thing I'm not a complete idiot, or I wouldn't know or understand fair use. People tend to forget that fair use is limited in its scope. Unfortunately, a lo

by jscheel 14y ago

Good thing I'm not a complete idiot, or I wouldn't know or understand fair use. People tend to forget that fair use is limited in its scope. Unfortunately, a lot of people's idea of fair use is, "I want it, so I'm gonna take it." It IS a moral imperative. It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. In high-school and the first part of my college life, I pirated music and applications with impunity. I justified it every way I could, but at the end of the day, I realized I was stealing -- regardless of what nuanced legal argument I could come up with. It drives me crazy when people say "it's not stealing, it's just copyright infringement," like that magically makes what they are doing better.

ynniv 14y ago
To steal is to deprive, to copy is to disappoint.
summerdown2 14y ago
> It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. Surely you understand that it’s possible for people who aren’t you to look at the same facts, and come to a different conclusion? Not because they’re fooling themselves, but simply because people of good heart are allowed to have differences of opinion. Try this video, particularly the bit that starts at 10:00 http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html
Gormo 14y ago
> It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. If you're going to alter the definition of "stealing" to cover things that aren't stealing, then why stop there? Why not call copyright infringement "arson" or "murder" too? Making an unlicensed replica of another person's non-rival good is not the same thing as depriving another person of a rival good in their possession. You can even hold both to be worthy of legal censure without having to advance this disingenuous prevarication. If you're in favor of strict IP law, do you not see how playing these semantic games actually undermines your credibility and therefore your argument?
- jscheel 14y ago
  The thing is, law is nothing more than codified morality. I do believe, in a court of law, that we should make a distinction between theft and copyright. Several Supreme Court justices agree that this is the case. However, when looking and the very core of the issue, absent legal codification, I'm still taking something that isn't mine, regardless of whether or not it was merely a copy. That is where I am coming from. Responsible adults shouldn't need to split legal hairs, we should recognize that we are, at its core, taking what is not ours to take. There is a legal distinction, but not a moral one.
  - Gormo 14y ago
    The law is significantly divergent from morality, codified or otherwise, and is often itself immoral. But, that said, when looking at the issue from a purely moral perspective, the difference becomes even more clearly illuminated: again, making a replica of someone else's thing is utterly different from taking their thing away from them. This isn't a hair split in the slightest: the key component of harm that makes theft immoral just isn't present with copying.
    - MattSayar 14y ago
      But you're not compensating them for the time they spent making it. They've spent time to make this thing, and you're taking a copy of this thing without spending a dime for their effort. It's a service. A labor. That you're not paying for.
      - Gormo 14y ago
        So? You're not entitled for compensation for the time you spend making anything. Your effort is neither a service nor labor done one anyone else's behalf; it's a speculative capital investment, and your risk to bear. If I spend millions of dollars developing a new type of camera film in 2000, and digital cameras make film cameras obsolete before I earn a penny of revenue, that's too bad, but no one owes me anything. Spent a billion bucks building new houses in 2008? Sorry to hear it, but you don't get to tear down other people's houses to restore the value of yours. And if you say that copying is different from anything else that might diminish your return because you think you already had some inherent right to control whether other people make their own replicas of your stuff, then you're begging the question; your lack of ROI can't itself be the justification for copyright if you make such an argument.

by jscheel 14y ago

ynniv 14y ago

To steal is to deprive, to copy is to disappoint.

summerdown2 14y ago

> It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. Surely you understand that it’s possible for people who aren’t you to look at the same facts, and come to a different conclusion? Not because they’re fooling themselves, but simply because people of good heart are allowed to have differences of opinion. Try this video, particularly the bit that starts at 10:00 http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html

Gormo 14y ago

> It IS stealing. I don't care how you sugarcoat it. If you're going to alter the definition of "stealing" to cover things that aren't stealing, then why stop there? Why not call copyright infringement "arson" or "murder" too? Making an unlicensed replica of another person's non-rival good is not the same thing as depriving another person of a rival good in their possession. You can even hold both to be worthy of legal censure without having to advance this disingenuous prevarication. If you're in favor of strict IP law, do you not see how playing these semantic games actually undermines your credibility and therefore your argument?

jscheel 14y ago
The thing is, law is nothing more than codified morality. I do believe, in a court of law, that we should make a distinction between theft and copyright. Several Supreme Court justices agree that this is the case. However, when looking and the very core of the issue, absent legal codification, I'm still taking something that isn't mine, regardless of whether or not it was merely a copy. That is where I am coming from. Responsible adults shouldn't need to split legal hairs, we should recognize that we are, at its core, taking what is not ours to take. There is a legal distinction, but not a moral one.
- Gormo 14y ago
  The law is significantly divergent from morality, codified or otherwise, and is often itself immoral. But, that said, when looking at the issue from a purely moral perspective, the difference becomes even more clearly illuminated: again, making a replica of someone else's thing is utterly different from taking their thing away from them. This isn't a hair split in the slightest: the key component of harm that makes theft immoral just isn't present with copying.
  - MattSayar 14y ago
    But you're not compensating them for the time they spent making it. They've spent time to make this thing, and you're taking a copy of this thing without spending a dime for their effort. It's a service. A labor. That you're not paying for.
    - Gormo 14y ago
      So? You're not entitled for compensation for the time you spend making anything. Your effort is neither a service nor labor done one anyone else's behalf; it's a speculative capital investment, and your risk to bear. If I spend millions of dollars developing a new type of camera film in 2000, and digital cameras make film cameras obsolete before I earn a penny of revenue, that's too bad, but no one owes me anything. Spent a billion bucks building new houses in 2008? Sorry to hear it, but you don't get to tear down other people's houses to restore the value of yours. And if you say that copying is different from anything else that might diminish your return because you think you already had some inherent right to control whether other people make their own replicas of your stuff, then you're begging the question; your lack of ROI can't itself be the justification for copyright if you make such an argument.