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How can I reason and speak about something I can't look at but for second hand testimony? Why should anyone limit his or herself to the second-hand testimony of

How can I reason and speak about something I can't look at but for second hand testimony? Why should anyone limit his or herself to the second-hand testimony of people who could afford to look at the facts when the only obstacles are social? Why are facts, cultural or otherwise, even behind a gate? Why should I be a second-class human because I can't afford to license the means to think? To put it differently: reduce, reuse, recycle. Once a work is made, why should anyone pay for it again beyond the cost of transcription? If investors can't cope with the product being the dividend, maybe the effort wasn't worth it... (Of course, these are just my own thoughts.)

FreeInfo4All 13y ago
Wow, amongst other things, that makes a good case for giving law enforcement agencies direct access to our private information. You're right: why have "second hand testimony" if you can get it firsthand? After all, the NSA is only making copies of all our information, so we are not deprived of anything either.
- vy8vWJlco 13y ago
  On the contrary, privacy has nothing to do with copyright, or rather: they are at entirely opposite ends of a spectrum. Privacy is an extension of one's right to be secure in one's body, and free in one's thoughts. It is non-transferrable. Disclosure is boolean: it was either voluntary, in which case it does not impose any obligations on those who would reason about it (and copy it, and...), or it was involuntary, in which case it is damage (as in the case of NSA spying). Money doesn't enter into it. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly, it is typically transferable, and it typically imposes obligations even when licensed. It is about monetizing copies at the expense of free expression and thought, and that expense can be bought, sold, in any measure, at the discretion of the holder. It is intended to be a tool to meter out copies for as much remuneration as possible, not to keep them to one's self forever with no intention of ever monetizing them.
  - FreeInfo4All 13y ago
    My point (that is admittedly not really clear) is that privacy and copyright are just restrictions on what you can do with information. But allow me to address your points in a wall of text nobody will read: > Privacy is an extension of one's right to be secure in one's body, and free in one's thoughts. Copyright is an extension of one's right to be paid for the value provided by their labor. Only, in this case, the labor is of an intellectual nature that can be infinitely replicated without recompense. Significantly, each copy of that labor provides substantially the same amount of value regardless of the number of copies, so N copies provides almost N times the value. I don't understand the argument that the remuneration for that value should be anything other than a function of the value provided; anything less than a linear relation looks dangerously, to me, like communism. Not to mention that "Once a work is made, why should anyone pay for it again beyond the cost of transcription?" is a direct corollary to the "you should get an A for effort!" fallacy. > It is non-transferrable. Disclosure is boolean: it was either voluntary, in which case it does not impose any obligations on those who would reason about it (and copy it, and...), or it was involuntary, in which case it is damage (as in the case of NSA spying). Money doesn't enter into it. Two things: 1. Copyright has to be transferable else its economic value would be severely restricted. 2. Privacy may not be "transferrable" (the term does not really make sense for "privacy"), but it absolutely is tradeable, and it's hardly as boolean as you make it out to be. As Google and Facebook show us so clearly, people will gladly trade their privacy in exchange for services that would otherwise have a monetary cost. So it definitely is tradeable. But is that really "voluntary"? Well, if anyone dug into Microsoft's "Scroogled" campaign, it was inspired by a survey where the surprising finding was that a large fraction of users did not know that their private information was being mined by Google, and a significant portion of them said did not like it. (I'd like to say the numbers were 45% and 70% respectively, but I can't be sure.) Now: Is that voluntary? What if they didn't know, but did not mind; is that voluntary? What if they knew and didn't mind, but hadn't considered the implications; would you call uninformed decisions like that voluntary? 3. And that's also a clear example that privacy is, in fact, monetizable, so money certainly enters into it. > Copyright is a government-granted monopoly, it is typically transferable, and it typically imposes obligations even when licensed. Just like money is a government-granted monopoly on a unique serial number. It's not licensed, but it does impose obligations on whoever owns a hard copy at the moment (no copies). > It is about monetizing copies at the expense of free expression and thought, and that expense can be bought, sold, in any measure, at the discretion of the holder. It is intended to be a tool to meter out copies for as much remuneration as possible, not to keep them to one's self forever with no intention of ever monetizing them. Yes it is about monetizing copies; or to put it in Psuedo-economical terms, it is about ensuring economic compensation for the value provided by each copy to the consumer. "As much remuneration as possible" would ideally be econ-speak for "what the market will bear", but this does not apply well to copyright because of the severe market distortion that widespread piracy introduces. What you have instead is some portion of honest (or technically unsavvy) consumers paying more to compensate for large number of pirates who derive value without paying for it. But, no it is not at the expense of free expression and thought. 1. Free thought is not affected at all. Copyright does not stop you from thinking anything. It only stops you from profiting from copies of other people's expression, which is in no way related to restricting what goes on in your head. 2. It only restricts your "free expression" to the extent that your "free expression" exactly matches somebody's copyrighted expression, or aspects thereof. Unlike patents, it is almost impossible that two independently created works will match exactly in any significant aspect. 3. True, some derivative expression is unfairly caught in the copyright web, especially when there is no clear way to extricate the creative aspect from the original work. The one example that I personally lament are Anime Music Videos; there used to be a ton of awesome work with very original and meticulous synchronization of music to completely unrelated videos that suddenly had their audio stripped on Youtube. However, if you look at the bigger picture, almost all copyright infringements are simply copying original works to avoid paying for it, either with money or patience. 4. Even then, tons of derivative work gets through just fine, simply because it makes no economical sense to stamp it out. Literary fanfic is one example. 5. The petabytes of torrents exchanged daily (yes, petabytes in the US alone; look up the numbers) is hardly "free expression and thought". Ponder how many movies/songs/games that is, even if you assume a ridiculously generous 50% of the torrent traffic to be legit. It's just the "expression" of the "thought" that somebody else's work should be had for "free". The image you seem to have of copyright restricting "free expression and thought" is based on a focus on a secondary effect of copyright laws that is actually a very small edge case in reality.

FreeInfo4All 13y ago

Wow, amongst other things, that makes a good case for giving law enforcement agencies direct access to our private information. You're right: why have "second hand testimony" if you can get it firsthand? After all, the NSA is only making copies of all our information, so we are not deprived of anything either.

vy8vWJlco 13y ago
On the contrary, privacy has nothing to do with copyright, or rather: they are at entirely opposite ends of a spectrum. Privacy is an extension of one's right to be secure in one's body, and free in one's thoughts. It is non-transferrable. Disclosure is boolean: it was either voluntary, in which case it does not impose any obligations on those who would reason about it (and copy it, and...), or it was involuntary, in which case it is damage (as in the case of NSA spying). Money doesn't enter into it. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly, it is typically transferable, and it typically imposes obligations even when licensed. It is about monetizing copies at the expense of free expression and thought, and that expense can be bought, sold, in any measure, at the discretion of the holder. It is intended to be a tool to meter out copies for as much remuneration as possible, not to keep them to one's self forever with no intention of ever monetizing them.
- FreeInfo4All 13y ago
  My point (that is admittedly not really clear) is that privacy and copyright are just restrictions on what you can do with information. But allow me to address your points in a wall of text nobody will read: > Privacy is an extension of one's right to be secure in one's body, and free in one's thoughts. Copyright is an extension of one's right to be paid for the value provided by their labor. Only, in this case, the labor is of an intellectual nature that can be infinitely replicated without recompense. Significantly, each copy of that labor provides substantially the same amount of value regardless of the number of copies, so N copies provides almost N times the value. I don't understand the argument that the remuneration for that value should be anything other than a function of the value provided; anything less than a linear relation looks dangerously, to me, like communism. Not to mention that "Once a work is made, why should anyone pay for it again beyond the cost of transcription?" is a direct corollary to the "you should get an A for effort!" fallacy. > It is non-transferrable. Disclosure is boolean: it was either voluntary, in which case it does not impose any obligations on those who would reason about it (and copy it, and...), or it was involuntary, in which case it is damage (as in the case of NSA spying). Money doesn't enter into it. Two things: 1. Copyright has to be transferable else its economic value would be severely restricted. 2. Privacy may not be "transferrable" (the term does not really make sense for "privacy"), but it absolutely is tradeable, and it's hardly as boolean as you make it out to be. As Google and Facebook show us so clearly, people will gladly trade their privacy in exchange for services that would otherwise have a monetary cost. So it definitely is tradeable. But is that really "voluntary"? Well, if anyone dug into Microsoft's "Scroogled" campaign, it was inspired by a survey where the surprising finding was that a large fraction of users did not know that their private information was being mined by Google, and a significant portion of them said did not like it. (I'd like to say the numbers were 45% and 70% respectively, but I can't be sure.) Now: Is that voluntary? What if they didn't know, but did not mind; is that voluntary? What if they knew and didn't mind, but hadn't considered the implications; would you call uninformed decisions like that voluntary? 3. And that's also a clear example that privacy is, in fact, monetizable, so money certainly enters into it. > Copyright is a government-granted monopoly, it is typically transferable, and it typically imposes obligations even when licensed. Just like money is a government-granted monopoly on a unique serial number. It's not licensed, but it does impose obligations on whoever owns a hard copy at the moment (no copies). > It is about monetizing copies at the expense of free expression and thought, and that expense can be bought, sold, in any measure, at the discretion of the holder. It is intended to be a tool to meter out copies for as much remuneration as possible, not to keep them to one's self forever with no intention of ever monetizing them. Yes it is about monetizing copies; or to put it in Psuedo-economical terms, it is about ensuring economic compensation for the value provided by each copy to the consumer. "As much remuneration as possible" would ideally be econ-speak for "what the market will bear", but this does not apply well to copyright because of the severe market distortion that widespread piracy introduces. What you have instead is some portion of honest (or technically unsavvy) consumers paying more to compensate for large number of pirates who derive value without paying for it. But, no it is not at the expense of free expression and thought. 1. Free thought is not affected at all. Copyright does not stop you from thinking anything. It only stops you from profiting from copies of other people's expression, which is in no way related to restricting what goes on in your head. 2. It only restricts your "free expression" to the extent that your "free expression" exactly matches somebody's copyrighted expression, or aspects thereof. Unlike patents, it is almost impossible that two independently created works will match exactly in any significant aspect. 3. True, some derivative expression is unfairly caught in the copyright web, especially when there is no clear way to extricate the creative aspect from the original work. The one example that I personally lament are Anime Music Videos; there used to be a ton of awesome work with very original and meticulous synchronization of music to completely unrelated videos that suddenly had their audio stripped on Youtube. However, if you look at the bigger picture, almost all copyright infringements are simply copying original works to avoid paying for it, either with money or patience. 4. Even then, tons of derivative work gets through just fine, simply because it makes no economical sense to stamp it out. Literary fanfic is one example. 5. The petabytes of torrents exchanged daily (yes, petabytes in the US alone; look up the numbers) is hardly "free expression and thought". Ponder how many movies/songs/games that is, even if you assume a ridiculously generous 50% of the torrent traffic to be legit. It's just the "expression" of the "thought" that somebody else's work should be had for "free". The image you seem to have of copyright restricting "free expression and thought" is based on a focus on a secondary effect of copyright laws that is actually a very small edge case in reality.