6 ms·

Where are the internet hippies saying everything should be free?

crusso 13y ago
My question as well. I'd love to hear from the advocates of "It's digital, there is no cost to the content producer for others to make copies."
- icebraining 13y ago
  The difference is the implicit agreement between the author and the agency, without which the former wouldn't have spent two months making those works.
  - res0nat0r 13y ago
    There is also an agreement between you and artists that if you want to watch a movie or listen to a music cd you also pay for it.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      When did I agree to that?
      - res0nat0r 13y ago
        You didn't if you downloaded it without paying, which is why it is illegal. Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post: "We never signed any contracts or work-for-hire agreements and I certainly never agreed to donating or selling any copyright of my work without a licensing fee." So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't?
        icebraining 13y ago
        You didn't if you downloaded it without paying, which is why it is illegal. So it's illegal to violate an agreement you didn't enter in? That makes no sense, sugar. Let's test that: to read this post, you must agree to pay me 5BTC. Have you now committed an illegality? I guess not. Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again? So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't? Sure they should, by whoever has an (explicit or implicit) agreement to pay them. Thankfully I haven't, but I still like to reward them when I can for all the joy they brought me.
        res0nat0r 13y ago
        > So it's illegal to violate an agreement you didn't enter in? That makes no sense, sugar. Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute. > He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again? I read it, your prior post was very short. See my quote above directly from his blog post; there wasn't any contract.
        Amadou 13y ago
        Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute. I think it is in substantial dispute. Can you cite a case of someone in the US being successfully prosecuted for downloading? Note that this precludes bittorrent, gnutella, etc situations where downloading means simultaneously uploading. Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too. Canada: http://archive.is/W0mdI http://archive.is/W0mdI Netherlands: http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-parliament-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111224/ http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-parliament-downloading-movies-... Spain: http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/21/spanish-pirate-site-owners-to-get-six-years-jailtime-but-users-off-the-hook/?ncid=tcdaily http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/21/spanish-pirate-site-owners-...
      - majormajor 13y ago
        You agreed to it when you paid in order to watch it. So yes, you didn't. But if you don't agree, you shouldn't watch it. It's a simple deal, regardless of whether or not technology means you could. Otherwise you can turn it around and ask "when did the artist agree to you watching it without paying" which is pretty similar to the case described here, just replace watching with using.
        icebraining 13y ago
        But if you don't agree, you shouldn't watch it. Why? when did the artist agree to you watching it without paying If I own a car made by Toyota, should I need their agreement to offer rides to people?
        res0nat0r 13y ago
        > Why? It's against the law. > If I own a car made by Toyota, should I need their agreement to offer rides to people? This argument makes no sense. You can play the music you bought for other people for free, just like giving a free car ride. You did in fact pay for the Toyota, just like you would to purchase an album.
        icebraining 13y ago
        It's against the law. The courts in my jurisdiction disagree, but in any case, I wasn't making a legal argument, but an ethical one. Unless of course you consider that any illegal activity is necessarily unethical, in which case we have nothing to discuss. You can play the music you bought for other people for free Not freely, I can't, only under the very restrictive limits of fair use. But I grant you the analogy isn't good. In any case, the point stands: why should I get to decide who can do what with the works (in my case, software) I produce, after I sell them?
        majormajor 13y ago
        I have a hard time seeing the argument that it should be unilateral. An agreement should be between multiple parties, so if you don't agree to what they're offering, you shouldn't take it. Otherwise it devolves into "I will take it because I can." Why does that make any more sense for instantly-reproducible, yet still not instantly-creatable, goods than for physical ones? If you want to take it, you probably see some value in its creation.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        Who do you think you're kidding? You obviously know about the obligation to pay; you've just decided that if the product you want access to has been laundered through at least one 3rd party, you've never had to look any of the producers in the eye, and therefore you have no obligation to them. If anything, you're even worse than the person who originally published the content you're taking: they're at least accountable to the original relationship that gave them access to the product. That first sentence sounds outraged and pointed, but it's not; it's a serious question. Every time this issue comes up, I feel like I read people making similar points, as if they were remotely convincing. I really want to know who, among all the people who are not already on your side on this issue, you think would be persuaded by the logic that "I didn't have a contract with the producer of _Wall-E_, and so I'm not obligated to pay them before downloading and watching their movie." It seems to me that a child can see where the obligation to pay comes from.
        icebraining 13y ago
        I'm not trying to convince anyone, I just enjoy arguing.
        bct 13y ago
        It feels exactly the same arguing from the other side. I think that means we're working with fundamentally different premises.
      - kazagistar 13y ago
        To be fair, all property law is just as fictional. I didn't agree to not trespass or use items that other people claim belong to them. I didn't agree to the papers they hold saying that I cannot go for a joyride in my neighbors' car. The law defines property. Just because IP has different traits then physical property does not make it more real; they are both useful fictions that form the foundation of a functional society. The laws encode our social norms and ideas about property. There is an entirely different set of laws which encodes acceptable behaviors in business practices, such as contract law, which is somewhat of a different area. There is some very good arguments to be made that the current definitions of intellectual property are severely flawed, and haven't been updated to reflect our social perception or technical needs about what should or shouldn't be property. But there is no reason why "no IP enforcement" is inherently the right solution.
        icebraining 13y ago
        Scarcity is what sustains private property, as a way to control conflicts when multiple people want to access rivalrous goods. Intellectual property is a collection of disparate concepts, but if we take copyright, there's no similar justification for it. See Against Intellectual Property, by Stephan Kinsella: http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
        kazagistar 13y ago
        Right, some kind of solution for scarcity is needed, but any particular property system is merely a possible implementation. And while "scarcity" is not a problem solved by IP, there are other problem that IP does indeed solve. All property rights, as implemented by our laws, are just as much of a fiction. You just feel that one is more necessary or better then another.
        icebraining 13y ago
        All property rights, as implemented by our laws, are just as much of a fiction. You just feel that one is more necessary or better then another. I'm not sure why you feel I would disagree with that, or why would that contradict my position. I'm not a believer in natural laws.
- drcube 13y ago
  Even if they believe that, it doesn't make plagiarism and breech of contract okay.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Sophomoric semantic rationalization. Two different settings for copyright violation, but sure, just use synonyms and related concepts to make one seem bad and the other OK; gullible message board nerds ravenous for validation for pirating movies, music, and software will lap it up.
    - subsystem 13y ago
      There's more than a semantic difference between moral and material interests. In fact most "internet hippies" I know wants strong moral protection for authors [0][1]. It's a fairly central concept in the copyright debate, not least since it's part of the universal declaration of human rights. [0] http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/the-pirate-party-on-copyright-reform/ http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/the-pirate-party-on-c... [1] http://the1709blog.blogspot.se/2012/05/pirate-party-plans-for-copyright-reform.html http://the1709blog.blogspot.se/2012/05/pirate-party-plans-fo... [2] http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G06/400/60/PDF/G0640060.pdf http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G06/400/60/PDF/G0...
    - drcube 13y ago
      No. If you have a contract to get paid for work, it really doesn't matter whether you "own" the end product in any meaningful way. You should get paid according to the terms of the contract, even if it was just a verbal contract. And taking credit for someone's work is not remotely the same as copying it without their permission, attribution intact. Can you not tell the difference?
- orbitur 13y ago
  They are using his work to aid in selling their product. He should get a cut of that. It's not much related to Little Bobby downloading a movie.
hsod 13y ago
Good question. They seem to be nowhere to be found when it's the little guy asserting copyright.
- derleth 13y ago
  Everyone thinks plagiarism is wrong.
icebraining 13y ago
Corn fields, I suppose.
- derleth 13y ago
  Try as you may, there's no inconsistency here. Everyone thinks plagiarism is wrong.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Sorry, it was a failed attempt at being funny. I was implying bananacurve was referring to a strawman ("internet hippies saying everything should be free").
nawitus 13y ago
Believing that copyright shouldn't exist or should be limited from it's current status but contracts should be enforced is a completely valid position.
- coldtea 13y ago
  Only there weren't any contracts here. How about: "work should be conpensated" and "give it for free and make up in volume/exposure is BS"?
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  You can't enforce a contract related to creative works without the concept of copyright. Otherwise there is nothing of value upon which to base the contract. That is where copyright came from in the first place.
  - learc83 13y ago
    >You can't enforce a contract related to creative works without the concept of copyright. Yes you can. The value is in the time and creative process that went into creating the creative work. A contract that says I will pay you $1000 to create a piece of open source software, is still a valid and enforceable contract, even though I won't own the software in the end.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    You definitely can - it's contracts for performing a service, and it doesn't matter if the end result is some copyrightable artifact like a poem, an uncopyrightable artifact like a finding of fact (x % of surveyed people liked your product) or no artifacts at all, as for many services.
seanc 13y ago
Not that I'm firmly in the camp of 'everything should be free', but in this case the agency promised the designer "There's no money now, but since you hold the copyright on the work, if we decide to distribute it, we'll have to pay you later. So work for peanuts, okay?" If there were not copyright at all, then the agency wouldn't have had the promise of future revenue to lure the designer into the deal in the first place. If everyone knew up front that once the work was done it would be free to the world, there would have been no misunderstanding, and the designer would have had an easier time insisting on getting paid properly up front.
__david__ 13y ago
Plagiarism != Piracy
drcube 13y ago
This has nothing to do with that. If you publish something in public for all the world to see, don't expect random strangers to just hand you money for the privilege of seeing it. But if someone tells you they will pay you for your work, and then when you spend two months working on it, they refuse to pay and furthermore pass the work off as their own, that's fucked up no matter what the copyright laws are in your country.
kazagistar 13y ago
This has little to do with IP law, and everything to do with contract law and negotiation. A position like "short copyright period and no software patents" is trivial reconciled with "don't do work without contracts, and have the law enforce contracts."
derleth 13y ago
There is no inconsistency here. Everyone thinks plagiarism is wrong.
Pitarou 13y ago
> Where are the internet hippies saying everything should be free? Are you trolling? Even the extreme open source advocates would agree that, if you commission a guy to do some work for you for an agreed price, you should pay him.

My question as well. I'd love to hear from the advocates of "It's digital, there is no cost to the content producer for others to make copies."

icebraining 13y ago
The difference is the implicit agreement between the author and the agency, without which the former wouldn't have spent two months making those works.
- res0nat0r 13y ago
  There is also an agreement between you and artists that if you want to watch a movie or listen to a music cd you also pay for it.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    When did I agree to that?
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      You didn't if you downloaded it without paying, which is why it is illegal. Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post: "We never signed any contracts or work-for-hire agreements and I certainly never agreed to donating or selling any copyright of my work without a licensing fee." So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't?
      - icebraining 13y ago
        You didn't if you downloaded it without paying, which is why it is illegal. So it's illegal to violate an agreement you didn't enter in? That makes no sense, sugar. Let's test that: to read this post, you must agree to pay me 5BTC. Have you now committed an illegality? I guess not. Also you are undermining your own argument here if you support the OP's original "agreement" but not copyright to music / movies, when he explicitly states in the post He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again? So he should expect to be paid for his work or it be protected, but musicians shouldn't? Sure they should, by whoever has an (explicit or implicit) agreement to pay them. Thankfully I haven't, but I still like to reward them when I can for all the joy they brought me.
        res0nat0r 13y ago
        > So it's illegal to violate an agreement you didn't enter in? That makes no sense, sugar. Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute. > He states that they had to written, explicit contact. Care to read my post again? I read it, your prior post was very short. See my quote above directly from his blog post; there wasn't any contract.
        Amadou 13y ago
        Yes. Downloading an album or movie without paying for it is illegal. This isn't in dispute. I think it is in substantial dispute. Can you cite a case of someone in the US being successfully prosecuted for downloading? Note that this precludes bittorrent, gnutella, etc situations where downloading means simultaneously uploading. Outside of the US there are plenty of countries where it has been made explicit in the law that downloading is OK. Some even going so far as to include the uploading portion of torrenting, etc as legal too. Canada: http://archive.is/W0mdI http://archive.is/W0mdI Netherlands: http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-parliament-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111224/ http://torrentfreak.com/dutch-parliament-downloading-movies-... Spain: http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/21/spanish-pirate-site-owners-to-get-six-years-jailtime-but-users-off-the-hook/?ncid=tcdaily http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/21/spanish-pirate-site-owners-...
    - majormajor 13y ago
      You agreed to it when you paid in order to watch it. So yes, you didn't. But if you don't agree, you shouldn't watch it. It's a simple deal, regardless of whether or not technology means you could. Otherwise you can turn it around and ask "when did the artist agree to you watching it without paying" which is pretty similar to the case described here, just replace watching with using.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        But if you don't agree, you shouldn't watch it. Why? when did the artist agree to you watching it without paying If I own a car made by Toyota, should I need their agreement to offer rides to people?
        res0nat0r 13y ago
        > Why? It's against the law. > If I own a car made by Toyota, should I need their agreement to offer rides to people? This argument makes no sense. You can play the music you bought for other people for free, just like giving a free car ride. You did in fact pay for the Toyota, just like you would to purchase an album.
        icebraining 13y ago
        It's against the law. The courts in my jurisdiction disagree, but in any case, I wasn't making a legal argument, but an ethical one. Unless of course you consider that any illegal activity is necessarily unethical, in which case we have nothing to discuss. You can play the music you bought for other people for free Not freely, I can't, only under the very restrictive limits of fair use. But I grant you the analogy isn't good. In any case, the point stands: why should I get to decide who can do what with the works (in my case, software) I produce, after I sell them?
        majormajor 13y ago
        I have a hard time seeing the argument that it should be unilateral. An agreement should be between multiple parties, so if you don't agree to what they're offering, you shouldn't take it. Otherwise it devolves into "I will take it because I can." Why does that make any more sense for instantly-reproducible, yet still not instantly-creatable, goods than for physical ones? If you want to take it, you probably see some value in its creation.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Who do you think you're kidding? You obviously know about the obligation to pay; you've just decided that if the product you want access to has been laundered through at least one 3rd party, you've never had to look any of the producers in the eye, and therefore you have no obligation to them. If anything, you're even worse than the person who originally published the content you're taking: they're at least accountable to the original relationship that gave them access to the product. That first sentence sounds outraged and pointed, but it's not; it's a serious question. Every time this issue comes up, I feel like I read people making similar points, as if they were remotely convincing. I really want to know who, among all the people who are not already on your side on this issue, you think would be persuaded by the logic that "I didn't have a contract with the producer of _Wall-E_, and so I'm not obligated to pay them before downloading and watching their movie." It seems to me that a child can see where the obligation to pay comes from.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        I'm not trying to convince anyone, I just enjoy arguing.
      - bct 13y ago
        It feels exactly the same arguing from the other side. I think that means we're working with fundamentally different premises.
    - kazagistar 13y ago
      To be fair, all property law is just as fictional. I didn't agree to not trespass or use items that other people claim belong to them. I didn't agree to the papers they hold saying that I cannot go for a joyride in my neighbors' car. The law defines property. Just because IP has different traits then physical property does not make it more real; they are both useful fictions that form the foundation of a functional society. The laws encode our social norms and ideas about property. There is an entirely different set of laws which encodes acceptable behaviors in business practices, such as contract law, which is somewhat of a different area. There is some very good arguments to be made that the current definitions of intellectual property are severely flawed, and haven't been updated to reflect our social perception or technical needs about what should or shouldn't be property. But there is no reason why "no IP enforcement" is inherently the right solution.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        Scarcity is what sustains private property, as a way to control conflicts when multiple people want to access rivalrous goods. Intellectual property is a collection of disparate concepts, but if we take copyright, there's no similar justification for it. See Against Intellectual Property, by Stephan Kinsella: http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf
        kazagistar 13y ago
        Right, some kind of solution for scarcity is needed, but any particular property system is merely a possible implementation. And while "scarcity" is not a problem solved by IP, there are other problem that IP does indeed solve. All property rights, as implemented by our laws, are just as much of a fiction. You just feel that one is more necessary or better then another.
        icebraining 13y ago
        All property rights, as implemented by our laws, are just as much of a fiction. You just feel that one is more necessary or better then another. I'm not sure why you feel I would disagree with that, or why would that contradict my position. I'm not a believer in natural laws.
drcube 13y ago
Even if they believe that, it doesn't make plagiarism and breech of contract okay.
- tptacek 13y ago
  Sophomoric semantic rationalization. Two different settings for copyright violation, but sure, just use synonyms and related concepts to make one seem bad and the other OK; gullible message board nerds ravenous for validation for pirating movies, music, and software will lap it up.
  - subsystem 13y ago
    There's more than a semantic difference between moral and material interests. In fact most "internet hippies" I know wants strong moral protection for authors [0][1]. It's a fairly central concept in the copyright debate, not least since it's part of the universal declaration of human rights. [0] http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/the-pirate-party-on-copyright-reform/ http://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/the-pirate-party-on-c... [1] http://the1709blog.blogspot.se/2012/05/pirate-party-plans-for-copyright-reform.html http://the1709blog.blogspot.se/2012/05/pirate-party-plans-fo... [2] http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G06/400/60/PDF/G0640060.pdf http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G06/400/60/PDF/G0...
  - drcube 13y ago
    No. If you have a contract to get paid for work, it really doesn't matter whether you "own" the end product in any meaningful way. You should get paid according to the terms of the contract, even if it was just a verbal contract. And taking credit for someone's work is not remotely the same as copying it without their permission, attribution intact. Can you not tell the difference?
orbitur 13y ago
They are using his work to aid in selling their product. He should get a cut of that. It's not much related to Little Bobby downloading a movie.

hsod 13y ago

Good question. They seem to be nowhere to be found when it's the little guy asserting copyright.

derleth 13y ago
Everyone thinks plagiarism is wrong.

icebraining 13y ago

Corn fields, I suppose.

derleth 13y ago
Try as you may, there's no inconsistency here. Everyone thinks plagiarism is wrong.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Sorry, it was a failed attempt at being funny. I was implying bananacurve was referring to a strawman ("internet hippies saying everything should be free").

nawitus 13y ago

Believing that copyright shouldn't exist or should be limited from it's current status but contracts should be enforced is a completely valid position.

coldtea 13y ago
Only there weren't any contracts here. How about: "work should be conpensated" and "give it for free and make up in volume/exposure is BS"?
snowwrestler 13y ago
You can't enforce a contract related to creative works without the concept of copyright. Otherwise there is nothing of value upon which to base the contract. That is where copyright came from in the first place.
- learc83 13y ago
  >You can't enforce a contract related to creative works without the concept of copyright. Yes you can. The value is in the time and creative process that went into creating the creative work. A contract that says I will pay you $1000 to create a piece of open source software, is still a valid and enforceable contract, even though I won't own the software in the end.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  You definitely can - it's contracts for performing a service, and it doesn't matter if the end result is some copyrightable artifact like a poem, an uncopyrightable artifact like a finding of fact (x % of surveyed people liked your product) or no artifacts at all, as for many services.

seanc 13y ago

Not that I'm firmly in the camp of 'everything should be free', but in this case the agency promised the designer "There's no money now, but since you hold the copyright on the work, if we decide to distribute it, we'll have to pay you later. So work for peanuts, okay?" If there were not copyright at all, then the agency wouldn't have had the promise of future revenue to lure the designer into the deal in the first place. If everyone knew up front that once the work was done it would be free to the world, there would have been no misunderstanding, and the designer would have had an easier time insisting on getting paid properly up front.

__david__ 13y ago

Plagiarism != Piracy

drcube 13y ago

This has nothing to do with that. If you publish something in public for all the world to see, don't expect random strangers to just hand you money for the privilege of seeing it. But if someone tells you they will pay you for your work, and then when you spend two months working on it, they refuse to pay and furthermore pass the work off as their own, that's fucked up no matter what the copyright laws are in your country.

kazagistar 13y ago

This has little to do with IP law, and everything to do with contract law and negotiation. A position like "short copyright period and no software patents" is trivial reconciled with "don't do work without contracts, and have the law enforce contracts."

derleth 13y ago

There is no inconsistency here. Everyone thinks plagiarism is wrong.

Pitarou 13y ago

> Where are the internet hippies saying everything should be free? Are you trolling? Even the extreme open source advocates would agree that, if you commission a guy to do some work for you for an agreed price, you should pay him.