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> Nothing is free. Did you not get the whole concept of "digital"? Information most certainly is free. It's getting someone to make the specific types of infor
by pdkl95 12y ago
> Nothing is free.
Did you not get the whole concept of "digital"? Information most certainly is free. It's getting someone to make the specific types of information you want that costs money.
Of course there are ways of restricting copyright infringement: laws respect for the legal system. A monopoly on the distribution is a powerful thing - it gives you a fairly easy civil case against anybody who violates that monopoly.
What it doesn't do is grant you free enforcement of that monopoly, nor does it guarantee that someone will actually buy your product. Just because you want to make some type of art doesn't mean others actually want it or that it is worth any amount of funding >0.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that money (profit motive) is the only way stuff gets created, which is patently incorrect.
"disempowering"?
Did you watch those talks? (mainly #2) This is about human rights that the arts should not trump just because they want to assert some new type of "property right" simply because they have devised some sort of technical trick to that tries to enforce some aspect of their monopoly.
To continue the example used by Doctorow, just because you have a copyright or patent on the software that runs a cochlear implant, you shouldn't be automatically able to extend those monopolies to override the wishes of the person who actually has the cochlear implant surgically inserted into their skull.
Restrictions - limiting someone's uses - are trivial to talk about when the copyright is on some movie that isn't really important, so some people have accepted the DRM argument for movies. The point of Doctorow's talk is that the concept of restrictions becomes VERY different when you're talking about repossessing someone's legs or hearing.
A lot of this issue comes down to the propaganda that has been used by the media industry over the last few decades. They created the incorrect term "Intellectual Property", when property rights are not what the government grants you when you get a copyright or patent. You get some legal rights, which is fine. You get an easy civil court case. The current effort is to try and extend that limited, specific purpose monopoly into other areas by claiming that your movie, book, song, or software is "property". Being "property" is important, because it is a lot easier to make a case that your property should be defended by force. We defend traditional property because it is finite (aka a "scarce resource"). Government granted fictions don't need such protection, as they already have it by definition!
Now, you're worried about how interesting art and such will be created, and the answer to that is simple: the same ways it has always been created, and if you're clever, some new ways. It is easy to use Kickstarter as an example of new ways to fund things, but the cool, really interesting ways haven't even been invented yet. I realize that this is probably a hard and risky business, but a copyright doesn't mean you should be able to remove that risk by break the general purpose computer. A copyright doesn't mean you should be able to get rights beyond the first sale and the ability to sue people that distribute your monopoly protected works, just because you found some technical trick (DRM) to make that distribution initially difficult. Being able to sue someone doesn't mean you're entitled to have the government any enforcement costs. Most importantly, that same copyright doesn't grant you a market or audience or any kind of guaranteed income, nor should it trump any *human rights".
It will be hard for a while, as new styles of funding are explored. Many musicians have already moved back to a live-performance model, with patronage being used in some areas. I suggest that anybody thinking that restrictions (DRM) are necessary instead focus their time and money on changing to a new funding model - or inventing one - instead of wasting that their time and money trying to prop up pre-general-purpose-computer business models.
- api 12y agoOh I get it. I just think it's not relevant to TPB at all, and that the linking of the two things is a giant exercise in changing-the-subject. (1) Destroy old business model. (2) ... hand wavey magic happens here ... (3) Utopia! I question #2 categorically. The magic never comes. Historically people have to struggle to be compensated fairly for their work. It was true for labor in the late 19th century, it's true for Chinese sweatshop workers, and it's true for content creators. A rising tide does not automatically lift all boats, and models of fair labor compensation do not appear without a struggle. Let's be totally clear here. I see the piracy issue as an issue of labor fairness vs. labor exploitation. If programmers were the ones on the chopping block, none of you people would be talking like this. You'd all be up in arms and talking about what can be done. This is entitled elitism of the first order; only some professions are entitled to compensation or for their wishes about how their works are used to be respected. Why is it that there are a million hackers working on new alternatives to The Pirate Bay, yet I see almost nobody working on new ways for authors, musicians, and artists to connect directly with their audiences? TPB doesn't connect musician to audience -- it distances musician from audience even more than the record companies ever did! Piracy is the ultimate in passive consumerism. It's consumerism so passive there isn't even a twice-removed economic connection. There's no connection at all. You -- the viewer or listener -- might as well not even exist. If the goal is to get the scummy record companies out of the loop, why aren't hackers working on that? Why doesn't somebody create a distributed, censorship-resistant medium for people to publish creative work that incorporates a transparent and direct-to-the-creator Bitcoin-based mechanism for payment? I'm not even talking about DRM, which I agree doesn't work. I'm talking about a simple mechanism. On TPB, Popcorn Time, and any number of these other things, I don't even see a way to pay the artists if I want to. There's not even a "tip" functionality. I think the intent is clear from the absence of anything like that in the design. This is about free, not freedom. You're appropriating a bunch of high-minded rhetoric, but the reality is you're just cheapskates who want free labor. I'll reserve my respect for people who actually make things of their own and put them out there to advance the cause of freedom-- people like Linus, or DJB, or pretty much every original OSS software author out there.
- sounds 12y agoWhy are we working on new distribution channels like The Pirate Bay? Because we categorically reject the notion that corrupt, law-breaking middlemen who abuse the artist's right to be paid and abuse or refuse service to the customer -- I mean the MPAA, RIAA, etc. -- are a better alternative or economic model for a digital age than the free sharing of bits which is what the internet (and before that, usenet, and before that, sneakernet) has always been. We categorically reject the notion that we need state-sponsored controlled locked-down DRM ecosystems where hackers are thrown in jail for sending an HTTP request to an open server and cell phone unlocking is illegal, just so that the MPAA can continue to exist. The free as in zero dollars alternative _is_ what is happening to software: the price of an operating system is being driven to zero dollars. We celebrate this as the liberation of technology from the monopolistic, predatory, illegal activities that happened 20 years ago. We applaud the brilliant, profitable companies that are not hostile to free software (as in freedom). We hope more companies will learn how to do something like Github, The Linux Foundation, or Amazon EC2. Meanwhile, you can question the magic. It might not make sense to you, but it makes sense to John Perry Barlow: https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html Why aren't you championing Actors Guilds, Authors fighting against Amazon's policies and fees, or even the fight against DRM?