Ethics and Piracy

[Firelad]

Ned, you said something about trade secrets: Just FYI, and I think it's quite importnat: The difference between a trade secret and a patent is that if you register a patent, you must publish the plans or whatever for what you're making, but nobody else is allowed to duplicate the product, while with a trade secret you don't publish the plans but anyone can reverse engineer and duplicate your product. It's a neat arrangement actually.

Anyway, it just seems to me that the way the "art industry" has gone is quite disgusting... I'm all for art providing livelyhood, but:
1) The copyright laws seem to be better at protecting the publisher than the artist,
2) It just seems ridiculous to be illegal for me to memorise a passage from a book and, say, teach it to other people - which is analogous to sharing files from CDs,
3) Transferring and selling copyright, provided that we define copyright by the affirmation of authorship and the author's right over his work to corporations or even other people is just plain weird and,
4) Art has survived through millenia without copyright laws and media corp and quite frankly has been a lot more, well, artish than the stuff that's coming out today and in general art will bloody well survive my downloading some music. Quite frankly, I don't really think that the artists whose music I'm downloading would mind the least. Hey, I just sent an email to a musician a few days ago asking for permission to play a composition of hers I found and liked on a CD. I got back an email saying go ahead It was so nice.
Anyway, as a musician (at least aspiring) I can tell you right now that despite the fact that I'd be happy to sell CDs, I wouldn't mind the least that you rip and share and record and whatever every damn bloody thing on that hypothetical CD. And quite frankly, any artist who doesn't think so isn't doing it for the art but for the money, and I'm of the firm opinion that that's not art and the bastard can go **** himself for all I care. Nobody has a natural right to earn money for being a talented person and artists will do their art anyway whether they have a day job or no. I know that I'm not planning on living off my music despite the fact that it's the most important thing in my life. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to earn some money from concerts (I already have, but it was frankly pitiful ). I'm with those who think that concerts, merchandising, charity are the best ways for musicians to earn money.


In short:

*Despite the fact that in a perfect world every artist would get rewarded for his efforts, I don't think that draconian laws enforced by media corporations is exactly the best way to create a perfect world.
*A true artist's aim is not to be a millionaire. And those who view THAT as their aim have enough venues in the world of entertainment despite all of us filesharers determined efforts.
*Kill the leeching media corporations. They have no right to exist, they're interfering. They aren't even needed anymore to spread the work of the artist, something that really was a working justification before the advent of file-sharing and the internet in general.

If I've forgotten anything I assure you that I'll remember it and post it later.

Oh, and if this is an argument about ethics, then why is 95% of it argument about legal fiction?

[Firelad]

Oh, I forgot to add about my hypothetical CD - If people would actually go to the trouble of copying it, I think I'd be very happy for them to let me know, I'd be quite flattered

[Imran Siddiqui]

In fact there is no such thing as intellectual property, it is a legal fiction.

Um... ALL property is a legal fiction! If someone stronger can come up and take something from you at any time (ie, no laws against theft), you don't really 'own' anything do you? It's the law which says you do.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Quote:

In fact there is no such thing as intellectual property, it is a legal fiction.

Um... ALL property is a legal fiction! If someone stronger can come up and take something from you at any time (ie, no laws against theft), you don't really 'own' anything do you? It's the law which says you do.

Not if you believe in natural rights or some other form of moral realism.

The difference between "intellectual" property and the regular sort is that you can't take the latter without depriving someone else of it. But in the case of the former someone who gives me an idea does not lose his own copy.

Everyone can understand the notion of regular property in moral terms (stealing is wrong), but it's a stretch to say that ideas can be property in this sense.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming

The artist signed the contract in the first place... and in exchange, he got the money he wanted. Sony is within their rights as assigned by the contract. What's your problem. The artist can whine all he wants, but guess what... he agreed to it.

Sure, but that doesn't make it right. If you agree that people can agree to unfair contracts (for whatever reason) then your argument collapses, completely.

Why? Again... McCartney signed and agreed to the original contract. He signed away the rights to his songs for money. The fact that Michael Jackson bought them and now owns them because he paid for them is just business.

Because the legal framework at the time meant that you had to publish a piece of music before you could receive royalties on recordings of it. IIRC Lennon and McCartney didn't actually control the company that published their own songs. There was no alternative and it simply enriched a bunch of people who did nothing.

Hence the objection above applies again.

In both cases the artists agreed to the contracts, and got paid money. At least they got something... you are arguing that they shouldn't get anything for their efforts... that anything they produce should be free for you to steal as you so desire... an argument that should suffice that some type of copyright laws are needed.

Of course your use of the term "steal" assumes these songs are a kind of property. If you want to make sense of this in some moral sense of ownership (not a legal one) you will find yourself floundering to justify it.

[Agathon]

I don't know if you read the whole thread, Ming, but the argument has been largely over whether intellectual property laws are based on the notion that ideas are property in the sense that they are covered by some sort of natural right or whether IP law is utilitarian in nature (e.g. we establish some means to pay people for "creating" new ideas as an incentive, not because there is a special moral relationship between a person and an idea).

The latter was the original justification for copyright law and in my view the only reasonable one. However, it is subject to revision such that if the laws are not working properly to compensate the creators of new ideas then some revision of the law is needed. In other words, the law needs changing because muscians get stiffed.

But some people want to say that ideas are really property in the natural rights sense of the term. That would mean that utilitarian arguments do not apply to IP law just as they don't apply to other rights based claims. Of course this is the typically self-serving position of record companies, who profit from this conception of IP.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Agathon
I don't know if you read the whole thread, Ming,

Yes... I had... but I was responding to your attempts to show how the current laws were "screwing" somebody.

Sure, but that doesn't make it right. If you agree that people can agree to unfair contracts (for whatever reason) then your argument collapses, completely.

You are assuming that it was an unfair contract. Back then, it took a lot of captal to get a record published... you needed a recording studio, you had to promote, and distribute the record... a costly proposition. Record companies took their chances by signing up bands. Some made them money, others didn't.
Bands didn't have the resources to produce their own records, so they signed with record companies, getting money up front. It was a two way street. The contracts made both parties money... fair services were being earned by both parties. Record companies and the Bands made a lot of money. So your argument collapses completely.

Because the legal framework at the time meant that you had to publish a piece of music before you could receive royalties on recordings of it. IIRC Lennon and McCartney didn't actually control the company that published their own songs. There was no alternative and it simply enriched a bunch of people who did nothing.

Did nothing? excuse me... as I stated above, getting music published was a two step process... the artists had their jobs and the record companies had their jobs... both took risks...
You point to the legal frameworkas the problem. The real "problem" was the proscess of recording and then distributing the music... a costly proposition. Now the system is different. A band can produce their own music, and distribute it in a different fashion via the internet or other methods... Bands that dont' want to sign away their right have an option. Back then, the option was to rent time in a studio... pay somebody to cut the albums, go around the country to radio stations to promote air time, and actually go to the record stores and try to get them to sell it... an impossible task... so the record companies and artists needed each other. So it wasn't the legal framework, it was just the nature of the business. Both parties benifited from the contract they signed.... and the artists were happy to sign those contracts... they even threw parties when they were lucky enough to be signed by an important record label company. You make it sound like somebody put a gun to their head to sign these contracts... It was the exact opposite.

Of course your use of the term "steal" assumes these songs are a kind of property. If you want to make sense of this in some moral sense of ownership (not a legal one) you will find yourself floundering to justify it.

I do feel the songs are property. Just like a book is property, like art work is property... The people that create them own the rights to them. So stealing them is theft. I do not flounder at all trying to justify it... They created the material... It was their hard work... they own the rights... just as a company that builds something tangiable. Your line about how if you steal a car, the person losses the car, but if you steal inforamtion the person losses nothing is flawed. They do lose something... They lose the profit they should have made. That is a loss... you have stolen that from them.

[optimus2861]

Originally posted by Ming
They do lose something... They lose the profit they should have made. That is a loss... you have stolen that from them.

That's the industry line. The reality is there's no clear consensus on whether P2P filesharing actually impacts sales, and if so, in what fashion. A recent study by a pair of economics professors (one from Harvard) concluded that filesharing's impact was neutral, overall. Realistically, downloads fall into one of three categories:

1) Person downloads, listens, decides he doesn't like it, deletes. No lost sale here because the person determined it was worth no money to him. Same result would have occurred if the person simply heard the song in some other fashion (radio, TV, friend, etc).

2) Person downloads, listens, decides he likes it, keeps it, buys CD. Gained sale here. Perhaps a "pure" gained sale if the song was not available any other way, thus no way for the person to determine if it would be worth buying or not in the first place -- in which case you would expect the person to lean towards not spending money on an unknown.

3) Person downloads, listens, decides he likes, keeps it, doesn't buy CD. Here's the only case you can argue a lost sale.

And just for semantics, let's throw in category 4:

4) Song downloaded is public domain. No copyright infringement in the first place.

The majority of downloads may be category #3, but that doesn't make all downloads "lost sales".

[Ming]

Originally posted by optimus2861
That's the industry line. The reality is there's no clear consensus on whether P2P filesharing actually impacts sales, and if so, in what fashion. A recent study by a pair of economics professors (one from Harvard) concluded that filesharing's impact was neutral, overall.

If there is just "one" lost sale, profit is lost.

The argument that it could "enhance" sales may be a legitimate point... however, there are already other methods for people to sample music... most music stores allow you to sample, or you can hear it on legitmate sources like the radio. You don't have to "steal" the music to sample it

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming

Yes... I had... but I was responding to your attempts to show how the current laws were "screwing" somebody.

They are.

You are assuming that it was an unfair contract. Back then, it took a lot of captal to get a record published... you needed a recording studio, you had to promote, and distribute the record... a costly proposition. Record companies took their chances by signing up bands. Some made them money, others didn't.
Bands didn't have the resources to produce their own records, so they signed with record companies, getting money up front. It was a two way street. The contracts made both parties money... fair services were being earned by both parties. Record companies and the Bands made a lot of money. So your argument collapses completely.

No. In fact it doesn't. For your argument to go through you need to assert that all contracts are fair. If they aren't then you need to supplement your argument. The fact that some contracts are fair is neither here nor there.

What we are talking about in this case is the publishing of the music itself, not its recording or distribution. That in my view was an unecessary legal step which removed control of the music to the artist. The background to this is the monopolistic nature of the recording industry at the time and its laws which prevented people from releasing their music on their own terms. Lennon and McCartney had little choice in this matter.

But that's not much of an issue with regard to the main point of this thread.

Did nothing? excuse me... as I stated above, getting music published was a two step process... the artists had their jobs and the record companies had their jobs... both took risks...

The publisher of the song (not the record company or the distributor) took very little in the way of risk. Publishers had composers over a barrel.

You point to the legal frameworkas the problem. The real "problem" was the proscess of recording and then distributing the music... a costly proposition. Now the system is different. A band can produce their own music, and distribute it in a different fashion via the internet or other methods... Bands that dont' want to sign away their right have an option. Back then, the option was to rent time in a studio... pay somebody to cut the albums, go around the country to radio stations to promote air time, and actually go to the record stores and try to get them to sell it... an impossible task... so the record companies and artists needed each other. So it wasn't the legal framework, it was just the nature of the business. Both parties benifited from the contract they signed.... and the artists were happy to sign those contracts... they even threw parties when they were lucky enough to be signed by an important record label company. You make it sound like somebody put a gun to their head to sign these contracts... It was the exact opposite.

But the nature of the business was such that artists were held over a barrel. The Beatles received a royalty of one farthing (a coin then no longer in general use) per double sided record when they signed with Parlophone.

If you want a good history of the way that artists have been screwed, you should read Norman LeBrecht's When the Music Stops which is a history of the music industry.

I do feel the songs are property. Just like a book is property, like art work is property... The people that create them own the rights to them.

This is the real issue. You can't just assert that ideas are property, you need an argument.

Normally we understand theft as a zero sum game. If I take your car, you can no longer use it. But if I copy your idea, your possession of it is not diminished by my copying it - you still have it.

So stealing them is theft. I do not flounder at all trying to justify it... They created the material... It was their hard work... they own the rights... just as a company that builds something tangiable. Your line about how if you steal a car, the person losses the car, but if you steal inforamtion the person losses nothing is flawed. They do lose something... They lose the profit they should have made. That is a loss... you have stolen that from them.

I figured you would say this. They don't lose the idea. They lose the ability to make money from it. That is different. So to use the car example again - I take your car, and (say you deliver pizzas with it) you lose the ability to make money from the car. But, while the car is, the ability to make money from the car is not a piece of property. Property crimes involve taking or appropriating something so that the original person doesn't have it. The potential to earn money from something is not a thing - it's a potentiality.

Now AFAIK courts do allow people to sue for loss of earnings due to other crimes but these are not property crimes. You still haven't shown that an idea is a piece of property. Nor have you shown what the special relationship is between a person and an idea that makes it wholly theirs.

[DinoDoc]

Have any of you dealt with piracy in videogames? Because I'd like to read that conversation. Focusing on music bores me.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Agathon

You still haven't shown that an idea is a piece of property. Nor have you shown what the special relationship is between a person and an idea that makes it wholly theirs.

Well... you haven't shown that an individuals creation is not property... or proven that there isn't a special relationship between a person and an idea... so your point?

Are you really claiming that a book or song created by an author isn't theirs? And that there is no special relationship between the two... you are the one that needs to start proving something. Songs or books don't create themselves... somebody does creates them... and works hard to do so... just as hard if not harder than the efforts you extend in teaching... which you get paid for.

[debeest]

Originally posted by Aeson
Some questions for those claiming that piracy is ok because the product may or may not be valuable, and so a 'free trial' is in order to determine it's worth.

Do you apply the same logic in reverse, that you will compensate the author(s) of the product according to it's value even if that exceeds the original price? Have you ever paid more than the asking price for a cd, game, book, or movie because you enjoyed it a lot? Do you seek out the owners of web sites you enjoy, paying them for their service, or make sure to follow all the links to advertisers/sponsers who allow them to run their site? Your favorite game, how many hours of enjoyment did you derive from it? Hundreds? Thousands? And yet what compensation did you offer the author. $30-$60?

Asleep, thank you. This is perhaps the first intelligent question I've seen regarding my own position on the issue.

I download some stuff in order to determine whether it's worth buying. I consider this perfectly comparable to borrowing a CD from a friend for the same purpose.

If I like the music enough that I would have bought it if I'd heard it on the radio, then I buy it. If not, I don't.

It's important to note that I don't buy stuff without hearing it first. I don't buy a pig in a poke. And of course, by the same token, I don't pay extra for the CDs I do buy. They offer music at a price; I hear the music first, decide whether or not to buy, and pay the price they ask if I do buy.

I believe that I am not costing the artists or industry anything this way, including lost sales profits.

Does that answer your question?

[-Jrabbit]

I confess to writing before back-reading the full thread... butcan't believe this is still being debated.

Originally posted by Agathon
The background to this is the monopolistic nature of the recording industry at the time and its laws which prevented people from releasing their music on their own terms.

Excuse me, but please quote me a US law that ever prevented people from releasing their music on their own terms.

But the nature of the business was such that artists were held over a barrel. The Beatles received a royalty of one farthing (a coin then no longer in general use) per double sided record when they signed with Parlophone.

True dat. But not germane to this.

You can't just assert that ideas are property, you need an argument.

Puh-lease. The idea of intellectual property is an old one, with both patent law and copyright law as preludes to what is now called "intellectual property" law. These concepts have been well established for many decades.

Normally we understand theft as a zero sum game. If I take your car, you can no longer use it. But if I copy your idea, your possession of it is not diminished by my copying it - you still have it.

This is mere rationalization, Agathon. The key point is that ideas cannot be capitalized upon without being dispensed. The fact that hard goods cannot be cloned but must be stolen is not germane. "Zero sum game"???? To make this logic leap (that the zero-sum proposition must apply equally to both physical and ephemeral property) is naive at best.

They don't lose the idea. They lose the ability to make money from it. That is different.

But just as wrong - both morally and legally.

People who rationalize their actions through illogical notions are engaging in the merest of sophistry -- in essence, just because they don't feel guilty, like they did when they snarfed a candy bar from the store, it must be morally/ethically OK.

Trying to further justify this because someone did a study claiming that "filesharing" (love that guilt-free nomenclature!) carries no net effect on sales is equally erroneous. Proving the economic neutrality of an action has NO BEARING on its legality or morality.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by debeest
Asleep, thank you. This is perhaps the first intelligent question I've seen regarding my own position on the issue.

you quoted Aeson, not me, he is far more eloquent than I.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming

Well... you haven't shown that an individuals creation is not property...

If it is an idea, then I think I have. Properties are things which, if they are taken, the other person is necessarily deprived of them. If I copy your idea, you still have it. As Thomas Jefferson (hurrah for Jefferson!) said, "He who lights his taper at mine doth not diminish my possession of the flame." Or something like that.

or proven that there isn't a special relationship between a person and an idea... so your point?

Generally it's incumbent on a person who asserts something like this to prove it. The same goes with God. It isn't incumbent on atheists to show that God doesn't exist, but on those making the positive existential claim.

What would this special relationship be? Creating it? If so, then we are in trouble because most new ideas are really developments of old ideas and it is simply impossible for someone to "pay all his influences". Moreover, if you have a strong conception of creator's rights you may well end up a Marxist.

Are you really claiming that a book or song created by an author isn't theirs?

I'm claiming it's not property. I am not claiming that there is no way in which we should compensate people who produce ideas, only that this cannot be done on a property model. I favour a utilitarian system, where copyright is awarded solely on the basis that it encourages people to produce more ideas. That was Jefferson's idea and I think it is the only sustainable one.

Of course if you buy into the utilitarian model, rather than the property model, then there is reason to reform the copyright system when it is no longer rewarding creation and is instead rewarding the hoarding of copyrights. People who have a lot invested in copyrights (i.e. hoarders) try to push the property model so that they can keep things as they are.

And that there is no special relationship between the two... you are the one that needs to start proving something. Songs or books don't create themselves... somebody does creates them...

Sure, but the material from which they are created is the cultural commons. For example, Eddie Van Halen created a new guitar style, but he was influenced by and copied people like Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. Yet he paid them nothing, nor did they those that influenced them (this is another reason why the property system breaks down, enforcement would be too complicated).

As I said, copyright law should be framed so as to provide an incentive for idea creation, not because of the dubious claim that ideas are a form of property.

and works hard to do so... just as hard if not harder than the efforts you extend in teaching... which you get paid for.

Relax. You are still going to get paid, but you will be paid in a way that provides an incentive for you to create ideational works. The law needs tweaking to make sure that this occurs as efficiently as possible. The property model would object to such tweaking because it is derived from an absolutist conception of rights rather than a utilitarian system.

There are alternatives. People like me are paid to produce ideas that we give away for free. That is how universities work. Say I give a talk about Plato. Other people who are interested in it can listen and develop their own ideas from mine without paying me a cent. Same goes for scientists who publish their papers in journals (for which they receive pretty much nothing). Society pays people like us a retainer with the proviso that we share our information freely because freedom of information is paramount when it comes to peer review. Private markets simply cannot compete with this system, which is why universities generally do not operate on market principles (but through donation and taxation).

But this sort of system doesn't work for everything. That is why we have copyright laws. But there is no reason to have monolithic copyright laws, we can alter them depending on what works best in each area. Standing in the way of this are those who would make ideas property and attempt to constrain the essential nature of information (that it wants to be free) to enrich themselves at society's expense.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Agathon
Generally it's incumbent on a person who asserts something like this to prove it.

Yep... and since the law and tradition set down through history has agreed that it is indeed the case, then the burden to prove it isn't is on your shoulders

While it's nice of you to admit that people should get paid for their ideas, it doesn't balance out your thought that it's ok to steal their ideas since YOU don't consider them property. But this is really no surprise since you have posted in another thread that theft has more dignity than honest work... kind of puts your thoughts in this thread in the proper perspective

[Agathon]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
I confess to writing before back-reading the full thread... butcan't believe this is still being debated.

It seems that this is because you've misunderstood what is at issue.

Let's get straight to the point.

Puh-lease. The idea of intellectual property is an old one, with both patent law and copyright law as preludes to what is now called "intellectual property" law. These concepts have been well established for many decades.

Yes, and what is at stake here is how that should be understood. Jefferson and those who helped create such laws saw them in utilitarian terms. In other words copyright law exists only to provide an incentive, it does not exist because ideas are property (in the non-utilitarian sense).

I am arguing that certain people are promoting the latter idea as a means of preventing copyright law reform that will benefit society and cost them money.

This is mere rationalization, Agathon. The key point is that ideas cannot be capitalized upon without being dispensed. The fact that hard goods cannot be cloned but must be stolen is not germane. "Zero sum game"???? To make this logic leap (that the zero-sum proposition must apply equally to both physical and ephemeral property) is naive at best.

That's not what is at issue. Ideas are a fundamentally different kind of thing from physical objects. It's not a rationalization, it's an undeniable fact. If I tell you about Plato's theory of forms, my knowledge is not diminished by my telling you, whereas if I give you one of my sweets, I no longer have it.

But just as wrong - both morally and legally.

It depends. Legality is not at issue here, but what the law should be. We take other people's ideas all the time without having to pay. The only reason we should have to pay is if society would be better off than if we didn't.

What's at stake here is the way we think about copyrights rather than copyrights themselves.

People who rationalize their actions through illogical notions are engaging in the merest of sophistry -- in essence, just because they don't feel guilty, like they did when they snarfed a candy bar from the store, it must be morally/ethically OK.

If I steal a candy bar from a store then the store owner no longer has it. If I tell someone else a joke he told me, we both still have the joke. To assume that every single idea that everyone ever thinks up is a kind of property and should be protected by the law is both unworkable and misses the essential point that ideas are not like property.

Trying to further justify this because someone did a study claiming that "filesharing" (love that guilt-free nomenclature!) carries no net effect on sales is equally erroneous. Proving the economic neutrality of an action has NO BEARING on its legality or morality.

Actually, you are completely off base here. Economics is the only thing that matters here. The reason that we compensate musicians for their music is that we believe that if we didn't, no-one would produce music. That is the original justification for copyright laws - go read the history for yourself.

But if it turns out that lots of worthwhile music is still produced while people share files then we realize that copyrighting music is simply a waste of time. It's the same as jokes. Most jokes are produced and given away for free, but that doesn't stop the continual flood of jokes that are produced. Hence there is no need for a market for jokes (although exceptionally funny people can still make a living at it). It is perfectly possible that people can make a good living at being musicians even if they give away their music for free (most artists make more money off of concert appearances and memorabilia anyway).

The jury is still out on this. But there is no need to confuse the issue by appealing to a wholly ridiculous notion of intellectual property.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming

Yep... and since the law and tradition set down through history has agreed that it is indeed the case, then the burden to prove it isn't is on your shoulders

Except that the law and tradition support my argument and not yours. Copyright law was formulated to provide an incentive for people to create ideas that benefit society. It was not created because people believed in a form of "mental property" after all copyrights are quite new (only a few hundred years old) whereas property laws are as ancient as the oldest law code we know of.

While it's nice of you to admit that people should get paid for their ideas, it doesn't balance out your thought that it's ok to steal their ideas since YOU don't consider them property. But this is really no surprise since you have posted in another thread that theft has more dignity than honest work... kind of puts your thoughts in this thread in the proper perspective

The stuff in the other thread was an obvious joke, and you know it.

This debate is over what conception of copyright underlies people being paid for ideas - the property model or the utilitarian model. History and rationality are on the side of the utilitarian model.

Supporters of the property model are only using it because it is in their interest to prevent alterations in the law.

If it turns out that copyrights aren't necessary to ensure the flow of quality music to society, then there is nothing wrong with file sharing any more than there is anything wrong with people on Apolyton sharing their ideas with each other.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Agathon
If it turns out that copyrights aren't necessary to ensure the flow of quality music to society, then there is nothing wrong with file sharing any more than there is anything wrong with people on Apolyton sharing their ideas with each other.

And if indeed that is the case... and the laws change, and the creators of ideas can get paid fair value for their ideas... GREAT.

Until then, people are stealing when they rip off software and fileshare, and are depriving the creators of such property their fair share.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Agathon
Except that the law and tradition support my argument and not yours. Copyright law was formulated to provide an incentive for people to create ideas that benefit society. It was not created because people believed in a form of "mental property" after all copyrights are quite new (only a few hundred years old) whereas property laws are as ancient as the oldest law code we know of.

They were created to PROTECT people's ideas and to allow people to PROFIT from those ideas... Copyright laws only added legal support to an already accepted idea that people OWNED their ideas. That books, music and other such ideas were the PROPERTY of the people that created them... Your version is just your opinion

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming


And if indeed that is the case... and the laws change, and the creators of ideas can get paid fair value for their ideas... GREAT.

Until then, people are stealing when they rip off software and fileshare, and are depriving the creators of such property their fair share.

Except there is no such thing as a fair share in a market system. There is only what people (individually and collectively) are prepared to pay for it.

Fairness has nothing to do with copyright laws - their only concern is to promote the creation of ideas by providing the prospect of financial reward. There's no "fair" price, only the price that works. If sufficient ideas are created without the need for copyright, then there is no price.

If you want to start talking about fairness then welcome to communism, Comrade Ming. Why shouldn't janitors be paid a "fair" wage as opposed to what the market determines?

More to the point, you need to consider the consequences of restricting the flow of information. In some cases they can be worse. So it's not a one-sided issue.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming


They were created to PROTECT people's ideas and to allow people to PROFIT from those ideas... Copyright laws only added legal support to an already accepted idea that people OWNED their ideas. That books, music and other such ideas were the PROPERTY of the people that created them... Your version is just your opinion

No - it's the facts. Note the bolded portions.

1787: U.S. Constitution

According to Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, "the Congress shall have power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."


1790: Copyright Act of 1790


The First Congress implemented the copyright provision of the U.S. Constitution in 1790. The Copyright Act of 1790, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of Such Copies, was modeled on the Statute of Anne (1710). It granted American authors the right to print, re-print, or publish their work for a period of fourteen years and to renew for another fourteen. The law was meant to provide an incentive to authors, artists, and scientists to create original works by providing creators with a monopoly. At the same time, the monopoly was limited in order to stimulate creativity and the advancement of "science and the useful arts" through wide public access to works in the "public domain." Major revisions to the act were implemented in 1831, 1870, 1909, and 1976.

The US led the way in copyright law. Care to recant?

[Ming]

While you want to argue what the value of fair might be... you also want people to be able to just TAKE the ideas with no compensation... You are the one expousing communism... I'm saying that people deserve to get paid for their ideas and that they own their own ideas

[Agathon]

More.. here is a case that proves that the Constitution did not have your conception in mind.

The case arose from a dispute between the official reporter of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Richard Peters, and the previous reporter, Henry Wheaton. Peters began publishing "Condensed Reports" of cases decided during Wheaton's tenure and Wheaton sued. The case went before the U.S. Supreme Court. Peters argued that Wheaton had failed to properly obtain copyright, while Wheaton argued that authors were entitled to perpetual property rights in their works. Justice McLean delivered the majority decision, stating that "since the statute of 8 Anne, the literary property of an author in his works can only be asserted under the statute. . . . That an author, at common law, has a property in his manuscript, and may obtain redress against any one who deprives him of it, or by improperly obtaining a copy endeavours to realise a profit by its publication cannot be doubted; but this is a very different right from that which asserts a perpetual and exclusive property in the future publication of the work, after the author shall have published it to the world." The decision struck a decisive blow against the notion of copyright as a perpetual natural right, and the utilitarian view of copyright embodied in the U.S. Constitution prevailed, i.e., "that patents and copyrights are exclusive rights of limited duration, granted in order to serve the public interest in promoting the creation and dissemination of new works." See the amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court by Tyler Ochoa and Mark Rose in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, May 20, 2002.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Agathon
The US led the way in copyright law. Care to recant?

And yeah... the same document protected the rights of slave owners... It was written to sound good

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming
While you want to argue what the value of fair might be... you also want people to be able to just TAKE the ideas with no compensation...

Which we do all the time and nobody cares.

You are the one expousing communism... I'm saying that people deserve to get paid for their ideas and that they own their own ideas

But you are hovering dangerously close to a labour theory of value. Trust me, you don't want to go there.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming

And yeah... the same document protected the rights of slave owners... It was written to sound good

But copyright (in the sense we understand it) had no real existence before this. It is a legal fiction. Nowhere in US copyright law AFAIK is the utilitarian view of copyrights rejected.

Face it, copyright laws are enacted for utilitarian reasons. Those are the facts.

[Ming]

They were inacted to "legalize" concepts already in existence. Writers "owned" their work... Artists "owned" their paintings... you seem to be claiming that wasn't the case before the law. Bad argument

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Ming
They were inacted to "legalize" concepts already in existence. Writers "owned" their work... Artists "owned" their paintings... you seem to be claiming that wasn't the case before the law. Bad argument

They were most certainly not. Artists owned their canvases but people copied them all the time. Writers owned their manuscripts, but these were copied all the time.

You say that copyright law was enacted to legalize concepts already in existence. While it may be the case that utilitarian ideas of copyright had existed before, and perhaps natural rights to ideas (although I can't find any cases of either), it is simply a fact that what was legalized was the utilitarian notion of copyright.

More to the point, no one was more hung up on the notion of natural rights than the framers of the US Constitution (who borrowed heavily from Locke), but even they did not conceive of natural rights to ideas. If they had, there is no way that they would have included a conception of copyright that explicitly denies this in their Constitution.

You can't have it both ways - either the history is relevant (and I am right) or it isn't and you need to provide a better argument for natural rights to ideas.