Ethics and Piracy

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
No you don't. Suppose I place a large pile of bricks in front of your door. By clearing the bricks, you agree to owe me a billion dollars. You see how ridiculous your assertion is, no?

I honestly tried my best to explain how the law functioned (in the US anyway) and why, but apparently I failed.

One more time (with feeling)

The difference between a cd and a ton of bricks is.....

the information on the cd is covered by a license which prohibits its reproduction. It doesn't matter how you procure the cd, it just matters what you do with it. The act of using a cd is an act of accepting the license, read the inside cover of the liner notes, its there.

Disregarding most of the brick analogy, unlike the cd, I can't strip the bricks of its information and transmit to others. And theres no agreement that I would be prohibited to, even if there was.


What do I need to explain better? Maybe its a cultural thing, Americans have these boiler plate contracts on everything, and for the most part they are upheld, if you read them or not.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
you would be incorrect. well, the first phrase you are correct . On what other grounds do you think the RIAA is suing people?

Breaking copyright laws

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I was responding to Sava's remarks that Metallica was already adequately compensated. I was using you in the second person singular, not plural. Comprende? I thought that it was obvious I was referring to his particular impact on the free market by including the phrase "beyond your own economic investment"

Still my two points hold.

1. Sava is one of the people who are the market for Metallica music, and they collectively determine the price for the songs, if the market were free.

2. However, that market is not free. Anything that has a brand or label attached to it puts it out of a competitive market. That brand makes this thing distinguishable. If this brand cannot be copied, it will have the effect of giving this something a monopoly.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
No you don't. Do you sign a contract before you buy the CD, with all the terms detailed and agreed to by both parties?

I would bet that 90% of all contracts are never signed. Granted, they're mostly mundane, paying the neighbor kid 5 bucks to mow your lawn, or buying something with cash etc. Buy the lawnmower, it probably has a warranty on it. Buy a shirt, you can take it back if it has a hole in it. etc.

[Kuciwalker]

Only 90%?!

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I would bet that 90% of all contracts are never signed. Granted, they're mostly mundane, paying the neighbor kid 5 bucks to mow your lawn, or buying something with cash etc. Buy the lawnmower, it probably has a warranty on it. Buy a shirt, you can take it back if it has a hole in it. etc.

Okay, verbal contracts are enforceable if both parties agree to the terms, that both parties agree to be bound by the contract, and that one side can verify that such a contract does exist. Most of the time this is not a problem.

A warranty can only become a contract once you signed and send it back, right?

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Breaking copyright laws

but what is a copyright law anyway? While you can have cases involving copyright infringement without licensees, quite often they go hand in hand.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Still my two points hold.

1. Sava is one of the people who are the market for Metallica music, and they collectively determine the price for the songs, if the market were free.

hence my caveat

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
2. However, that market is not free. Anything that has a brand or label attached to it puts it out of a competitive market. That brand makes this thing distinguishable. If this brand cannot be copied, it will have the effect of giving this something a monopoly.

Would you just call it "music" or "rock music" or "we were once cool music" to avoid branding it? I frankly want to know what group I'm purchasing when I get a cd. If that injures the free market, well call me a commie

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Okay, verbal contracts are enforceable if both parties agree to the terms, that both parties agree to be bound by the contract, and that one side can verify that such a contract does exist. Most of the time this is not a problem.

A warranty can only become a contract once you signed and send it back, right?

True on the warranty, well warranty fine print dependent of course. However a cd is a license not a warranty. You don't have to do anything affirmative beyond using the cd to consent to be bound. At least in the US, you can be bound by an affirmative act, which can include non-verbal communication or acts.


Maybe I'm cynical, but I think warranties have to be sent in, in order to rip off the fools that are too lazy to do it and their crap breaks. I feel the same way about rebates.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I honestly tried my best to explain how the law functioned (in the US anyway) and why, but apparently I failed.

One more time (with feeling)

The difference between a cd and a ton of bricks is.....

the information on the cd is covered by a license which prohibits its reproduction. It doesn't matter how you procure the cd, it just matters what you do with it. The act of using a cd is an act of accepting the license, read the inside cover of the liner notes, its there.

There is no contract -- or at least such a contract is not enforceable, under US law. As I said, one side has no say to it and cannot be held responsible for not being obliged to it.

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Disregarding most of the brick analogy, unlike the cd, I can't strip the bricks of its information and transmit to others. And theres no agreement that I would be prohibited to, even if there was.

There is no difference. I merely illustrated why a coercive contract cannot be upheld in a court of law (at least in a US court of law). How the contract is arrived is irrelevant.

[asleepathewheel]

oh, I see why you mentioned warranty, because I brought it up. I was being too general, I meant the general store warranty, ie you have 90 days to return this merchandise. As opposed to manufacturer's warranty. Should have picked a better example, as it can go either way. My bad.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
but what is a copyright law anyway?

You want a link to the text?

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
While you can have cases involving copyright infringement without licensees, quite often they go hand in hand.

What licensees? The only "licenses" are EULAs of software.

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Would you just call it "music" or "rock music" or "we were once cool music" to avoid branding it? I frankly want to know what group I'm purchasing when I get a cd. If that injures the free market, well call me a commie

My point is you are not talking about a free market because this sector has never been a free market. The only exception is republished works in the public domain. Why do you think Ming makes so much $$$

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
oh, I see why you mentioned warranty, because I brought it up. I was being too general, I meant the general store warranty, ie you have 90 days to return this merchandise. As opposed to manufacturer's warranty. Should have picked a better example, as it can go either way. My bad.

Oh, that. I think that's just a promise made by a store (or a chain of stores) to give its customers confidence. Anything that's above and beyond the laws covering consumer protection is probably not enforceable in a court of law, but they do it anyways because it garners goodwill.

[Tingkai]

The next time I sell my car, I'm going to stick a contract underneath the hood that strictly prohibits the buyer from sharing the benefits of the car with other people (no passengers allowed), re-selling the car, lending the car, or giving the car away. The contract will state that by using the car, the buyer agrees to the contract, even if the buyer did not know the contents of the contract before purchasing the car.

Actually, I shouldn't sell my car and I shouldn't buy or borrow someone else's car because that's immoral and it's theft.

When I borrow a car or buy a used car, I'm stealing the work and creativity of the automakers. I am gaining benefits from something I didn't create.

Thousands of automaking jobs are lost because of this piracy. Everytime someone buys a used car, one less car is sold by the automaker. If you share your car with, say, your wife, that means your wife doesn't have to buy a car and that harms the automakers. The loss of sales revenue limits the automakers ability to create new models of cars and thousands of autoworkers lose their jobs.

Clearly, selling your car, giving someone a ride, or lending your car is theft and immoral.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
There is no contract -- or at least such a contract is not enforceable, under US law. As I said, one side has no say to it and cannot be held responsible for not being obliged to it.

I was under the impression that this happened all the time, please tell me where I'm wrong (and I would love to read up on it). This is an adhesion contract, but those are generally upheld so long as they are not unconsionable or unclear. And as you probably know, many types of adhesion contracts are upheld, such as forum selection clauses for cruise lines, etc.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Tingkai
Clearly, selling your car, giving someone a ride, or lending your car is theft and immoral.

Clearly.

[Whaleboy]

How? (to both statements)

The first requires a large dose of spam, the second simply state that morality and ethical systems just have different placements on a scale of emotivism.

If you buy the CD, you have to obey the contract that goes with it (or get sued); if the contract doesn't end up DOING anything, well, that sucks for the company that sold the CD to you.

Indeed. Their attempt to (illegitimately in my eyes) exert control over the free information on the disk fails.

If you know the contract is there and that it is part of the agreement that allows you to have the CD, then your excuse can't be "but I intentionally didn't read it!"

No, the key thing is that they may think it as such, but when I buy the CD, it is not presented as a condition of purchase. I purchase the CD without knowledge of the license existing as far as they are concerned because it is not offered as a condition of purchase. Furthermore, it is irrelevant to me, and you haven't shown why it should be. To do so, you must attack my distinction between proprietary material goods and the infinite resource of information.

Whaleboy, you suck. Seriously, I can back you up when you deny qualitative absolutes... but QUANTITATIVE ones...

That point there was irrelevant here. If you want to get into a debate about it, we'll have to cover the tired ground of the possibility of other internally consistent logical systems, and the not-so tired ground of cosmology. I think we can both concur that this is irrelevant to the issue of free information.

because Whaleboy thinks he can deny the existence of logics and morality

That is not crucial to my, or either argument. Logics? I have a morality that does not cover CD copying, yet I could think it all-pervasive and my argument would remain unaffected. I would ask you to revise your points there.

Oncle Boris: the problem is that whether or not information is "property" is irrelevent to this debate, as it's simply a matter of contractual obligation

That your the misunderstanding here. If you want to show Agathon, OB and myself to be wrong, you need to attack the distinction that information cannot be property. If you want to talk about why I should honour contracts, set up a virtue theory thread and we can talk about that, or the place of the contracts in the first instance.

A shocking admission here at apolyton.

I would consider this to be an illegitimate rent paid to a dying industry. Why subsidize an industry for which there is no need?

Agreed. Furthermore one is still paying for information which is a fallacy, others that do not seek it would be made to pay! That's worse than CD sales, since at least you get something resembling material compensation for your money.

Nevertheless, there are those people who want to make some into property to suit themselves. Their means of doing so threatens to morph into a totalitarian control over the distribution of information or at least a severe curtailing of the rights we currently enjoy.

Indeed, take that to its conclusion and it seems rather scary.

I could agree with you, if only you come up with an answer to this problem: who's gonna pay for the distribution?

Even if intellectual property was 0$, we would need to pay for the bandwidth, the book, the CD, etc.

I am happy to pay a fee for broadband service, for the cost of the plastic circle, or for the paper and ink in a book. I am not happy to pay for what comes through my broadband, for the music on the disk (the information), or the text in the book, because the information is an abstraction.

One can always argue that piracy depletes the financial resources of the owner(s) of said works and objects.

That's consequential at best. In other words, I download something, or receive a piece of random information that is my business, and that prevents me from buying a CD. Am I going to be forced into HMV and obliged at gunpoint to buy a CD? I think not. The situation there is analogous to car magazines recommending one car or slamming another. It is entirely consequential, or what I would call environmental for a business, who, so to speak, cannot nor should not control the weather.

AFAIK, copyrighted material is definitely not public domain. This kils your third point as well.

But the copyright is irrelevant. They do not reside in a personal domain like a house or a PC, nor are they directed private communications (me -> a specified individual or individual). If I publicise something, it is published me -> unknown individuals that want it. As a condition of that, as I have control over the convenience, I make them pay. That need not be the case. The fact that I release it like that makes it public domain. This leads to the conclusion that the publishing industry has been living on borrowed time since it started, waiting for a means of cheap replication that bypasses their ability to control the information by the production of its means of communication, or the illegitimate notion of copyrights.

So it's OK to steal money from rich people's bank accounts, but not poor people's?

There is no stealing going on. One is not advocating hacking into ones account, violating private property or siphoning off anothers finite resources to ones own ends.

Okay, verbal contracts are enforceable if both parties agree to the terms, that both parties agree to be bound by the contract, and that one side can verify that such a contract does exist. Most of the time this is not a problem.

Precisely. At the point of sale, I am not asked to agree to the contract. If I was, I would simply lie because the contract is a fallacy... but I take a utilitarian view that honourable people might not.

[Oncle Boris]

First of all, let' say that I don't believe 'property' to be a fundamental right, but rather a notion on which society has agreed by contract.

The position held by Agathon and Whaleboy, however, seems dubious to me in that they stipulate that the notion of property should be abolished for intellectual work, because of the nature of the result of the work- i.e., abstract property.

However, it seems to me that 'property' has not been agreed upon because of its nature per se, but rather as a recognition of the work required to achieve it. If you deny intellectual property, you are denying physical property, too.

Let's take this example: if everyone could buy a pill-machine for 60$, along with the basic chemistries needed for a few bucks, and download pill-codes on Kazaa, do you think we should be justified of depriving the pharmaceutical companies of their patents?

This leads us to my point:
R&D=production costs (studio time, a movie special effects, etc). Both can be circumvented because their results can be 'digital'- i.e, mp3 or 'pill code'.
Pill=Material support of the property (DVD, book, etc). As it would be in my example, both can be circumvented because the hardware to forge them is cheap.

However exaggerate is the majors' power, there are some costs we cannot deny. And I don't think intellectual work has less worth than physical work.

What I believe, though, is that as society, we can take steps to increase the availability of intellectual work and reduce the unjustified costs needed to acquire it. Nevertheless, it remains that intellectual work should be recognized, and its produce available for free only if the author agrees.

As a tool to undermine the RIAA, Kazaa is justified. To claim intellectual property does not exist is a fallacy.



----Agathon

You were wrong on the distribution issue. There will always be a need for a place to distribute mp3s WHEN they are released- if only for them to reach the sub-networks, such as Kazaa. Running a server with lots of bandwidth is expensive. These costs are not covered by your broadband connection.

[lord of the mark]

Do you think the commercial music/game/etc business would survive if everyone could dl everything they wanted for free. I doubt it could.

This leaves two positions for the DLer. That of Agathon - it wouldnt survive, and thats OK, it would be a better world if the commercial production of intellectual property disappeared, I prefer software from Linus Torvald, music from the local garage band or tavern fiddler,etc. This at seems is a POTENTIALLY moral position. The argument would then become if we all want such a society, if the DLer has the right to impose it on others. The response would include the costs to society of the legal and technical steps taken to stop DLing.

The other position is that I LIKE commercially produced int Property, but i will DL it anyway - le the other suckers pay for the existence of a system I leach off of. I suspect this is in fact the position of the majority of DLers, but i could be wrong.


Why is it ok for artist X to be influenced by artist Y, but not for me to copy artist X's work exactly? Well of course there is a cost benefit balance in all intellectual property issues - copying provides a benefit. Thats why there are time limits on patents, and on copyrights, etc. But for influence or "fair use" the time limit is zero, while for straight copying its not. Cause when someone is influenced by me, I can still make money on my original - most who are willing to buy what ive made wont find the influenced product a perfect substitute, while for the copy they will.



Agathon - should we abolish ALL Copyright law???? Should you have the right to retype the works of an author, and publish them without royalties????

[lord of the mark]

"This leads to the conclusion that the publishing industry has been living on borrowed time since it started, waiting for a means of cheap replication that bypasses their ability to control the information by the production of its means of communication, or the illegitimate notion of copyrights."


Well this is an acknowledgment of truth. This isnt about RIAA or the contemporary music industry. This is about the rights of authors back to Dickens and beyond to make a living from their works.

Should it be possible to be a professional author??? In fiction, non-fiction etc???? What would the world look like if there were NO copyrights, and no patents
???

[DaShi]

Are Urban Ranger and Agathon the same person?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Tingkai
The next time I sell my car, I'm going to stick a contract underneath the hood that strictly prohibits the buyer from sharing the benefits of the car with other people (no passengers allowed), re-selling the car, lending the car, or giving the car away. The contract will state that by using the car, the buyer agrees to the contract, even if the buyer did not know the contents of the contract before purchasing the car.

Actually, I shouldn't sell my car and I shouldn't buy or borrow someone else's car because that's immoral and it's theft.

When I borrow a car or buy a used car, I'm stealing the work and creativity of the automakers. I am gaining benefits from something I didn't create.

Thousands of automaking jobs are lost because of this piracy. Everytime someone buys a used car, one less car is sold by the automaker. If you share your car with, say, your wife, that means your wife doesn't have to buy a car and that harms the automakers. The loss of sales revenue limits the automakers ability to create new models of cars and thousands of autoworkers lose their jobs.

Clearly, selling your car, giving someone a ride, or lending your car is theft and immoral.

Well the automakers sell used cars themselves, these days Obviously they know that the ability to sell a used car makes it more economical for buyers of new cars. In the intellectual property arena, one may note that game publishers have not come down on the used game market, which is handled by, among others the largest retailers of new games (like EB)

Can it be said that DLing enables the purchase of music and games in the same way as the the used car market???


BTW, how hidden is the EULA???? Dont you get that whenever you install something??? isnt it more analogous to a contract taped to the steering wheel???

And why would anyone make a car with multiple seats if they didnt want you to give rides???

[gunkulator]

Originally posted by Whaleboy

There is no stealing going on. One is not advocating hacking into ones account, violating private property or siphoning off anothers finite resources to ones own ends.

What resources are you talking about? If I hack into your bank account and change a few bits on a computer, how does this constitute theft? No physical thing has been stolen, right? If you are foolish enough to trade real physical money for mere information, you get what's coming to you.

[lord of the mark]

if intellectual property is so obviously wrong, why dont those who oppose it start a political movement to abolish copyright law, patent law, etc???

[Japher]

Agathon - should we abolish ALL Copyright law???? Should you have the right to retype the works of an author, and publish them without royalties????

Copywrites and patents are there to prevent someone from making a profit off of someone elses work. It is perfectly legal to quote, or use the words of, someone in a report. Yet, if you copy more than one page or chapter you are getting close to plagerism.

Stealing some ones work, passing it off as your own, and making profit for doing so is what those laws are there to protect.

No profit is being made by people sharing files. However, potential profit is being hindered due to a technology that they cannot control. Albeit sad, it is not wrong, IMO.

If I record a song off the radio, and give it to a friend, did I break a copywirte? Not in the eyes of the law... So, how is this any different?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Japher


Copywrites and patents are there to prevent someone from making a profit off of someone elses work. It is perfectly legal to quote, or use the words of, someone in a report. Yet, if you copy more than one page or chapter you are getting close to plagerism.

Stealing some ones work, passing it off as your own, and making profit for doing so is what those laws are there to protect.

No profit is being made by people sharing files. However, potential profit is being hindered due to a technology that they cannot control. Albeit sad, it is not wrong, IMO.

If I record a song off the radio, and give it to a friend, did I break a copywirte? Not in the eyes of the law... So, how is this any different?

er, lets see, a copy off the radio is inherently lower quality than the original, and youre only doing it once. So its not likely to really impact sales of the original.

[Whaleboy]

The position held by Agathon and Whaleboy, however, seems dubious to me in that they stipulate that the notion of property should be abolished for intellectual work, because of the nature of the result of the work- i.e., abstract property.

I can't speak for Agathon, but it *is* ones property as long as it in the private domain, so ones own abode (home, located only on ones own physical property, or in personal, private communications). As soon as it is released in public, then yes, it cannot be property, nor can it be owned, and thus cannot be controlled.

However, it seems to me that 'property' has not been agreed upon because of its nature per se, but rather as a recognition of the work required to achieve it. If you deny intellectual property, you are denying physical property, too.

Just because the notion of intellectual property in public is a fallacy, that does not preclude the right of the author to be recognised as such for that work.

Let's take this example: if everyone could buy a pill-machine for 60$, along with the basic chemistries needed for a few bucks, and download pill-codes on Kazaa, do you think we should be justified of depriving the pharmaceutical companies of their patents?

Yes. If the "pill-codes" were released in public.

However exaggerate is the majors' power, there are some costs we cannot deny. And I don't think intellectual work has less worth than physical work.

The fact that profits will fall as a result of my idea is not in question here, though a business will still be able to operate. I'm talking about the ethics of it all, I'm not a harbinger of a sympathy fest for the RIAA or BPI! This is not a question of worth, this is a simple matter of supply and demand. A finite resource has, well, finite quantity, and I expect to be compensated should some of my resources be desired by another. I can also put profit on that. If it is an infinite resource, they can take as much as they want, and my status does not change.

As a tool to undermine the RIAA, Kazaa is justified. To claim intellectual property does not exist is a fallacy.

You have not shown why, though the burden of proof is on me to justify my position, I believe I have done so. It imo only goes as far as the right of the author to be recognised as such (as per the GPL), their right to claim money over it is a fallacy because that requires that information to be finite in its duplication. Personal computing renders the duplication infinite.

You were wrong on the distribution issue. There will always be a need for a place to distribute mp3s WHEN they are released- if only for them to reach the sub-networks, such as Kazaa. Running a server with lots of bandwidth is expensive. These costs are not covered by your broadband connection.

The costs to the record companies or providers concerned do not constitute a refutation. If running something has a cost, the resource is finite, thus one can charge for it. That is not in question. The record companies are perfectly entitled to charge for the plastic circles, just not the right to experience the patterns of pits and grooves (or whatever CD's have) on them. That pattern in other words, is not property.

Do you think the commercial music/game/etc business would survive if everyone could dl everything they wanted for free. I doubt it could.

I disagree. Sure it would change somewhat and probably botteneck until they fill the new niche's that would be generated. It could well be an incredible opportunity for them, especially since their most profitable enterprise already is in merchandise.

This at seems is a POTENTIALLY moral position. The argument would then become if we all want such a society, if the DLer has the right to impose it on others. The response would include the costs to society of the legal and technical steps taken to stop DLing.

Impose what on others? Is that direct (in which case imposition) or consequential (in which case not)? I dare say that DLing cannot be stopped without resorting to some rather totalitarian measures that most of us would agree to be Draconian.

The other position is that I LIKE commercially produced int Property, but i will DL it anyway - le the other suckers pay for the existence of a system I leach off of. I suspect this is in fact the position of the majority of DLers, but i could be wrong.

I concur. My position is such that I do not consider downloading to be wrong or have any ethical problem with it, so I have two equally legitimate options in my mind. I can go to HMV and pay £14/£15 for a CD with 12 or so tracks, or I can spend half an hour downloading them for nothing, putting them on a CDR which costs pennies. It's just good business sense .

Why is it ok for artist X to be influenced by artist Y, but not for me to copy artist X's work exactly?

If that is the case, then you are removing the right of the author to be recognised as the author of that work.

Agathon - should we abolish ALL Copyright law???? Should you have the right to retype the works of an author, and publish them without royalties????

Sorry for answering Agathon's question, but yes I do think we should abolish all copyright law. That does not mean that the publishers cannot make any money through paper sales.

Should it be possible to be a professional author??? In fiction, non-fiction etc???? What would the world look like if there were NO copyrights, and no patents
???

Consider that this only applies to royalties. As an author, I would be quite happy to be paid X amount to write a book (after all, I am the one to bring it into existence), it belongs to me and the publisher (private property), who prints it in books, and releases them to the public. I have money, they have a near monopoly from the books for a long while and much money can still be made. Problem solved.

What resources are you talking about? If I hack into your bank account and change a few bits on a computer, how does this constitute theft? No physical thing has been stolen, right? If you are foolish enough to trade real physical money for mere information, you get what's coming to you.

The allotted hard-disk space is yours, and you the provider etc etc do not intend for it to be in public realm, you have taken measures to prevent people from accessing it, the hacker has not purchased the material means of transmission. It is analogous to calling a locked door wide open.

if intellectual property is so obviously wrong, why dont those who oppose it start a political movement to abolish copyright law, patent law, etc???

Because no-one would take it seriously, this is a matter of ethics, politics looks at philosophy and tries to make a realistic and pragmatic interpretation of the philosophy (at least thats the way it should work). The RIAA and BPI has too much power for this to become even close to realistic. Implementability is usually irrelevant to a philosophy.

Stealing some ones work, passing it off as your own, and making profit for doing so is what those laws are there to protect.

Hence the right to be recognised as the author of that work.

No profit is being made by people sharing files. However, potential profit is being hindered due to a technology that they cannot control. Albeit sad, it is not wrong, IMO.

Agreed. Again it is like a consumer magazine slandering a product. The fact that people won't buy the product is merely consequential (I love that word) or environmental.

If I record a song off the radio, and give it to a friend, did I break a copywirte? Not in the eyes of the law... So, how is this any different?

er, lets see, a copy off the radio is inherently lower quality than the original, and youre only doing it once. So its not likely to really impact sales of the original.

Ignoring quality, same goes for the CD. One assumes distribution.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
if intellectual property is so obviously wrong, why dont those who oppose it start a political movement to abolish copyright law, patent law, etc???

www.gnu.org

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Japher

Copywrites and patents are there to prevent someone from making a profit off of someone elses work.

The history of the music business is other people making money from the work of artists because of copyright.

Copyright exists solely to provide an incentive to for people create useful or intrinsically valuable ideas. It does not exist to allow corporations to hoard IP and seek perpetual rents from the public.

That's one reason why copyright is supposed to expire. But the current trend is towards extending it perpetually in order to seek rents from the public when the creator and his immediate descendants are long dead. The reason is that corporations own copyrights and they are potentially immortal. We are moving from a situation in which individuals are rewarded for creating new and useful ideas, to a situation where corporations do. While an individual can only benefit from his creation while he's alive, and his immediate descendants while they are alive, a corporation can do so forever. But corporations do not create ideas, people do.

More to the point, having a limit on copyright recognizes that ideas that experience longevity tend to do so because they become part of the cultural commons. At some point it is better to remove copyright so that the community may make free use of the idea rather than be beholden to some faceless corporation.

It is perfectly legal to quote, or use the words of, someone in a report. Yet, if you copy more than one page or chapter you are getting close to plagerism.

That is a different issue from the one we are dealing with. That speaks to the necessity of identifying the originator of the idea to prevent others from presenting it as their own. That does not entail anything about the possibility of charging for it, or treating it as a piece of property.

Stealing some ones work, passing it off as your own, and making profit for doing so is what those laws are there to protect.

Yes, and in the first respect it works quite well. In the second respect it is a miserable failure since it is being subverted towards being a rent providing stricture rather than an idea promoting one.

No profit is being made by people sharing files. However, potential profit is being hindered due to a technology that they cannot control. Albeit sad, it is not wrong, IMO.

It depends what you mean by "profit". They profit from it by enjoying the material they download.

And as for control, the powers that be are attempting to cripple the free flow of information (whether it is copyrighted or not) by introducing DRM technologies. These are likely to reduce the freedoms we have (the fair use provisions of copyright) and ensure that corporations have more control over what we do with information, how we consume it and who we can give it to.

Do you really want to live in a world where you don't have your own copy of your favourite album, but have to stream it for a fee over the internet? At present consumers have managed to stave off that trend (thanks to Apple), but the record companies will try again when technology is more in their favour and we can be locked in to schemes like the old Pressplay service.

Do you really want to have to pay 10 cents every time you, as a private citizen, want to email someone else an image you found on the net? That is what life will be like if some people have their way.

If I record a song off the radio, and give it to a friend, did I break a copywirte? Not in the eyes of the law... So, how is this any different?

Actually I think that is forbidden too.

[Ned]

Whaleboy, re your initial post, you are right on. The problem the music and soon the movie industry faces is analogous to the problem the radio broadcasters faced when they wanted to make money from broadcasting into the public domain.

[Whaleboy]

Whaleboy, re your initial post, you are right on. The problem the music and soon the movie industry faces is analogous to the problem the radio broadcasters faced when they wanted to make money from broadcasting into the public domain.

Indeed. Personally I find the arguments from the RIAA and BPI to be rather ad hoc, fuelled by the protestations of business that are unwilling to adapt to a changing environment, whose now-dying climate has been particularly sweet for them, it is nonetheless ceasing to be so. Businesses must evolve or they die out. That goes for all of them. If they resist change, they are generally doomed. And I do not think that the record companies will win in a battle against those who would copy, individual ingenuity is a very formidible opponent.

[Oncle Boris]

EDIT: WHALEBOY

You are holding an intriguing position on the pill issue.

I assume you believe any work that involves the production of an infinite resource to be worthless (in $, ), in that you don't have the right to charge something for it.