Creative effort - or at at least any that is truly worthy of the name - takes tears, and sweat, and blood. We can marvel at the output of an artist, or a writer, or a composer, or a film maker and yet fail to focus on the years of toil that often preceded that work. And I am not here speaking of some isolated genius. I still remember the days when I was so dissatisfied with my lack of writing skills that I decided to devour the subject with a non-stop investment of thousands of hours of work specifically aimed at improving those skills - and the seemingly fruitless results of what seemed to be mediocre output at the time - only to wind up, in time, with some degree competence in that area, competence that has served me well professionally and otherwise as I now exercise that skill set in various ways. That sort of creativity is something we all can do, each in his own way, and it is therefore common to us all and not limited to the work of the occasional genius. We all can create, some better than others, and we can all rejoice in that process because it is one of the fundamentally rewarding things we can do in life. It is in our nature to build things, and to improve upon them, and to innovate. This can be in writing, or drawing, or painting, or sculpting, or coding, or composing, or performing, or doing any other act requiring creativity. This is not some trivial take-it-or-leave-it part of life. It is often what defines us at our core.
Copyright, at its heart, is aimed at giving the person who creates something control over the creative work. If I write something, I control what is done with it. No random person can just come along and appropriate it to that person's use or profit. I can say no to that or I can say yes, as I determine. If I say yes, I can require that person to compensate me for using my work or I can decide that I don't want compensation because I want others to freely benefit from my work. The point is that it is my decision. I have sole control over what is done with that which I create. Why? Because the law protects that right. And it does so, for the most part, through copyright.
When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work. Under that sort of legal system, I can attempt to sell my work, or license it, or perform it publicly, but anybody else can do the same. Why? Because it is no longer "my" work, at least not legally. It is not protected in any way from the efforts of others to exploit it commercially or to give it away as they like. It is anyone's right to do with it what he will. Now, of course, I may rejoice in this. I may desire to create something wonderful and see to it that it is freely distributed to the maximum degree possible because I feel it is important that people benefit from my creative output without any obligation to me. Under a society in which copyright is protected, I can freely choose to do that if I like. I can place my work in the public domain and relinquish any right to compensation for it. Or I can let others use it freely but only on if they meet some condition that I impose on it, such as giving me attribution. The point is that this is my decision. If copyright does not exist, though, I have no such rights and I have no such control. In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process. In such a system, anything created by anybody is simply common property. People can use it for good or for bad but I have no say in it. I may be the creator but that is beside the point. People like the author of this piece can simply saunter by and take it for whatever use the like.
When a society makes a decision to defend the right of a creative person to control his work, and to profit from it or give it away as he likes, it has to make all sorts of policy decisions. Should such control last indefinitely? Of course not. Why? Because the benefits that we all get from being able to control our creative work only last so long. After a time, and certainly after we die, we have presumably exhausted whatever benefit we get from such control. Then too, others also create and, in time, all sorts of people borrow from one another and build upon the efforts of others regardless of the degree of creativity that they add to the process. Given enough time, we get what is known as a "common heritage" - something that far transcends the creative work of any one person. And so we have what is known as a public domain - a rich collection of creative output that is freely available to all. Those who value copyright and its social benefits in protecting creative output also value the public domain because it is a natural concomitant to the protected core of works that fall under copyright in any given generation. Indeed, a key aspect of copyright is precisely to encourage people to create - to invest the very blood and sweat that it often takes to do something great - in order that society generally will be enhanced and improved as creative works are done, are made available to the world as the creator may decide, and eventually pass into the public domain. So a fundamental tenet of copyright is that it cannot be absolute. It needs to be strictly bounded to achieve its legitimate goals without being extended to a point where it defeats those goals and gives special privileges to persons for no good reason.
Today, copyright has been seriously abused in the U.S. and elsewhere and needs to be fixed. In particular, terms of copyright need to be brought back to sensible levels. The public domain as it exists needs to be preserved and a better system needs to be in place by which orphaned works can freely enter the public domain. Many other fixes are needed as well. What is most definitely not needed is a SOPA-style enforcement scheme that opens up legal channels to copyright holders that would permit all sorts of abusive actions against innocent parties in the name of copyright enforcement. This sort of thing merely perpetuates the abuse and does not fix anything. Those who have been paying attention strongly sense this, and it has been pretty amazing to watch people unite to oppose the back-room sleaziness that led to such legislative efforts in the first place.
To defeat SOPA, though, one must affirm copyright. Just as we recoil at legal abuse in a SOPA-style scheme, we equally recoil at self-righteous claims that people can freely take what others create with no consideration whatever given to those who create it. That sort of radical assertion will get us nowhere when it comes to shaping serious legal policy in the SOPA debate. It needs to be roundly rejected.
Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do?
> In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process.
This is a common approach, but it completely fails as a moral argument. You are saying it is right because it is good for creators. That is an argument of self-interest, and problem is it immediately justifies its opposite. A non-owner can simply say: disobeying the law serves my self-interest, therefore that is right for me.
But it is also short-sighted. You are not only a 'creator', you are a user too. One might well be the greatest writer of books, for example, and so benefit from increased copyright/IP rights. But one will probably not also be the greatest music composer, and the greatest film-maker, and software developer, and so on. We are net consumers, in a sense. To give producers more is to take more from ourselves.
Ultimately, we grant IP rights not because they are for producers, but because they are pragmatically supposed to be useful overall -- that is the only justification. There is no other, no sensible rational purely moral argument, for copyright/IP. That ought always to be remembered.
The problem is not copyright itself. The problem is that the creators are not the copyright owners any more.
This is a very subtle distinction. We should do all we can to help creators, not publishers. Publishers have their place in the distribution chain, but they should not be allowed to act as if they were the creators.
If the publisher's business model is failing, so be it. Publishers and gatekeepers are not worth saving. Creators are. Support creators. Buy CDs directly from the artists. Buy them through the shortest distribution chain possible (even if that might be Amazon or Apple).
Create laws that make copyright an unalienable right, thus forcing publishers back to the publishing business that is rightly theirs.
> When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work.
I could not disagree more. If someone creates a work of art, they only own the physical manifestation of that creation. They can guard that physical manifestation, thereby preventing its release into the public domain until such a time as it may profit them. What they do not own is other people's property, so to force other people to not do with their property what they please simply because someone else had a thought first is unethical. It's an understandable, knee-jerk, brute-force means of providing a business model to artists, but it is still unethical.
We both agree the idea that 65 years after your death your estate will still own the copyright to that post is insane. However, you defend the basic concept that copyright protects artists which enables them to produce more content. Yet, Shakespeare had no copyright protection so he produced more not less content. He still profited from his work, just not as much.
But, let's look at it from another direction. Simplify the tax code enough and H&R block goes out of business. That does not mean society is worse off. Copyright enriches artists at the cost of society but the real question is society bettor off. There is a deluge of new content, but the overwhelming majority truly interesting works are not for profit. I honestly think we would be bettor off if Avatar had never been created an instead we what artists do when they are not pandering to the largest audience possible.
PS: I don't listen to music. I don't watch TV. I do occasionally see a movie, but it's been a while. I used to do a fair amount of reading but I literally only follow a single author who I would just as soon donate to to keep them writing as buy their books. I do play WoW, but that's a subscription game which would survive just fine without copyright.
>Copyright, at its heart, is aimed at giving the person who creates something control over the creative work.
I'm not sure about this. Copyright is aimed at enabling and encouraging creative works. It achieves this by giving the creator control. Here, the word giving is important; we only give the creator control because we think that will result in more high quality creative works (in theory).
>When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it.
Instead, they are saying that they no longer want to give away control to the creator, because copyright is not achieving the desired results.
>To defeat SOPA, though, one must affirm copyright.
Agreed. However, I think it's easier to discuss the goals, benefits, and extent of copyright law from the vantage point I've expressed above.
Quite. CDs filled an important need at the time they came on the market - quality music reproduction that did not degrade with repeated use like vinyl or tape does. Sure, digital delivery would have been nice, but back then modems ran at about 1200bps and mp3 encoding was a gleam in the eye of someone at the Fraunhofer Institute.
Two wrongs don't make a right; saying the service isn't good enough is a cheap excuse. Pirates should articulate what they do pay for, not what (they say) they would pay for. Talk is cheap, distribution and marketing do have costs associated with them.
Edit: my point is to defend the basic idea of copyright and content distribution as an economic good, rather to support any particular distribution model or SOPA itself. Coming from a film background, it costs a great deal of money to bring a high-quality film to the screen, and to reliably recoup that investment, distributors usually spend 50% of the film's budget on marketing. Films are sort of like startups insofar as each one is a little self-contained business, and the same is true of alnums, TV shows etc., but discussion of the economics from the content production side is often sorely lacking in debates about piracy.
1. Why is copyright so important if everyone can create well? Why scarcify something that without the protection would be worthless? If creation is humanity, why limit the act of creation to the first person to get there? We don't prevent people from climbing mountains just because someone else got there first. We don't stop runners from finishing races because someone else got first place. We don't stop fashion, because brands copy each other's styles all the time (trademark issues are related, but really different here... no one complains when Gap puts out a line similar to say Tommy Hilfiger, as long as they claim it is Gap). In fact a large number of creative works are merely derivative of other works, even "brilliant new" ones -- any limit on the creation process in this regard can be seen as artificially scarcifying something.
2. Why respond to an article about why the current copyright situation is broken and needs change with a long rant that defends the need for copyright, and uses language seemingly arguing against some strawman position of "abolish copyright" that is not present in the original article.
Copyright, at its heart, is aimed at giving the person who creates something control over the creative work.
I'm certain this is just wrong, at least from a USA perspective. The first copyright in England was to control, that is, copyright is censorship.
In the USA historically copyright was a way to induce people to enlarge the public domain.
Giving "creative" people control has never really entered into it, in the USA. I'm given to understand this is different in continental Europoean cultures, but SOPA and PIPA are American, and based out of an English-speaking culture.
If you propose to add some kind of "moral right of control" to a "creative" work, you first need to define "creative work" so that I can tell a creative work from an un-creative work without referring to some authority, a list or an oracle or a government agent. Then we can discuss what moral rights might pertain, and how long they should last, etc etc. I personally think that the prevalence of independent invention invalidates any such "moral right of control", but you clearly believe otherwise.
"I have sole control over what is done with that which I create."
Actually, the US Constitution only allows for limited control, not unlimited control. The Constitution requires Fair Use exceptions to your control of your created works.
... I was so dissatisfied with my lack of writing skills ... only to wind up, in time, with some degree competence in that area ...
And a total mastery of the art of understatement, clearly. Thank you for your contributions to this community, I am humbled by your continued willingness to invest time to improve it and your success at doing so.
> If I write something, I control what is done with it.
You're a good writer, both in the technical and moral sense; and I respect your experience, ability, and goals. However, there is no creation ex nihilo. I can't remember who said this, so I use it without attribution: would the world of music be richer today if, in 1900, one could copyright a bassline?
< When people propose that copyright be abolished...
This isn't what the linked piece is about. The author's arguments are mainstays like:
1) IP laws mostly protect big corporations, not creators, since these corporations effectively leverage their control of distribution against creators.
2) The measures these corporations take to protect their IP succeed only at annoying legitimate customers. Piracy has never been curbed by anti-piracy practices.
3) Et al.
Abolishing an exploitative industry that preys on copyright holders and abolishing copyright itself are two very different things.
"To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction" - Bhagavad Gita
There's a level of indirection that we should think about very clearly. We aren't talking about control over the first or any other copy of a work of art, but rather control over people who want to use them. Control over people with their own free will can never be better than a necessary evil, so we as a society should agree on the bare minimum that would satisfy those goals we share.
You might want to separate the right to copy and the obligation to give attribution. I know of no one who would support the abolition of mandatory attribution. But abolishing the restrictions on copying itself doesn't seem so unreasonable once I say "but you would still have to name the original author!".
To me, a reasonable system would be to authorize everything, provided you give proper attribution. You can copy, but name the author. You can parody or plagiarize, but you have to say so. That way, we keep a right to recognition, at nearly zero cost to society. I think this is both morally acceptable, and economically feasible.
Under a society in which copyright is protected, I can freely choose to do that if I like. I can place my work in the public domain and relinquish any right to compensation for it.
As you can do in a society without copyright--that is your personal decision. Copyright is not required for you to do what you will with your stuff.
Or I can let others use it freely but only on if they meet some condition that I impose on it, such as giving me attribution. The point is that this is my decision.
It isn't, though, as we've shown empirically by this point. You cannot stop--physically, legally, or morally--others from doing with your work as they will, provided it exists in a digital form. That genie, as they say, is long since out of the bottle.
If copyright does not exist, though, I have no such rights and I have no such control.
You already have next to no control! Your "rights" are anything but!
In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process.
Why do you need a say? If it's information, it can be duplicated on their dime, and that is their decision. Why need you be involved?
Moreover, why does it matter if it is claimed as their own? It will eventually be found out and publicized if it really matters--or maybe you and your work aren't important enough to merit society's collective memory.
In such a system, anything created by anybody is simply common property. People can use it for good or for bad but I have no say in it.
Yep, that's about the size of it.
I may be the creator but that is beside the point. People like the author of this piece can simply saunter by and take it for whatever use the like.
And isn't that a wonderful thing? That people can build on and reuse the work of those that came before them? That they can do so without fear of reprisal and instead devote that energy to innovation?
Why are you afraid of such a communal future?
Why are you afraid of the removing artificial scarcity?
My opinion is that you cannot own or have any control over an integer. I don't care how much effort you put into "discovering" this number: go right ahead and sell that number on a CD if you so desire, but I beleive the buyer has just as much authority over that number as you do (none).
This is such bullshit, I really wish I could downvote this sort of post.
If you don't agree with the methods used by companies to sell their products DON'T then take it anyway, you're showing people WANT the product but aren't willing to pay, so what's the best solution? Make it harder to pirate / try to block pirating.
This guy and everyone else who refuses to just not consume media they can't get on terms they and the companies agree with are the reason we have all this SOPA crap.
If the latest Rihanna album is $10 and you're only willing to pay $1 instead of then pirating DON'T get it, just ignore it, if everyone did this we'd have no problems, then media companies would either adjust or accept that they're doing it wrong, they wouldn't then fight the internet.
This guy and everyone else who follows the same point of view is essentially trying to blackmail media companies, how about instead you just move on. You have no right to the media they produce and if you're unhappy with what they want for it MOVE ON. If Sony want to sell the latest album from band x for $1,000 that's their choice, you have no right to that album.
This is a series of pretty poor arguments. The author seems to be looking for reasons to justify their own piracy and conflates anger at the approach of the "copyright industry" with infringement upon peoples' rights. One of the final lines of the article, in particular, is jarring:
"If I'm a pirate, it's not to have some cheap music. It is because the time has come for you to fuck off."
It's fine to be angry about the approach large copyright holders take to piracy - suing consumers, encouraging the extradition of 23 year old UK citizens for linking, throwing cash at politicians to try to push through obscene laws like SOPA/PIPA. I'm angry about it. It's a horribly reactive, staid approach to a changing world that just isn't going to net them any long-term profitability.
What's not fine is in your mind elevating your piracy to the level of a significant political protest. It might make you feel better about it, but it really doesn't change the fact that you're stealing something of value that someone worked hard to produce.
I am exactly in line with what the article says, except that I don't buy, neither do I downloaded music these last few years. In my case it is therefore not a rationalization for having free stuff.
I downloaded a lot when I was a student, when I began to work I decided I did not have the "I'm poor" excuse any more and I began buying CDs of bands I like. I stopped buying CDs after I got my first DRMed one. I thought "ok, this is stupid, I don't want to be part of this any more".
Only recently I have discovered the real harm that copyright laws and lobbyists are doing to the society. They are criminalising sharing. Think a bit about it. We have to stand against them. Now there are copyright restrictions on SCIENCE papers. It is effectively a danger to our society.
Here in France a law was proposed to display on CDs price tag how much the artist receives when you buy a CD. It was voted down by lobbyists' minions. That alone says a lot.
> It might make you feel better about it, but it really
> doesn't change the fact that you're stealing something
> of value
Copyright infringement is not stealing.
Separately, the person who worked hard to produce whatever you're buying is reaping a fraction of a percentage point of whatever you're spending, and that's only if the distributor hasn't found a way to screw them out of that entirely (or else they've been long since dead).
> you're stealing something of value that someone worked hard to produce.
What exactly is stolen? Certainly not the piece of music, film, or knowledge: unlike spaghetti, those are abundant, non-conflicting goods. Nor the exclusivity, for it is only destroyed. Nor secrecy or privacy, for the piece of knowledge or art is public already.
This is not theft. This is infringing a state granted monopoly. It doesn't make it a good idea, mind you. Upholding the law is generally a good idea. But unlike plain theft, it's not obviously wrong either.
I wasn't particularly impressed with the quality of the arguments either. On the other hand I don't see much hope of change unless 'piracy' becomes even more commonplace than it already is.
So while I personally would rather do without (similar to using Linux/Gimp vs pirating Windows/Photoshop etc.) and think that piracy in many ways strengthens the hand of the copyright owners by suffocating legitimate alternatives (again see Linux/Gimp vs pirated XP/Photoshop) I think that encouraging and legitimizing widespread piracy could well be the only "significant political protest" with any chance to succeed.
Riots and revolutions tend to happen in the summer, maybe copyright will only change if some people get to watch Transformers for free. I can live with that.
If one rejects copyright, there is no 'stealing' of things of value, there is only copying -- since the work to produce things would be paid for through other means than restrictions.
If someone argues against copyright, you cannot defend it by invoking 'stealing'. The 'stealing' here is not removing of anything in any normal sense. It is infringement of, or disobedience of, copyright -- which of course would not exist if there were no copyright. There is no basic harm.
You might say it would be difficult to pay for production with other economic arrangements. But that is a matter of comparing economic efficiency; it has nothing to do with stealing.
I admit it's stealing, but I don't care. I also break the speed limit - constantly. I also smoke pot from time to time. Music is so abundant and readily accessible it no longer makes sense to charge $20 per CD, let alone anything for songs that take two seconds to download. There is no way to stop pirating without either crippling or sensoring the Internet. Technology advances and industries die as a result. Instead of accepting the cold hard reality of the Internet and the ease of pirating and adjusting their business models, the major media companies are trying to reverse the wheel of time. They probably want us all using records again.
I used to be this guy, i would pirate software, music, tv shows, films, games etc. I did it mainly because it was easy. Innovation has changed my ways, not completely, but mostly.
I no longer pirate music, ive paid for spotify for over 2 years now, i get music wherever i want on any device and its great, i wish they had metallica and acdc but theres youtube for that.
I no longer pirate software, linux got good at "just working" and i've been using ubuntu for years now. I use google docs and other SaaS apps and pay for really good apps like dropbox.
I no longer pirate games, mainly because i'm not much of a gamer, but i have paid for some indie games like SPAZ, Minecraft, QUBE, Darwinia etc because they're indie and the money goes to the developer and the price point is much more reasonable than the big games that come with heavily restrictive DRM.
I still download TV Shows, but not as much as i used to because of BBC iPlayer and similar initiatives, its mainly American TV i download, i've actually no idea if this is illegal or not, considering most of the shows are put on the american networks websites for streaming too.
For films there are LoveFilm, Netflix (now in the UK), iPlayer does some films now as does youtube, but i still think films are the category that is lacking the most, but also a really tough nut to crack, but hell, if it can be done with music, it can be done with films.
So, in my opinion, innovation and me feeling good about giving money to actual people rather than conglomerates is what has stopped me from pirating as much as i used to and thats the key.
I'm pretty much down to the same conclusion, personally.
I'd happily pay a recurrent, if modest, sum of money for the ability to legally and easily download not only newer but, more importantly, older and more obscure movies and television series to my computer in the form of convenient unencumbered .avi|.mkv|.mp4 files, from a catalog whose selection and quality matches the level of service of the 2010's.
If MAFIAA offered that, with a credible promise that the material will be there ten years from now, I would not only pay for the content but not bother to stash a single file onto my external hard disk. Because of the high level of sophistication when it comes to the selection, quality, and availability of the content it would be far more convenient to just pay again to redownload what I want to see again.
Pay-per-view is exactly what the studios are dreaming of but it's not going to happen through restrictions, but through unrivalled convenience only.
The ultimate response to those who try to legislate against piracy for years has been to point out that there is no paid service which is as convenient as other unpaid, illegal ones (bittorrent or usenet, for instance). This is just one of the few unfortunate times where it makes fiscal sense for corporations to try to change the laws rather than innovate.
They might say "you could never get every movie/album/piece of software in one place like that! It would be an organizational nightmare!" Given no other option, however, they will be forced to innovate.
I own Blu-rays that have anti-piracy ads that I can't skip through before I watch the movie. That alone shows how screwed up this situation is.
They might say "you could never get every movie/album/piece of software in one place like that! It would be an organizational nightmare!" Given no other option, however, they will be forced to innovate.
Heheh, and yet The Pirate Bay (and lots of others), have a single site with lots of things. It might be a nightmare, but not only can it exist, but it does exist.
I am always amazed that the pirate/P2P swarm essentially distributes thousands and thousands of films/tv shows/music for free. Distribution is now free! You don't need to pay to copy your bits! Your users will do it for you, for free!
When I was living in the United states I was able to use services like Netflix and spotify and get the content I wanted whenever I wanted where ever I wanted. Now, I that live in India, I cannot get that content legally. I cannot watch the TV shows I want to watch as they are aired (I have to wait 2-3 years for stuff to come on TV). The ONLY option I have is to download tv shows via torrents / find some online stream and discover new music via grooveshark. Its not that I can't pay for the content, or don't want to, its that I quite literally cant!
I wan't to buy "How I Meet your Mother" on English with spanish subtitles. I am from Spain and live on Germany.
The only option to get the content I am looking for is through megavideo/piratebay.
With the films, happen the same. If I use my iTunes spanish account, the content is delayed 6 months, no tv shows and all of them in spanish. If I use a German account, I only get German content.
I pay spotify premium since two years ago. But for tv shows and films. The only content i can get is from sites like megavideo/piratebay, etc.
This industry is the only one that doesn't offer to the client what the client wants. Easy.
How about those of us who live where getting certain products legally is essentially impossible? In my case, these are anime-series and documentaries, neither which can be bought where I live. What should I do, if I really want to watch these, and have no way of getting them except for P2P?
(Fun fact: Availability was what "drove" me into piracy in the first place. There was a TV-show which had aired about a year earlier, which I had missed then but wanted to see. I tried every legal way to obtain it that I could think of, because I believed piracy was wrong at the time, but it was simply not for sale. In the end, I ended up with my first torrent downloading.)
The author claims that he hates the music industry and won't miss them, yet he admits he's willing to break the law to get their products. Consider the absurdity of this juxtaposition.
Modern popular music is properly considered the product of both the artists and the industry. Someone mentioned Rihanna. Do you think you would have any idea who Rihanna is without the music industry? Would her music sound at all the same with the music industry's backing (funds to pay for studio use and hire studio musicians)? If you don't like modern popular music fine, but if you don't like it, why are you pirating it?
Given that perspective, when you download music, you are enjoying both the labor of the artist and the record company. If you don't like the price they're charging to enjoy their services, that does not give you the right to simply not pay. (We can debate elsewhere whether you already have the right to not pay, but you certainly don't get that right simply because you don't like the price.)
Someone asked for a better analogy. Sneaking into a movie theater and standing (so you aren't taking up a seat) in the back is an analogous situation. You are enjoying the services of the movie theater (which you consider worth breaking the law to get access to) without paying their asking price.
Someone reminded us that copying isn't stealing. Well it isn't sharing either. Two children playing with two toys isn't sharing. Two children taking turns with one toy is sharing.
To return to the most important point, the author's argument can be summed up and generalized as, "If you don't like the cost/benefit ratio of a service, you have the right to take it for free as long as no one is directly hurt in the process."
Frankly, I think people like that should be stopped, which as Ed pointed out, almost makes me feel like a SOPA supporter.
One more point worth considering. We were conditioned to associate the music with the medium, because it was more profitable. Now it is not anymore and there lies the problem.
In the past I bought a MC and then I bought a CD. I paid twice for the same work. Did the shop offer me a discount? No.
Do I get a discount when I watch the same movie twice in a cinema or if I buy a DVD after I have seen the movie in the cinema? No.
Do I get easy access to mp3 if I buy a CD? No.
The movie/music industry simply sends the wrong signals...
A lot of his arguments are centered around the music industry, but guess what: You can get a high quality, DRM free song with just one click for about $1 today. This makes his whole blog post sound like an uninformed, whiny rant.
Those of you who continually refer to piracy as stealing are muddying the waters. I agree that it is morally wrong to download copyrighted works without paying for them, but whenever someone uses the word theft, I switch off.
It is akin to borrowing a book and then scanning it and using OCR to make an ebook before it is returned to the owner. Or ripping a friend's CD. I don't think a reasonable person would describe this as stealing. This is exactly what file sharing is, except that the scanning/ripping has already been done.
By insisting that this is "stealing" you will alienate some people who might be open to persuasion and to changing their behaviour. They know that they have not deprived the owner of it's use and that they have not stolen anything.
At some point, someone has to devise a purely-virtual solution: You should be able to buy 'virtual tickets' that give you the right to download a movie from anywhere you want. People making use of music in their videos would be required to have a link to buy the ticket. I think the idea of charging for "digital copies" doesn't make sense anymore, because it has zero scarcity, same goes with "digital performance"
"I launch a search and I click. In less than 10 minutes, I've a full movie on my disk. In 20, I've the complete discography of an artist."
When I hear about stuff like this, along with people's multi-terabyte arrays of content, I wonder if they actually listen/watch much of it. Movie/Record companies are worrying that this all got "stolen" but if it was never viewed was it actually "stolen"?
From my point of view the content that the artivle is talking about is the equivalent of candy.
By pirating this content you are the same as a child stealing candy. The analogy is obviously imperfect because a shop owner is directly damaged by the physical theft but my point is that a child does not need sweets. And 'pirates' do not need bland tv shows distracting them from so many other things in this world that are more deserving of time.
'Pirates' just seem to be sadder version of consumers who don't even help the economy. Little black holes taking and giving nothing back.
I feel sadness that these people try to justify their activities and ally themselves with the SOPA protests.
I like to pay for my stuff, most software I use is either OSS or I payed for it. I have tucked a way in the attic over 500 CD's. I didn't buy any CD in the last 8 years or so. I used to download all the music I liked (but I still go to concerts). Than emusic came along and I used that, until lots of labels stopped using it and it became more expensive. Now I'm a happy Spotify user. So I didn't download music in the last 4 years or so. The only thing that is left is movies and TV-series I download a lot (and still go to the movies). I tried Jaman but there is not allot of quality content (I did get 3 credits free but never used it since movies I liked where not available in my country).
I would pay 50~100 euro per month for a all you can eat package providing that episodes are available with in a week of first broadcast (not in my country but global) and movies are available with in a month after showing in the theater. I asked around (yes very scientific) and most people would to that to.
So I have this money to give to the industry (max 1200 euro per year) but there is no service to give the money to. You could say go rend a movie (if you still can find such a place) but I refuse to pay 5 euro for a sloppy movie (the best movies I see in the theater any ways). You could say buy the movie but I'm not willing to pay 20 euro for a single Blu-ray. If tomorrow I could not download movies and TV-series any more I still wouldn't do that). In almost every other industry products follow demand but apparently the entertainment industry thinks they are above basic free market economics.
This entire debate has been wrong footed from day 1, "piracy" is and always has been a misnomer and an aggressive attempt to frame the debate.
Sharing, lending, and broadcasting have been a core part of the dissemination of creative works for centuries. Libraries. Personal borrowing. Museums. Broadcast TV and radio. For the entirety of the modern age it has been the norm for the average individual "consuming" a creative work to do so without directly purchasing a licensed copy. Somehow creative industries survived.
Today the limits to copying are very different and thus unfamiliar if not frightening for some. Yet creative industries have not died and are not dying, despite persistent attempts to fight against modern technology at every stage (resisting digital distribution, creating experiences that are typically wholly inferior to the "piracy" experience). Imagine if literature, music, etc. never embraced libraries, radio, or television. Imagine if book lending was made illegal.
There are ways to embrace sharing and dissemination of IP without direct payment for every consumed copy while still maintaining profitability. The old limits are dead. Portraying all manner of sharing of creative works as "intellectual property theft" is frankly ridiculous. The idea that the line between borrowing a book from a library (or reading a book within the library) and borrowing a digital copy of a movie from a friend (or even a stranger) is a line between acceptable behavior and theft is an idea born of prejudice and provincialism. We need to get over such old prejudices and begin to form new models and new boundaries.
I've always wondered what odd confusion of emotions could make someone say they are a thief and proud of it.
I can understand those who claim that what they are doing isn't thievery.
I can understand those that don't accept the idea of intellectual property in general.
But for you to both buy into the philosophy that what you are taking is valuable, and ought to be protected---then still steal it proudly..... that is one thing I can't understand.
He's good a point about the easiness of downloading/watching. Here's a real story: In Canada, it seems like all streaming music websites are illegal. (Spotify, pandora, <you name it>). But, I still wanted to be legal. So, at the end, I had to "hack" my way to download spotify and listen to it. Isn't that stupid? If they decide that spotify is illegal, at least give me a better solution.
Rdio has Canadian content, and there isn't a law against streaming music in Canada, the reason most music services do no bother is because of the expensive and complicated structure of the paid royalties. It's hard to get the initial license and almost impossible to satisfy the royalty payments,
Most music startups that stream music do not bother with canada, and that's sad.
Read the article why pandora decided to quit the Canadian market, sad true story
[+] [-] grellas|14 years ago|reply
Copyright, at its heart, is aimed at giving the person who creates something control over the creative work. If I write something, I control what is done with it. No random person can just come along and appropriate it to that person's use or profit. I can say no to that or I can say yes, as I determine. If I say yes, I can require that person to compensate me for using my work or I can decide that I don't want compensation because I want others to freely benefit from my work. The point is that it is my decision. I have sole control over what is done with that which I create. Why? Because the law protects that right. And it does so, for the most part, through copyright.
When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work. Under that sort of legal system, I can attempt to sell my work, or license it, or perform it publicly, but anybody else can do the same. Why? Because it is no longer "my" work, at least not legally. It is not protected in any way from the efforts of others to exploit it commercially or to give it away as they like. It is anyone's right to do with it what he will. Now, of course, I may rejoice in this. I may desire to create something wonderful and see to it that it is freely distributed to the maximum degree possible because I feel it is important that people benefit from my creative output without any obligation to me. Under a society in which copyright is protected, I can freely choose to do that if I like. I can place my work in the public domain and relinquish any right to compensation for it. Or I can let others use it freely but only on if they meet some condition that I impose on it, such as giving me attribution. The point is that this is my decision. If copyright does not exist, though, I have no such rights and I have no such control. In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process. In such a system, anything created by anybody is simply common property. People can use it for good or for bad but I have no say in it. I may be the creator but that is beside the point. People like the author of this piece can simply saunter by and take it for whatever use the like.
When a society makes a decision to defend the right of a creative person to control his work, and to profit from it or give it away as he likes, it has to make all sorts of policy decisions. Should such control last indefinitely? Of course not. Why? Because the benefits that we all get from being able to control our creative work only last so long. After a time, and certainly after we die, we have presumably exhausted whatever benefit we get from such control. Then too, others also create and, in time, all sorts of people borrow from one another and build upon the efforts of others regardless of the degree of creativity that they add to the process. Given enough time, we get what is known as a "common heritage" - something that far transcends the creative work of any one person. And so we have what is known as a public domain - a rich collection of creative output that is freely available to all. Those who value copyright and its social benefits in protecting creative output also value the public domain because it is a natural concomitant to the protected core of works that fall under copyright in any given generation. Indeed, a key aspect of copyright is precisely to encourage people to create - to invest the very blood and sweat that it often takes to do something great - in order that society generally will be enhanced and improved as creative works are done, are made available to the world as the creator may decide, and eventually pass into the public domain. So a fundamental tenet of copyright is that it cannot be absolute. It needs to be strictly bounded to achieve its legitimate goals without being extended to a point where it defeats those goals and gives special privileges to persons for no good reason.
Today, copyright has been seriously abused in the U.S. and elsewhere and needs to be fixed. In particular, terms of copyright need to be brought back to sensible levels. The public domain as it exists needs to be preserved and a better system needs to be in place by which orphaned works can freely enter the public domain. Many other fixes are needed as well. What is most definitely not needed is a SOPA-style enforcement scheme that opens up legal channels to copyright holders that would permit all sorts of abusive actions against innocent parties in the name of copyright enforcement. This sort of thing merely perpetuates the abuse and does not fix anything. Those who have been paying attention strongly sense this, and it has been pretty amazing to watch people unite to oppose the back-room sleaziness that led to such legislative efforts in the first place.
To defeat SOPA, though, one must affirm copyright. Just as we recoil at legal abuse in a SOPA-style scheme, we equally recoil at self-righteous claims that people can freely take what others create with no consideration whatever given to those who create it. That sort of radical assertion will get us nowhere when it comes to shaping serious legal policy in the SOPA debate. It needs to be roundly rejected.
[+] [-] hxa7241|14 years ago|reply
Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do?
> In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process.
This is a common approach, but it completely fails as a moral argument. You are saying it is right because it is good for creators. That is an argument of self-interest, and problem is it immediately justifies its opposite. A non-owner can simply say: disobeying the law serves my self-interest, therefore that is right for me.
But it is also short-sighted. You are not only a 'creator', you are a user too. One might well be the greatest writer of books, for example, and so benefit from increased copyright/IP rights. But one will probably not also be the greatest music composer, and the greatest film-maker, and software developer, and so on. We are net consumers, in a sense. To give producers more is to take more from ourselves.
Ultimately, we grant IP rights not because they are for producers, but because they are pragmatically supposed to be useful overall -- that is the only justification. There is no other, no sensible rational purely moral argument, for copyright/IP. That ought always to be remembered.
[+] [-] Derbasti|14 years ago|reply
This is a very subtle distinction. We should do all we can to help creators, not publishers. Publishers have their place in the distribution chain, but they should not be allowed to act as if they were the creators.
If the publisher's business model is failing, so be it. Publishers and gatekeepers are not worth saving. Creators are. Support creators. Buy CDs directly from the artists. Buy them through the shortest distribution chain possible (even if that might be Amazon or Apple).
Create laws that make copyright an unalienable right, thus forcing publishers back to the publishing business that is rightly theirs.
[+] [-] wwwtyro|14 years ago|reply
I could not disagree more. If someone creates a work of art, they only own the physical manifestation of that creation. They can guard that physical manifestation, thereby preventing its release into the public domain until such a time as it may profit them. What they do not own is other people's property, so to force other people to not do with their property what they please simply because someone else had a thought first is unethical. It's an understandable, knee-jerk, brute-force means of providing a business model to artists, but it is still unethical.
Find. Another. Way.
[+] [-] onemoreact|14 years ago|reply
But, let's look at it from another direction. Simplify the tax code enough and H&R block goes out of business. That does not mean society is worse off. Copyright enriches artists at the cost of society but the real question is society bettor off. There is a deluge of new content, but the overwhelming majority truly interesting works are not for profit. I honestly think we would be bettor off if Avatar had never been created an instead we what artists do when they are not pandering to the largest audience possible.
PS: I don't listen to music. I don't watch TV. I do occasionally see a movie, but it's been a while. I used to do a fair amount of reading but I literally only follow a single author who I would just as soon donate to to keep them writing as buy their books. I do play WoW, but that's a subscription game which would survive just fine without copyright.
[+] [-] jmilloy|14 years ago|reply
I'm not sure about this. Copyright is aimed at enabling and encouraging creative works. It achieves this by giving the creator control. Here, the word giving is important; we only give the creator control because we think that will result in more high quality creative works (in theory).
>When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it.
Instead, they are saying that they no longer want to give away control to the creator, because copyright is not achieving the desired results.
>To defeat SOPA, though, one must affirm copyright.
Agreed. However, I think it's easier to discuss the goals, benefits, and extent of copyright law from the vantage point I've expressed above.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|14 years ago|reply
Two wrongs don't make a right; saying the service isn't good enough is a cheap excuse. Pirates should articulate what they do pay for, not what (they say) they would pay for. Talk is cheap, distribution and marketing do have costs associated with them.
Edit: my point is to defend the basic idea of copyright and content distribution as an economic good, rather to support any particular distribution model or SOPA itself. Coming from a film background, it costs a great deal of money to bring a high-quality film to the screen, and to reliably recoup that investment, distributors usually spend 50% of the film's budget on marketing. Films are sort of like startups insofar as each one is a little self-contained business, and the same is true of alnums, TV shows etc., but discussion of the economics from the content production side is often sorely lacking in debates about piracy.
[+] [-] sophacles|14 years ago|reply
1. Why is copyright so important if everyone can create well? Why scarcify something that without the protection would be worthless? If creation is humanity, why limit the act of creation to the first person to get there? We don't prevent people from climbing mountains just because someone else got there first. We don't stop runners from finishing races because someone else got first place. We don't stop fashion, because brands copy each other's styles all the time (trademark issues are related, but really different here... no one complains when Gap puts out a line similar to say Tommy Hilfiger, as long as they claim it is Gap). In fact a large number of creative works are merely derivative of other works, even "brilliant new" ones -- any limit on the creation process in this regard can be seen as artificially scarcifying something.
2. Why respond to an article about why the current copyright situation is broken and needs change with a long rant that defends the need for copyright, and uses language seemingly arguing against some strawman position of "abolish copyright" that is not present in the original article.
[+] [-] bediger|14 years ago|reply
I'm certain this is just wrong, at least from a USA perspective. The first copyright in England was to control, that is, copyright is censorship.
In the USA historically copyright was a way to induce people to enlarge the public domain.
Giving "creative" people control has never really entered into it, in the USA. I'm given to understand this is different in continental Europoean cultures, but SOPA and PIPA are American, and based out of an English-speaking culture.
If you propose to add some kind of "moral right of control" to a "creative" work, you first need to define "creative work" so that I can tell a creative work from an un-creative work without referring to some authority, a list or an oracle or a government agent. Then we can discuss what moral rights might pertain, and how long they should last, etc etc. I personally think that the prevalence of independent invention invalidates any such "moral right of control", but you clearly believe otherwise.
[+] [-] ensignavenger|14 years ago|reply
Actually, the US Constitution only allows for limited control, not unlimited control. The Constitution requires Fair Use exceptions to your control of your created works.
[+] [-] lemming|14 years ago|reply
And a total mastery of the art of understatement, clearly. Thank you for your contributions to this community, I am humbled by your continued willingness to invest time to improve it and your success at doing so.
[+] [-] khafra|14 years ago|reply
You're a good writer, both in the technical and moral sense; and I respect your experience, ability, and goals. However, there is no creation ex nihilo. I can't remember who said this, so I use it without attribution: would the world of music be richer today if, in 1900, one could copyright a bassline?
[+] [-] FreakLegion|14 years ago|reply
< When people propose that copyright be abolished...
This isn't what the linked piece is about. The author's arguments are mainstays like:
1) IP laws mostly protect big corporations, not creators, since these corporations effectively leverage their control of distribution against creators.
2) The measures these corporations take to protect their IP succeed only at annoying legitimate customers. Piracy has never been curbed by anti-piracy practices.
3) Et al.
Abolishing an exploitative industry that preys on copyright holders and abolishing copyright itself are two very different things.
[+] [-] enduser|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prodigal_erik|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loup-vaillant|14 years ago|reply
To me, a reasonable system would be to authorize everything, provided you give proper attribution. You can copy, but name the author. You can parody or plagiarize, but you have to say so. That way, we keep a right to recognition, at nearly zero cost to society. I think this is both morally acceptable, and economically feasible.
[+] [-] angersock|14 years ago|reply
As you can do in a society without copyright--that is your personal decision. Copyright is not required for you to do what you will with your stuff.
Or I can let others use it freely but only on if they meet some condition that I impose on it, such as giving me attribution. The point is that this is my decision.
It isn't, though, as we've shown empirically by this point. You cannot stop--physically, legally, or morally--others from doing with your work as they will, provided it exists in a digital form. That genie, as they say, is long since out of the bottle.
If copyright does not exist, though, I have no such rights and I have no such control.
You already have next to no control! Your "rights" are anything but!
In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process.
Why do you need a say? If it's information, it can be duplicated on their dime, and that is their decision. Why need you be involved?
Moreover, why does it matter if it is claimed as their own? It will eventually be found out and publicized if it really matters--or maybe you and your work aren't important enough to merit society's collective memory.
In such a system, anything created by anybody is simply common property. People can use it for good or for bad but I have no say in it.
Yep, that's about the size of it.
I may be the creator but that is beside the point. People like the author of this piece can simply saunter by and take it for whatever use the like.
And isn't that a wonderful thing? That people can build on and reuse the work of those that came before them? That they can do so without fear of reprisal and instead devote that energy to innovation?
Why are you afraid of such a communal future?
Why are you afraid of the removing artificial scarcity?
EDIT: Removed potentially inflammatory leader.
[+] [-] baddox|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] baddox|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mjwalshe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] citricsquid|14 years ago|reply
If you don't agree with the methods used by companies to sell their products DON'T then take it anyway, you're showing people WANT the product but aren't willing to pay, so what's the best solution? Make it harder to pirate / try to block pirating.
This guy and everyone else who refuses to just not consume media they can't get on terms they and the companies agree with are the reason we have all this SOPA crap.
If the latest Rihanna album is $10 and you're only willing to pay $1 instead of then pirating DON'T get it, just ignore it, if everyone did this we'd have no problems, then media companies would either adjust or accept that they're doing it wrong, they wouldn't then fight the internet.
This guy and everyone else who follows the same point of view is essentially trying to blackmail media companies, how about instead you just move on. You have no right to the media they produce and if you're unhappy with what they want for it MOVE ON. If Sony want to sell the latest album from band x for $1,000 that's their choice, you have no right to that album.
[+] [-] gavinballard|14 years ago|reply
"If I'm a pirate, it's not to have some cheap music. It is because the time has come for you to fuck off."
It's fine to be angry about the approach large copyright holders take to piracy - suing consumers, encouraging the extradition of 23 year old UK citizens for linking, throwing cash at politicians to try to push through obscene laws like SOPA/PIPA. I'm angry about it. It's a horribly reactive, staid approach to a changing world that just isn't going to net them any long-term profitability.
What's not fine is in your mind elevating your piracy to the level of a significant political protest. It might make you feel better about it, but it really doesn't change the fact that you're stealing something of value that someone worked hard to produce.
[+] [-] Iv|14 years ago|reply
I downloaded a lot when I was a student, when I began to work I decided I did not have the "I'm poor" excuse any more and I began buying CDs of bands I like. I stopped buying CDs after I got my first DRMed one. I thought "ok, this is stupid, I don't want to be part of this any more".
Only recently I have discovered the real harm that copyright laws and lobbyists are doing to the society. They are criminalising sharing. Think a bit about it. We have to stand against them. Now there are copyright restrictions on SCIENCE papers. It is effectively a danger to our society.
Here in France a law was proposed to display on CDs price tag how much the artist receives when you buy a CD. It was voted down by lobbyists' minions. That alone says a lot.
[+] [-] cturner|14 years ago|reply
Separately, the person who worked hard to produce whatever you're buying is reaping a fraction of a percentage point of whatever you're spending, and that's only if the distributor hasn't found a way to screw them out of that entirely (or else they've been long since dead).
[+] [-] loup-vaillant|14 years ago|reply
What exactly is stolen? Certainly not the piece of music, film, or knowledge: unlike spaghetti, those are abundant, non-conflicting goods. Nor the exclusivity, for it is only destroyed. Nor secrecy or privacy, for the piece of knowledge or art is public already.
This is not theft. This is infringing a state granted monopoly. It doesn't make it a good idea, mind you. Upholding the law is generally a good idea. But unlike plain theft, it's not obviously wrong either.
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|14 years ago|reply
So while I personally would rather do without (similar to using Linux/Gimp vs pirating Windows/Photoshop etc.) and think that piracy in many ways strengthens the hand of the copyright owners by suffocating legitimate alternatives (again see Linux/Gimp vs pirated XP/Photoshop) I think that encouraging and legitimizing widespread piracy could well be the only "significant political protest" with any chance to succeed.
Riots and revolutions tend to happen in the summer, maybe copyright will only change if some people get to watch Transformers for free. I can live with that.
[+] [-] hxa7241|14 years ago|reply
If someone argues against copyright, you cannot defend it by invoking 'stealing'. The 'stealing' here is not removing of anything in any normal sense. It is infringement of, or disobedience of, copyright -- which of course would not exist if there were no copyright. There is no basic harm.
You might say it would be difficult to pay for production with other economic arrangements. But that is a matter of comparing economic efficiency; it has nothing to do with stealing.
[+] [-] marknutter|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TamDenholm|14 years ago|reply
I no longer pirate music, ive paid for spotify for over 2 years now, i get music wherever i want on any device and its great, i wish they had metallica and acdc but theres youtube for that.
I no longer pirate software, linux got good at "just working" and i've been using ubuntu for years now. I use google docs and other SaaS apps and pay for really good apps like dropbox.
I no longer pirate games, mainly because i'm not much of a gamer, but i have paid for some indie games like SPAZ, Minecraft, QUBE, Darwinia etc because they're indie and the money goes to the developer and the price point is much more reasonable than the big games that come with heavily restrictive DRM.
I still download TV Shows, but not as much as i used to because of BBC iPlayer and similar initiatives, its mainly American TV i download, i've actually no idea if this is illegal or not, considering most of the shows are put on the american networks websites for streaming too.
For films there are LoveFilm, Netflix (now in the UK), iPlayer does some films now as does youtube, but i still think films are the category that is lacking the most, but also a really tough nut to crack, but hell, if it can be done with music, it can be done with films.
So, in my opinion, innovation and me feeling good about giving money to actual people rather than conglomerates is what has stopped me from pirating as much as i used to and thats the key.
[+] [-] yason|14 years ago|reply
I'd happily pay a recurrent, if modest, sum of money for the ability to legally and easily download not only newer but, more importantly, older and more obscure movies and television series to my computer in the form of convenient unencumbered .avi|.mkv|.mp4 files, from a catalog whose selection and quality matches the level of service of the 2010's.
If MAFIAA offered that, with a credible promise that the material will be there ten years from now, I would not only pay for the content but not bother to stash a single file onto my external hard disk. Because of the high level of sophistication when it comes to the selection, quality, and availability of the content it would be far more convenient to just pay again to redownload what I want to see again.
Pay-per-view is exactly what the studios are dreaming of but it's not going to happen through restrictions, but through unrivalled convenience only.
[+] [-] drewblaisdell|14 years ago|reply
They might say "you could never get every movie/album/piece of software in one place like that! It would be an organizational nightmare!" Given no other option, however, they will be forced to innovate.
I own Blu-rays that have anti-piracy ads that I can't skip through before I watch the movie. That alone shows how screwed up this situation is.
[+] [-] rmc|14 years ago|reply
Heheh, and yet The Pirate Bay (and lots of others), have a single site with lots of things. It might be a nightmare, but not only can it exist, but it does exist.
I am always amazed that the pirate/P2P swarm essentially distributes thousands and thousands of films/tv shows/music for free. Distribution is now free! You don't need to pay to copy your bits! Your users will do it for you, for free!
[+] [-] zalthor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cientifico|14 years ago|reply
The only option to get the content I am looking for is through megavideo/piratebay.
With the films, happen the same. If I use my iTunes spanish account, the content is delayed 6 months, no tv shows and all of them in spanish. If I use a German account, I only get German content.
I pay spotify premium since two years ago. But for tv shows and films. The only content i can get is from sites like megavideo/piratebay, etc.
This industry is the only one that doesn't offer to the client what the client wants. Easy.
[+] [-] junto|14 years ago|reply
I pity the 14 million "edge case" Catalan speakers in Spain.
[+] [-] thomasgerbe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zirro|14 years ago|reply
(Fun fact: Availability was what "drove" me into piracy in the first place. There was a TV-show which had aired about a year earlier, which I had missed then but wanted to see. I tried every legal way to obtain it that I could think of, because I believed piracy was wrong at the time, but it was simply not for sale. In the end, I ended up with my first torrent downloading.)
[+] [-] DanielStraight|14 years ago|reply
Modern popular music is properly considered the product of both the artists and the industry. Someone mentioned Rihanna. Do you think you would have any idea who Rihanna is without the music industry? Would her music sound at all the same with the music industry's backing (funds to pay for studio use and hire studio musicians)? If you don't like modern popular music fine, but if you don't like it, why are you pirating it?
Given that perspective, when you download music, you are enjoying both the labor of the artist and the record company. If you don't like the price they're charging to enjoy their services, that does not give you the right to simply not pay. (We can debate elsewhere whether you already have the right to not pay, but you certainly don't get that right simply because you don't like the price.)
Someone asked for a better analogy. Sneaking into a movie theater and standing (so you aren't taking up a seat) in the back is an analogous situation. You are enjoying the services of the movie theater (which you consider worth breaking the law to get access to) without paying their asking price.
Someone reminded us that copying isn't stealing. Well it isn't sharing either. Two children playing with two toys isn't sharing. Two children taking turns with one toy is sharing.
To return to the most important point, the author's argument can be summed up and generalized as, "If you don't like the cost/benefit ratio of a service, you have the right to take it for free as long as no one is directly hurt in the process."
Frankly, I think people like that should be stopped, which as Ed pointed out, almost makes me feel like a SOPA supporter.
[+] [-] vlasta2|14 years ago|reply
In the past I bought a MC and then I bought a CD. I paid twice for the same work. Did the shop offer me a discount? No.
Do I get a discount when I watch the same movie twice in a cinema or if I buy a DVD after I have seen the movie in the cinema? No.
Do I get easy access to mp3 if I buy a CD? No.
The movie/music industry simply sends the wrong signals...
[+] [-] planb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hari_Seldon|14 years ago|reply
It is akin to borrowing a book and then scanning it and using OCR to make an ebook before it is returned to the owner. Or ripping a friend's CD. I don't think a reasonable person would describe this as stealing. This is exactly what file sharing is, except that the scanning/ripping has already been done.
By insisting that this is "stealing" you will alienate some people who might be open to persuasion and to changing their behaviour. They know that they have not deprived the owner of it's use and that they have not stolen anything.
Stop talking about stealing, it's lazy
[+] [-] zerostar07|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rythie|14 years ago|reply
When I hear about stuff like this, along with people's multi-terabyte arrays of content, I wonder if they actually listen/watch much of it. Movie/Record companies are worrying that this all got "stolen" but if it was never viewed was it actually "stolen"?
[+] [-] adaml_623|14 years ago|reply
By pirating this content you are the same as a child stealing candy. The analogy is obviously imperfect because a shop owner is directly damaged by the physical theft but my point is that a child does not need sweets. And 'pirates' do not need bland tv shows distracting them from so many other things in this world that are more deserving of time.
'Pirates' just seem to be sadder version of consumers who don't even help the economy. Little black holes taking and giving nothing back.
I feel sadness that these people try to justify their activities and ally themselves with the SOPA protests.
[+] [-] stefanve|14 years ago|reply
I would pay 50~100 euro per month for a all you can eat package providing that episodes are available with in a week of first broadcast (not in my country but global) and movies are available with in a month after showing in the theater. I asked around (yes very scientific) and most people would to that to.
So I have this money to give to the industry (max 1200 euro per year) but there is no service to give the money to. You could say go rend a movie (if you still can find such a place) but I refuse to pay 5 euro for a sloppy movie (the best movies I see in the theater any ways). You could say buy the movie but I'm not willing to pay 20 euro for a single Blu-ray. If tomorrow I could not download movies and TV-series any more I still wouldn't do that). In almost every other industry products follow demand but apparently the entertainment industry thinks they are above basic free market economics.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|14 years ago|reply
Sharing, lending, and broadcasting have been a core part of the dissemination of creative works for centuries. Libraries. Personal borrowing. Museums. Broadcast TV and radio. For the entirety of the modern age it has been the norm for the average individual "consuming" a creative work to do so without directly purchasing a licensed copy. Somehow creative industries survived.
Today the limits to copying are very different and thus unfamiliar if not frightening for some. Yet creative industries have not died and are not dying, despite persistent attempts to fight against modern technology at every stage (resisting digital distribution, creating experiences that are typically wholly inferior to the "piracy" experience). Imagine if literature, music, etc. never embraced libraries, radio, or television. Imagine if book lending was made illegal.
There are ways to embrace sharing and dissemination of IP without direct payment for every consumed copy while still maintaining profitability. The old limits are dead. Portraying all manner of sharing of creative works as "intellectual property theft" is frankly ridiculous. The idea that the line between borrowing a book from a library (or reading a book within the library) and borrowing a digital copy of a movie from a friend (or even a stranger) is a line between acceptable behavior and theft is an idea born of prejudice and provincialism. We need to get over such old prejudices and begin to form new models and new boundaries.
[+] [-] true_religion|14 years ago|reply
I can understand those who claim that what they are doing isn't thievery.
I can understand those that don't accept the idea of intellectual property in general.
But for you to both buy into the philosophy that what you are taking is valuable, and ought to be protected---then still steal it proudly..... that is one thing I can't understand.
Aren't people supposed to want to be good?
[+] [-] phzbOx|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaxPresman|14 years ago|reply
Most music startups that stream music do not bother with canada, and that's sad.
Read the article why pandora decided to quit the Canadian market, sad true story
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JgGeRC_...