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Internet Piracy/Sharing: Your Thoughts?

Started by LegendarySandwich, January 02, 2011, 11:10:21 PM

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TheJackel

Quote from: "DJAkuma"
Quote from: "Whitney"What about copyrighted material existing prevents the free exchange of ideas any more than it does in the "real world" and what about the internet entitles it to supersede established law?

If I remember right the original intent of copyrighting was so that one could have a few years to profit off of their work before others could freely copy and improve on it, walt disney screwed it all up by pushing for copyrights to be extended far beyond what's reasonable. I doesn't prevent the free exchange of ideas but it slows it down some.

So you are saying that companies ought to be willing to give up their property ownership to you, as well as be limited by your standards as to how much they can make on a  product? I didn't realize this was a Pirate Theocracy.. And far I can tell, a lot of software like games are mod friendly to which come with mod tools. It's irrelevant if you think X-product needs or doesn't need improvement as that is not an argument. I don't see anything beyond reasonable here.

The Magic Pudding

Quote from: "TheJackel"
Quote from: "DJAkuma"If I remember right the original intent of copyrighting was so that one could have a few years to profit off of their work before others could freely copy and improve on it, walt disney screwed it all up by pushing for copyrights to be extended far beyond what's reasonable. I doesn't prevent the free exchange of ideas but it slows it down some.

So you are saying that companies ought to be willing to give up their property ownership to you, as well as be limited by your standards as to how much they can make on a  product? I didn't realize this was a Pirate Theocracy.. And far I can tell, a lot of software like games are mod friendly to which come with mod tools. It's irrelevant if you think X-product needs or doesn't need improvement as that is not an argument. I don't see anything beyond reasonable here.

Intellectual property is an abstract principle, I don't see why governments shouldn't make laws that encourage and reward creators, but also gives as much benefit as possible to society, by enabling further development and cheaper products.  It's a matter of balance, I suppose a person with an extreme ideology or self interest may declare the whole system unfair.

QuoteGeneric drugs only become available when the original manufacturer’s patent expires. Drug companies are granted “patents” on new drugs they discover or invent. A patent gives the company a monopoly for up to 20 years â€" during that time no one else can sell that drug. This does not mean, however, that drug companies actually get a full twenty years to sell the drug.  They usually apply for a patent early in the process of developing a new drug.  Only after the FDA has approved the drug can the company sell it. This usually takes at least a few years after the company has gotten its patent. So the real amount of time that a drug company can be the only one selling a new drug is less than 20 years.  http://www.genericsarepowerful.org/learn?id=0011

So the creators of antibiotics, should they still have a stranglehold on its production?
I don't think so, the status quo doesn't seem unreasonable, profits are there to encourage research, but eventually cheap generics will be available and further development of the product is possible. The powers that be do get it right some times, though details can be argued such as the situation in developing countries.

Asmodean

Quote from: "LegendarySandwich"Yeah, but if I bought a bus ticket, I would expect to able to do what I want with it.
And as a ticket holder is not at liberty to drive the bus or tune it or unscrew things or make blueprints to copy it, so is a CD buyer not at liberty to do those things with the information on the disk. The disk itself, however, is the metaphorical bus ticket, with which you can do what you want.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

LegendarySandwich

Quote from: "Asmodean"
Quote from: "LegendarySandwich"Yeah, but if I bought a bus ticket, I would expect to able to do what I want with it.
And as a ticket holder is not at liberty to drive the bus or tune it or unscrew things or make blueprints to copy it, so is a CD buyer not at liberty to do those things with the information on the disk. The disk itself, however, is the metaphorical bus ticket, with which you can do what you want.
Actually, I am at liberty to do those things. The only thing that's stopping me is a law that rarely ever gets enforced.

hismikeness

Quote from: "Stevil"Lack of intellictual property rights stifles innovation and removes incentive to produce a quality product.
As file "sharing" gets more and more common we will find movies becoming only b-grade, we will find less and less quality musicians and bands.

I believe the exact opposite. Piracy has taken a bite out of the artists' wallet. For years, consumers blindly purchased a CD because of a song they heard on the radio, only to find the rest of the CD was crap, just as an example. Then, along came digital music, mp3's and such, and Napster followed. Now, if I only want one song, I get one song. Then, iTunes and other online stores allowed you to buy just one song. If you remember, some record companies initially refused to allow their artist's materials on iTunes because they didn't like that model. Most have seen that it is a reasonable way for people to purchase material.

I think that piracy has improved the quality of material being released. It seems to me that movies are simply better, music is better, tv shows are better because for people that pirate to purchase, there has to be reasonable incentive.

Myself... if I'm unsure about an artist or a movie or a tv show, I will pirate (usually at a lower digital quality) it first, then if I like it I will purchase it. For too long I spent my money on crap media to blindly drop cash on stuff anymore.

And, I don't think that piracy is as widespread as people believe. More often than not people will ask me how to download, and they know nothing about it. I tell them to google, knowing that they will be routed to many "fake" sites and give up. I don't, however, tell them to google "pirate bay". But even that... you have to have the torrent program as well.
No churches have free wifi because they don't want to compete with an invisible force that works.

When the alien invasion does indeed happen, if everyone would just go out into the streets & inexpertly play the flute, they'll just go. -@UncleDynamite

Asmodean

Quote from: "LegendarySandwich"Actually, I am at liberty to do those things. The only thing that's stopping me is a law that rarely ever gets enforced.
That... And the bus driver with a bus-sized tire iron. I think he'd get him that if you decided you wanted to drive  :pop:
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

LegendarySandwich

Quote from: "Asmodean"You are at liberty to do whatever you want, even be it prohibited by the law, but using that liberty, you also forfeit the right to whine when the enforcers come to collect, no..?  :pop:
Nope. I can still whine if I want to. I'd just look like a damn fool.

Tom62

My 2cts. Some copyright enforcement measures goes far beyond anything that is reasonable acceptable for the consumers. Examples: outrageous lawsuits against ordinary people, who downloaded just a few songs and now have to pay loads of money in "damages"; content that cannot be viewed or purchased, if you don't happen to live in the USA (like Netflix, E-Books, stuff in the Apple Store and YouTube video's); DVD's that cannot be watched on your DVD player, because of heavy copy protection and regional codes; DRM that cripples your hardware, etc. etc. etc. These types of draconian, consumer unfriendly measures have to stop.

Yes, I believe that piracy should be forbidden and that the artists should continue to make a decent living, selling their stuff on the internet. On the other hand, we should not allow ourselves to be treated as potential criminals. I also expect a fair price for digital content. It is unfair towards the customers, if a digital copy of a product is only marginally cheaper than the physical version (note: some older CD's are cheaper on Amazon than their downloadable versions in the Apple Store!). Once a digital copy is produced, there are barely any storage-, production- or shipping costs. These cost savings should be reflected in the price.
The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.
Robert A. Heinlein

Asmodean

Quote from: "LegendarySandwich"Nope. I can still whine if I want to. I'd just look like a damn fool.
Indeed. Do what you want, then pay the price. Expecting not to pay the price is kind of foolish.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Gawen

There are two soundtracks I'd like to have. But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $40 for each one (last time I looked)...coming from two Japanese movies (Onmyoji series) that virtually no one knows about, although they may have been hits in Japan. The soundtracks are not important to me, really, otherwise I would have tried ripping them from somewhere by now.

And that's my 4 halfpence...
The essence of the mind is not in what it thinks, but how it thinks. Faith is the surrender of our mind; of reason and our skepticism to put all our trust or faith in someone or something that has no good evidence of itself. That is a sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith is not.
"When you fall, I will be there" - Floor

Event_Horizon

F***! Why didn't I find this thread sooner? I am actually in a debate with someone on another forum regarding copyright, piracy, and file sharing. I'll put my abbreviated argument here.

My first point is this: in capitalism we have personal property rights which allows us to combine our physical labor to manipulate material objects, making those objects property. You plant an apple tree, the labor (tilling cutting, harvesting) combined with your investment capital (seeds, water) produces fruit, and that fruit is yours. You can sell the fruit, eat the fruit, or whatever you want, because it is yours.

Second point: every human has certain rights, regardless of who or what grants them, and those rights cannot be infringed upon.

Third Point: Creators have certain human rights, and consumers have certain rights, but there is a conflict between the rights of the consumer and the rights of the creator in one central aspect: distribution. Distribution is to spread the work in any manner conceivable, and there is a conflict between who should get that right: the consumer or the creator. My argument would be that distribution rests solely with the creator because only the creator stands to gain or lose from the distribution methods they choose, and anyone who is not the creator, or has a stake in the creation's success, should not get the privilege to distribute work they have no stake in.

Fourth point: any use of force is unethical, no matter where it comes from or what kind of force it is.

Fifth point: our economic system is entirely voluntary, and does not allow for any force or coercion. This ties into my fourth point.

Finally, to define terms, there are two completely independent actions when someone refers to piracy, and I will only address one in the argument, but I'll explain the other. The pirate I focus on is the person who buys a CD, or a book, or a movie and puts it online for free. The other "pirate" is simply a person who finds such media and takes it. I don't have a problem with the latter because if the media is already there, then a completely different set of ethics is present. So with all that out of the way: here's my argument.

I find piracy simply unethical because it violates basic tenets of property, human rights, and uses force. If an author writes a book, they have ownership and distribution privileges. If the pirate then takes that book and puts it on a torrent site, or makes a PDF they are doing several unethical actions.

1: The pirate is infringing on the personal property rights and the right of distribution of the creator in choosing how distribute the media without consent, and since any kind of infringement of rights is unethical, the pirate's actions are therefore unethical.

2: The pirate uses force against the creator to distribute their media in channels that they do not want without consent, and any use of force against someone is unethical, so therefore the pirate's actions are unethical.

3: The pirate is usurping the principles of the voluntary market by involuntarily forcing the creator to compete with their own creation, and since the market MUST be voluntary, the pirate's actions break the fundamental principals of our voluntary economic system and are therefore unethical.

What it all comes down to is consent. If you take a friend's car without consent, it is theft. If you have sex with someone without their consent, it's rape. If you make someone work for you without consent, it is slavery. The logic and ethics do not change when it comes to digital media.

At least those are my thoughts for this particular moment.

LegendarySandwich

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... cyfaq.com/
Quote1. What is piracy?
In this context piracy refers to copyright infringement, not to trademark violation,
robbery committed at sea or counterfeiting.

2. Pirates only want content for free!
This is a common misconception about the piracy movement. Pirates are not against
artists getting support by buying their content, but the argument pirates made that
it should not be forced by the law.
Pirates encourage consumers to support content producers, but they also want the sum of human
culture to be freely available to everyone. Information is a special resource in a way, since once
it is made it can be copied to everyone at basically zero cost. This is the reason that it can be
economically shared to everyone, and there is no real reason to use the old scarcity based economical
models. Pirates have noticed that as technologies progress, so must laws, and a law based on the
technological level of the Middle Ages does not make sense in the modern information age.

3. Piracy is a form of communism, which has been "proven not to work".
It is a fallacy to claim that anything which sounds like communism must therefore to be wrong,
but in any case pirates are not generally communists. Pirate ideology attracts support from all sides of the
political spectrum. Pirates are also not against authors receiving compensation for their works,
we actually encourage it! Many content producers have noticed that by supporting piracy
their profits have increased, since piracy is free advertising for them.

The idea of communism is not related to information, since that can be copied to everyone
and no invidividual is losing resources because of this sharing. In a broader sense, communism
is an economic structure where the state owns the means of production, which is not a goal
in the piracy movement.

4. Immaterial rights don't matter.
There is a clear global trend, that information and 'intellectual property' is becoming more
and more important to the economy. Also, the development of technology is enabling people to
to consume and produce more content than ever before. At the same time, various copyright organizations
are trying to fight the piracy movement as a threat to their profits, by throwing students into jail
and sueing single parents.

5. If piracy is legal, content producers won't get paid.
According to a Canadian study, those who illegally download alot of music also buy it more[2].
The study concludes that for every 12 downloaded songs, music purchases increase by
0.44 CDs. Many downloaders have said that they simply want to preview their music
before purchase, and buy it if the CD turns out to be one they like.

6. Piracy is stealing.
Piracy is not technically nor legally stealing. Piracy is about copying information,
it is not taking away anything from anyone. Legally speaking piracy is copyright infringement,
which has no connection to stealing. It is also false that people who pirate never buy content,
since according a recent study people who download a lot of music tend to also buy it a lot[2].

Also, the argument was crafted through the use of propaganda, by calling copyrights and similar
concepts intellectual property. Since people understand the theft of property as morally wrong,
the pro-copyright people wanted to equate piracy as theft,to make it look bad or morally wrong. In reality however,
copyright is not 'intellectual property', but a monopoly created to prevent the freedom to make copies.

7. Art would die if all copying would be legalized.
Content producers can make money using the same exact ways as they used to,
by selling the content, using advertising, selling fan-products and so on.
In the future digital distribution will increase if people are given what they
demand (DRM-free products!), and studies have shown that piracy does not decrease
profits[2].One study found that those who download music illegally buy 10 times more music
than those who don't[7].

Also, there exists millions of artists who do not create art for the purpose
of making profit, but to express themselves, and release it for free for the public
to enjoy. Besides, in many countries (or in the past), internet downloading was
completely legal, and it didn't stop people from buying music and movies, and
increased penalties and legislation has not decreased piracy at all, and when
piracy has gone up profits have not gone down either.

8. How does legalizing copying help arts?
It helps the culture, since the more it is shared the more people can enjoy it,
because currently they can afford only limited amount of it. It also makes it possible
for the masses to use this content, create new remixes and mash-ups from it and therefore
create new culture.

9. Internet piracy costs the industry billions of dollars every year.
Large corporations tend to calculate how many copies of their work has been downloaded,
then simply claim that each of those downloads is counted as a "lost sale". This has two
problems. Firstly, many people preview something by first downloading it, and then buying
it if they like the product. Secondly, most of these downloads are by people who wouldn't
have bought them in the first place. Hollywood profits have been steadily increasing even
when internet piracy has increased.

10. Copyright is a form of human right.
No it isn't: the freedom to earn money from your work is a human right, but you don't need copyright
for that. Copyright restricts your right to do what you want with things you've bought - it's not a
right, it's a restriction of rights.

11. Without copyright there is no incentive to create content.
Open source, mash-ups, youtube, community projects, Star Wreck, creative commons, etc.
It is absolutely wrong to say that people wouldn't produce content without profiting,
and besides, getting rid of copyright does not mean the end of commercial content producing.
The western world produces about 1000 free songs per day, which is probably comparable
to the amount of commercial music produced, if not more.

12. Pirates are freeloaders who do not buy content.
Studies [2] have shown that those who download a lot of music, also tend to buy it a lot.
The myth that pirates are criminals who only 'steal' content has been constructed by
various copyright organizations out of fear from piracy.

13. Pirates are the reason Hollywood has declining profits.
People often assume that piracy is the reason for declining profits
in the entertainment industry, but the facts tell a different story.
In fact, in the year 2007 Hollywood reported a record breaking year for the movie industry[1].

14. Piratism is illegal, therefore it is wrong.
It is a fallacy to claim that if something is illegal, therefore it is morally wrong.
There has been laws against freedom of speech, against blasphemy or homosexuality, but
a modern society generally accepts these things. Even if it were the case that breaking the law
in itself is wrong, it is not an argument against the piracy movement. Our aim is not to encourage
law-breaking, but to change the laws itself.

15. Pirates are young people who don't understand how the society really works.
Piracy movement is mainly supported by youth for the simple reason that they are the people
most affected by the copyright legislation. Older people use new technology less, and the youth
have also grown-up during the Internet age, where people took it for granted that information could
be shared and edited to create new information.

16. Pirates just consume content but never produce it.
A main point in the piracy ideology is that it is not acceptable to protect the "rights" of the minority
of content producers by breaking the rights like privacy and freedom of speech from the majority.
However, the assumption that no content producers support piracy is wrong. Content producers from
musicians like Trent Reznor[3] to the creators of South Park[4] support piracy.
There also exists a huge indie community of video,music and game/software creators that releases their content
for free.

17. Analyzing internet traffic to detect piracy is okay if you don't break the law.
In every case when a new privacy breaching law is proposed, the argument is always
presented that if you don't break the law you have nothing to fear. The problem with
this argument is that it allows the state to monitor everything from private communications
to private life. A core argument for piracy is that to prevent it, in practice a totalitarian
Big-Brother state is needed, and we are obviously against that. "The rights of" the copyright holders
must never interfere with basic human rights such as the right to privacy. If the ISP's are forced
to install some basic packet inspecting technology at a high cost, pirates simply move to an encrypted
P2P-network in an never-ending arms-race.

18. New technology is not a reason to change laws.
New technology has been a powerful force in changing laws in the past.
For example, it used to be the case that property extented infinitely upwards from the land,
but since the introduction of airplanes that law was obviously has to be changed, since it would've
been impractical to ask permission from the thousands of landowners every flight.

We can use Moore's law to project the development of technology in the future, and it a few decades
you can buy an mp3-player that has enough disk space to hold every single song ever made, and wirelessly
transmit it to everyone around you. In this situation the only real way to prevent copyright infringement
is to implement a totalitarian big brother society, and even that will make it difficult to prevent piracy
in the future. The next generation of p2p-networks like Freenet [5] will be totally encrypted,
completely decentralized and it will be difficult to know who is sending what, or
where the files are even coming from.

19. Why don't you create a political party then?
We have done that with great frequency. Also check PP-International.

20. Artists should have rights too.
The current copyright law is effective at restricting the creation of new art,
since remixes and mash-ups can be illegal. One example is the illegal album The Grey Album,
made by Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley). In a free society, people would have the right to
create new content by using old content.

21. No artist supports piracy.
Content producers from musicians like Trent Reznor[3]and novelist Paulo Coelho[6] to the creators of South Park[4] support piracy.
Alex Jones, an American radio host also advocates his fans to burn DVDs and distribute them for free. [8]
Michael Moore said after the leak of his movie: "I'm just happy that people get to see my movies.
I'm not a big supporter of the copyright laws in this country...I don't understand bands or filmmakers...
who oppose sharing, hav[ing] their work being shared by people, because it only increases your fanbase" [9].


Sources:
1. EFF: Hollywood's Record Year Shows MPAA's Piracy Folly
2. The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada
3. Nails frontman urges fans to steal music
4. South Park Libertarians
5. The Freenet Project
6. Alchemist Author Pirates His Own Books
7. Study: Free Music Downloaders Buy 10 Times More Music
8. Alex Jones Tv 1/5:Open Phone Lines, 2:00
9. MTV.com, Michael Moore Brushes Off 'Sicko' Leakbh, retrieved 2007-07-12

Last updated on 12.4.2010
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Thoughts?

LegendarySandwich


Asmodean

Point 21: Yeah... And I can find a dozen names of artists who do NOT support piracy. You can not show a general trend with a few examples. You need statistics, the verified variety.

Other points: might get back to later.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

LegendarySandwich

Quote from: "Asmodean"Point 21: Yeah... And I can find a dozen names of artists who do NOT support piracy. You can not show a general trend with a few examples. You need statistics, the verified variety.
The point wasn't to show that the majority of artists support piracy, the point was to show that some artists do indeed support it.