I'm tired of this. I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore. I don't even feel guilty about it. If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen.
I'm also tired of people preaching about how piracy is unethical. A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale. People cannot own information. You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of motion, imagine if he owned calculus. How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds. If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws.
edit: And let us not forget the primary purpose of these laws. The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea. It was to provide an incentive for people to create and learn. Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite.
> If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws.
People used to think freeing someone's slave was unethical property theft as well. As soon as the economic interest shift, so does the mainstream ethics. Same will happen to piracy, as soon as authors cannot make money off copyright and patents. Then it's the monopoly of ideas that will become unethical, and not the other way around.
> If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly.
1. If a musician doesn't want to have publishers taking a cut of the revenue from their music they are free to not have a publisher involved.
2. If a musician wants to distribute their music for free or have a pay what you want system they can.
If a musician chooses to use a publisher or big label then you should respect that; pretending that a publisher is a worthless middleman and using it to justify pirating media is laughable. If the publisher was worthless then the musician would not be using them, would they?
Do you really think people like Rihanna and One Direction wish they could set up a bandcamp account and get rid of the publishers? Of course not because publishers provide real tangible value.
Either respect the wishes of the musician by consuming through official channels or just pirate it, don't pretend you're a noble person by wanting to "donate" to the musician directly, if the musician wanted that they would not have a label involved.
You completely misunderstood. I'm not justifying pirating by "pretending" the publisher is a worthless middleman. Did you not read my post? Piracy is not unethical. The fact that a middleman exists gives me more incentive to not purchase through the traditional means.
Piracy is not unethical. It's not wrong. It's not stealing. If the musician wants to own the content they should simply not release it. I could care less about "respecting" the musician. Why should I pay money for low quality content when I could download the flac version for free without drm?
Does repeating a statement as "Piracy is not stealing" make it true? Does echo-chambering the meme "Artists just ask for this" make it true after enough mindless repetition here and elsewhere?
Why would any content creator (except, of course, producers of software, they laugh at you from their SaaS cloud) want to create anything if a pompous and self-righteous "respecting" in quotes is the spit in the face?
Or could you care less? If so, why do you consider payment-or-not-download not an option? (hint: "because I can" was already answered but not considered satisfactory)
> Does repeating a statement as "Piracy is not stealing" make it true?
When it's the supreme court repeating it, that certainly make it true. [1]
> Why would any content creator (except, of course, producers of software, they laugh at you from their SaaS cloud) want to create anything if a pompous and self-righteous "respecting" in quotes is the spit in the face?
For the same reason humans have been creating art since much before the existence of copyright? The notion that we can attribute as "property" on something not tangible only appeared recently in human history [2]. While we have been creating art for much longer.
Not to get into the argument (if you can't understand the difference between copyright infringement and theft, good luck), but the suggestion that no one would create work without copyright is absurd.
Plenty of music is released for free, many photographers are happy just to have someone see their work, and lots of software is written with very permissive licenses.
Remember, the entire point of copyright is to benefit society by having more works available to the public. That's it. I don't believe it's proven that we need strong (or any?) copyright in order for this to happen.
Too often people are just ignorant about the law's purpose, or they just don't understand it. I can see why too, it's a simpler argument with a lot of money behind it for the creator to say they should own what they create rather than realizing the limited time monopoly was only a means to promote the progress of science and useful arts.
> If the artist wants money he should set up a donations account so I can pay him directly. I'm tired of these middlemen.
The middlemen play an important role in some industries. Many people ask cstross why he doesn't have a donation link so that people who've read a pirate version of one of his books can pay him. He is very clear - he wants you to buy a book of his (any book) so that his publisher can get some of the cash as well. Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc.
Some of this could be taken away from the middlemen. Kindles could have a "highlight typo / highlight grammar error" mode, which sends possible corrections to the publisher who reviews, then corrects them, and they get updated on the device.
I've never trawled through a slush pile. But having seen some of the rubbish that comes out the end I dread to think what goes in the other end.
> If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws.
I am happy to pirate a lot of content. But I try hard to pay for everything I pirate. Sometimes that's not possible (out of print book, no longer distributed video, etc.) There are lots of things about content distribution that really suck. But I do try to pay for my content.
It is wrong to suggest that wanting to pay people for the work they do is something that only a dolt would do.
> Books need to be written, edited, typeset, 'printed' / 'put into ebook format', distributed, etc.
The author writes the book. Typesetting and "putting into ebook format" are a copy-and-paste affair, taking at most a day. Pirated books don't need to be printed or distributed.
>Typesetting and "putting into ebook format" are a copy-and-paste affair, taking at most a day.
I suggest you try doing it for someone else's work. Try signing up to be an editor at one of the story-writing sites.
It's not a copy-and-paste affair. And doing it well requires non-trivial amount of attention and time.
So, they pay once for that time and effort. That doesn't mean that they should be paid in perpetuity! Imagine a cobbler who fixes my shoes. Should I pay them for every step I take? Of course not, I pay them once for the work they have done.
Because continuing that analogy, you should pay once for that time and effort on the part of the publisher as well. It kind of falls apart, and I'm pretty sure it's not the point you were trying to make.
I'm a little confused. Why should I pay for a product more than once? My analogy of shoes is that it's a service you purchase. If I need to purchase the service again, then I will... pay a second time :-) But if I purchase a college textbook, unless there is some massively important content update, then I can't see why I need to purchase it more than once!
To be clear, if more than one person buys the book, then the time and effort will have been repaid by more than one person. The analogy I provided doesn't actually fall down - if several people go to the cobbler to have their shoes repaired, more the good for the cobbler!
So yes, I only would pay once for the time and effort of the publisher for that book. I might buy more books from the publisher, but then that is different content.
I'm not following your reasoning as to why I or anyone else should pay the publisher more than once for the same product. Could you clarify?
>I'm not following your reasoning as to why I or anyone else should pay the publisher more than once for the same product. Could you clarify?
Ahh, I kind of misunderstood. I got on some odd tangent about software in general (i've been arguing a piracy thread on another board recently and got the two conflated in my mind) and forgot that this was a thread about textbook shenaniganery.
Still, I rather dislike physical analogies to digital things as they're usually terribly flawed in one way or another. There is at least an argument (if not a very good or reasonable one) on the whole textbook licensing thing. There is no reasonable argument in any universe real or imagined where cobbler would charge you per step. It's reductio ad absurdum.
Of course! Sorry, I might have been unclear. I'm talking about the service of repairing my shoes. Not for every step I took in the shoes... that would indeed be absurd :-)
Edit: OMG, I really did write "every step I take"! That was a total brain fart, and not in any way what I meant to say. I have no idea why I wrote that :( A little embarassed now!
> Because that person made it? Are you saying people have no right to own the things they make?
"I can only see so far because I'm standing in the shoulder of giants."
Imagine if you had to pay for every one of the thousands little concept that your own idea (inevitably) derives from. That system would be unsustainable. We can only make progress because we can expand and improve on what were created before.
Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from?
That's a straw man.
The argument for paying people for new IP is that for a limited time we should offer rewards for people to add to the collective knowledge of our society.
So really in terms of your argument, the consumer isn't paying for "standing on the shoulder of giants" either. The consumer of IP is only paying for the incremental value added by the creator of the content.
As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation.
> Who is arguing that one should pay for every previous idea that a new idea is derived from?
IP limits production to create artificial scarcity. No matter how you look at it, after you copyright or patent something. You are limiting what can be created in the world.
> As a society, we discovered that rewarding producers adds to the useful aggregate more than just hoping that they'll add the same amount of content without compensation
No we did not. Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more monopoly privilege for the monarchy. [1] Together with the monopoly selling rice, and other commodities, were the monopoly of printing books. At no point in history did we, as a society, conclude that if we limit reward producers it would add to the useful aggregate. That excuse was only invented after the "monopoly privilege" over copying books were renamed to "copy rights". At the same time that other monarchy monopolies were destroyed.
Society never discovered that it's worth in the aggregate. You cannot prove it's worth in the aggregate. Any attempt so far to measure the aggregate has been absurd. [2]
> You are limiting what can be created in the world.
Not really true. You could say that IP limits some forms of use that could produce new creations. But that would ignore the fact that often IP is licensed, thus not preventing the creation of some content.
Further, providing a reward for the creation of new IP dramatically increases the overall creation rate of what society considers to be "useful" IP.
> No we did not. Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more monopoly privilege for the monarchy
That's just an ad hominem.
> At no point in history did we, as a society, conclude that if we limit reward producers it would add to the useful aggregate.
See, this is just factually incorrect. All you need to do is to look at US history and the motivations for creating copyright and patent law as part of the new nation to see that you're wrong.
The saddest thing is that I actually think that our system of IP is in serious need of a rewrite. The way that big media companies abuse our legal system and the power of our government should be criminalized. At very least, we should be using statistical models and the Scientific method to determine the ideal values for copyright and patent lengths rather than basing new IP laws upon the lobbying efforts of Disney.
That said, as an advocate for changing the situation, you're not being effective. You make totally unfounded arguments and in at least one other place in this same thread I saw where you were using cheap online debating tricks to try to get your point across.
When I read the original article this thread is based on, I felt some legitimate annoyance at the professor since what he's doing is unethical. But then I read a couple of your posts and felt I needed to respond to arguments that were remarkably uninformed and disingenuously constructed.
Actually, it isn't. Ad hominem is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.
In this case, he is referring to a third party (the monarchy) who actually did use it as a monopoly priviledge for the monarchy. Saying that it is frabricated does not make it so. In fact, if you look at all that was said, it was "Historically, Intellectual property was created as one more monopoly privilege for the monarchy."
> Actually, it isn't. Ad hominem is an attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of the person supporting it.
Which is what the poster did in bringing up the motivations of a monarchy that used some form of IP regulation that we weren't even discussing. Discrediting monarchies' motivations for wanting IP has nothing to do with the situation we have today. It's an ad hominem.
None of that has anything to do with the utility of reward-based IP laws in promoting the creation of useful IP to society. So you could also consider some argument about how monarchies used IP in medieval times to be a red herring. Regardless of the label, the argument is equally invalid.
If you read the context of that quote then you're telling me you think that the USPTO is arguing that an effectively infinite amount of money should be paid for every new piece of IP since you'd also need to pay something for all the IP that it was built upon.
The USPTO is certainly NOT arguing that when you pay for IP you also must pay something for everything that the IP is built upon.
Perhaps not. But let's say that I patent some technology that uses as it's basis another idea that is patented. Then I develop some technology based on this. I then license that technology. Then someone else creates a patent based on my patent and then licenses it from me.
So here is where I perhaps get a little confused. Is this allowed? If you can't refine an idea, then this restricts innovation. If I can refine the idea and then patent it, does this mean that any license costs must go only to me? Or do I have to pay a portion of these license costs to the original patent I have derived my ideas from?
Option 1: Can't refine a patent. Result: restriction of innovation and trade.
Option 2: You can refine a patent, but don't have have to license this to the original patent author. Result: you can bypass patents. The whole system becomes pointless.
Option 3: You can refine a patent, but you must pay part of the license you charge to the original patentee. Result: Costs increase for each patent license.
I Don't have a problem with it if I can get an ebook for a reasonable place. That being said, throughout college many of my books were ~$150. No way I'm paying that.
>The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea
Agreed, although getting wealthy off an idea isn't inherently unethical either.
> provide an incentive for people to create and learn.
Agreed. Rewarding people for adding "useful" pieces to societies knowledge base should be rewarded.
> Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite.
In the aggregate? I don't think so. The professor in the linked article for this thread is obviously doing the opposite. In undergraduate academia, 95% (made up number) of the actual knowledge in the materials being used to educate are or should be in the public domain.
The fact that the market for calculus books didn't completely collapse with the advent of the laptop (let alone the ipad) is a sign that there's a deliberate effort in the academic world to force students to pay for intellectual property that has no value beyond what is already freely available elsewhere.
But to generalize and claim that all copyright and patent laws are doing more harm than good is specious. Are you saying we should get rid of all IP protections? Completely?
I am not going to pay for any product I can pirate anymore.
+
A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale
uhh huh?
Why not just declare that you're not going to look at anything that's subject to copyright any more? That way you can avoid paying those evil royalties to the people who create artwork, and nobody can say you're wrong.
Don't watch TV, don't listen to music, don't read any book published after [whatever the cutoff date is] and don't play video games. Sounds like that's what will make you happy.
I'm also tired of people preaching about how piracy is unethical. A copied piece of data is not equivalent to a lost sale. People cannot own information. You cannot own an algorithm or idea. Imagine if Newton owned the laws of motion, imagine if he owned calculus. How can someone own an arrangement of words or sounds. If you think piracy is unethical you are either a dolt or benefiting from current copyright and patent laws.
edit: And let us not forget the primary purpose of these laws. The purpose wasn't so you could get insanely wealthy off of an idea. It was to provide an incentive for people to create and learn. Copyright and patent laws are now doing the opposite.