This thread has gone in pretty-much the opposite direction from what I intended, which is sadly about exactly what I expected.
I thought I made a decent argument here on why you were wrong about people will go for the old over the new.
The secondary market exists. The existence and proliferation of this market necessitates a change in certain business models, or else those business models will cease to function. Is there room for copyright law in this changing marketplace?
My answer is yes, but in a different format. Crazy lady on that blog says no, because she's crazy.
My answer is that copyright will simply become increasingly less relevant to the way society actually works. Removing it altogether would give a lot of companies the jolt they need to change their business model, but it doesn't really matter if it remains. Some people will be punished for copyright violation along the way, but short of major government intervention, it won't matter on a larger scale.
Just because it exists does not mean it is universally owned.
Yes, but when something can be copied for free, there is very little excuse for it not to be universally available. It benefits everyone if everyone in the world has access to the media and the artist is compensated in a manner that is not based on copyright.
If the artist is not voluntarily providing their work for free, then forcefully taking it is the same as involuntary servitude.
Making a copy doesn't constitute "taking" their work, however.
The music industry is in a very tough position because what they create is so easy to copy and distribute.
I hate to keep going back to the same point, but really, it all boils down to this: they need to change their business model or shut the fuck up.
The music and movie business model began to die in the 80's. It wasn't just cassette tapes and VHS recorders that started it either. It was the emergence of metal bands and raps groups that were able to sell albums without the help of a major record label that precipitated the demise of the industry. It was this realization among the content creators that the big labels no longer held the position of market gatekeeper that started the industry's fall.
The media industry has two problems:
1. Their product is easy to duplicate and distribute. 2. They are no longer the gatekeeper.
They may have been able to handle one of those two problems but when you combine them it is impossible to overcome.
Also, me listening to someone's music isn't forcing them to work. They did the work already. The work was the creation of the art. That's the only part of the process that can be considered creative or artistic work. You made it. Now you are done working. Nobody takes it from you by force. You can keep it in your house and never share it with anybody. But as soon as you share it with one person, they can share it with the whole world, if they so choose. If you would like them not to share it, then have them explicitly and contractually agree not to do so before you give it to them.
So, you are arguing that if someone wants to make money from their art, then their only option is that they should charge the entire production price to the first person to consume it, and then everyone else can get it for free?
Clearly not. You're ignoring a wealth of possibilities, Nuri. For one, there is the threshold pledge system, which is a way to be paid for a single release of a product without having to simply charge the first person. Additionally, TheWhaleShark suggested a service-based system where you get access to all of the music from one record company, though I think tying the model to a record company is still problematic as more and more artists are detaching themselves from record companies and the like. Artists can also make money simply from voluntary donations.
On the other hand, here's a much more reasonable copyright model: Balanceed Buyout
Could you say that the secondary market is comprised of the people that are pirating? For example, Adobe is very restrictive with Photoshop and it's hard to get a previous version of their software from them. They also raise the price of the first sale of new versions because of restrictions on secondary sale of their older products. Due to this you get the secondary market, in some cases, pirating the older software because the cost. The restrictions on the first-sale is causing a increase of piracy in the secondary market. I don't think its piracy vs the secondary market but, piracy vs first-sale.
With that could it be that we just apply copyright laws just to first-sale of the product only? This would leave previous versions free to distribute among people. New versions of Photoshop would have to include new features worth purchasing. They would have to adjust the first sale to reflect what they have done with the new product. They could keep the model of just selling the newest version and maybe guarantee support for a certain amount of time.
Scott, when you need your hair cut and you go to a barber, do you negotiate the price of your haircut and arrive at a mutually agreed upon, signed contract for services before you sit in the barber's chair?
If you don't, then why should you pay the barber once he's finished? Isn't he a little like a squeegee man?
What about a taxi that pulls up in front of you on a street corner? Is the driver of that cab like a squeegee man? If you didn't wave it over, does that mean you can get in and ride to California for free?
What about the Subway? It's just sitting there and will continue to keep running in spite of your patronage, just like the artists who the article compares to being virtual slaves to their muses. If you get on a train and don't pay, it would be supported by all the people who do pay. Does that make it right for you not to pay?
If I go of my own volition to a plantation and work the cotton gin, if they refuse to pay me afterwards, that's not slavery. That's just me giving out free work. If you want to be paid in money, rather than simply being paid in "life", then arrange to be paid before you create your art, not after. To force someone to pay for work you decided to do all on your own after the fact, that's extortion.
In fact, why should your employer pay you? I think there's ample evidence that you would do computer work whether you were paid or not. How is your work different from an artist enslaved to her muse or the person who you wrote about who simply enjoyed working with a cotton gin?
Scott, when you need your hair cut and you go to a barber, do you negotiate the price of your haircut and arrive at a mutually agreed upon, signed contract for services before you sit in the barber's chair?
If you don't, then why should you pay the barber once he's finished? Isn't he a little like a squeegee man?
What about a taxi that pulls up in front of you on a street corner? Is the driver of that cab like a squeegee man? If you didn't wave it over, does that mean you can get in and ride to California for free?
In both of these cases, the prices for service are clearly posted. It's the same as going to a restaurant. The prices are on the menu. The time at which you pay is after the services are rendered, but there is an implicit agreement to pay because the prices are posted. It's simply a matter of courtesy to change the timing of the payment. A barber would only count as a squeegee man if he cut your hair without you asking him to do so, and then he demanded payment afterward. Because I asked the barber for a haircut, it's the same as buying something.
What about the Subway? It's just sitting there and will continue to keep running in spite of your patronage, just like the artists who the article compares to being virtual slaves to their muses. If you get on a train and don't pay, it would be supported by all the people who do pay. Does that make it right for you not to pay?
The subway has turnstiles, a physical reality. They also have cameras and a special MTA police force. Free subway rides are not a law of the universe. A better analogy would be if we invented teleporters. Should we then continue to pay for the MTA because they are still running the subway?
In fact, why should your employer pay you? I think there's ample evidence that you would do computer work whether you were paid or not. How is your work different from an artist enslaved to her muse or the person who you wrote about who simply enjoyed working with a cotton gin?
If I follow my muse, for no money, then I would be doing work I want to do. I would work on things like GeekNights, or other fun stuff. My employer pays me because I have skills that are in limited supply to do certain work. My employer is in need of those skills, and they want me to apply them to their purposes, and not my own purposes.
In other words, if you do the work that you yourself want done, you pay yourself to do that work. If you want someone else to pay you to do work, then you have to do work that someone else wants you to do.
The problem is that people have been gambling. They have been doing work that they themselves want to do, and then when they find other people actually like what they have done, they have been able to extract money from those others after the fact. This is still possible if you work in a physical medium like sculpture, but is no longer possible in any medium that can be digitized.
If everyone on earth had a sculpture copying machine, it would be lunacy to expect that many people would pay you for a sculpture you have already created that they could easily copy. Instead, you would have to work via commissions or other means if you wanted to reliably make money from sculpting. Is this necessarily good? Well, it probably means less money for sculptors if everyone has a perfect Michelangelo replica in their house (can't compete with the past).
Technology and science are things we can't, nor should we, turn back the clock on. Instead, we should adapt our society to deal with this new reality. Much in the way we would build all new traffic laws if we invented hovercars, we must also invent all new laws now that we have invented computers. To apply road vehicle traffic laws to hovercars would either limit the hovercars to be no better than the road vehicles, or it would result in great inefficiency and danger.
When technology advances as rapidly as it is now, fundamental assumptions upon which we have built our society are changing incredibly frequently. The conflict between those who are able to deal with this, and those who are not, will be the great culture war of this century. Of course, I have great confidence that the side that adapts will achieve overwhelming victory, as even if they are in the minority, their ability to utilize the advanced tools at their disposal is a force that can not be contested.
So, if you are only following your muse when you work on anything related to Geeknights, I guess you can never expect to receive any payment for any such work. Or am I missing something?
So, if you are only following your muse when you work on anything related to Geeknights, I guess you can never expect to receive any payment for any such work. Or am I missing something?
Precisely. We can not expect payment. There is no guarantee whatsoever of monetary return on investment from GeekNights. That doesn't mean there is no possibility, it just means there is no guarantee. In fact, GeekNights is a big financial loser. The expenses are much greater than the revenues.
Even if we were to actively try to make money from GeekNights, we would not do it by attempting to artificially limit distribution, or charge people for access. In fact, that would be counter-productive. If we charged for GeekNights, even one cent, who the hell would pay for it? Who would pay for it if they found it on iTunes, and were unfamiliar with it? Maybe a small handful of people would listen and pay a pittance for the "privilege." Instead, we have thousands of listeners who pay nothing.
This is why we use the most permissive Creative Commons license available. We recognize that it is better to be a dandelion than to be a mammal. Penny Arcade makes comic strips three times a week. They give them away for free. Yet, they are rolling in it. Mike Krahulik admitted to buying a Mercedes with cash. If they had limited free distribution of their content with copyright, they would be nobodies.
The world doesn't work the way it used to. It hasn't worked that way for over a decade. Yet, there are people out there who still don't get it. If you want to make art you want to make, you may or may not make money. It's a gamble. But don't expect to be able to share your art with only those who pay. You share it with one person, you share it with the world. Therefore, if making money is your goal, you must either agree to payment in advance, or find some other means like advertising or charity.
People who enjoy your art without paying you are your fans. Think of them as people who walk into your store and walk out without buying anything. Locking them out of your store is not the answer. Instead, you have to find some way to better serve them, like Valve does.
GeekNights episodes are licensed under the Creative Commons, attribution, non-commercial license. This means that you can share it, remix it, redistribute it, excerpt it, and do just about anything else you like so long as you give us credit for the original content and don't (attempt) to make any money. If you wish to do something beyond this, feel free to contact us for alternate licensing arrangements.
Fix that too.
So, when will we all receive our free Geeknights T- shirts? I'll take mine in XL, please.
The difference with a T-shirt is that it does not have an essentially zero cost to copy, while digital media does.
The difference with a T-shirt is that it doesnothave an essentially zero cost to copy, while digital media does.
Also, I would like to say I have no problem whatsoever if someone else makes and sells GeekNights merch, which is something that intellectual property laws would allow us to prohibit.
So, when will we all receive our free Geeknights T- shirts? I'll take mine in XL, please.
The difference with a T-shirt is that it doesnothave an essentially zero cost to copy, while digital media does.
Is there no T-shirt muse? If I understand Scott's argument, I think that he would say that if a T-shrit artist was simply following her muse and would make T-shirts whether or not she was paid to make them, then those T-shirts should be taken as free by anyone who wants to take one.
Is there no T-shirt muse? If I understand Scott's argument, I think that he would say that if a T-shrit artist was simply following her muse and would make T-shirts whether or not she was paid to make them, then those T-shirts should be taken as free by anyone who wants to take one.
The design of the t-shirt could be taken as free by anyone. If they would like to print their own identical shirts, that's just fine by me. To take the physical t-shirt that belongs to someone else, is theft.
Why can't people stop equating digital copying to real theft? They are not the same! How many times do we have to say this? Let's say you have a nice TV in your house. I come in your house, take it, and put it in my house. This is wrong! Why? Because you are harmed! You are minus one television. Let's say I see your television when I come over to visit. I then go home and magically produce a perfect replica of it for myself. This is not theft! You are not harmed! You still have your TV. I just have a new one for free. The world is actually a better place. I am +1 TV and nobody else is minus anything.
It used to be in the past that we had no replicators. Thus, all property could follow the laws of physical property. Now we have invented replicators, but only for information. Thus, we can no longer apply the laws of physical property to anything that can be represented digitally, but we don't yet have replicators for non-digital things. Thus, the old property laws are, for the present time, applicable to physical property. When we invent replicators for physical objects, then all of the old rules of property will be obsolete for physical as well as digital goods.
Let's say there's a wizard. He walks into the Louvre. He casts a spell and produces a 100% identical copy of the Mona Lisa, and walks out with it. Is this theft? Absolutely not. The original Mona Lisa is still hanging there. It is obvious that if he were to take the original off the wall, then that would be a problem. This is such a basic concept. Why can't people understand this?
Why can't people stop equating digital copying to real theft? They are not the same! How many times do we have to say this? Let's say you have a nice TV in your house. I come in your house, take it, and put it in my house. This is wrong! Why? Because you are harmed! You are minus one television. Let's say I see your television when I come over to visit. I then go home and magically produce a perfect replica of it for myself. This is not theft! You are not harmed! You still have your TV. I just have a new one for free. The world is actually a better place. I am +1 TV and nobody else is minus anything.
Are you referring to a TV because the patents have expired on older parts of it or are you about to make an argument that might destroy modern science? Are we not straying from copyright to patent at this point?
Is there no T-shirt muse? If I understand Scott's argument, I think that he would say that if a T-shrit artist was simply following her muse and would make T-shirts whether or not she was paid to make them, then those T-shirts should be taken as free by anyone who wants to take one.
The design of the t-shirt could be taken as free by anyone. If they would like to print their own identical shirts, that's just fine by me. To take the physical t-shirt that belongs to someone else, is theft.
Why can't people stop equating digital copying to real theft? They are not the same! How many times do we have to say this? Let's say you have a nice TV in your house. I come in your house, take it, and put it in my house. This is wrong! Why? Because you are harmed! You are minus one television. Let's say I see your television when I come over to visit. I then go home and magically produce a perfect replica of it for myself. This is not theft! You are not harmed! You still have your TV. I just have a new one for free. The world is actually a better place. I am +1 TV and nobody else is minus anything.
It used to be in the past that we had no replicators. Thus, all property could follow the laws of physical property. Now we have invented replicators, but only for information. Thus, we can no longer apply the laws of physical property to anything that can be represented digitally, but we don't yet have replicators for non-digital things. Thus, the old property laws are, for the present time, applicable to physical property. When we invent replicators for physical objects, then all of the old rules of property will be obsolete for physical as well as digital goods.
Let's say there's a wizard. He walks into the Louvre. He casts a spell and produces a 100% identical copy of the Mona Lisa, and walks out with it. Is this theft? Absolutely not. The original Mona Lisa is still hanging there. It is obvious that if he were to take the original off the wall, then that would be a problem. This is such a basic concept. Why can't people understand this?
The design of the t-shirt could be taken as free by anyone.
Does that mean I can print up some Mickey Moue T-shirts?
This weekend, they're having the Baltimore Comic-Con at the Convention center just down the street from my apartment. This one particular guy there has a booth selling what are obviously pirated.bootlegged DVDs. He also has collections of MAME, Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and Pinball emulators packaged with multiple game ROMs.
Now, he obviously just collected these from the internet. The only thing he did was package them. He was trying to sell them for outrageous prices. Would it be okay to steal them from him? They aren't his work and he's trying to profit from "stealing" other people's work. What do you think?
Does that mean I can print up some Mickey Moue T-shirts?
Not legally, no. The key difference is that Mickey Mouse is under full copyright, whereas Geeknights' stuff is (apparently, despite it not even being said on the website) under an attribution-only Creative Commons license. On the other hand, I don't see any moral issues with printing up a bunch of Mickey Mouse T-shirts.
Now, he obviously just collected these from the internet. The only thing he did was package them. He was trying to sell them for outrageous prices. Would it be okay to steal them from him? They aren't his work and he's trying to profit from "stealing" other people's work. What do you think?
It's not okay. He isn't stealing anything, but if you take a physical DVD from him, then you are stealing (If you buy one, then you're just an idiot). On the other hand, if someone buys a DVD from him, makes a bunch of copies, and gives them out for free right next to him, that's awesome. Of course, they're both still violating copyright.
Does that mean I can print up some Mickey Moue T-shirts?
Yes, I think you should be able to print Mickey Mouse t-shirts.
This weekend, they're having the Baltimore Comic-Con at the Convention center just down the street from my apartment. This one particular guy there has a booth selling what are obviously pirated.bootlegged DVDs. He also has collections of MAME, Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and Pinball emulators packaged with multiple game ROMs.
Now, he obviously just collected these from the internet. The only thing he did was package them. He was trying to sell them for outrageous prices. Would it be okay to steal them from him? They aren't his work and he's trying to profit from "stealing" other people's work. What do you think
If he was giving away the pirated DVDs for free, I would have no problem with it. However, he is going one step further. He is engaging in commercial sharing, not non-commercial sharing.
The Pirate Bay doesn't charge money. They have advertisements, but they only cover the cost of bandwidth and such. This is non-commercial activity. Just like when I lend a book to a friend, it is non-commercial. This is the kind of activity that needs to be made legal. What we do not need to make legal is commercial sharing.
If I buy a Mickey Mouse t-shirt and resell it, that's fine. If I make a Mickey Mouse t-shirt for myself, that's fine. If I print a bunch of Mickey Mouse t-shirts, and give them away for free, that is also fine. If I print Mickey Mouse t-shirts and sell them, then that is the thing that should not be permitted. And, unlike with non-commercial digital sharing, it is trivially easy for us to prohibit such activity. I actually find it quite laughable that the government and copyright holders go through so much trouble to shut down non-commercial sharing, like Bittorrent, while there are obvious bootleggers, like those at the comic-cons, not even trying to hide their activities at all.
According to Scott, Geeknights supposedly has taken off the non-commercial restriction, thoughfrontrowcrew.comdisagrees.
The icon on the lower-left of the homepage, however, is consistent with Scott.
Though for me it appears on the lower right, that's true. Nonetheless, Scott ought to fix the "What can I do with GeekNights?" part of the "About" section.
Let's say somebody downloads a copy of the latest hit movie for free, and watches it. They then never pay to see the movie. This begs a question. If the person were unable to see that movie for free, would they have paid to see it, or would they simply have not seen it? These are the questions I tried to answer in this thread about pirating Spore.
I strongly believe that if a study were to be done, you would find that the people who pirate instead of purchasing something, and would have purchased in the absence of piracy, are an extremely small group of people. Again, when you look at the kind of thing Valve did in Russia. They found out that people were pirating games not because they were unwilling to pay. They were pirating because they wanted the game on the same release date as everyone else, and also lower prices. Valve obliged, and piracy dropped like a rock. People who knew how to pirate, and had no qualms about pirating, ceased to do so. They were not moved by legal pressures, but by market pressures.
This is why non-commercial piracy is not harmful. It's not actually taking any money from anyone. It's just giving enjoyment to people who would not have paid otherwise. I mean, how many people pirate Photoshop who could not possibly afford it? Yet, look at all the good that comes from these people becoming great artists because they were able to learn these tools early on due to piracy.
However, I did say that printing and selling Mickey Mouse T-Shirts is wrong. And this is why. Let's say I print some for myself. Ok, that's just personal use, and is fair use even now. You can't regulate what people do privately. But if they start to sell them, then there is no doubt that is taking money away from the rights-holder. If I burn up some copies of the latest video game, and sell them to people, that means those people were indeed willing to pay for that game. It also means that that money is going to me instead of the people it should be going to. By buying the game from me, the bootlegger, they have proven they were willing to pay for it. In this case, there is a demonstrable and quantifiable damage.
If I give someone a free copy of Windows 7, we can't assume they would have paid anything for it. If piracy were not possible, they probably would have continued using Windows XP or Ubuntu or whatever. But if I sell someone a copy of Windows 7 for $5. That means I have demonstrably "stolen" $5 from Microsoft.
You see, the way they do the math with copyright stuff is all backwards. Let's pretend the copy of Windows 7 that I sold would cost $200 at retail. I sold it for $5. Right now, they would argue that I stole $200 from Microsoft. That is bullshit. Those $200 don't actually exist. There is no proof that anyone was willing to give Microsoft $200, and did not do so. There is only proof that someone would have given Microsoft $5, if they had put their product at that price. I'm still wrong, because I stole $5 from Microsoft, but not $200 wrong. If I gave the copy away for free, I would count that as stealing $0 from Microsoft. There is no evidence to suggest that Microsoft would have sold an extra legitimate copy had my illegitimate copy not existed.
The assumption that every bootleg or pirated copy of something is equivalent to a lost legitimate sale needs to go away.
If I gave the copy away for free, I would count that as stealing $0 from Microsoft. There is no evidence to suggest that Microsoft would have sold an extra legitimate copy had my illegitimate copy not existed.
The assumption that every bootleg or pirated copy of something is equivalent to a lost legitimate sale needs to go away.
OK Scott, you need to very careful now. I smacked you around on this before (in this thread). The fact that there is no way to prove the loss of a sale in an individual transaction does not mean that there is no provable loss of sales due to piracy in general.
Take a look at the "Law and Morality" thread where the discussion about second hand smoking basically boils down to the same point. Only there you are arguing for the other side!
Man up Scott, you can't have it both ways. If there is scientific evidence of a detrimental effect of piracy on sales, qualifying your justification with "it's not a whole sale" is just as dumb as saying "my smoking didn't cause your cancer". I mean, in the other thread you wanted to charge people with assault because they provably caused you a tiny bit of bodily harm by smoking. What does that position translate to in this debate?
You are Microsoft! Wanting to sue the living shit out of people who give Windows 7 to their friends.
Comments
The media industry has two problems:
1. Their product is easy to duplicate and distribute.
2. They are no longer the gatekeeper.
They may have been able to handle one of those two problems but when you combine them it is impossible to overcome.
On the other hand, here's a much more reasonable copyright model:
Balanceed Buyout
With that could it be that we just apply copyright laws just to first-sale of the product only? This would leave previous versions free to distribute among people. New versions of Photoshop would have to include new features worth purchasing. They would have to adjust the first sale to reflect what they have done with the new product. They could keep the model of just selling the newest version and maybe guarantee support for a certain amount of time.
If you don't, then why should you pay the barber once he's finished? Isn't he a little like a squeegee man?
What about a taxi that pulls up in front of you on a street corner? Is the driver of that cab like a squeegee man? If you didn't wave it over, does that mean you can get in and ride to California for free?
What about the Subway? It's just sitting there and will continue to keep running in spite of your patronage, just like the artists who the article compares to being virtual slaves to their muses. If you get on a train and don't pay, it would be supported by all the people who do pay. Does that make it right for you not to pay? In fact, why should your employer pay you? I think there's ample evidence that you would do computer work whether you were paid or not. How is your work different from an artist enslaved to her muse or the person who you wrote about who simply enjoyed working with a cotton gin?
In other words, if you do the work that you yourself want done, you pay yourself to do that work. If you want someone else to pay you to do work, then you have to do work that someone else wants you to do.
The problem is that people have been gambling. They have been doing work that they themselves want to do, and then when they find other people actually like what they have done, they have been able to extract money from those others after the fact. This is still possible if you work in a physical medium like sculpture, but is no longer possible in any medium that can be digitized.
If everyone on earth had a sculpture copying machine, it would be lunacy to expect that many people would pay you for a sculpture you have already created that they could easily copy. Instead, you would have to work via commissions or other means if you wanted to reliably make money from sculpting. Is this necessarily good? Well, it probably means less money for sculptors if everyone has a perfect Michelangelo replica in their house (can't compete with the past).
Technology and science are things we can't, nor should we, turn back the clock on. Instead, we should adapt our society to deal with this new reality. Much in the way we would build all new traffic laws if we invented hovercars, we must also invent all new laws now that we have invented computers. To apply road vehicle traffic laws to hovercars would either limit the hovercars to be no better than the road vehicles, or it would result in great inefficiency and danger.
When technology advances as rapidly as it is now, fundamental assumptions upon which we have built our society are changing incredibly frequently. The conflict between those who are able to deal with this, and those who are not, will be the great culture war of this century. Of course, I have great confidence that the side that adapts will achieve overwhelming victory, as even if they are in the minority, their ability to utilize the advanced tools at their disposal is a force that can not be contested.
Even if we were to actively try to make money from GeekNights, we would not do it by attempting to artificially limit distribution, or charge people for access. In fact, that would be counter-productive. If we charged for GeekNights, even one cent, who the hell would pay for it? Who would pay for it if they found it on iTunes, and were unfamiliar with it? Maybe a small handful of people would listen and pay a pittance for the "privilege." Instead, we have thousands of listeners who pay nothing.
This is why we use the most permissive Creative Commons license available. We recognize that it is better to be a dandelion than to be a mammal. Penny Arcade makes comic strips three times a week. They give them away for free. Yet, they are rolling in it. Mike Krahulik admitted to buying a Mercedes with cash. If they had limited free distribution of their content with copyright, they would be nobodies.
The world doesn't work the way it used to. It hasn't worked that way for over a decade. Yet, there are people out there who still don't get it. If you want to make art you want to make, you may or may not make money. It's a gamble. But don't expect to be able to share your art with only those who pay. You share it with one person, you share it with the world. Therefore, if making money is your goal, you must either agree to payment in advance, or find some other means like advertising or charity.
People who enjoy your art without paying you are your fans. Think of them as people who walk into your store and walk out without buying anything. Locking them out of your store is not the answer. Instead, you have to find some way to better serve them, like Valve does.
Why can't people stop equating digital copying to real theft? They are not the same! How many times do we have to say this? Let's say you have a nice TV in your house. I come in your house, take it, and put it in my house. This is wrong! Why? Because you are harmed! You are minus one television. Let's say I see your television when I come over to visit. I then go home and magically produce a perfect replica of it for myself. This is not theft! You are not harmed! You still have your TV. I just have a new one for free. The world is actually a better place. I am +1 TV and nobody else is minus anything.
It used to be in the past that we had no replicators. Thus, all property could follow the laws of physical property. Now we have invented replicators, but only for information. Thus, we can no longer apply the laws of physical property to anything that can be represented digitally, but we don't yet have replicators for non-digital things. Thus, the old property laws are, for the present time, applicable to physical property. When we invent replicators for physical objects, then all of the old rules of property will be obsolete for physical as well as digital goods.
Let's say there's a wizard. He walks into the Louvre. He casts a spell and produces a 100% identical copy of the Mona Lisa, and walks out with it. Is this theft? Absolutely not. The original Mona Lisa is still hanging there. It is obvious that if he were to take the original off the wall, then that would be a problem. This is such a basic concept. Why can't people understand this?
This weekend, they're having the Baltimore Comic-Con at the Convention center just down the street from my apartment. This one particular guy there has a booth selling what are obviously pirated.bootlegged DVDs. He also has collections of MAME, Atari, Nintendo, Sega, and Pinball emulators packaged with multiple game ROMs.
Now, he obviously just collected these from the internet. The only thing he did was package them. He was trying to sell them for outrageous prices. Would it be okay to steal them from him? They aren't his work and he's trying to profit from "stealing" other people's work. What do you think?
The Pirate Bay doesn't charge money. They have advertisements, but they only cover the cost of bandwidth and such. This is non-commercial activity. Just like when I lend a book to a friend, it is non-commercial. This is the kind of activity that needs to be made legal. What we do not need to make legal is commercial sharing.
If I buy a Mickey Mouse t-shirt and resell it, that's fine. If I make a Mickey Mouse t-shirt for myself, that's fine. If I print a bunch of Mickey Mouse t-shirts, and give them away for free, that is also fine. If I print Mickey Mouse t-shirts and sell them, then that is the thing that should not be permitted. And, unlike with non-commercial digital sharing, it is trivially easy for us to prohibit such activity. I actually find it quite laughable that the government and copyright holders go through so much trouble to shut down non-commercial sharing, like Bittorrent, while there are obvious bootleggers, like those at the comic-cons, not even trying to hide their activities at all.
Let's say somebody downloads a copy of the latest hit movie for free, and watches it. They then never pay to see the movie. This begs a question. If the person were unable to see that movie for free, would they have paid to see it, or would they simply have not seen it? These are the questions I tried to answer in this thread about pirating Spore.
I strongly believe that if a study were to be done, you would find that the people who pirate instead of purchasing something, and would have purchased in the absence of piracy, are an extremely small group of people. Again, when you look at the kind of thing Valve did in Russia. They found out that people were pirating games not because they were unwilling to pay. They were pirating because they wanted the game on the same release date as everyone else, and also lower prices. Valve obliged, and piracy dropped like a rock. People who knew how to pirate, and had no qualms about pirating, ceased to do so. They were not moved by legal pressures, but by market pressures.
This is why non-commercial piracy is not harmful. It's not actually taking any money from anyone. It's just giving enjoyment to people who would not have paid otherwise. I mean, how many people pirate Photoshop who could not possibly afford it? Yet, look at all the good that comes from these people becoming great artists because they were able to learn these tools early on due to piracy.
However, I did say that printing and selling Mickey Mouse T-Shirts is wrong. And this is why. Let's say I print some for myself. Ok, that's just personal use, and is fair use even now. You can't regulate what people do privately. But if they start to sell them, then there is no doubt that is taking money away from the rights-holder. If I burn up some copies of the latest video game, and sell them to people, that means those people were indeed willing to pay for that game. It also means that that money is going to me instead of the people it should be going to. By buying the game from me, the bootlegger, they have proven they were willing to pay for it. In this case, there is a demonstrable and quantifiable damage.
If I give someone a free copy of Windows 7, we can't assume they would have paid anything for it. If piracy were not possible, they probably would have continued using Windows XP or Ubuntu or whatever. But if I sell someone a copy of Windows 7 for $5. That means I have demonstrably "stolen" $5 from Microsoft.
You see, the way they do the math with copyright stuff is all backwards. Let's pretend the copy of Windows 7 that I sold would cost $200 at retail. I sold it for $5. Right now, they would argue that I stole $200 from Microsoft. That is bullshit. Those $200 don't actually exist. There is no proof that anyone was willing to give Microsoft $200, and did not do so. There is only proof that someone would have given Microsoft $5, if they had put their product at that price. I'm still wrong, because I stole $5 from Microsoft, but not $200 wrong. If I gave the copy away for free, I would count that as stealing $0 from Microsoft. There is no evidence to suggest that Microsoft would have sold an extra legitimate copy had my illegitimate copy not existed.
The assumption that every bootleg or pirated copy of something is equivalent to a lost legitimate sale needs to go away.
Take a look at the "Law and Morality" thread where the discussion about second hand smoking basically boils down to the same point. Only there you are arguing for the other side!
Man up Scott, you can't have it both ways. If there is scientific evidence of a detrimental effect of piracy on sales, qualifying your justification with "it's not a whole sale" is just as dumb as saying "my smoking didn't cause your cancer". I mean, in the other thread you wanted to charge people with assault because they provably caused you a tiny bit of bodily harm by smoking. What does that position translate to in this debate?
You are Microsoft! Wanting to sue the living shit out of people who give Windows 7 to their friends.