When is piracy morally justifiable?

[Lucyfish]

3 minutes ago, Rassah said:

But that is how it works. I created a form of art, the way the haircut looks, and I deserve to be paid for it, for 75 years, especially if anyone takes pictures. And if someone else cuts your hair again, to look similar, I will sue them for copying my work!

Except that isn't happening, so obviously that's not how it works lol

[Rassah]

5 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

Except that isn't happening, so obviously that's not how it works lol

Why not! Logically it's the same thing. Why is this idea absurd, but the one for drawing pictures for someone is not?

[evan]

 

19 minutes ago, Rassah said:

That's a problem of oversupply, not copyright. Do you believe we should artificially raise prices of other products (bread, milk, airline tickets, cell phone chips) and make consumers post higher prices to help support the producers of those products too?

But... ALL products and services, outside of intellectual property, are subjugated to the consumer's discretion. If consumers don't like it, they don't pay for it, and the product or service fails. So makers of products and services strive to improve and innovate to get more consumers to give them money. Why should art be any different?

except those prices are set to meet the needs of the company alongside the needs of the consumer. there's obviously a median, but art does have to be different because the needs of consumer and artist are wildly different. the reasons a consumer doesn't like a certain piece of art can be random, unrelated to anything, and therefore not valuable when considering how to set the value of the work. popularity CAN be a factor but in art that can't be the sole factor. 

the reasons a piece of art should economically fail are not the same as bread or milk. anyone can tell that bread has gone bad. the difference between what makes one song a higher quality production than another? most people don't actually know or use reasons irrelevant to the actual change in production

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But I'm not arguing that consumers have to dictate to the artists exactly how things must be done. Just that they have to like what is done. I don't even know what prompted the suggestion that artists should (or can) only earn if they do what they are told.

Sorry if that wasn't clear somewhere.

except when applied to the actual music industry, that's not actually different. your differentiation is marginally apparent when the only thing we have to latch onto the market is consumer opinion. and frankly, no you don't have to like what is done. you want greater common denominator music. go listen to pop.

art has a market based on who it's marketed to, not this blanket principle of being liked period. that's a massive and important distinction. there are differences between skilled and unskilled, yes, but those are essentially two different problems, trying to understand the rights of a professional and understanding non-professionals where popularity fuels them.

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And the professionals get paid. While whose who put shit on paper do not, but the argunent from the copyright supporters is that they also must be paid. That is what this example is about. Why do people who produce shit on paper must, deserve, obligated to be paid too?

that's not what the argument is at all. the argument is that if they have a copyright their work be respected and their right to their property is not plagiarized, as a principle of art. if their property is not working, they will vanish on loss of profit, not because others have a right to take what's not theirs. your abolishment of copyright law harms all of them.

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By the was, my current most favorite music artist group is Studio Killers. All their music, and music videos, and even art, is freely available online. But they still earn money... Maybe you guys who keep telling me there's no way to make money without copyright, or that I can't give examples of how to, should look to them as an example of how it's possible.

except, quite clearly on their tumblr page:

All characters are trademarked to Studio Killers. All unauthorized copying and distributing for commercial use is strictly prohibited.

so they rely on copyright law to prevent others from trying to release material under their name for publication and recognition purposes.

also, they're owned by several different labels and their album does cost money. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CZ4KGXK?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

you're not wrong that they're crowdfunded for live performance, but it's unrealistic as an example.

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I didn't even think live performances would be related to the topic. You can't copy a live performance, and the people paying to attend are actually paying for a job being performed.

well, they're actually kind of a huge deal in music copyright. if you weren't aware of that, that's a bit of a problem. you can record and distribute a live performance without permission, you can also perform works that have copyright law, distribute that and basically earn profit from someone else's work without permission. 

kind of a huge deal.

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But that is how it works. I created a form of art, the way the haircut looks, and I deserve to be paid for it, for 75 years, especially if anyone takes pictures. And if someone else cuts your hair again, to look similar, I will sue them for copying my work!

Why??? With copyright, I only need to do the work once to be paid for my entire lifetime.

You mean as opposed to "customers" who's hair I didn't cut, and didn't really do any work for, refusing to pay me what I deserve.

your analogies are just getting less and less understandable. i don't even have anything else to say to that; that just doesn't make any sense and doesn't have any meritable principles in regards to the actual market of music/art. you may as well just start up a barber shop and complain about that instead and it would be more relevant.

6 minutes ago, Rassah said:

Why not! Logically it's the same thing. Why is this idea absurd, but the one for drawing pictures for someone is not?

you're literally not even aware that you're taking this out of context and providing a weak analogy.

look, honestly man you can reply if you want but at this point i'm not even impressed by your arguments. they're unorganized and you aren't even aware of certain principles of copyright that are fundamental to the discussion (live performance in particular). just thought you should know, because it's getting hard to even find points that are conducive to argue.

 

notice how i said that without questioning your intelligence as a person or ability to speak english.

[Rassah]

11 minutes ago, evan said:

except those prices are set to meet the needs of the company alongside the needs of the consumer. there's obviously a median, but art does have to be different because the needs of consumer and artist are wildly different. the reasons a consumer doesn't like a certain piece of art can be random, unrelated to anything, and therefore not valuable when considering how to set the value of the work. popularity CAN be a factor but in art that can't be the sole factor. 

the reasons a piece of art should economically fail are not the same as bread or milk. anyone can tell that bread has gone bad. the difference between what makes one song a higher quality production than another? most people don't actually know or use reasons irrelevant to the actual change in production

Some people may like one type of bread over another. Or some specific loaf may taste a bit off, with some people liking the taste and others not. But I'm not sure what you're implying here. That even if the art isn't liked by the people, maybe those people aren't sophisticated enough, and should still be forced to part with their money to pay for it?

I suspect, based on this text, that you're not sure where prices come from and how they are established (supply/demand curve, surplus/shortage, and market equilibrium). Maybe this will help a bit https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics/supply-demand-equilibrium

Otherwise will be arguing from two perspectives, one fully grasping the way this works, and the other guessing.

11 minutes ago, evan said:

except when applied to the actual music industry, that's not actually different. your differentiation is marginally apparent when the only thing we have to latch onto the market is consumer opinion. and frankly, no you don't have to like what is done. you want greater common denominator music. go listen to pop.

art has a market based on who it's marketed to, not this blanket principle of being liked period. that's a massive and important distinction. there are differences between skilled and unskilled, yes, but those are essentially two different problems, trying to understand the rights of a professional and understanding non-professionals where popularity fuels them.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what this is about. Isn't art being marketed to the market (people) that likes that particular style of art? What is the distinction? Where is the dictating of what artists should produce, besides that they won't get paid if they make stuff no one wants?

11 minutes ago, evan said:

that's not what the argument is at all. the argument is that if they have a copyright their work be respected and their right to their property is not plagiarized, as a principle of art. if their property is not working, they will vanish on loss of profit, not because others have a right to take what's not theirs. your abolishment of copyright law harms all of them.

That is the argument, which extends from the very often repeated "artists deserve to be paid for their work," and "if you copy an artist's stuff, you are depriving then of future income," as if they deserve a future income. If the argument is that their so-called property is to be respected, and they must be paid for that property, or damages if someone else makes copies of that property, then I have yet to hear anything defending that argument. How is it property? Why is it property? Why must an artist be paid when someone else uses their own property to reproduce that etherial idea?

11 minutes ago, evan said:

except, quite clearly on their tumblr page:

All characters are trademarked to Studio Killers. All unauthorized copying and distributing for commercial use is strictly prohibited.

so they rely on copyright law to prevent others from trying to release material under their name for publication and recognition purposes.

also, they're owned by several different labels and their album does cost money. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CZ4KGXK?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

you're not wrong that they're crowdfunded for live performance, but it's unrealistic as an example.

Don't forget that despite having that text and selling their album (which I bought too), they share their art freely, don't object to people making and sharing copies (as long as they don't pass it off as their own), and have no issues with people drawing their characters too. They would make money even without copyright protections, because they earn it through crowdfunding (which I have contributed to), live performance tickets, selling "official" copies of the music to their fans, and selling their art on merchandise like t-shirts (I own the Goldie Foxx one), giant fridge magnets, etc. That's how artists can, and should, earn money in a world without copyright: by making actual art (not pop crap), that fans actually like, treating their fans well as if they actually pay their bills (because they do), and selling actual things to their fans, not just selling the right to listen to their music. I have made a lot of new fans for them by sharing links to their music with my friends and people I talk to at conferences when I travel. That would have been impossible if their music was copyright restricted, existing only on CDs, like things used to.

11 minutes ago, evan said:

you can also perform works that have copyright law, distribute that and basically earn profit from someone else's work without permission. 

kind of a huge deal.

But... You're the one performing the work. You are doing the work. You should get paid for doing the work in that case, even if it was someone else's idea. Nor does this big deal really matter when the question is whether intellectual property is actually property to begin with.

 

And, you're right. I have been arguing that intellectual property isn't actually property, that piracy isn't actually theft, that simply doing manual labor doesn't deserve payment, that potential earnings are not quantifiable, and that unlike everything else in the market, copyright doesn't actually have a price discovery mechanism (outside of payment for actual labor performed, like a live performance or a commission, which isn't a copyright issue). I feel I have presented my arguments in as detailed manner as possible.

I would really like for someone to actually start presenting counterpoints, like how an idea is property, what is stolen when something is duplicated, why is it actually theft, why people deserve to be paid for doing no actual work when piracy occurs, etc. And please no more of "because that's the way it has been," or "because I don't know how artists will earn a living," or "because law," or because "feels." Those aren't logical arguments.

 

[evan]

14 minutes ago, Rassah said:

Those aren't logical arguments.

Before I even bother to continue, this in itself is your problem that I will keep pointing out as much as needed. You're choosing to dismiss any conclusion as illogical if it doesn't match yours. You use your principles in one specific way with no regard for the actual knowledge and system of the subject, no understanding that your perspective is limited and think that you are the only one who is being logical.

I at least try to entertain your points, and you might notice in the education debate I conceded some. However, I've yet to see you actually assume you could be at fault for four different people arguing against you and finding your points illogical. It's astounding honestly. Do you think you're just that much more "right" than anyone else? I have no idea what incites you to not think it remotely possible that your principles are either unclear, not actually relevant, not argued well, or worse simply logical fallacy that would be pointless to argue with as it has no meaning. 

This isn't even a matter of having to think we're right. This is a simple matter of assessing what's happening and why no progress has been made with you specifically in every argument you've participated in here, with plenty of people who aren't just un-educated, but just happen to not think like an economist. People who happen to have experience in the fields you're trying to make points about, in some cases where you don't think that relevant material is relevant at all, which is a massive problem.

I don't even understand why you think there's any merit arguing. You don't even seem to capable of comprehending arguments as anything other than "not mine, therefore invalid".

Edited December 29, 2015 by evan

[Lucyfish]

2 hours ago, Rassah said:

Why not! Logically it's the same thing. Why is this idea absurd, but the one for drawing pictures for someone is not?

Because there are restrictions. Rules in place so the stupid shit doesn't fly. I will be the first to admit these rules are not solid and need a good revision, but they are there to make sure that dumb shit like that doesn't happen.

[evan]

21 minutes ago, Rassah said:

Some people may like one type of bread over another. Or some specific loaf may taste a bit off, with some people liking the taste and others not. But I'm not sure what you're implying here. That even if the art isn't liked by the people, maybe those people aren't sophisticated enough, and should still be forced to part with their money to pay for it?

I suspect, based on this text, that you're not sure where prices come from and how they are established (supply/demand curve, surplus/shortage, and market equilibrium). Maybe this will help a bit https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics/supply-demand-equilibrium

Otherwise will be arguing from two perspectives, one fully grasping the way this works, and the other guessing.

The fact that you still need to think in bread when my point was that bread has an entirely different functional market is depressing. You're like...reliant on analogies. You don't seem to ever make an argument based on the actual details of the point. If I was unclear, I apologize. However, my point was simply that inexperienced consumer opinion isn't a reliable measurement of the quality of the music. In fact that's the whole problem. Utilities can have a market, they can also literally not fulfill their utility.

Music can vary on such a wide scale that you can make a piece of music that literally does not follow any conventions of the music that most people would buy (which is by the way highly variant in itself if we reference charts of most sold albums) and still sell well. There's very little commonality between these things. Argument of production quality needing to be "clean"; ineffective due to the popularity of albums from before the 1980's some of which feature impressive work for the time but terrible aging, but also not needing "dirt" due to the high sales of modern pop music, which is some of the cleanest production out there. Instrumentation? Somewhat bias towards the presence of vocals, but not mandatory considering the fact that orchestral music has lasted hundreds of years and recordings can still be purchased from almost any artist. Genre? Nope, even the original Christmas classics are jazz, and plenty of soundtracks can sell on their own. Even highly popular soundtracks feature things as out there as atonal music and minimalism. 

But people will dislike it because "the voice sounds off". Or because "I don't like this one part, it isn't cool enough". It's...I'll recognize that these are complaints a listener will have, but they have no relevant principle. Maybe timbre? But there's nothing qualitative about the music I can assume as a result of this. They just don't like it. But then it goes so far as people will feel that certain forms of music are more "valid" than others, which is an even bigger problem and this is the problem I have. There's no way to actually assign utility and a clear sense of "yes, this music has a higher and clearer value than this music", and then therefore giving that role to solely the consumer can only exacerbate this as what they're hearing has no objective principles by which the music was created. 

The reason I think those with higher sophistry (eg music critics) should have more power determining the value of music than the average consumer is because they are given a chance to understand the music beyond the art itself, and to also help guide the market, either by creating negative stigma with certain pieces of art, or creating positive ones. They are significantly less subjective and can be given contextual purpose. This is determinant only by making sure there are the right people though; everyone has a differing opinion, but the way in which certain people create their opinion is unaware of the purpose or context of the music.

Especially important considering that certain pieces of information can change the way we listen to a piece, and actually cause us to appreciate it. Meaning that on some level we have to be willing to at least acknowledge music we don't understand in the chance that we may not be appreciating it as much as we could.

My point simply being that the consumer opinion cannot be the final word on the success of the sales because it is rarely a clear indicator of anything.

 

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But... You're the one performing the work. You are doing the work. You should get paid for doing the work in that case, even if it was someone else's idea. Nor does this big deal really matter when the question is whether intellectual property is actually property to begin with.

Except this is the entire point of intellectual property. If I go out and make a profit using someone else's music in ticket sales, I may be earning money for the revenue but I am actively using someone else's ideas to get credibility. If I claim the songs are self written, I am instantly claiming that the intellectual property is mine, and now I am profiting on it in a tangible medium. I have now given myself the right to create recordings in counter to the original creator, of that performance, or of recordings that I make (or could simply steal, because really it is my song now!) and literally make the original composer vanish on all grounds.

If you really need to relate the fact that I'm the one performing the work, it can be assumed by most people that the original creator also performed their own work. So now I am also plagiarizing a live performance without credit on top of that. Me being the one performing the work is only a small part of the picture. It's the fact that I am gaining profit for someone else's creation.

My doing the work to learn the music doesn't matter. Every piece takes work. That's just irrelevant. The point is to claim that you have falsified the right to use the music however you want, this specific medium being performance.

I just want to point out that you keep moving the point. I try to address something and then you pull out a question that we are trying to answer in components, which is why we enter certain topics. Raising that question at this point in time when we need to clarify the purpose of live performance in copyright is at best a distraction.

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Don't forget that despite having that text and selling their album (which I bought too), they share their art freely, don't object to people making and sharing copies (as long as they don't pass it off as their own), and have no issues with people drawing their characters too. They would make money even without copyright protections, because they earn it through crowdfunding (which I have contributed to), live performance tickets, selling "official" copies of the music to their fans, and selling their art on merchandise like t-shirts (I own the Goldie Foxx one), giant fridge magnets, etc. That's how artists can, and should, earn money in a world without copyright: by making actual art (not pop crap), that fans actually like, treating their fans well as if they actually pay their bills (because they do), and selling actual things to their fans, not just selling the right to listen to their music. I have made a lot of new fans for them by sharing links to their music with my friends and people I talk to at conferences when I travel. That would have been impossible if their music was copyright restricted, existing only on CDs, like things used to.

absolutely nothing you said is different from most bands. this is common practice. also you do not want to start the "what is art" argument with me so cut the "actual art" shit. that's just a very bad time waiting to happen for everyone involved. also not an argument with pop seeing as the only fake thing about pop music is the fact that it uses a performer/celebrity alias (justin bieber, etc), the producers are generally the most capable in the industry to some extent

 

[Rassah]

1 hour ago, evan said:

Before I even bother to continue, this in itself is your problem that I will keep pointing out as much as needed. You're choosing to dismiss any conclusion as illogical if it doesn't match yours.

I'm sorry, but no. Logic is logic. Illogical arguments are illogical. It's not that I dismiss them because they don't match my arguments, it's that they are illogical, inconsistent, contradictory, or irrelevant. I even tried to explain WHY, as opposed to simply dismissing them. I'll list those again:

Bit it's legal - legal status is not an indicator of something being ethical. It is just a reflection of popular belief. Growing hemp is illegal, but not unethical. Seizing people's property for some rich guy to build a mall on is legal, but not ethical.

Most people agree/believe - Majority consensus does not establish if something is ethical or right. Most people believed the sun revolved around the earth, or that witches should be burned, or that slavery is OK at one point.

But if someone worked hard on it, they have to be paid - This is a statement of your belief, not an argument. It is no more convincing than me stating that "No, they must not be paid for it." There is no logical "substance" there (not to mention it shows an ignorance of basic economics).

But the poor artists won't be able to make a living - This is an appeal to emotion, and again does not establish ethics of the situation. If every day on the way to your work/school I beat you up and took your money, can I claim that my beatings and theft are ethical, because without it how will I make money? Of course not.

But you don't understand the intricacies of how this system works - How something works has no bearing on the ethics of the actions that come about as a result of that work. You don't need to know the process by which I hide in the alley, spot you, and beat you up to take your money, to know that the action is unethical.

Honestly, unfortunately, the level of debate here has been severely lacking. Hell, no one even bothered to delve into the fundamental question of what is property.

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Do you think you're just that much more "right" than anyone else? I have no idea what incites you to not think it remotely possible that your principles are either unclear, not actually relevant, not argued well, or worse simply logical fallacy that would be pointless to argue with as it has no meaning.

In this case, yes I do believe I'm right. Why? Because I know and understand such things as property, ownership, exchange, price and value, and things like logic and sophistry. So far I am unconvinced that others here understand those too.

I will very much concede that my principles are unclear and not argued well. For one, I have argued about things like property and price discovery, both things that require quite a bit of background knowledge and exposition, while assuming others understood those concept too, without bothering to explain them. Granted I also didn't want to post even bigger walls of text, trying to actually explain the fundamental concepts being argued about here.

 

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I don't even understand why you think there's any merit arguing.

You are right, there is no merit. I hoped to, while arguing, at least expand on some of the more advanced concepts - by giving examples, analogies, explanations - in hopes that some people will pick up on them and provide some concrete arguments against my own points. Ones that would challenge me to think, figure out counterarguments, and challenge them back, in a sort of a game of mental chess. That's what debates are about and why I enjoy them - they force me to rethink my own positions, and either change them, or solidify them further, but aside from my own arguments in my own head, where I am trying to figure out how to conceptualize and explain things better, this has been quite disappointing.

 

By the way, I know you're a big fan and expert on music, so I'll just add that music critics, music culture, and what some people may believe is good or sophisticated, despite it not being a popular theme, would not change at all regardless of whether copyright existed or not. There would still be critics, marketing agencies trying to influence tastes, and connoisseurs who like certain things others just don't get. But in the end, consumer opinion is still going to be the final word on who gets paid, just as it is now. Even public music grants go to places that people feel produce at least some minimum level of quality music.

As for profiting from someone else's creation, as you no doubt know, no one has an original idea anymore (or at least those are incredibly rare). Everyone's idea is based on ideas of their predecessors. We, every one of us, no matter what we do or how high we climb, are all standing on the shoulders of giants. We are all already profiting from someone else's work and ideas. And plagiarism, although NOT illegal, IS unethical, because that is actually a lie/fraud.

And with regards to pop, my issue with it is that much of it feels like its "manufactured for the masses" by big production factories that simply follow a formula for what will appeal to most people (Like the songs in 1984). Aside from some notable exceptions (e.g. I loved Lady Gaga) there just doesn't seem to be a lot of creativity in that whole industry. But you are the expert in these matters, so I will defer the informed opinion to you.

Edited December 29, 2015 by Rassah

[evan]

8 minutes ago, Rassah said:

That's what debates are about and why I enjoy them - they force me to rethink my own positions, and either change them, or solidify them further, but aside from my own arguments in my own head, where I am trying to figure out how to conceptualize and explain things better, this has been quite disappointing.

It's very odd that I feel exactly the same way about you right now.

Honestly I don't know where to begin. I don't find anything you've just said convincing. I find it mostly inundated in fallacy and "because I said so". But then we just have to have this argument all over again. It's absurd. You want to argue objective logic here yet your arguments to my perspective don't have clarity or sound logic. So I guess you just have permission to find me stupid? That's what you seem to resort to elsewhere, which is just fucking disappointing.

I frankly don't think you can act like you're the only one disappointed here. Just as much I hoped to get into any complex theory about music and philosophy of music which would help create answers for intellectual property having value, your last paragraph shows me that'd be pointless. And that worries me. I may lack in an economic perspective, but frankly that alone tells me you really don't have a perspective for music or art for that matter. That creates fallacy, whether or not you realize it and I've been watching it this whole thread. Your principles can be sound and your ideas completely irrelevant. 

This is frankly exactly just like how you chose to "not study school budget because I don't give a fuck". You don't have all the answers. Not even close. And as a result your logic here has flaws that you don't even seem capable of exercising an understanding of.

[Rassah]

If you had found fallacies, I wish you had pointed them out with counterarguments  I feel cheated.

I have some limited education in music theory, having played instruments (piano and violin), sung in chorale most of my life starting from first grade, and having taken classes on music history and music theory. But, I would say my knowledge and understanding of such are minimal at best.

But with regards to your potential argument, although I would be interested in hearing it, my belief is that property can only be a real tangible thing, since one of the most fundamental features of it is the ability to restrict others from it, or transfer it to others. Intellectual property, when fully expanded upon, runs into the problem that it is, technically, an idea. One that can exist in your head. And thus, after you have been simply exposed to it, you already possess it, in a way that can not be restricted or transfered. It will be in your head regardless. So, fundamentally, intellectual property boils down to thought control. But unfortunately we never got around to expanding on the entire idea to get to that point. 

And, considering this belief of mine, I'm not sure that complex music theory or philosophy of music can convince me that intellectual property is actual property, since in the end it will still be something that exists as information in people's minds.

 

And, on the topic of topics that unfortunately will not be discussed, technologically we are now on a customer of having the option for anyone, completely anonymously, upload anything, in a way that it can not be seized, destroyed, or even discovered, and allow anyone else to download a copy of that completely anonymously too. This works by splitting the file into pieces, encrypting the pieces with a key, and uploading it to a decentralized, distributed, redundant network, where no one can know what pieces they are storing, and then let anyone retrieve that file by simply sharing the key with them. Once this is out, no type of information or content will be possible to censor or take down (even illegal information like cp) and no one will know who has access to said information. Copyright and illegal content will be literally impossible to enforce except through careful control of distribution (as I believe it should be). I think it maybe would have been interesting to discuss this future, but I guess I'll miss out too.

By the way, Evan, regardless of us being confrontational dicks to each other, please know that I respect you enormously. If I am bitching at the stupidity of the debates here, it's not about you. You at least are obviously aware of your own limitations, which itself is admirable. And I am always greatful for you helping point out mine, even if I don't show it.

[MalletFace]

As a note, I am going to use U.S. copyright because I live in the U.S., it is available publicly, it is similar to many others, and it is very broad. Please, nobody contradict me because copyright functions differently in your country; I know.

5 hours ago, Rassah said:

But that is how it works. I created a form of art, the way the haircut looks, and I deserve to be paid for it, for 75 years, especially if anyone takes pictures. And if someone else cuts your hair again, to look similar, I will sue them for copying my work!

According to Title 17 of the United States Code, "Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device."

"Fixed! But my haircut is fixed," you might argue; it does not work that way.

According to Title 17, "A work is “fixed” in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration. A work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are being transmitted, is “fixed” for purposes of this title if a fixation of the work is being made simultaneously with its transmission."

That is not the only thing wrong with this sentence alone, though. There is no "art" in U.S. copyright.

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Works of authorship include the following categories:

1. literary works;
2. musical works, including any accompanying words;
3. dramatic works, including any accompanying music;
4. pantomimes and choreographic works;
5. pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works;
6. motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
7. sound recordings; and
8. architectural works.

A person taking a picture of your 'art' cannot be sued or charged with a crime without reimbursing you, and a person that copies your style cannot be sued or charged with a crime. In order for you to sue either of these people, they would have to be infringing on the right of the copyright owner

1. to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;
2. to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;
3. to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
4. in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;
5. in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly;
6. in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission;
7. to claim authorship of [the] work;
8. to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of any work of visual art which he or she did not create;
9. to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation;
10. to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of [the] work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation, and any intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of [the] work is a violation of that right; and
11. to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of [the] work is a violation of that right

It seems you believe they would be infringing on your right "to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work," but they are only infringing on this right if it is your right. We have discovered, however, that it is not.

Yet, if you hold this haircut dear to your heart, you can protect yourself in a way. You will need to prepare a description, explanation, or illustration of one or more processes of preparing this haircut in a fixed medium.

If your haircut is complicated enough to make it difficult to recreate without your method and if your haircut is desirable, you have benefited yourself and the market. You will be able to reproduce your haircut without being required to disclose how you produce it, and, if your haircut makes a large enough splash, competitors will be forced to adapt; it is up to them how they do so.

You will be surprised to learn you should get more than 75 years of protection, too. If you identify yourself of the creator of the work, you retain ownership of the copyright until your death, and the copyright is maintained for 70 years after your death.

3 hours ago, Rassah said:

I would really like for someone to actually start presenting counterpoints, like how an idea is property, what is stolen when something is duplicated, why is it actually theft, why people deserve to be paid for doing no actual work when piracy occurs, etc. And please no more of "because that's the way it has been," or "because I don't know how artists will earn a living," or "because law," or because "feels." Those aren't logical arguments.

An idea is not property under U.S. copyright, and it never can be because Title 17 will never be changed to allow it. An idea is actually not property under the copyright law of any nation I can think of. You have to understand what can be protected to know when theft happens and when piracy happens

If you understand what can be protected by copyright, though, you will find that there is no theft or piracy in copyright law. Theft and piracy apply to the infringement of the rights of a property holder. Because the rights of a property owner and the rights of a copyright owner are different, infringement of the rights of a copyright holder is properly called copyright infringement.

You can obviously see how the rights of a copyright holder are violated when 'piracy' occurs when you look at what their rights actually are. With a game, for example, copying the work, distributing the work, and damaging the copyright protection built into the work violates three rights of the copyright holder. Downloading the work, by the way, is the reason a person not planning on distributing or damaging the work can be prosecuted or sued; they infringed on the copyright owner's right to make copies of the work.

I cannot give you much beyond here, though. If you don't respect English and early American common law, the U.S. Constitution, the United States Code, the idea of natural rights, or any number of other legal precedents, there is no way anybody can argue against you with arguments you believe to be logical - which, as an idea, is totally illogical.

Copyright law exists because copyright is considered a natural right. Copyright law exists because the rights that go along with copyright ownership are considered natural rights. Copyright law exists because the rights that go along with copyright ownership are considered to be beneficial to creators and consumers. Copyright law in the U.S. exists because it is allowed in the U.S. Constitution. Copyright law exists because most people agree with it. Copyright exists for many historical, philosophical, and economic reasons that you are likely to systematically argue against without substance, tact, or refrain.

To go even further, copyright was not created in order to compensate people that "deserve to be paid for doing no actual work." Payment was considered a positive consequence of it when it was created. The primary purpose was to benefit the public, and understanding this requires reading the laws, reading the works of late enlightenment thinkers that believed in natural rights, reading the works of the founders of modern legal codes, reading the works of the U.S. founding fathers in the U.S.'s case, and generally doing more work than demanding that other people do it for you.

And, to go even further again, you claim to understand property, but you demand people explain to you how intellectual property is property. This is illogical. Intellectual property is not property. This is a misused term that leads to perfectly capable people like you believing copyright ownership is a form of property; it is not. Property rights and the rights of copyright ownership are different. Intellectual property is a blanket term for copyright, trademark, and other laws regarding the rights of creators.

For now, here is Title 17 of the United States Code as provided digitally by the U.S. government if you are too lazy to find it.

Edited December 29, 2015 by MalletFace
I care too much about copyright law to not fix a spelling error.

[Saxon]

Well, at least we can all agree that if we so much as raise the idea that content creators deserve to be paid in exchange for providing their goods to someone, that we are definitely proposing the establishment of a totalitarian state. :V

I'm confused that rassah is arguing, once more, that duplication of information 'isn't stealing', when he agreed earlier that it could be, at least in some cases. 

 

I prefer people like Azure, who openly acknowledge that they're dicking people over by pirating and simply don't care, to the pretense that is pretending that being a thief makes you a morally superior liberator, compared to everybody else.

Come on; pull your head out of your arse.

[Rassah]

Oop, hear that guys? There's apparently some words on some paper somewhere written by men. Words written down by men on paper is the absolute and final authority on morals and ethics. Always has been. My argument is invalid.

[Onnes]

8 minutes ago, Rassah said:

Oop, hear that guys? There's apparently some words on some paper somewhere written by men. Words written down by men on paper is the absolute and final authority on morals and ethics. Always has been. My argument is invalid.

Are you drunk?
If so: You might reconsider posting until sober.
If not: Have you considered drinking?

[Saxon]

I think I'm going to have to call a waaambulance; there's a severe case of butt hurt. :c

Rassah, several of your criticisms of copyright law are bold strawmen, such as 'it is possible to copyright facts and ideas', which it explicitly isn't under copyright law.

Dismissing these inconsistencies, because those documents are on paper, is ludicrous.

[Rassah]

The US Constitution claims that blacks are only worth 2/3rds of whites. It was nullified, but the text is still in there, as a reminder of why text on paper written by men is not in any way a good indicator of what is just or ethical. I bet some of you guys were very insistent that homosexuality is wrong and immoral, and gay marriage should be illegal, back when there were words on paper stating as such.

[evan]

16 minutes ago, Rassah said:

The US Constitution claims that blacks are only worth 2/3rds of whites. It was nullified, but the text is still in there, as a reminder of why text on paper written by men is not in any way a good indicator of what is just or ethical. I bet some of you guys were very insistent that homosexuality is wrong and immoral, and gay marriage should be illegal, back when there were words on paper stating as such.

did you read where he also argued your points, or are we just going to gloss over that in its' entirety?

seriously, this is embarrassing to read. go back and read his post again.

[AshleyAshes]

*munches popcorn*

Hey, remember that thread on FAF where Rassah came in to say that I was stealing from artists for all the pirated material I keep on a server on my place?  Yeah, he's been trolling you, this is just an excuse for pseudo-intellectual debate, his actual position is not as concrete as he's trying to convince you.

Just mentioning this incase anyone was wondering why I wasn't contributing to this discussion.

[evan]

3 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

*munches popcorn*

Hey, remember that thread on FAF where Rassah came in to say that I was stealing from artists for all the pirated material I keep on a server on my place?  Yeah, he's been trolling you, this is just an excuse for pseudo-intellectual debate, his actual position is not as concrete as he's trying to convince you.

Just mentioning this incase anyone was wondering why I wasn't contributing to this discussion.

at some point the only troll left is me, and i am trolling myself

[MalletFace]

4 minutes ago, Rassah said:

The US Constitution claims that blacks are only worth 2/3rds of whites. It was nullified, but the text is still in there, as a reminder of why text on paper written by men is not in any way a good indicator of what is just or ethical. I bet some of you guys were very insistent that homosexuality is wrong and immoral, and gay marriage should be illegal, back when there were words on paper stating as such.

That law can be changed has little to do with the validity of natural rights, but I will submit that it has to do with which people have their rights protected by the government. That has little to do with whether or not the rights laid out in Title 17 and other copyright laws around the world are valid, though, as long as these rights apply to all individuals equally.

If you can display to me how Title 17 or any other similar code is not applied equally to all individuals, then I will relent that there is inequality in its application. This does not mean it loses its validity as a natural right, though; it means only that the right that does exist is not being applied equally.

7 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

*munches popcorn*

Hey, remember that thread on FAF where Rassah came in to say that I was stealing from artists for all the pirated material I keep on a server on my place?  Yeah, he's been trolling you, this is just an excuse for pseudo-intellectual debate, his actual position is not as concrete as he's trying to convince you.

Just mentioning this incase anyone was wondering why I wasn't contributing to this discussion.

I really don't care. This gives me an excuse to find all kinds of information I have never seen before, and it gives me an excuse to be exposed to new opinions.

I was pretty neutral on copyright ownership as a right before this - I only had interest in the law.

[Rassah]

15 minutes ago, evan said:

did you read where he also argued your points, or are we just going to gloss over that in its' entirety?

seriously, this is embarrassing to read. go back and read his post again.

Unfortunately his entire post was about what the current text says about it, and how it applies to the text. But texts are fallible, written by men with personal objectives, and there are many conflicting texts. So I can't rely on just texts. The entire civil rights and freedom movement has been based on the idea that texts are wrong.

He did mention "copyright is a natural right," which is where I've been going towards this whole time, but unfortunately he simply left it at that without attempting to support that claim.

Hey @MalletFace, maybe you can expand on that natural rights thing a bit?

5 minutes ago, MalletFace said:

If you can display to me how Title 17 or any other similar code is not applied equally to all individuals, then I will relent that there is inequality in its application.

Didn't laws against gay marriage apply equally to all individuals? And laws against marijuana? I never had a problem with the laws being applied unequally, but rather with the law itself being unjust. If there is a natural right to copyright, I'd like to know what that's based on. But all art, music, and invention is an idea. It enters our memory as soon as we experience them. So, while I can have a mental image of a piece of art, or a memory of the song, somehow it violates the natural right of someone else far away, who isn't even aware of me, if I bring that idea into the real world by my own effort.

 

Here's a hypothetical. What if technology and implants improve so much that we can have an option of having a photographic memory stored in hardware in our heads? Meaning any time we look at a piece of art or watch a movie, we will have a perfect copy of it in our memory? Does a law, which is in effect censorship, that prevents you from sharing that memory now run afoul of the first amendment?

[MalletFace]

1 hour ago, Rassah said:

Unfortunately his entire post was about what the current text says about it, and how it applies to the text. But texts are fallible, written by men with personal objectives, and there are many conflicting texts. So I can't rely on just texts. The entire civil rights and freedom movement has been based on the idea that texts are wrong.

@MalletFaceHe did mention "copyright is a natural right," which is where I've been going towards this whole time, but unfortunately he simply left it at that without attempting to support that claim.

All of that was to address another number of your points, though. You repeatedly requested an explanation of these things:

• how an idea can be property,
• how duplication of copyrighted material is theft, and
• why a person deserves compensation for theft of intellectual property.

I explained that an idea cannot be property, that duplication of copyrighted material is not theft, and that copyrighted material is protected for the benefit of the public. No comment on that?

I did, however, avoid explaining why copyright protection is considered a natural right because it is an unanswerable question where you are concerned. I might as well attempt to answer it now, though. Here are six words to explain it in short:

People like having their works protected.

When a majority of people agree that all individuals possess a right, they tend to validate this by making it so in text. Before about 1500, people felt no need to protect their rights as creators; the nature of life as it was protected it naturally. Literacy was not common, copying texts was difficult and tedious, copying artistic works was pointless because they were done on commission, there was no such thing as a brand, and having the skill to copy another person's work usually meant you were capable of making your own at lower risk. The right of a creator was protected by their unique ability and by the market.

Over time, the printing press, lithography, common literacy, public education, television, radio, analog recordings, digital recordings, the internet, digital storage, and any number of other things changed this. Infringing the rights of a creator is easy, so texts were created to formalize protecting them.

Creators in Great Britain demanded protection from the government and removal of publishers as controllers of works, so the Copyright Act 1709 was created. Creators in the United States felt that the Copyright Act not applying to the colonies was unfair, so the Copyright Clause was added to the U.S. Constitution.

In the U.S., which is where my experience lies, people again and again wanted law updated as the industrialization of the country made copying the works of others easier. They updated it in the late 1800s. They updated it from 1903-1914. They updated it in the '40s. They updated it in the '70s. They updated it in the '80s. Each time new protections were added to combat infringement of the rights most people wanted.

Is that enough, or do I have to go down to the complaints of writers in Great Britain, the complaints of inventors in the U.S., the complaints of writers and inventors in the U.K., the complaints of writers and artists in France and Germany, the complaints of farmers in the American West, and the complaints of many others throughout modern history in combination with the appeals of powerful figures to the government for recognition and protection of rights they believed they held from birth?

1 hour ago, Rassah said:

Didn't laws against gay marriage apply equally to all individuals? And laws against marijuana? I never had a problem with the laws being applied unequally, but rather with the law itself being unjust. If there is a natural right to copyright, I'd like to know what that's based on.

Copyright protection does not take away any normally accepted rights; laws against gay marriage and laws against marijuana arguably do. Copyright protection gives rights to creators, and is a direct statement that those that infringe on these have no right to do so. A majority of people agree with this.

But I will have to say that a natural right is not based on anything. A legal right must be, but not a natural right.

Natural rights are considered inalienable, and are the culmination of enlightenment thought. There is no logical way to explain why something is a natural right, and even people like Locke only just managed to make it appear sensible. When most people accept a right as natural, though, you can be guaranteed you will see it lived out. In the U.S., a person's rights to a work they created are understood to be natural, and even attempts to make it a legal right should be avoided; this is why all U.S. copyright law is very vague and malleable.

1 hour ago, Rassah said:

But all art, music, and invention is an idea. It enters our memory as soon as we experience them. So, while I can have a mental image of a piece of art, or a memory of the song, somehow it violates the natural right of someone else far away, who isn't even aware of me, if I bring that idea into the real world by my own effort.

If they are fixed in a medium, they are not an idea in copyright law. The rest of this is just you blowing off copyright protection as a natural right.

1 hour ago, Rassah said:

Here's a hypothetical. What if technology and implants improve so much that we can have an option of having a photographic memory stored in hardware in our heads? Meaning any time we look at a piece of art or watch a movie, we will have a perfect copy of it in our memory? Does a law, which is in effect censorship, that prevents you from sharing that memory now run afoul of the first amendment?

It does not.

If a creator acts on their right to perform or display a work publicly to an audience they are aware will make copies and derivatives, they are forfeiting their right to produce copies and derivatives. As they have forfeited this right, you are not infringing on the right, and you cannot be 'censored.'

If they are not aware you are going to make a copy of their work, you are willfully infringing on their rights, and you will be 'censored' just as much as the guy that goes into a movie theater and records a film on a crappy Nikon.

This is why Title 17 has a whole section of limitations on the rights of a copyright holder, and why Title 17 is like any other Code in providing definitions.

Edited December 30, 2015 by MalletFace

[Rassah]

1 hour ago, MalletFace said:

I explained that an idea cannot be property, that duplication of copyrighted material is not theft, and that copyrighted material is protected for the benefit of the public. No comment on that?

Ideas (patents, songs) are treated like property in our law, including having provisions for transfer, inheritance, and even being included as assets in business financial statements. There's probably a reason the term "intellectual property" was created. Likewise for the description of the act of copying as "theft," which results is similar consequences when caught. As for "for the benefit of the pubic," I'd argue it's for the benefit of creators who want government enforced monopoly power over their creations (see Disney). The public seems quite content with downloading music and movies.

1 hour ago, MalletFace said:

Here are six words to explain it in short:

People like having their works protected.

People like getting free shit by having it stolen for them from others (the whole concept of government enforced socialism). I have some ethical issues with that too.

Rights are universal. Moreso, rights are things that exist without someone else enforcing them against others (negative vs positive rights). For example, everyone wants authority over their own body and life. That doesn't require an outside party to enforce, it only requires the outside party to not interfere. Everyone wants authority and ownership of things they create using their own body and their own materials. Again, those do not require an outside party to enforce. So here we have the right to your own life, and the right to your own property and product of your labor.

Let's examine a right to a living wage. Does that come all by itself? No. Money doesn't grow on trees. So a third party has to be involved, to take money, by force, from someone else who used their own body, labor, and property to create it, in order to fulfill that "right."

How about copyright? Can that right exist on its own, without a third party enforcing it? Again, it can't. Someone else has to monitor to see if someone else used their own labor and property to make an unauthorized copy, and someone else has to use force to impose that "right" on the offender. Moreso, many other people's rights to their own property and labor have to be violated to pay for that monitoring and enforcement.

In a drastically simplified way, your right to your own life, property, and labor would continue to exist on a primitive island without government, or a technologically advanced society where cryptography provided for complete protection against a third party enforcer. A copyright would not.

 

P.S. Thanks for the history lesson, but all it has served to do is describe the process by which men with personal interests have put words to paper. Unfortunately, as I have repeatedly said, majority opinion, text on paper, and fallible men with personal interests don't establish what is right, ethical, or just. Laws change. I could likewise write a history on how government has gotten perverted with corruption and concentration of power WAY beyond the initial intentions, the result of which are all the things Bernie supporters are bitching about, but the history and things written into law would likewise not make any of those things ethical or right.

1 hour ago, MalletFace said:

Copyright protection does not take away any normally accepted rights; laws against gay marriage and laws against marijuana arguably do.

If some grandma downloads some music from a site she's not aware of being an illegal sharing site, and the RIAA busts her ass, at the least she will have the right to a chunk of her income taken away, and at worst her right to move about (prison).

1 hour ago, MalletFace said:

If they are fixed in a medium, they are not an idea in copyright law.

How does that apply to music and songs? There's no medium that they are fixed in, since they are based on sound. All medium containing is is betery a recording/copy of the original idea.

1 hour ago, MalletFace said:

If a creator acts on their right to perform or display a work publicly to an audience they are aware will make copies and derivatives, they are forfeiting their right to produce copies and derivatives. As they have forfeited this right, you are not infringing on the right, and you cannot be 'censored.'

So does this mean you believe that technological advancement will eventually completely destroy the entire concept of copyright, and the "theft" will be relegated to actual acts of theft, where someone would have to break into someone's private property to steal the contents thereof?

[MalletFace]

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

Ideas (patents, songs) are treated like property in our law, including having provisions for transfer, inheritance, and even being included as assets in business financial statements. There's probably a reason the term "intellectual property" was created. Likewise for the description of the act of copying as "theft," which results is similar consequences when caught.

How so? Here are some things that obfuscate my understanding of how that is true.

• Property law varies by state.
• The rights of personalty owners and realty owners vary within states.
• Inheritance of personalty and realty varies by state.
• Section 202 of Chapter 2 of Title 17 states, "Ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, is distinct from ownership of any material object in which the work is embodied."
• The rights of a patent owner are the same as the rights of a personalty owner under Title 35 - "patents shall have the attributes of personal property" - but patents cannot legally be ideas; they must be demonstrable in illustrations, explanations, models, or descriptions.
• Trademarks, personalty, and realty can be held forever, but patents and copyright protections cannot be held for more than a set time under the United States Code.
• Penalties for copyright infringement are federal if not settled between the two conflicting parties, and penalties for infringement of the rights of personalty and realty owners are only sometimes federal if not settled between the two conflicting parties.
• Consequences for all crimes in the U.S. can be called similar; this is how U.S. justice works. Most penalties are fines, prison sentences, and community service. This is how cruel and unusual punishment is avoided.

Here's the Office of Law Revision Counsel's online version of the United States Code. This is where most of intellectual property law is - Title 17 and Title 35 specifically.

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

As for "for the benefit of the pubic," I'd argue it's for the benefit of creators who want government enforced monopoly power over their creations (see Disney). The public seems quite content with downloading music and movies.

As Thomas Jefferson noted, "Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men..." To draw the line on this is difficult - and why Jefferson did not want to deal with it - but this is what U.S. copyright law does.

Disney does not permanently have rights to most of their creations, though, for example. The copyright protection for most of their work will end over the next fifty years. People will be able to legally make copies of Steamboat Willie in the next ten years and Cinderella in twenty. People will not be able to create new works that do not fall under fair use using Mickey or Cinderella, but that is under intellectual property laws unrelated to colloquial piracy.

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

Rights are universal.....

Please read the discussion between Madison, Jefferson, and McPherson. In full. They all hate the idea of protecting works and inventions, but they relent that the right is natural - Jefferson fought that to the death, though - and that it is necessary for the right to be protected just as much as it is necessary for the rights to property and freedom of person. There are also writings from the Sept. 5 session of the Constitutional Congress about patents.

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

P.S. Thanks for the history lesson, but all it has served to do is describe the process by which men with personal interests have put words to paper. Unfortunately, as I have repeatedly said, majority opinion, text on paper, and fallible men with personal interests don't establish what is right, ethical, or just. Laws change. I could likewise write a history on how government has gotten perverted with corruption and concentration of power WAY beyond the initial intentions, the result of which are all the things Bernie supporters are bitching about, but the history and things written into law would likewise not make any of those things ethical or right.

Majority opinion does actually determine what is right, ethical or just in a practical sense. Morality is defined by the group. This is why morality changes over time; the group changes over time.

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

If some grandma downloads some music from a site she's not aware of being an illegal sharing site, and the RIAA busts her ass, at the least she will have the right to a chunk of her income taken away, and at worst her right to move about (prison).

Emotional arguments are almost never rational and only succeed in making us feel bad about thinking rationally and logically.

Ignorantia juris non excusant - ignorance of the law does not excuse.

When one breaks a law, certain rights are forfeited to the state.

There is nothing new there.

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

How does that apply to music and songs? There's no medium that they are fixed in, since they are based on sound. All medium containing is is betery a recording/copy of the original idea.

"A work is “fixed” in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration."

"'Copies' are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device."

Music and songs are able to be copyrighted when they are notated or recorded. That the notation or recording may be digital does not change this.

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

So does this mean you believe that technological advancement will eventually completely destroy the entire concept of copyright, and the "theft" will be relegated to actual acts of theft, where someone would have to break into someone's private property to steal the contents thereof?

I honestly cannot understand this. Can you reword it?

At best I can understand, it would appear that this is what it has come to in your scenario.

Edited December 30, 2015 by MalletFace
"Is avoided" not "works"

[Käpt'n]

I think it is alright to be a pirate when the product isn't available anymore and when it isn't available in your region in any way.

Also porn. Because no one buys porn anymore.

[Rassah]

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Here are some things that obfuscate my understanding of how that is true.

• Property law varies by state.

Intellectual property varies  by country.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

• The rights of personalty owners and realty owners vary within states.

The rights of copyright owners vary by country.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

• Inheritance of personalty and realty varies by state.

Same as above, vary by country.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

• Section 202 of Chapter 2 of Title 17 states, "Ownership of a copyright, or of any of the exclusive rights under a copyright, is distinct from ownership of any material object in which the work is embodied."

Not sure why this is relevant.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

• The rights of a patent owner are the same as the rights of a personalty owner under Title 35 - "patents shall have the attributes of personal property" - but patents cannot legally be ideas; they must be demonstrable in illustrations, explanations, models, or descriptions.

You can't patent something without describing that idea somehow. But what is protected in a patent is your actual idea, not your illustrations and text. Someone could come up with your idea competent independently, without ever knowing about your patent, and would still be found to be infringing on your intellectual property if they tried to sell it or make money off it.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

• Trademarks, personalty, and realty can be held forever, but patents and copyright protections cannot be held for more than a set time under the United States Code.

That actually makes the claim that it's a right worse. Rights don't expire. You can't murder someone after some set period of time. Also, we have yet to see copyright expire after Disney started prolonging them.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

• Penalties for copyright infringement are federal if not settled between the two conflicting parties, and penalties for infringement of the rights of personalty and realty owners are only sometimes federal if not settled between the two conflicting parties.

I'm not sure relying on state and federal law is a good way to distinguish property types...

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

• Consequences for all crimes in the U.S. can be called similar; this is how U.S. justice works. Most penalties are fines, prison sentences, and community service. This is how cruel and unusual punishment is avoided.

Don't know why this is relevant either.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

As Thomas Jefferson noted, "Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men..." To draw the line on this is difficult - and why Jefferson did not want to deal with it - but this is what U.S. copyright law does.

Men, even famous ones, make mistakes. This quote of his reminds me of the government approved monopolies, such as utilities, that some famous men have come up with a century after him, which proved to be a terrible idea.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Disney does not permanently have rights to most of their creations, though, for example. The copyright protection for most of their work will end over the next fifty years.

It was supposed to have ended 50 years ago. They keep lobbying to extend the term length of copyright. So I don't expect that to stop in the future. But, again, if something is a right, it shouldn't expire. That this does makes it at most an arbitrarily defined grant given by law, not an actual right.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Please read the discussion between Madison, Jefferson, and McPherson. In full.

I'm debating with you, not them. I'm assuming you have read that text, and thus can use their points to defend your point of view as well.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

They all hate the idea of protecting works and inventions, but they relent that the right is natural

You have yet to elaborate on this. This right is definitely not a negative right, meaning it must be enforced. And so far this "natural" right seems to be entirely supported by feels. There is nothing about intellectual property violations that infringe on the freedom of persons for instance. Nothing about me downloading a song restricts the artist from performing any action. It may change what they might have to do to convince someone to engage in an exchange with them, but it doesn't actually restrict them from continuing to sell their song.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Majority opinion does actually determine what is right, ethical or just in a practical sense. Morality is defined by the group. This is why morality changes over time; the group changes over time.

This is probably where I differ with most prior here. I believe majority opinion is just that, majority opinion. Morality, or ethics, do not change, and majority opinion simply adjusts as more people become informed and accept the new knowledge. Just like the earth continued to be round despite majority opinion believing it was flat, slaves continued to be human beings, with a right to life, property, and products of their labor, even while the majority of the population did not believe so. While you might say "Slaves did not have rights because the law didn't give them rights," I would say "Slaves had rights, were having their rights violated, and it took many people pointing out that their rights were being violated for the law to finally catch up to reality." Laws are not the source of rights. They are merely a record of them, and a way to settle disputes. Rights would continue to exist on an island with a small governmentless community, or in a large governmentless anarchy. E.g. if governments collapse due to money, law, communications, identity, and commerce were to be replaced with encrypted cryptographic alternatives that no authority, such as a government agency, could stop, regulate, or enforce, negative rights, such as right to life and property would continue to exist even without a set of laws to "establish" those rights. Copyright on the other hand would not.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Emotional arguments are almost never rational and only succeed in making us feel bad about thinking rationally and logically.

That wasn't so much an emotional argument as a real life example. An old lady literally got busted and fined by the RIAA.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Ignorantia juris non excusant - ignorance of the law does not excuse.

Stupidest, most cruel and unjust policy ever, thanks to which everyone in the country is now a criminal (no one can read millions of pages of law, not even the legislators that pass it), and which allows corrupt governments to exploit and extort their own citizens.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

When one breaks a law, certain rights are forfeited to the state.

Rights can't be forfeited. Not even to the state, because a state doesn't grant rights. It simply recognizes, and often violates them.

 

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Music and songs are able to be copyrighted when they are notated or recorded. That the notation or recording may be digital does not change this.

However, if I perform a song, entirely from memory (idea), without relying on the record, or possibly even ever having heard it (e.g. I heard that song sung by a friend), I am still in violation of intellectual property theft (copyright infringement). Look at the Happy Birthday song, which had been battled, with people fined, for decades. That only settled because the song was found to not have been under proper copyright from the beginning. If I publicly sing other songs that are properly copyrighted, which are effectively just ideas in my head, I can still be fined.

5 hours ago, MalletFace said:

I honestly cannot understand this. Can you reword it?

When copying intellectual property becomes as simple as just experiencing it (your brain automatically records a copy of everything you see and hear), and sharing said property becomes as simple as communicating it (you can communicate sounds and pictures directly, like through radio) - where the copyright thing becomes as simple as a word, and sharing it as simple as saying a word - what happens to copyright? The law will not be able to ban us from making personal copies. That camera that someone sneaks into the movie theater will be an integral part of every movie goer. Will the laws ban us from speaking certain "words" and ideas, thus becoming a plain censorship law?

 

[Saxon]

13 hours ago, Rassah said:

The US Constitution claims that blacks are only worth 2/3rds of whites. It was nullified, but the text is still in there, as a reminder of why text on paper written by men is not in any way a good indicator of what is just or ethical. I bet some of you guys were very insistent that homosexuality is wrong and immoral, and gay marriage should be illegal, back when there were words on paper stating as such.

I am gay, and I'm an Englishmen, but never mind. 

The problem wasn't  'since copyright law is written on paper it must be upstanding'. The problem was that you made specific claims about copyright law, and a review of the law shows that your claims were incorrect.

 

For example, if I said 'the US constitution grants the state of wyoming as the dominion of cthulu', and someone posted the constitution, to prove me wrong, it would be silly of me to say 'well...yeah, but it's only written on paper'.  

 

[Onnes]

Since this has circled back around to the subject of 'rights', it is probably time to revisit what the heck those even are.

Rassah, as near as I can tell your natural rights are essentially an AnCap variation of Locke's. (I chose Locke just because he's who I associate with natural rights.) From what I've read here, I'd end up summarizing it as:

Life  > Property (Modern usage, NOT Locke's 'Estate') > Liberty

The replacement of 'Estate' with 'Property', and its precedence to Liberty, largely removes the tensions between absolute property rights and Locke's Liberty and Estate. This is obviously distinct from the 'Life', 'Liberty', and 'Happiness' (similar to Locke's estate) of Jefferson

I've stated all this to make it clear that even among the natural rights crowd, there are many ways of formulating said rights that leads to wildly different conclusions about ethics. A right is meaningful only insofar as other people respect it or have it forced upon them. If you found yourself stranded on a desert island with a bunch of Marxists, your views on property as a natural right would be completely irrelevant. Everyone else on that island would either have a very different view of natural rights or an entirely different moral framework. If you tried to enforce your natural rights, the other inhabitants, being Marxists, would view you as violating their rights.

Edited December 30, 2015 by Onnes

[MalletFace]

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

Intellectual property varies  by country.

But you said "our law." It would have made sense to have assumed you meant the country I had been using as an example for quite a while, and I was pointing out that not all people are subject to what you call "our law." If you want to show me where intellectual property law varies by country, though, please be sure to avoid the numerous UN, WIPO, and WTO members; they try to make their copyright law very similar.

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

You can't patent something without describing that idea somehow. But what is protected in a patent is your actual idea, not your illustrations and text. Someone could come up with your idea competent independently, without ever knowing about your patent, and would still be found to be infringing on your intellectual property if they tried to sell it or make money off it.

Your idea is not protected, as another person can have that idea and not violate any of your rights; look at the rights a patent holder has, and tell me where the infringement is in that case.

What is protected is whatever specific process or machine you laid out in illustration, description, or explanation in a fixed medium. If your work is unique enough to be patented, the likelihood that somebody independently came upon the exact same process or machine, no changes at all, is astronomically low. Law is not built to work for cases where the likelihood of it happening is fundamentally zero. The only things I can imagine that are built that way sit in the labs of universities and research facilities.

4 hours ago, Rassah said:

That actually makes the claim that it's a right worse. Rights don't expire. You can't murder someone after some set period of time. Also, we have yet to see copyright expire after Disney started prolonging them.

Legal rights expire all the time, and natural rights are inalienable, not indefinite. If a right is assumed to exist that must expire by the majority, then a right that expires must exist.

In addition, the Copyright Term Extension Act was seen as only fair to companies that had copyrighted materials before copyright law was changed. It merely caused the pre-1978 works to be subject to the post-1978 laws. There is no plan to change the rights of a copyright owner for Disney or any other company.

5 hours ago, Rassah said:

I'm not sure relying on state and federal law is a good way to distinguish property types...

You were arguing that intellectual property is just property. I was using this as a way to point out that there is more than one kind of "property," and that not all "property" is treated the same by every organization and individual. How can intellectual property be the same as personalty and realty when personalty and realty are treated differently?

5 hours ago, Rassah said:

Not sure why this is relevant.

You said "Ideas (patents, songs) are treated like property in our law;" U.S. Code, Title 17, Chapter 2, Section 202 says "nope."

5 hours ago, Rassah said:

It was supposed to have ended 50 years ago. They keep lobbying to extend the term length of copyright. So I don't expect that to stop in the future. But, again, if something is a right, it shouldn't expire. That this does makes it at most an arbitrarily defined grant given by law, not an actual right.

50 years ago?

Prior to the change, works were protected for 75 years after publication if they were under corporate authorship. That would mean Steamboat Willie would have seen its copyright expire in 2003. After the change, works under corporate authorship got 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication. Because it was shorter, the Copyright Term Extension Act allowed Disney to fall under the publication aspect of the new law, so Steamboat WIllie's copyright now expires in 2023.

I am not sure how 2003 was fifty years ago, and I am not sure how placing all companies under the new law is arbitrary.

5 hours ago, Rassah said:

I'm debating with you, not them. I'm assuming you have read that text, and thus can use their points to defend your point of view as well.

I can say the same thing; I am debating with you. I am assuming you are knowledgeable on the subject, and thus can use their points to defend your point of view as well.

If you are not knowledgeable, educate yourself and return. I've already done enough in scavenging through most of the Chapters and Sections of Title 17 and Title 35, looking through the United States Code to see what property law there is, looking through the Codes of Some of the Several States to see what property law there is, looking to find some of the writings from the exact day the patent discussion was had at the constitutional convention, and generally attempting to educate you. I draw the line here. Not my job.

Don't interpret my inaction as anything but that; I simply believe that I have done enough for you. If you want me to agree with you, I will if you show me where it is true rather than assert that it is. If you are like me and don't care if I agree, but refuse to use anything other than your opinion, then I am almost through with this. I seek to be informed, not parroted at. I know what you say, now prove it.

5 hours ago, Rassah said:

You have yet to elaborate on this. This right is definitely not a negative right, meaning it must be enforced. And so far this "natural" right seems to be entirely supported by feels. There is nothing about intellectual property violations that infringe on the freedom of persons for instance. Nothing about me downloading a song restricts the artist from performing any action. It may change what they might have to do to convince someone to engage in an exchange with them, but it doesn't actually restrict them from continuing to sell their song.

You believe in a different set of rights than the majority. The majority wins. Unless you find a way to overpower the majority, such as with a divine reign, abundant political influence, or cult of personality, then feel free to say that the right does not exist; you will still be forced to live with the rights the majority approves of. If you manage to overthrow the majority, then feel free to say that the rights I believe in don't exist - you will be fought by the majority, though.

Show me an example of where the majority has the most power and does not enforce what they believe is a right. Show me an example where the majority has not contradicted the minority in order to enforce what they believe is a right. Show me, do not tell me.

• I can show you a list of the rights a majority of the English colonists thought they had that were trampled on by a king before they rebelled, as they made sure to make it clear.
• I can show you a list of the rights a majority of the citizens of Russia thought they had that were trampled on by a king before they rebelled, as they made sure to make it clear.

Whether or not these rights are kept, though, really only depends on whether or not the majority maintains most of their power.

6 hours ago, Rassah said:

That wasn't so much an emotional argument as a real life example. An old lady literally got busted and fined by the RIAA.

...

Stupidest, most cruel and unjust policy ever, thanks to which everyone in the country is now a criminal (no one can read millions of pages of law, not even the legislators that pass it), and which allows corrupt governments to exploit and extort their own citizens.

It was an emotional argument, and it is unfortunate; however, it does not mean we should do away with ignorantia juris non excusant.

To do away with that means any person being tried for a crime may use ignorance as a defense, and it would then be the job of the prosecution to prove not that an individual did a crime, but that the individual was aware that the act was a crime. This is nearly always impossible. This is an unfortunate truth as old as the Latin itself.

6 hours ago, Rassah said:

Rights can't be forfeited. Not even to the state, because a state doesn't grant rights. It simply recognizes, and often violates them.

Legal rights can be forfeited. A state never takes away a person's natural rights; it takes away what the majority agrees are legal rights.

This is why inmates are still allowed to practice their religion, make criticisms of their government, and maintain their copyright, but they are not allowed to engage in free commerce, move as they wish, or live under their own schedule.

6 hours ago, Rassah said:

However, if I perform a song, entirely from memory (idea), without relying on the record, or possibly even ever having heard it (e.g. I heard that song sung by a friend), I am still in violation of intellectual property theft (copyright infringement). Look at the Happy Birthday song, which had been battled, with people fined, for decades. That only settled because the song was found to not have been under proper copyright from the beginning. If I publicly sing other songs that are properly copyrighted, which are effectively just ideas in my head, I can still be fined.

Because the rights to perform the work - a work that must be fixed in a medium in order to be perceived - are exclusively those of the copyright owner.

You infringed on their right to perform their work.

However, the Happy Birthday example is misused. What was found is that the company only had claim to what had been recorded - a piano melody and lyrics - that the company had only not proved that they had the copyright - not that they did not have it - and that the copyright had expired anyway. This case only held the precedent that one only holds copyright ownership over something that is fixed in a tangible medium, and the individual must prove this in order to defend their copyright. The likely reason Warner could not prove they held ownership, though, is that they had failed to register the copyright. They probably did actually have proper copyright despite the findings.

6 hours ago, Rassah said:

When copying intellectual property becomes as simple as just experiencing it (your brain automatically records a copy of everything you see and hear), and sharing said property becomes as simple as communicating it (you can communicate sounds and pictures directly, like through radio) - where the copyright thing becomes as simple as a word, and sharing it as simple as saying a word - what happens to copyright? The law will not be able to ban us from making personal copies. That camera that someone sneaks into the movie theater will be an integral part of every movie goer. Will the laws ban us from speaking certain "words" and ideas, thus becoming a plain censorship law?

I can speak nothing about the future. We will see if and when that happens. The world is going to change in the next few centuries in major ways.

[Sidewalk Surfboard]

Can you all just like shut the fuck up

[Rassah]

10 hours ago, Onnes said:

Rassah, as near as I can tell your natural rights are essentially an AnCap variation of Locke's. From what I've read here, I'd end up summarizing it as:

Life  > Property (Modern usage, NOT Locke's 'Estate') > Liberty

I'm actually more of a follower of Murray Rothbard, and some of the newer contemporary philosophies, such as those expound upon by contemporary writers like Jeffrey Tucker (a good friend), and the cypherpunk movement. When things are distilled down to simple computer code, things become SO much clearer (e.g. bitcoin converts money and value transfer into literally speech, and gives a right to transact privately and anonymously that trumps any law, regulation, or border, making all three of them become literally a violation of speech). Not a fan of Locke's cause of the whole social contract thing. And no reason that life should be > instead of = to property. In some cases it is.

10 hours ago, Onnes said:

A right is meaningful only insofar as other people respect it or have it forced upon them. If you found yourself stranded on a desert island with a bunch of Marxists, your views on property as a natural right would be completely irrelevant.

For me, personally, absolutely not. Sorry for more Goodwin (just finished watching The Man in the High Castle, good show), but I would probably feel like a defiant Jew in WW2 Germany, sticking to my principles in the face of tyranny, or whatever. I mean, if we can't have our principles, then what are we? Also, your situation, as a snapshot in time, may be valid, but over the long term that island's Marxism will collapse. People recognize the right to ownership of things and don't like having their stuff taken. People are afraid to die and value life. It's all in our DNA, practically.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

But you said "our law.

No, I said NO law. As in NO law trumps rights and ethics, because laws are just words written on paper by fallible men pushing their own agendas, and because it's easy to demonstrate that laws are not necessarily ethical or just. It doesn't matter what country the law is in. The question is whether piracy is morally justifiable, not whether it's legal. And when I attempted to reason that it is, the counterarguments I got were " but the law says." Unfortunately I keep getting those counterarguments despite pointing out that legal ≠ moral/ethical.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Your idea is not protected, as another person can have that idea and not violate any of your rights;

Not true. If someone comes up with the same idea and starts using it in their product, you can sue them for patent infringement. It doesn't even matter if they came up with it on their own.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

What is protected is whatever specific process or machine you laid out in illustration, description, or explanation in a fixed medium. If your work is unique enough to be patented, the likelihood that somebody independently came upon the exact same process or machine, no changes at all, is astronomically low.

And yet all too common in today's tech world, with companies racing to patent things first, and even introducing the concept of "patent trolling." Note all of their "fixed in a medium" patents are about concepts, designs, and ideas.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Legal rights expire all the time

Yeah, cause they're not rights to begin with. Or because they are rights, but people decide to violate them. We should probably just drop the whole "legal" discussion anyway. My family and I have had way too many issues with "legal" rights and them expiring over the years.

And you have an annoying propensity of conflating rights with laws, as do many other people.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

You were arguing that intellectual property is just property.

Actually I was arguing that intellectual property is in no way property, and just using absurd examples to try to point out the absurdity of thinking it *is* property, or that it could be subject to theft like one.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

You said "Ideas (patents, songs) are treated like property in our law;" U.S. Code, Title 17, Chapter 2, Section 202 says "nope."

Untrue. All this says is that the song is separate property from the physical CD it is stored on. It doesn't say that the song itself isn't to be treated like property. But, again, laws. Whatever.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Prior to the change, works were protected for 75 years after publication if they were under corporate authorship.

Weren't copyright works originally only protected for 28 years. So, 2016-50=1966. Close enough. And it only got extended to 75 years later. Why wouldn't it be extended further?

 

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

I can say the same thing; I am debating with you. I am assuming you are knowledgeable on the subject, and thus can use their points to defend your point of view as well.

And I do. Note I'm not asking anyone to dedicate hours of their life reading some background materials just so they can argue on the Internets.

I do wish you didn't waste your time scavanging through copyright law. Sorry that you did.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

You believe in a different set of rights than the majority. The majority wins.

Unfortunately that is true. And it has often been the case in my life. I believe in a lack of a god, and that morals coming from within us instead of getting the bible, which is different from the majority. I believe that gaus should have the right to form relationships and have sex, which was for a long time different from the majority. I believe and hold as true lots of things that the majority does not.

But I didn't realize this was a popularity contest, or that ethics were subject to popular opinion.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Unless you find a way to overpower the majority, such as with a divine reign, abundant political influence, or cult of personality,

Or technology, which is what my entire career is based on? One way I am convinced that I am right and others, despite being in majority, are wrong: when given the choice to do something without consequences or political and legal threats, people take that choice. I've heard people here mention that "Most people want to pay taxes," yet no one tries to pay extra. Ditto for copyright. "Most people want copyright protections," and yet file sharing and piracy are rampant, and should a system come up that makes it easy and impossible to stop or prosecute, I would best most people would actually not care about copyright. I wonder what a current poll of people below 25 say if questioned "is downloading music stealing?" My guess is most of our next generation would say no.

But, again, this isn't a popularity contest.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

To do away with that means any person being tried for a crime may use ignorance as a defense, and it would then be the job of the prosecution to prove not that an individual did a crime, but that the individual was aware that the act was a crime. This is nearly always impossible. This is an unfortunate truth as old as the Latin itself.

Oh, but this is TRIVIALLY easy. If laws only dealt with rights and infringing on those (murder, theft, fraud, etc), then those laws are pretty self evident already. Only way you could break those is by accident, which we already have trials for (was the murder premeditated, or manslaughter?). If it was someone breaking a contract, then they can't claim ignorance, since they read the contract. As for others, give a warning, and just check if a warning is on their record next time. In the grand scheme of things, it's a MUCH better system than hundreds is thousands of laws no one can actually follow, but which you can still be found guilty of if necessary.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

Because the rights to perform the work - a work that must be fixed in a medium in order to be perceived - are exclusively those of the copyright owner.

You infringed on their right to perform their work.

No I did not. I did not confine them to their house, muzzle them, or prevented them from performing their work on any way. Me singing something of theirs a thousand miles away does not infringe on them in any way whatsoever.

7 hours ago, MalletFace said:

I can speak nothing about the future. We will see if and when that happens. The world is going to change in the next few centuries in major ways.

I can, and am. It's the field I work in (at least in regards to decentralized "legislative arbitrage" technologies). But surely you can comment on a hypothetical?

[Rassah]

Honestly, yeah, this argument, and many other political, legal, and ethical, will never go anywhere with me, since I'm debating from a point of self realization, with my code of ethics being entirely from an individual point of view and stemming entirely from internal ratiomalization, while most people, having grown up in regilious and statist societies, along with education that reinforces the same, debate from a point of some "higher power," such as a god or the state passing down morals from above which can not be questioned. Often times seemingly even without realizing it. If you want to know what it's like for me to argue with most of you, if you're an atheist who's ever argued with fundamentalist Christians, it feels pretty much EXACTLY like that. Down to "But the bible, in U.S. Code, Title 17, Chapter 2, Section 202 says..."

Edited December 31, 2015 by Rassah

[Wrecker]

[AshleyAshes]

This is why I just trick him into talking about how he wants to kill children until he breaks and whines about how unfair I am for not refuting each of his 'valid', children killing, points.

Edited December 31, 2015 by AshleyAshes

[Hakar-Kerarmor]

6 hours ago, Rassah said:

Honestly, yeah, this argument, and many other political, legal, and ethical, will never go anywhere with me, since I'm better than all of you.

You talk too much.

[Saxon]

12 hours ago, Rassah said:

Honestly, yeah, this argument, and many other political, legal, and ethical, will never go anywhere with me, since I'm debating from a point of self realization, with my code of ethics being entirely from an individual point of view and stemming entirely from internal ratiomalization, while most people, having grown up in regilious and statist societies, along with education that reinforces the same, debate from a point of some "higher power," such as a god or the state passing down morals from above which can not be questioned. Often times seemingly even without realizing it. If you want to know what it's like for me to argue with most of you, if you're an atheist who's ever argued with fundamentalist Christians, it feels pretty much EXACTLY like that. Down to "But the bible, in U.S. Code, Title 17, Chapter 2, Section 202 says..."

'Ratiomalization'

 

I think the converse is true, Rassah, and that you haven't realised that you've cultivated your own form of ideology and are, perhaps, now so far down the rabbit hole that you're completely beyond reason. 

How else could you think that it is ethically upstanding to tell people that they don't deserve any money for their work, and that you're entitled to access it for free even if it was never meant to be shared online?

A further problem is that you've acknowledged that taking a physical item is a form of stealing, and that copying sensitive information is stealing, but still don't see the connection to piracy.

...if someone stole a DVD do you think that the shop should only charge them for the cost of the raw materials, about 10p, for the aluminium disk, since any good self-realised individual can self-ratiomalize their entitlement to the disk's information? 

Edited December 31, 2015 by Saxon

[AshleyAshes]

15 minutes ago, Saxon said:

'Ratiomalization'

 

I think the converse is true, Rassah, and that you haven't realised that you've cultivated your own form of ideology and are, perhaps, now so far down the rabbit hole that you're completely beyond reason. 

Everyone thinks that they are the main character in reality, that everyone else are the stupid ones, that everyone is crazy except them, or that they are the only objectively thinking person when everyone else is just being subjective.

[Onnes]

Since this cadaver of a thread is still shambling along, I thought I'd offer my post-mortem thoughts.
 

13 hours ago, Rassah said:

I'm actually more of a follower of Murray Rothbard ...

13 hours ago, Rassah said:

 ... And no reason that life should be > instead of = to property. In some cases it is.

Well that's terrifying.
 

13 hours ago, Rassah said:

For me, personally, absolutely not. Sorry for more Goodwin (just finished watching The Man in the High Castle, good show), but I would probably feel like a defiant Jew in WW2 Germany, sticking to my principles in the face of tyranny, or whatever. I mean, if we can't have our principles, then what are we? Also, your situation, as a snapshot in time, may be valid, but over the long term that island's Marxism will collapse. People recognize the right to ownership of things and don't like having their stuff taken. People are afraid to die and value life. It's all in our DNA, practically.

This all started because you assumed that your incredibly unusual ethics were universal and that if you asserted them in an argument people would for some reason be converted. If it had just been "This is what I, Rassah, personally believe, thus I think copyright is satan." then I doubt this even would have made it past page 1. The thread went on because you kept pushing your ideology as though it was an accepted truth and all you had to do was remind people of its divine origin.

What actually made this so bloody long, though, was first the fact that it took you forever to clearly lay out the unusual way you were founding your arguments. This was further compounded by your rhetorical choice to invoke 'theft', 'force', 'coercion', and unclarified ethics/morality which made many of posts read as unnecessarily condescending or trollish. The constant meaningless mentions of logic and illogic didn't help either.

If you had just clearly presented what you were actually arguing, and why, from the start then at the very least this thread would have been less mind-numbingly bad.

Edited December 31, 2015 by Onnes

[Rassah]

55 minutes ago, Saxon said:

I think the converse is true, Rassah, and that you haven't realised that you've cultivated your own form of ideology and are, perhaps, now so far down the rabbit hole that you're completely beyond reason. 

I've heard that one from Christian fundamentalists before, too. I'm so far into my own atheist ideology of skepticism, figuring out my own reasons for why things exist and happen, and figuring out my own morals, that I am completely beyond the reason that Jesus did it. It's right there in the bible/law.

55 minutes ago, Saxon said:

How else could you think that it is ethically upstanding to tell people that they don't deserve any money for their work, and that you're entitled to access it for free even if it was never meant to be shared online?

Well the first part is easy. If they were never promised money for their work, then they don't deserve it, and the only way for them to get it if the do deserve it is by taking it from someone else by force. Unless you can tell me some other way that people who did some work, which no one promised them payments for, can get the money they deserve?

As for accessing it for free, it's not free, since I still have to use my own money, resources, and work to get it. It just costs very little at this point, and doesn't compensate them. But it doesn't take anything away from them either. I never had a contract with them, I never made promises to them, I never promised them money, and chances are we aren't even aware of each other. So, yeah, I'm entitled to go to a public place and make copies of things using my own resources. Why wouldn't I be?

55 minutes ago, Saxon said:

A further problem is that you've acknowledged that taking a physical item is a form of stealing, and that copying sensitive information is stealing, but still don't see the connection to piracy.

Because there isn't one. Taking a physical item deprives the original owner of that item. Copying something, even copying a physical item by using a 3D scanner and 3D printer, does not deprive the original owner of their item.

Breaking and entering, or hacking, into someone else's private property is a problem because you are literally imposing on their private property. That's the problem there, the breaking into someone's secure property to get access to things you're not supposed to. Not the copying itself. I have no problems with copying sensitive information when it's already publicly posted online, since at that point it's already public.

55 minutes ago, Saxon said:

...if someone stole a DVD do you think that the shop should only charge them for the cost of the raw materials, about 10p, for the aluminium disk, since any good self-realised individual can self-ratiomalize their entitlement to the disk's information? 

That's similar to breaking into someone's private property or hacking into someone's computer, so the shop owner should be able to charge whatever they paid for the item to begin with, at least. But I don't think a shop should be bothering selling DVDs in the first place, aside from as collectible items with some numismatic value.

[Saxon]

Selling a copy of a software package you created to someone is not 'force', is it, Rassah?

Someone who steals the software file and redistributes it, does deserve to be arrested though. It's not their invention, so they're not entitled to take it.

It is amazing how moralistic netizens get about piracy, when what they're essentially using it for is watching movies for free instead of going to the cinema. What a hot moral issue!

[Rassah]

10 minutes ago, Onnes said:

Well that's terrifying.

Murray Rothbard's ideas are terrifying? (where he radically wants people to just leave each other alone?) Or the life = property terrifying? It's very easy to come up with examples of where being deprived of your property means getting deprived on your life. Having water stolen in a desert, your boat damaged at sea, etc.

 

10 minutes ago, Onnes said:

 This all started because you assumed that your incredibly unusual ethics were universal and that if you asserted them in an argument people would for some reason be converted.

I don't know if people would get converted. At the least I hoped some people would consider the points. But they are universal. My ethics don't depend on any law, religion, or social traditions. They would continue to exist even without those things, and to a point exist in all laws and religions already (the golden rule and whatnot). It's just that some of our laws have gotten to complex and convoluted, that they became contradictory, despite still being based on those universal ethics.

Seriously, is saying I believe that murder, stealing, and lying is bad THAT controversial? That's where all of this (and that non-aggression principle thing) stems from. But governments have convinced people that sometimes killing is necessary, sometimes stealing is necessary, and sometimes lying is necessary. That's what bugs me.

10 minutes ago, Onnes said:

What actually made this so bloody long, though, was first the fact that it took you forever to clearly lay out the unusual way you were founding your arguments.

Sorry, I was resorting to too many questions and analogies to try to get the other side to question their own points. Also, I could have started with the core principles of ethics, which is unfortunately where this whole thing ended up, but I didn't think this would be that serious of a thread.

10 minutes ago, Onnes said:

This was further compounded by your rhetorical choice to invoke 'theft', 'force', 'coercion', and unclarified ethics/morality which made many of posts read as unnecessarily condescending or trollish.

Sorry, I call things as they are. I've been trying to avoid it, for the reason you state, but if you take someone's stuff without their consent and without provocation, even if it was "legally justified" or whatever, it's still theft, no matter what fancy nice terms you use for it.

 

7 minutes ago, Saxon said:

Selling a copy of a software package you created to someone is not 'force', is it, Rassah?

No, if the other party voluntarily pays for it. That's not the seller "deserving" payment, that's them offering it, and only getting it if someone else agrees to buy it.

7 minutes ago, Saxon said:

Someone who steals the software file and redistributes it, does deserve to be arrested though. It's not their invention, so they're not entitled to take it.

Why do they deserve to be arrested? If the files were posted publicly (a furry art site, a github page, a patent listing) they're not stealing it, and if they make copies, they're not taking it. They're making copies.

Maybe that's the problem. Why do you believe that making a duplicate copy of something is the same as taking that thing?

7 minutes ago, Saxon said:

It is amazing how moralistic netizens get about piracy, when what they're essentially using it for is watching movies for free instead of going to the cinema. What a hot moral issue!

I go to Cinemas all the time too. There are movies I like seeing on the big screen and like supporting financially, even if I have a 55" 3D tv with 7.1 theater surround at home already. Plus I'm sure you've seen me get moralistic about TONS of things, not just this topic.

[Saxon]

You agreed earlier that deliberately invading a digital platform to harvest information was theft. 

Deliberately breaking into software packages to remove their requirement for activation keys is hence also theft. 

There are many instances where duplication of sensitive information amounts to theft. For example the duplication of passwords, credit card details and activation keys for software.

 

Stop the moralistic wank about how you feel good about yourself for choosing to go to the cinema every so often to support films you like. You should have to pay fairly to watch any film. Cinema is a business, not a patreon account. 

[AshleyAshes]

You guys need to stop mixing civil and criminal law, as if they were one thing, and directly equal to each other.

[Rassah]

1 hour ago, Saxon said:

You agreed earlier that deliberately invading a digital platform to harvest information was theft. 

Yes. Due to having to break into someone else's property.

Quote

Deliberately breaking into software packages to remove their requirement for activation keys is hence also theft. 

What? How so? That software package is now mine, and on my property. How is it theft to modify something I have fully bought and paid for, and brought to my own place?

Quote

There are many instances where duplication of sensitive information amounts to theft. For example the duplication of passwords, credit card details and activation keys for software.

That's not actually theft. Using those to later steal money or to break into personal data storages is the theft. Passwords, credit card details, and activation keys are just information. It's some bits of data that everyone "steals" into their head just by seeing it once. How is seeing and remembering a string of numbers without actually using them to steal money or personal information "theft?"

Quote

Stop the moralistic wank about how you feel good about yourself for choosing to go to the cinema every so often to support films you like. You should have to pay fairly to watch any film. Cinema is a business, not a patreon account.

I do pay fairly to watch any film. I just avoid paying unfairly for all films. Yes, it's a business, and it needs to keep figuring out how to be run as a business in a world without enforceable copyright (like iTunes, Spotify, and even Microsoft in China did). Only idiots think that in such a world donations would be the only way to make money, and those businesses will likely be the first to die.

Edited December 31, 2015 by Rassah

[Lucyfish]

Welp, Sony just ran off with $75 of mine. Bought a video editing program that doesn't work, they refuse a refund and want to charge me an extra $30 for tech support.

It's in cases like these where I absolutely condone pirating. This is what I get for buying instead of pirating, I get fucking ripped off.

[AshleyAshes]

8 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

Welp, Sony just ran off with $75 of mine. Bought a video editing program that doesn't work, they refuse a refund and want to charge me an extra $30 for tech support.

It's in cases like these where I absolutely condone pirating. This is what I get for buying instead of pirating, I get fucking ripped off.

1) Did you actually buy from Sony or some software retailer?  (I'm not being snarky, I honestly have NO idea if Sony has it's own software distribution system or not)

2) Did you pay with your credit card?  You may have venues through your credit card company to have them charge back the company for selling you unworking software and refusing service or refund.  CC purchases actually get consumers a surprising amount of protections that many aren't aware of.

Edit: This may be better suited to it's own thread. ^_^;

Edited December 31, 2015 by AshleyAshes

[Lucyfish]

Just now, AshleyAshes said:

1) Did you actually buy from Sony or some software retailer?  (I'm not being snarky, I honestly have NO idea if Sony has it's own software distribution system or not)

2) Did you pay with your credit card?  You may have venues through your credit card company to have them charge back the company for selling you unworking software and refusing service or refund.  CC purchases actually get consumers a surprising amount of protections that many aren't aware of.

1. I bought it directly from Sony.

2. I used a debit card, dunno if that has the same rules.

[AshleyAshes]

Just now, Lucyfish said:

1. I bought it directly from Sony.

2. I used a debit card, dunno if that has the same rules.

Eeeehn, not really sure.  But I'd suggest you look up with the payment processor to see what options you have.  I do know that credit cards are like CRAZY lenient on consumers when it comes to charge backs.  Seriously, it borderlines on enabling fraud. o___o

[Lucyfish]

Point on the topic though, pirating is definitely preferred when getting programs from Sony. They clearly do not deserve this money if they are gonna sell faulty products and then charge a shitload extra just to get support for it. That's fucking consumer abuse.

[AshleyAshes]

5 minutes ago, Lucyfish said:

Point on the topic though, pirating is definitely preferred when getting programs from Sony. They clearly do not deserve this money if they are gonna sell faulty products and then charge a shitload extra just to get support for it. That's fucking consumer abuse.

And maybe some of us here can help you get the program running?  I mean, it's media software, it's unlikely that it's just BROKEN, so maybe someone here can help you out?