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This Is Why I Pirate

NoOther said:
Im sorry, were you being serious here? Because there are many artists that don't follow the line of the RIAA and MPAA. There are also many artists with independent labels. And as far as not being able to make money as an independent artist, that is also ridiculous. There are many artists making money off of what they created by themselves. So you can absolutely make money by making music. Your comment about selling crap is ridiculous since you have to sell something to make money, doesn't mean you can't create and sell, which many people do.

In short, don't generalize the entire artist community as piracy haters and lazy bums who don't want a real job.
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Read the first line of my post:
"I find it funny that artists believe piracy is the only reason they are not making tons of money." I wasn't generalizing the entire artist community, only the ones that blame piracy for all their problems. Artists can make decent money off shows if they find venues willing to pay them, but making decent money off just selling cds and songs is nearly impossible.

If I exclude taxes, fees, equipment, and production costs, an artist would have to sell more than 2,100 songs per month to make $25,000 a year (assuming they are selling the songs themselves, and keep 100% of the sale price for themselves).

Music just isn't the source of entertainment that it used to be. Artists are now competing with TV, Podcasts, Movies, "The Internet", more mainstream video games, etc.
 
Whatsisname said:
the securing for limited time isn't the purpose, that is the means to the end of enriching the public domain.
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If the sole purpose of copyright law were to enrich the public domain with intellectual property, there would be no such provision of copyright. An alternate provision would have been implemented which, in lieu of simply not specifying ownership, or lack thereof, over intellectual property, defined an immediate release of work into the public domain, as opposed to a period of ownership followed by its release to the public domain. Copyright protection is not simply a "means to an end" to guaranteeing that intellectual property eventually reaches public domain status.

Copyright does exist for the purpose of protection. It's why the term "copyright protection" appears numerous times in Title 17 of the U.S. code. It does also exist, in some part, for the enrichment of the "public domain", a term which appears only a handful of times in Title 17.

Note also that there is no provision in the U.S. for a rights holder to explicitly release property to the public domain before the expiration of the copyright term. Instead, the idea that a work could be dedicated to the public domain by the rights holder willingly and voluntarily has been left as a legal gray area. If our forefathers were so intensely concerned about enriching the public domain, would they not have included such a provision allowing rights holders to disclaim copyright over original works and to dedicate said works to the public domain?
 
sabar said:
Good article. Now for a rant.

Copyright is useless in society. The only people it seeks to protect are the content distributors, not the actual artists.

How many writers that put fanfics on the net actually think and care about how often their works are reproduced? With the hundreds of thousands of original drawings and photos uploaded to the internet each day, in how many cases is that artist thinking about copyright? When a bored kid gets a sketch-pad and draws their surroundings, when do they care about copies?

They don't. The problem is 100% with the "old guard" publisher types. Yeah, the middle-men who take 90% of the artists revenue.

Think about it. The very idea of someone owning information. It is absurd. How can someone own numbers? Words or sounds or lines arranged in a certain way? Copying data from computer to computer is a violation of copyright. What about copying from brain to brain? People with good ears can memorize a song if they hear it enough. Each note and its length, plus lyrics. Information has been duplicated, re-created. I can teach it to others and write it down. But why does someone else own it? I hope brains are never connected to computers or I guarantee we will lose the rights to our own minds to the MPAA.

Think about it deeply. Don't think about what has been drilled into your brain by society. It really makes no sense.

People truly create new things because they love to do it, regardless of compensation or ownership. A real artist, a real programmer, a real photographer wouldn't stop making new things if copyright law was gone or reduced.

Here is my solution. Copyright law should be 5 years from the creation, then public domain. Patents should be 7 years. Medical breakthroughs 2 years. All copyright is voided immediately when the creator dies. That is far more than enough time to get paid off something. If you can't come up with something new every few years then that is pathetic. There are FAR too many cases of these insane 100 year copyright lengths applying to one-hit wonders from long-dead people.

Copyright isn't meant to protect you. It isn't meant to help indie artists and game makers who actually care. It's made so Disney corp can stay afloat from something they made 20-80 years ago because they have failed to do anything of note in the past 10 years. It is there so the recording and movie industry can re-re-re-release things from 30 years back. It is there so game companies and Hollywood can continue to churn out crappy sequels that no one wants at premium prices.

We do not have a right to free things, but we ought to have a right to information, and we don't. Most civilized countries are considered to have liberty and freedom, yet one of the basic human functions, the gathering and repetition of information, could not be any more restrictive.

How different would the world be if x86 had no more rights? Cheap chips everywhere?
What if Lucas lost the rights to Star Wars early? No crappy prequels/reworks?
What if the book 1984 was in the public domain? More awareness by people?
What if mickey mouse was in the public domain? Tens of thousands can draw him from their own memory by now anyways, but it is restricted still?

Copyright just stifles innovation when it lasts 90 years! Same deal with most patents too. Companies are forced to re-invent the wheel to engage in market competition with that company that patented the wheel. It is wasted money, wasted human resources, and wasted time.

It's funny indeed that the age of information has made laws more restrictive. But laws do not imply actual restriction. The common person still violates these new laws by sharing music/video/etc each day. It is just proof that copyright means nothing to the common citizen.

They just never have taken a step back and looked at how we got here and why.
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You sir, are correct. This is the way I have always felt about copyright. Copyright is a privilege granted by society to encourage people to create. Copyrights lasting 50+ years do not encourage creation, they discourage it as there is no financial motivating to create new works if you can still profit from old.

Best post I've seen on this topic in a long time.
 
wonderfield said:
If the sole purpose of copyright law were to enrich the public domain with intellectual property, there would be no such provision of copyright. An alternate provision would have been implemented which, in lieu of simply not specifying ownership, or lack thereof, over intellectual property, defined an immediate release of work into the public domain, as opposed to a period of ownership followed by its release to the public domain. Copyright protection is not simply a "means to an end" to guaranteeing that intellectual property eventually reaches public domain status.

Copyright does exist for the purpose of protection. It's why the term "copyright protection" appears numerous times in Title 17 of the U.S. code. It does also exist, in some part, for the enrichment of the "public domain", a term which appears only a handful of times in Title 17.

Note also that there is no provision in the U.S. for a rights holder to explicitly release property to the public domain before the expiration of the copyright term. Instead, the idea that a work could be dedicated to the public domain by the rights holder willingly and voluntarily has been left as a legal gray area. If our forefathers were so intensely concerned about enriching the public domain, would they not have included such a provision allowing rights holders to disclaim copyright over original works and to dedicate said works to the public domain?
Click to expand...

Mandating that everything ever created was put immediately into the public domain would mean a lot of people wouldn't bother making anything. That's exactly why there's copyright.

The whole point is that they give you the limited monopoly, as an incentive for you to actually create and disclose.

In the case of patents, you could just keep everything as a trade secret.

In the case of creative works, many would simply not bother if there wasn't some way to make some money from it.
 
The article is a bit simplistic, I have yet to see a discussion about the real fundamental justification for free ("pirated" if you want) music, movies and games.
All of these are part of our culture, and culture integration is critical to all, especially to populations with no money of their own like teenagers.
As @Kalabalana justly said, "People have a finite amount of resources to spend on media." People who say don't buy it if you can't afford it or if it's not an indie label are really not getting the point, or are depriving themselves from really great music. Like 90% of the greatest music.

What we need is a revolution (of course!) in the mainstream way to consume and purchase these cultural artifacts, affordable to all regardless of their financial situation, and rewarding the creators appropriately for their work. Right now, free downloads are the only alternative people have, unsatisfactory as it is.

There's also a lot of crap in the media, probably less than 5% of good stuff I liked in all I downloaded, and much less than 1‰ in all that's available. Free downloads are the best way to discover stuff you wouldn't consider listening to, watching or buying.

The cost of DRM technological implementations, of all the proceedings and trials against pirates, the parasites that are proxy services and cyberlockers, etc. (and I don't mean only the financial cost) would not exist if we simply had a society debate about culture and the proper constitutional rights and other legal background.
 
I hate when people say this however: tl;dr

In general and regarding software:
Possession is 9/10ths of the law. I don't really care what the EULA says because I'm not a business. I have the binary. I also have a disassembler and debugger. If that is too much work, make your own operating system/video game/whatever. DIY. Do you think by any means this is new?

Regarding IP law in the United States:
It needs an overhaul. Patent trolls and big business stifle innovation in the marketplace. The only way to be innovative is to be simple. Like the Raspberry Pi and that isn't even targeted towards a commercial market.

Regarding things like SOPA and in general:


If you read this post and even if you vehemently disagree, I want you to take away three key concepts:

Possession is 9/10ths of the law.
Once catapults are outlawed, only outlaws will have catapults.
Supply and demand is a helluva thing.
 
I can't say I agree with most of what the writer is saying, but this jumped out at me:

On the flip side of that, though, who actually loses something when I pirate a digital version of a game? The RIAA, MPAA, and others continue to spin piracy as theft, but we know that’s not true: I’m not taking my game from anyone. It’s not like Little Timmy arrives home to find out that he can’t play Lego Star Wars because Sebastian has stolen the grubby disc. If I wasn’t intending to buy a DVD in the first place — if I don’t have the money to buy the DVD, for example — what is the impact of me downloading an XviD rip? There isn’t one.
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In essence, one of his points is that 1) when you physically steal something, you are physically losing a good like the Little Timmy point he makes; 2) when you pirate something though, nothing's being physically removed since it is "merely" a copy so that's OK; 3) if I wasn't going to get it in the first place, they wouldn't have made the money anyways. Is no one else bothered by this type of argument? The 3rd part, the end of his example, is probably the most troubling point. I mean, if I wasn't going to buy it anyways... :rolleyes:
 
I forgot to mention one thing, too, since I can't edit...

I don't need to write a sophomoric, overly simplified, self-righteous, fart sniffing, straight out of English 101 argumentative essay piece trying to justify my actions:

If you don’t want to spend $10 on the latest Katy Perry album, then simply do without it. You don’t have to pirate that game; you don’t have some kind of innate privilege that compels you to download it. Put simply, I pirate because I can, but that doesn’t mean I should.

On the flip side of that, though, who actually loses something when I pirate a digital version of a game? The RIAA, MPAA, and others continue to spin piracy as theft...

... As it stands, the only real way around this is to support independent artists, where all or most of your money goes directly to the creator.
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So he'll pirate an album and send in a stamped envelope $20 directly to the artist's home?
Perhaps maybe $600 distributed equally to the dev team of the DAW software?

Yeah, should have just shut the fuck up.
 
FrostBite said:
I can't say I agree with most of what the writer is saying, but this jumped out at me:



In essence, one of his points is that 1) when you physically steal something, you are physically losing a good like the Little Timmy point he makes; 2) when you pirate something though, nothing's being physically removed since it is "merely" a copy so that's OK; 3) if I wasn't going to get it in the first place, they wouldn't have made the money anyways. Is no one else bothered by this type of argument? The 3rd part, the end of his example, is probably the most troubling point. I mean, if I wasn't going to buy it anyways... :rolleyes:
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Yeah, that argument has been really popular as of late with those opposing copyright law.

It's really just self-rationalization imo, the idea that "oh well maybe i pirate but it's not hurting anything because i wouldn't have bought it anyway so I'm not like one of those other bad guys." Like others have said, if you weren't going to buy it, you don't have a right to get it for free.
 
I want my movies, music and TV channels offered online and for a fair price. That is all I am asking. I don't support pirating but I also don't support the RIAA or MPAA trying to kill any form of distribution other than traditional CD, DVD or movies theaters. They are not embracing these new technologies, they are trying to kill them and go back to their monolithic monopoly practices.
 
Kynnath said:
The article had some interesting points. I'm not sure I share all of them (I was a pirate until I got a job and money, and don't pirate anymore), although he makes a fair amount of sense.

His argument, however, is flawed from the start. SOPA and PIPA are not about piracy. What they do to 'combat piracy' is insignificant, and given the lengths people regularly go to pirate, the additional cost of having to know IPs instead of domain names is laughable. What SOPA and PIPA target is lawful competition on the media space.

It used to be that content distribution was expensive. This lead to the means of distribution to be centralized in a few large companies that could afford the fixed costs. Selling one million copies of a disk required first creating and distributing one million physical copies. That ran for millions in investment.

Then along came the internet, and distribution costs plummeted. Selling a million copies now meant having a digital storefront where you could download or print smaller runs as demand required on a central location and ship out if someone wanted a physical copy. This has allowed a wealth of niche markets to be created, which the large distributors wouldn't normally target because the upfront costs wouldn't justify it.

This presents a challenge to the big media giants, because it's far more profitable if people just listen to a few artists they control than if they have to share entertainment money with a million micro producers they have no hold over. The solution? Raise the cost of entry back to the millions it took back in the day. How? Restrictive laws that give them the power to shut down anyone with no recourse or need to prove they have a case. The targeted individuals would face a long, expensive legal battle to defend their rights that most won't be able to afford, while others just won't make their start-ups in the first place.

You can see how the DMCA already does this on a smaller scale. YouTube is filled with examples of both actual corporations and trolls abusing the take-down request to shut down videos for weeks at a time. And that's just trying to get the site itself to recognize that there was no infringement. Imagine trying to make your case to a DNS, while your whole site is down for weeks and your funds are frozen.

It may read as a conspiracy theory, but just take a look at the law. Does it look like it's aimed at making unlawful behavior more difficult, or making lawful behavior onerous to the extent that you just won't bother?

A nice write-up on the law is found here. His views are a bit less extreme than mine, but still a good read. http://www.sea-of-memes.com/LetsCode47/LetsCode47.html
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Well said sir!
 
Chimel said:
The cost of DRM technological implementations, of all the proceedings and trials against pirates, the parasites that are proxy services and cyberlockers, etc. (and I don't mean only the financial cost) would not exist if we simply had a society debate about culture and the proper constitutional rights and other legal background.
Click to expand...
You have the right to debate. Have at it. You do not, however, have any right to partake of whatever you wish due to a philosophical position on copyright law. Similarly, you have the right to protest U.S. policy, but not the right to desecrate the American flag while doing so.

The right to disagree with a thing and the right to violate a thing are not the same.
 
FrostBite said:
Is no one else bothered by this type of argument? The 3rd part, the end of his example, is probably the most troubling point. I mean, if I wasn't going to buy it anyways... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

This is how the argument is presented (the first and last points):

1) If you don’t want to spend $10 on a game, don't buy it.
2) I’m not physically taking my game from anyone.
3) The creators of the content are subjectively compensated less than what the business is.
4) If I pirate this game, nobody is "harmed" and there is no loss except to the creators.
5) The industry model prevents the creator from being fairly compensated (this is subjective)
6) This is "beyond my control", therefore I will pirate because I can.
7) I still have $10 in my pocket.

This is how I read it:

1) If you don’t want to spend $10 on a game, don't buy it.
4) If I pirate this game, nobody is "harmed" and there is no loss except to the creators.
6) This is "beyond my control", therefore I will pirate because I can.
7) I still have $10 in my pocket.
Conclusion: I have compensated no one while doing no production of my own, including attempting to fix the root of the problem in terms of compensation.

Ignorance (Well, the system is broken! Free candy!) is not a very strong argument.
There is less incentive for people to produce anything which seems to be a trend in Western society.

Like I said, he should have just shut the fuck up.
 
wonderfield said:
Similarly, you have the right to protest U.S. policy, but not the right to desecrate the American flag while doing so.
Click to expand...

Except that desecrating the flag IS legal and protected under the First Amendment as "symbolic speech."
 
wonderfield said:
You have the right to debate. Have at it. You do not, however, have any right to partake of whatever you wish due to a philosophical position on copyright law. Similarly, you have the right to protest U.S. policy, but not the right to desecrate the American flag while doing so.

The right to disagree with a thing and the right to violate a thing are not the same.
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Dear shill, you can also report me for ripping all the DVD and BD I own to my media library and thus illegally bypassing the copy protection measures. Stupid laws that don't make common sense are begging to be violated, as a first step to being revised.

And I don't give a damn about burning flags, dollar bills or melting pennies from any nation. They are not holy, it's an archaic religious thing, you said it yourself ("desecrate".)
Ni Dieu, ni maître. Neither God nor master.
 
wizdum said:
Read the first line of my post:
"I find it funny that artists believe piracy is the only reason they are not making tons of money." I wasn't generalizing the entire artist community, only the ones that blame piracy for all their problems. Artists can make decent money off shows if they find venues willing to pay them, but making decent money off just selling cds and songs is nearly impossible.

If I exclude taxes, fees, equipment, and production costs, an artist would have to sell more than 2,100 songs per month to make $25,000 a year (assuming they are selling the songs themselves, and keep 100% of the sale price for themselves).

Music just isn't the source of entertainment that it used to be. Artists are now competing with TV, Podcasts, Movies, "The Internet", more mainstream video games, etc.
Click to expand...

First, it is good to know that is not what you really meant. I did read your post, and re-read it, and re-re-read it. You may not have not intended to generalize, but that is exactly how you worded it.

I find it funny that artists believe piracy is the only reason they are not making tons of money.
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That is a generalization on the artists. That is an all inclusive statement with no exclusion of any group of artists. If you meant only a smaller segment, then this wording would have been more proper:

"I find it funny that the artists who believe piracy is the only reason they are not making tons of money..."

OR

"I find it funny the artists who support SOPA and believe piracy is the only..."

the is a separator, it designates a segment or an individual. Just saying artists designates the entirety of the group.

So by saying "I find it funny artsts" includes all artists and applies the rest of the statement to the entirety of artists. And since that was your opening sentence, it then applies the rest of the post to the entire group of artists.
 
CEpeep said:
Except that desecrating the flag IS legal and protected under the First Amendment as "symbolic speech."
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Right. My mistake.

Chimel said:
Dear shill, you can also report me for ripping all the DVD and BD I own to my media library and thus illegally bypassing the copy protection measures. Stupid laws that don't make common sense are begging to be violated, as a first step to being revised.
Click to expand...
It's convenient for you to label me as a "shill" as a means for you to portray me as the 'bad guy' and yourself as the 'good guy'. That doesn't make it accurate.
 
Chimel said:
Dear shill, you can also report me for ripping all the DVD and BD I own to my media library and thus illegally bypassing the copy protection measures. Stupid laws that don't make common sense are begging to be violated, as a first step to being revised.

And I don't give a damn about burning flags, dollar bills or melting pennies from any nation. They are not holy, it's an archaic religious thing, you said it yourself ("desecrate".)
Ni Dieu, ni maître. Neither God nor master.
Click to expand...

Correction, stupid laws are begging to be protested, not violated. Violating laws still often requires punishment by those laws, no matter how stupid they may be. Now, if you wish to protest by violating them and are willing to pay the price for it, then by all means. But one should not expect to violate it knowingly and get away with it simply because they think it is a stupid law...
 
fps4ever said:
I want my movies, music and TV channels offered online and for a fair price. That is all I am asking. I don't support pirating but I also don't support the RIAA or MPAA trying to kill any form of distribution other than traditional CD, DVD or movies theaters. They are not embracing these new technologies, they are trying to kill them and go back to their monolithic monopoly practices.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what irks me. With digital distribution comes a monumental decrease in costs. No more need for a vast physical distribution network, manufacturing, packaging, Massive warehouses to hold the physical goods, shipping all over the country and the physical space at the retailer to hold the physical product. Do the consumers see the savings in this? Not one bit.

Oh and copyright and patent protection has gotten way out of hand. There's no reason a person or business should have a monopoly over a product for more than a decade or so. That's not the reason copyright and patents Exist. They exist to spur innovation and protect the creator for a reasonable amount of time to make a handsome profit off of what they've created and then release it into the public domain for all to use, improve, and make cheaper. Not stifle competition and innovation for 50-100 years.
 
FranklyShankly said:
Yeah, that argument has been really popular as of late with those opposing copyright law.

It's really just self-rationalization imo, the idea that "oh well maybe i pirate but it's not hurting anything because i wouldn't have bought it anyway so I'm not like one of those other bad guys." Like others have said, if you weren't going to buy it, you don't have a right to get it for free.
Click to expand...

It's being used because the content industries and politicians are trying to equate illegal downloading and the theft of physical items. They are not the same thing, no matter how many idiots try to say that downloading a movie is just like a jewelry store robbery. There are too many differences to even list them all, but a key issue is that the owner or distributor has not "lost" anything. With a physical good, if it's stolen, it can no longer be sold. That is a 1 to 1 loss. If one thing is stolen, that's one item the producer, distributor, owner or whoever doesn't get compensated for. If 10 items are stolen, the loss is multiplied by 10. It's completely different for a download. If a song is downloaded illegally, the song is still there for sale. Someone with money can come along and buy it and therefore the proper people are compensated. It gets a little fuzzier if you have more people downloading it, but 10 people downloading a digital product does not equal 10 items stolen. There is no way you can prove those 10 people would have ever paid for the product and therefore no one was deprived of any money. On a broader scale there is "some" kind of loss, but it's difficult to quantify. Most of the industry doesn't even try, they just spout complete bullshit as the truth and get their bought politicians to shove worse and worse laws down our throats. As someone mentioned earlier, if the industries would just adjust for the changing times and give the consumer what they're asking for, things would be fine. Since they don't, many consumers will go out and take what they want, on their own terms, whether it's right or wrong. The industries can blame themselves for this. I'm actually hoping sometime soon both the MPAA and RIAA are disbanded. If it ever happens, it couldn't be done too soon.
 
wtburnette said:
It's being used because the content industries and politicians are trying to equate illegal downloading and the theft of physical items.
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2z6ts9e.jpg


They're right. I would download EVERY car.
 
fps4ever said:
I want my movies, music and TV channels offered online and for a fair price. That is all I am asking. I don't support pirating but I also don't support the RIAA or MPAA trying to kill any form of distribution other than traditional CD, DVD or movies theaters. They are not embracing these new technologies, they are trying to kill them and go back to their monolithic monopoly practices.
Click to expand...

YYYYEEEESSSSSS.
 
wtiger said:
This is exactly what irks me. With digital distribution comes a monumental decrease in costs. No more need for a vast physical distribution network, manufacturing, packaging, Massive warehouses to hold the physical goods, shipping all over the country and the physical space at the retailer to hold the physical product. Do the consumers see the savings in this? Not one bit.

Oh and copyright and patent protection has gotten way out of hand. There's no reason a person or business should have a monopoly over a product for more than a decade or so. That's not the reason copyright and patents Exist. They exist to spur innovation and protect the creator for a reasonable amount of time to make a handsome profit off of what they've created and then release it into the public domain for all to use, improve, and make cheaper. Not stifle competition and innovation for 50-100 years.
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Partially to play Devil's advocate here, but also to put a little more perspective on the entire issue with relation to other forces:

I am interested to hear your theory how competition and innovation are being stifled for 50-100 years....? Considering copyrights and patents are based on singular ideas and items, not on creating wholly new ideas and items.

Also, note that some of the reason for extending the laws has to do with allowing companies to be competitive as well. Imagine if you had no copyright laws at all, then China decided to take all the innovations and manufacture them and sell them right back to us (yes some of this goes on now, but there are many more that can't be imported because of violations to these laws)? How many more US companies would go bankrupt because of that? And then think those companies are not making any money, so there is no money for R&D, so what new technologies would they be able to create?
 
wtiger said:
There's no reason a person or business should have a monopoly over a product for more than a decade or so.
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I think 25-30 years is about right. It affords content creators more than ample time to profit from their works. I don't think having such long copyright terms stifles innovation in any truly meaningful capacity, but it would be nice if things were shuffled into the public domain more quickly. I could download old Burt Reynolds movies to my heart's content.

Really, though, what I want to see is a legal construct providing for public domain dedication. I want to be able to take a piece of original work and completely disclaim any copyright to it. It's aggravating to me that there's absolutely no way to explicitly state that I don't want something I create to not be granted automatic protection if that's what I want.
 
NoOther said:
Correction, stupid laws are begging to be protested, not violated. Violating laws still often requires punishment by those laws, no matter how stupid they may be. Now, if you wish to protest by violating them and are willing to pay the price for it, then by all means. But one should not expect to violate it knowingly and get away with it simply because they think it is a stupid law...
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Well I didn't mean that they would be violated without punishment, nor that violating them precludes protesting them. I merely mean that if laws are stupid and go against the people, you can only expect to see violations such as the so-called rampant piracy, in addition to the protests. I want to enjoy my music and movies now, not when I'm dead, because there is so much lobbying that these legal changes may not happen during my lifetime.

And in my case, with well over 3,000 legally purchased CD and about half that in DVD/BD, the producers and their copyright agencies already got their fat paycheck from me. The artists, not so much. This is the situation that I, and the article, deplores. Let's not play on the words, and my arguments are probably not valid in many ways, my main point is, we have a real society problem on our hands, and we should debate and tackle it properly, not by supporting obsolete marketing practices on one side, or free downloads on the other side.
 
The biggest current problem with copyright law is the fact that our lawmakers keep taking a dump all over it by arbitrarily extending its length and granting exemptions for crap like Mickey Mouse.

We need a reasonable length of time that is set in stone and cannot be modified by congress. With the way things are going, I wonder if Copyright will necessitate a constitutional amendment in order to ensure its protection.
 
wonderfield said:
Really, though, what I want to see is a legal construct providing for public domain dedication. I want to be able to take a piece of original work and completely disclaim any copyright to it. It's aggravating to me that there's absolutely no way to explicitly state that I don't want something I create to not be granted automatic protection if that's what I want.
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Aren't you looking for the GPL then?
 
The GPL is a license which grants others certain rights to use the content, with certain restrictions, but it has no impact on ownership of that content or its automatic copyright. GPL-licensed content still belongs to the original creator. It says, basically, "I have rights to this work and grant others limited rights to it".

What I want is a way to say "I have no rights to this work", which isn't currently possible under U.S. law.
 
CEpeep said:
The biggest current problem with copyright law is the fact that our lawmakers keep taking a dump all over it by arbitrarily extending its length and granting exemptions for crap like Mickey Mouse.

We need a reasonable length of time that is set in stone and cannot be modified by congress. With the way things are going, I wonder if Copyright will necessitate a constitutional amendment in order to ensure its protection.
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The Berne Convention requires a minimum length of life plus 50 years if you want to be a signatory.

The US government couldn't lower it beyond that if it wanted to, being a signatory to that convention is way too important to all US IP holders.
 
wonderfield said:
The GPL is a license which grants others certain rights to use the content, with certain restrictions, but it has no impact on ownership of that content or its automatic copyright. GPL-licensed content still belongs to the original creator. It says, basically, "I have rights to this work and grant others limited rights to it".

What I want is a way to say "I have no rights to this work", which isn't currently possible under U.S. law.
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Not entirely true. Check out this book from 1940, released into the public domain:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015006853892;page=root;view=image;size=100;seq=9;num=3

"The honesty of the readers being beyond all suspicion, no author's
rights are reserved in any country."
 
Chimel said:
I want to enjoy my music and movies now, not when I'm dead, because there is so much lobbying that these legal changes may not happen during my lifetime.

And in my case, with well over 3,000 legally purchased CD and about half that in DVD/BD, the producers and their copyright agencies already got their fat paycheck from me. The artists, not so much. This is the situation that I, and the article, deplores. Let's not play on the words, and my arguments are probably not valid in many ways, my main point is, we have a real society problem on our hands, and we should debate and tackle it properly, not by supporting obsolete marketing practices on one side, or free downloads on the other side.
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Yes, and one whole in your argument here is that wanting /= entitled. Simply because you want something before you die does not mean it should be given or even made accessible to you. I doubt that is really what you are trying to say, but it comes off a little bit that way. A seller should have the right to attempt to sell their product at whatever price they feel they can sell it for. A buyer has the right to either accept or refuse that price. A buyer does not have the right to try and circumvent the seller.to obtain those goods, whether they are physical or digital. If the seller can continue selling said product at the price they have dictated, then obviously enough people can afford it for that price. Trying to say these prices is too high is complete and utter fallacy. Obviously it is not too high because more than enough people are buying it for that price and will continue to buy it for that price. The price only becomes too high when no one is willing to purchase it for that amount.

So the problem in this current situation is two-fold. The first problem is that people continue to buy the products at those prices thus perpetuating the ability of the production industry to continue charging that much. The second problem is by the production industry somehow assuming it is their right to tell people how they can use the product and/or define what is entitlement/theft.
 
I see the word "entitled" being thrown around a whole lot in here. I challenge you to find one instance where the article ever says "entitled".

(Hint: There isn't one)
 
wtburnette said:
It's being used because the content industries and politicians are trying to equate illegal downloading and the theft of physical items. They are not the same thing, no matter how many idiots try to say that downloading a movie is just like a jewelry store robbery. There are too many differences to even list them all, but a key issue is that the owner or distributor has not "lost" anything. With a physical good, if it's stolen, it can no longer be sold. That is a 1 to 1 loss. If one thing is stolen, that's one item the producer, distributor, owner or whoever doesn't get compensated for. If 10 items are stolen, the loss is multiplied by 10. It's completely different for a download. If a song is downloaded illegally, the song is still there for sale. Someone with money can come along and buy it and therefore the proper people are compensated. It gets a little fuzzier if you have more people downloading it, but 10 people downloading a digital product does not equal 10 items stolen. There is no way you can prove those 10 people would have ever paid for the product and therefore no one was deprived of any money. On a broader scale there is "some" kind of loss, but it's difficult to quantify. Most of the industry doesn't even try, they just spout complete bullshit as the truth and get their bought politicians to shove worse and worse laws down our throats. As someone mentioned earlier, if the industries would just adjust for the changing times and give the consumer what they're asking for, things would be fine. Since they don't, many consumers will go out and take what they want, on their own terms, whether it's right or wrong. The industries can blame themselves for this. I'm actually hoping sometime soon both the MPAA and RIAA are disbanded. If it ever happens, it couldn't be done too soon.
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That is the meat of the matter in regards to how "piracy" could be seen as not theft since it is not a physical item, and really how wrong pirates are in their point of view. It's too convienant of a view that since it is a near infinite resource that it wouldn't matter if 1 or 100 or 100,000 pirated the song because it's still there and available. The quanity of the pirating shouldn't matter, and there is nothing fuzzy about this. The thing is that if someone pirating had no interest whatsoever, they would not be pirating the product in the first place, period; e.g., if said pirate had no interest in Katy Perry, why would you bother pirating her songs? The truth of the matter is that people have some interest, enough to require them to spend a few minutes to go online and find pirated works, but they just don't want (or want enough) to pay to play or find the free demo.

One of the biggest problems I have with pirating is that pirates these days are not teenage kids or poor college students who have a shitty excuse of having no money, but adults that make money but still choose to pirate because they want something for free which is worse than a shitty excuse. If you can genuinely afford to purchase a song for $0.99, you like the song, but still choose to pirate the song, the problem is not the system, the problem is YOU.

Lastly, to a certain extent some developers have seen the price problem. Microsoft gives discounts to students, and some markets get a price discount due to their overall money constraints. Ignoring the problems that creates in itself (non-students using the .edu for discounts, gray market, etc...), some developers see the problem and want to help fix it. Many people have said that digital distribution greatly reduces the overhead to carry costs, but they still charge a hefty amount for their goods. Well, good job pirates, you are one (albiet a small one) of the reasons why they have to charge the rest of us paying "saps" extra is because some people choose not to buy the game, and while I'm sure the overall figure provided to the public is probably inflated, it is a vaild point. Whether or not these companies are "greedy" is not a valid reason for pirates to get free stuff.
 
CEpeep said:
Not entirely true. Check out this book from 1940, released into the public domain:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015006853892;page=root;view=image;size=100;seq=9;num=3

"The honesty of the readers being beyond all suspicion, no author's
rights are reserved in any country."
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The legality of doing this, though, is not defined. If a work is eligible for copyright protection, its protection is automatic, and there's no accepted method to disclaim that automatic protection.
 
wonderfield said:
The legality of doing this, though, is not defined. If a work is eligible for copyright protection, its protection is automatic, and there's no accepted method to disclaim that automatic protection.
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I don't really understand why you're so dead set on that being a possibility. If you don't want to protect your work, just... don't. Let it be known people can use it, and if anyone asks for permission, say yes. If they don't ask and then they use it anyway, don't sue them.

Pretty easy.
 
wonderfield said:
The legality of doing this, though, is not defined. If a work is eligible for copyright protection, its protection is automatic, and there's no accepted method to disclaim that automatic protection.
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You can get close enough. Use Creative Commons' "No Copyright" as your legal template:
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

It legally waives your copyright. In the event that this is declared invalid by a particular government, it opens the work under an all-permissive license. In the event that this too is considered invalid it contains a promise from the copyright holder never to exercise any part of their copyright for any reason.

It's not "public domain" since that's not a legally-defined entity in the US, but it is copyright-free.
 
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