Referencing some "copyright industry" is like saying that farmers are part of some "private land industry." Its a legal protection that's available to everyone, not just one industry. Its also a legal protection that is more morally justifiable than private land, seeing as it protects original works of creation rather than (in the U.S., anyway) land stolen from native Americans (which in any case is a product of nature).
Those very morally justification that demands 12 year olds to work and earn a pay if they want to learn physics, rather than just letting them learn.
Or that morally justification that only allows a rich 12 year old child to listen to music from all around the world, and learn to be a great musician.
Or that morally justification that only allows a rich 12 year old child to watch movies and become a move creator of culture and thus learn from the past.
Or that morally justification that only allows a rich 12 year old child to experience a wide range of video games, so he later get inspired to make new fantastic and wonderful games.
Or that morally justification that only allows a rich 12 year old to use images programs to create images of art, or advanced physic emulators to become the next Einstien.
After all, the creator of copyrighted works need to get paid, and restricting 12 years old in learning is the only moral superior way to force such payments.
Give me a break with the theatrics. You're basically saying "doesn't my extraordinary case justify copyright infringement / theft?"
No, it doesn't.
It justifies you getting off your rear and making resources for 12 year old kids to learn and play and experience FOR FREE. The existence of commercial products doesn't negate free stuff. So why not let the 12 year olds use any of the free and open source and widely available stuff? If you think that the stuff produced for free isn't as good as the copyrighted stuff, isn't that itself a useful observation of the effects of copyright?
Instead of using those 12 year olds as a prop piece for a bad argument, put your money where your mouth is and go out there and produce content for them that will inspire them, without forcing them to break copyright to be inspired.
Give me a break. Do you think that racism is justified just because you let black people ride in the back of the buss? Arguments that the back of the buss is equally good as the front of the buss is not good enough. If you think that putting in nicer seats will be a useful observation of the effects of racism, think again.
Instead of using those fixed up back seats as a bad argument in favor of racism, be honest with yourself. You simply want to continue a society that separate one part of society (black, poor, kids), from you (white, rich, old enough to be working with a high paid job).
Btw, I do produce content for free. My tax money however goes to support the restriction of 12 years old who want to learn physics. I think that is not the compromise that copyright is intended to be, or should exist in a moral society.
I think you've wandered a bit far from the original point with this talk of racism. More back to the first, I think it's an unavoidable fact that if you create something you are allowed to dictate the terms of using, consuming, or experiencing that thing. That means I can make something, and then I can require people to pay to use it/see it/experience it. And I don't think we can get away from that.
I also don't think we have can say that violating that right is an act of integrity.
I think it's an unavoidable fact that if you create something you are allowed to dictate the terms of using, consuming, or experiencing that thing.
I have to disagree 100%. Once you publish something you lose all effective control over it.
It is only this legal fiction we call copyright that gives copyright owners any sort of control. But even maximalist copyright regimes are full of more holes than swiss cheese - if anything, the more they ratchet up the controls the more people seek out the holes. It is human nature to share knowledge, modern copyright is about fighting human nature and that never works out (c.f. the war on drugs).
"Legal fiction" is the only thing that gives anyone any control over anything, tangible or otherwise. Without various "legal fictions" that society imposes, what's to stop someone stronger, faster, sneakier or smarter than you from making off with any of your property?
> human nature to share knowledge
Oh boy, where do I begin...
1. First of all, [citation needed]. Humans have been exploiting information asymmetry since the dawn of time.
2. It is also "human nature" to want to want to have sex with people one finds attractive. Are rape laws also never going to "work out"?
3. Entertainment counts as "knowledge" now? That's even more of a stretch than calling it "culture"!
"Legal fiction" is the only thing that gives anyone any control over anything, tangible or otherwise.
No, tangible items are inherently controllable because they are rivalrous and excludable. The law just structures how we deal with those characteristics. For information, copyright attempts to make it rivalrous and excludable, to stuff it into the same box as tangible items when it shares none of the same properties.
1. First of all, [citation needed]. Humans have been exploiting information asymmetry since the dawn of time.
Sure they have, but just because it happens sometimes does not contradict the self-evident fact that people love to share. Next time you send someone a lolcat, remember that.
2. It is also "human nature" to want to want to have sex with people one finds attractive. Are rape laws also never going to "work out"?
Rape, murder, theft, these are all behaviours that are (1) not the common case and (2) inflict harm because the objects of the crimes are essentially rivalrous.
3. Entertainment counts as "knowledge" now? That's even more of a stretch than calling it "culture"!
Arguments about quality of the information are completely orthogonal to the topic. Copyright law does not attempt to discriminate on the quality of the material copyrighted so quality isn't a factor in discussing the merits of copyright law either.
> No, tangible items are inherently controllable because they are rivalrous and excludable.
You missed my point. Tangible things are only as inherently controllable as the capacity of the owner to control them. Without "legal fictions", what's to keep someone more capable than you to simply take it from you? After all that's your argument against copyright: people can just take it, so owners have no control. What stops a bully from taking your school lunch?
> Sure they have, but just because it happens sometimes does not contradict the self-evident fact that people love to share.
"Sometimes"?! It happens all the time! It's been happening since the existence of competition over limited resources, even before humans consciously realized knowledge is power! Think of all the "priests" throughout various cultures in history. Think of why encryption exists. Think of why the CIA and NSA exist. Saying something is self-evident doesn't make it so.
>Next time you send someone a lolcat, remember that.
Heh, I don't send lolcats. Guess I'm not human, then :-P
> Rape, murder, theft, these are all behaviours that are (1) not the common case and (2) inflict harm because the objects of the crimes are essentially rivalrous
Wait, by (1) you mean if rape, murder, theft ever become the common case, it will be OK? You know, like when it happens during wars? And (2) what's so rivalrous about sex? You can have sex with multiple people simultaneously, and once somebody has had sex does not mean they cannot have it again. And heck, we have the technology to make it so people don't even remember having sex, so there's no harm done!
But you know what is rivalrous? The food, shelter and clothing creators need to live to create new works.
> Arguments about quality of the information are completely orthogonal to the topic
The characteristics of the information do matter matter in determining what protections are afforded it. Would you share here all your private information, financial accounts, photos, and so on? That's just knowledge after all, and it's human nature to share. Or say you get "doxxed" and it's all out on the Internet, you'd be OK with people sharing it? No? Oh, it's your private information, and suddenly you feel it should not be shared? Thank god for privacy laws but down with copyright laws! Funny how that works.
Without "legal fictions", what's to keep someone more capable than you to simply take it from you?
Laws don't keep people from taking tangible items, they only punish afterwards. The only thing that stops someone from taking something tangible from you is your ability to stop them. Nothing stops someone from making a copy of information they already have.
Think of all the "priests" throughout various cultures in history. Think of why encryption exists. Think of why the CIA and NSA exist.
Secret versus public knowledge. They are two entirely different things. This discussion is about intentionally published knowledge.
Wait, by (1) you mean if rape, murder, theft ever become the common case, it will be OK? You know, like when it happens during wars?
Even during war none of those is the common case. That's why we prosecute people for those crimes in times of war too. If those things actually become the common case, we can cross that bridge when we come it.
But you know what is rivalrous? The food, shelter and clothing creators need to live to create new works.
> Laws don't keep people from taking tangible items, they only punish afterwards.
So now all laws are "legal fiction"?
> The only thing that stops someone from taking something tangible from you is your ability to stop them. Nothing stops someone from making a copy of information they already have.
And my point is, your ability to stop them, absent the so-called "legal fictions", is about as weak as a creator having their work ripped off. If you doubt this, ask yourself how many people in the world are more than capable of taking stuff away from you.
> This discussion is about intentionally published knowledge.
Actually, it's about control of information. You don't want your private data published because you fear it may harm you. Creators want to publish their works because they hope to profit from it. If you expect your "rights" to be respected even though little stops people (coughNSAcough) from taking it, why should creators not expect respect for theirs?
Essentially, most works are intentionally published with the expectation that something will be given back in exchange. Otherwise you might as well say people are "intentionally publishing" loaves of bread in supermarkets and you could just take them. (And since about 40% of supermarket perishables are wasted on the shelves anyway, hey, they're only about 60% rivalrous anyway!)
> Even during war none of those is the common case. That's why we prosecute people for those crimes in times of war too.
War is an atrocity precisely because this does become the common case. And that we (make feeble attempts to) prosecute for war crimes means that even then it's not OK.
> Yes sir, Mr Valenti!
I guess that means you think non-consensual sex is perfectly fine!
> Again, secret versus public.
What does that have to do with the "human nature to share"?
I guess that means you think non-consensual sex is perfectly fine!
If there is one thing anyone else reading along should take away from this discussion, it is that you wrote the above. It perfectly sums up the intellectual rigor of the arguments you've made here. And yes, that statement means I am done wrasslin' with a pig.
> ""Legal fiction" is the only thing that gives anyone any control over anything, tangible or otherwise. Without various "legal fictions" that society imposes, what's to stop someone stronger, faster, sneakier or smarter than you from making off with any of your property?"
I don't steal from my friends, family, coworkers, and strangers.
Is that because of the law, workplace policy, or fear of social retribution and/or ostracism? No. So long as I kept it petty, there is realistically zero chance that I would be caught. It's because I'm not a dick.
Laws don't make us civilized. We have laws because we are civilized.
It is not an argument, it is a statement of fact, like saying water is wet.
There is an implicit assumption in your position that copyright based compensation is the only method of compensation. It isn't. It wasn't even the dominant method until the last couple of centuries when technology made it feasible. Now that technology has moved on, our economic systems need to keep up.
"It is not an argument, it is a statement of fact, like saying water is wet."
Oh nonsense. You're ignoring the legal system, which is hilarious, because you're talking about a LEGAL construct.
So yes in your little hypothetical world where copyright exists AND there is no legal system, sure, copyright has no effect and you have no control.
But otherwise, saying "if you publish you lose all control" it's like saying "if you go out in public you lose all control over what happens to you. Mugging... rape... murder... you have zero control".
It ignores the legal system, and your ability to seek punishment or compensation for being wronged under the law.
I don't understand the value of such an asinine hypothetical.
In the real world: you do retain control of what you publish after you publish it.
If you think otherwise: Mickey Mouse would like to have a word with you.
Oh nonsense. You're ignoring the legal system, which is hilarious, because you're talking about a LEGAL construct.
Original poster called it an "an unavoidable fact" - that is a statement far in excess of "there are laws." Given the context is people infringing copyright law, clearly we are talking about the utility of the law in the "real world."
We are? Then in the real world copyright is effectively managed, things are unpublished or never published and brands are managed.
Again, if you think in the real world you lose control, talk to Micky Mouse.
You lose a small amount of control against small, unincorporated actors, but you retain large amounts of control in the markets you operate in, and against any institutional actor at all.
If you create something, you are perfectly fine in dictating the terms of it. I just don't agree that you should require society to punish children who want to learn. Your dictating ends at that point, since its not a good compromise for society to make. If you still want to continue dictate the terms of using, consuming, or experiencing the thing you made, you got to do it without the help from the government.
You want to get paid, and you want the governments help to do so. Fine. Make a compromise that benefit both side and do no harm to groups we don't expect to be working at any rate. It should not be such a hard thing.
Ever hear the phrase it takes a village/community to raise a child? Do we punish a child because perhaps his parents don't have the skills and knowledge from a lack of life experiences - perhaps because they didn't have access to such material - therefore continuing the cycle? You have to look at what end goal you want to achieve, and then decide what systems to have in place.
This is an analysis that comes from simultaneously valorizing popular culture consumer products while denying the producers of those products a livelihood. It makes absolutely no sense in any case; where does the analysis end? Does freedom from copyright end at age 12, or should huge companies be allowed to ignore the GPL?
It doesn't make much sense in restricting a 12 year old from learning physics.
Just because one do not like the alternative, it doesn't make it any nicer, moral, or right.
If one can not accept that a business model based on restricting 12 year old from learning is wrong, can copyright ever become the compromise between society and the promotion of the Progress of Science and useful Arts that was once promised?
Should we give producers of those products a livelihood at the expense of warping the rest of society?
Because enforcing something like "intellectual property" is going to change society a whole lot. The enforcement is going to start with very invasive snooping, and end with stifling most inventions and innovations.
I personally am not willing to go that far. It's pretty clear that right now, "intellectual property" is mainly an instrument of control, to keep incumbent companies in power.
Personally, I don't get a lot out of popular (or really, any other) music. It's fine with me to let the market decide on prices without state enforced monopolies, temporary or otherwise. I believe that there's a whole lot of people who can and will make music and other art even if the state doesn't enforce monopolies for them. Indeed, society might get a lot more music: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1336802
Only on a message board does charging money for a Miley Cyrus track count as "warping society". Frankly, I think society is warped by us not charging enough to deter listeners.
tptacek, you and I have exchanged comments before when it comes to copyright. What's the real issue here?
Previously you've argued that the copyright industry actually has the stronger set of morals, and those violating copyright are somehow the "bad guys" in this debate.
Now you're arguing that society is warped and all content is trash ("a Miley Cyrus").
I may be trying to accomplish the impossible by being rational here, but level with me. Why the love for copyright?
I admit that copyright may have a useful purpose. I feel like the usefulness expires about 10 years after the work has been created.
I feel strongly that the current laws and the corporations who largely depend on those laws to make a profit represent a parasite that exploits 12 year olds and other underprivileged people.
You do wonderful analysis of cryptosystems. This isn't much different, right? It can be deconstructed analytically, the problem identified, and at least on a message board the propaganda can be debunked. ("You wouldn't steal a car. Stealing is wrong." Copyright violation IS NOT stealing.)
No, like (I think) most people who don't spend a lot of time on nerd message boards, I think pirating content (of all stripes) is deeply unethical and harmful.
Like (I think) most people who don't live in copyright bubble, I think most people would vote against government restricting 12 year old kids from learning physics based on their economic standing in society.
Most people if given a chance would to think about the ethical problems of current copyright law, and consider the harmful effect of using government force against children. They would (I think) reason that since we don't allow child labour, children are by definition not allowed to earn the money needed to pay for the learning they yearn for.
Given a chance to vote on it, my guess is that the vote would thus not be in favor of prosecution against children for crimes of learning, nor a duration of +100 years after the authors death. A popularity vote would much more likely (in my opinion) go to something like 10 years and limited copyright enforceability against children. The result would (likely expected) to be decrease piracy levels, create a massive culture explosion of new works, and make the average creator more richer than ever before. A true win, win situation for everyone except Disney.
Right, but what, exactly, is "pirating content"? And how far are we going to go to preven it? Because strictly speaking, the entire world wide web is based on copying content. Strictly, that's a whole lot of copyright infringement, a.k.a. "pirating". Sure, copyright isn't enforced a lot, but still, where's the line?
Very strictly enforcing current laws on copyright would (I think) prohibit a useful world wide web. Are you willing to go that far? If so, how do you propose we implement the enforcement without intruding massively on other, God Given Rights? If not, where and why are you going to draw the line? Because where you draw the line is going to be different than where the MPAA draws the line, and different from where I draw it (I think).
Very good deliberate misrepresentation. I congratulate you.
"Charging money for a Miley Cyrus track" is "giving the producers of that content a livelihood". Strict copyright enforcement, especially for digital "intellectual property" is where the warping comes in, especially for very long (infinite?) copyright terms. Also, since the enforcement is done by the state, the cost of strict enforcement takes away from other things the state could do, the "Opportunity Cost", I believe.
Strict enforcement of copyright is going to involve a lot of stuff, beginning with prohibiting open source operating systems. Are you willing to accept that? Why should I be willing to accept that?
I know you're probably getting at the point that people infringe copyright mainly for the purposes of "entertainment", but entertainment, education and inspiration aren't mutually exclusive.
Most scientists and artists have probably been inspired and educated by something that also entertained them.
Copies are inherently cheap. So cheap, that everyone on Earth could have one.
We have artificial scarcity of copies.
Many people could derive huge benefits (in the case of patented medicines, life!) if we hadn't artificially made the copies and drugs scarce.
Authorship is scarce, but copyrights only indirectly relate to authorship. They are an attempt to encourage authorship by restricting society. However, by banning derivative works, they also reduce authorship. By making copies an artificially scarce resource, they are derpiving society of most of the benefits of authorship.
There are other ways to give incentives for authorship besides depriving society of its benefits. Even if copyrights are applied, their application for hundreds of years is obscene. Empirically, many works of authorship got quite well funded without the support of copyrights.
>Many people could derive huge benefits (in the case of patented medicines, life!) if we hadn't artificially made the copies and drugs scarce.
That's a very short term analysis. Again, drugs don't just drop from the sky. Unless there's an alternative funding model, people copying drugs for free means the firm that did the R&D to make the drug goes bust, and won't invent future drugs that would save even more lives. Until the number of untreatable diseases tends to zero, making sure drug firms survive is a much higher long term priority than saving a few lives now.
>Authorship is scarce, but copyrights only indirectly relate to authorship. They are an attempt to encourage authorship by restricting society.
All laws are restrictions on society.
> However, by banning derivative works, they also reduce authorship.
No, it only bans unlicensed derivative work. See all the recent "Tom Clancy's XYZ" novels, or the new Bourne novels, or the entire plethora of Star Wars novels and animation. If you profit by building on the foundation laid by somebody else, don't they deserve a cut?
And heck, if someone really wants to author unlicensed derivative work, they can post to a fanfic site. If you've ever read fanfic, or heck, any amount of amateur work, you'd realize why any talent that we find worthwhile is so precious and should be nurtured.
> Empirically, many works of authorship got quite well funded without the support of copyrights.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but historically works got funded was through the means of patronship or commissions from rich people. Not a terribly scalable process.
Yes, we apply artificial scarcity to copies because authorship is scarce. But that's the best way we know how -- that's how economics has always worked. But until we've figured out a better way we should not just abandon a model that's worked pretty well so far.
Similarly, copyrights are discouraging authorship as well as encouraging it, and empirical evidence suggests the former factor may very well be stronger than the latter. So we might be paying the huge price of copyright restrictions for negative benefits.
> No, it only bans unlicensed derivative work
Requiring a license negotiation is a barrier so large, that it prevents virtually all derivative works. Most authors do not license any derivative works. Many creators of derivative works do not do so for a profit incentive. The cost of a license deal will often overwhelm the cost of creating the work itself.
In short, copyrights outright ban the vast majority of derivative works.
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but historically works got funded was through the means of patronship or commissions from rich people. Not a terribly scalable process
Not only patronship. British authors did not enjoy copyrights in the early US, so they had struck deals with publishers for right to be the first to publish. They often made more money from these deals than from their copyright-based publishing.
Contemporary authorship of much software is funded without being based on copyrights (A lot of open-source companies).
Other contemporary authorship is funded by academia, and does not depend on copyrights.
The "9/11 commission report" was published without copyrights, and yet the publisher had profited at least millions of dollars from its publication.
> Yes, we apply artificial scarcity to copies because authorship is scarce. But that's the best way we know how -- that's how economics has always worked
Economics had always worked on reducing scarcity, not increasing it.
> But until we've figured out a better way we should not just abandon a model that's worked pretty well so far.
There's no reason at all to believe this system works well, as the empirical evidence suggests otherwise. Consider that if today's copyright laws had existed in the time of Shakespeare, he would not be allowed to author his works without "licensing deals".
If we look at patents. It's working horribly. Literally millions of people are dying of curable diseases. 90% of drug funding comes from government, of which 85% goes to the pockets of the drug firms, and only 15% funds actual research!
I don't see how an effectively-infinite monopoly on content (which is where we are now with copyright term lengths) is justifiable in any way whatsoever.
Say what you will about Disney, but I can spend a few dollars to buy a Disney product on iTunes, and my kid can watch a beautifully made cartoon without being bombarded with advertisements for cheap crap. That's more than I can say for most of the rest of the tech industry.
You're better off reading a book to your kid, for free from the public domain, a public domain on which most of Disney's work is based. And you can thank Disney, amongst others, for the perpetually increasing copyright extensions which does mean that copyright works that happened after 1923 may never enter the public domain. So yeah, your few bucks spent on a bunch of shitty cartoons is used for lobbying.
And yes, my kid also likes Disney cartoons. It's innocent fun. But let's not fall over yourself with praises on the virtues of copyright. All moral justification for it fails in light of the ever expanding copyright terms. End of story.
Not really. I could buy them on DVD too instead of iTunes. The point is that copyright enables the production of these beautifully produced cartoons using a business model that's a simple cash transaction. No advertising, no privacy-destroying user tracking, just cash in trade for a product.
Copyright is not a divine right, it is granted as part of an exchange. Part of that exchange is that the copyright is granted for a limited time, after which the public can use the IP how they want.
If Disney and friends can change the deal to suit themselves, why shouldn't every consumer follow suit and make similar self-benefiting changes to the copyright deal and copy/consume Disney material without paying?
If you buy them on DVD or Blu-ray you will be bombarded by advertisements, and they were probably unskippable until Disney added a skip button and called it an invention (AKA "Disney Fast Play").
No advertising, no privacy-destroying user tracking, just cash in trade for a product.
If only that were the case. Does iTunes state in its privacy policy or EULA that purchase and playback tracking data is not recorded or reported to content producers? What about consumer devices (connected Blu-ray players, smart TVs, etc.) that report back to their masters like the recently discovered LG smart TVs?
Actually, part of the reason Disney films are so widely pirated is because you can't but them on DVD - their most popular films are only available on DVD for a couple of months every decade or so, and many haven't been released yet. Their business model is based largely around not making their product available. (Also, they dragged their feet spectacularly - it took the total death of the VHS market for them to move to DVD, just like it took widespread VHS piracy of their movies for them to release them on VHS.)
Disney paid $210MM to produce _Brave_, which money went not only to creatives, animators, and movie production types, but also to software developers, testers, devops teams, and network administrators.
And nobody is now allowed to create any derivative work to benefit society for the next ~200 years (or perpetually, if Disney has their way).
Ironic, since virtually all of Disney's works are based on public domain works that they themselves would be banned from using if their bought laws had existed then.
I agree that Disney should receive copyright protection on its new works. My complaint (and I assume the parent's) is the part where they keep that copyright indefinitely through retroactive extensions. It's not supposed to be a permanent rent, regardless of what they do with the money.
Brave was an exception, or a turning point depending on how you see their later releases.
A large number of Disney works have been "inspired by" other works. I'd estimate just under half, but this changes with every release. They do seem to be getting more original, but that seems to be mainly due to the Pixar team.
The quote below was from 2002 when there were a total of ~45 Disney animated feature films.
"a total of 28 films that have acknowledged sources outside of The Walt Disney Company itself, more than half of all the movies they've made to date."[1]
Because Intellectual Property is fundamentally different from Physical Property?
Society grants IP rights as an exchange. Exclusive access granted for a period of time to allow people to profit from their work - then it goes public domain so that society is enriched in turn.
You are right, they didn't spend a cent on lobbying to protect Brave. They'd already bought and paid for their extensions across all their works already, now and into the future. Pretty good investment that.
No. The copyright laws only look vaguely fair if you're not paying enough attention. They're deliberately slanted to favour specific businesses, which are colloquially known as The Copyright Industry.
Don't take my word for it. Ask a drug-addicted musician if you want chapter and verse on this.
The thing is, this is how they sell the law to us, "it's for everyone", but in the end, the ones who really benefits from it are the big players.
It's a lottery system, basically. A few lucky rock stars cash out. Everyone else doesn't win. And lotteries are also a good way to convince the population to pay more taxes, with the promise that anyone can win, where in reality few people do.
I think most people would call the rock stars cashing out "talented." Why not treat entertainment creativity the same way you would code? (Especially since both fall under the same copyright law?)
I think most people would call the rock stars cashing out "talented."
That is only a meaningful statement if you also believe the corollary - the people who aren't cashing out are not talented. And if you believe that then you are in for a really tough life.
