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?
