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Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom
From: Benjamin Kreuter <ben.kreuter () gmail com>
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:07:24 -0500
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:02:09 -0800 "Zach C." <fxchip () gmail com> wrote:
On Jan 27, 2012 4:07 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu> wrote:On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:06:28 GMT, Michael Schmidt said:You want to be very careful with that line of thought. You are takingthecreator the rightful owners profits, which they are entitled to if itis aproduct they created to be sold.You might want to go read "Courtney Love Does The Math", and then askyourselfthe following: 1) You can make a case that if you copy an album intead of buying it,you'redepriving somebody of profits. But what if it's an album that you would*not*have bought at full price anyhow? Or one that you bought used (see"first saleprinciple")?If you buy an album used, the seller generally loses possession of it, you gain possession of it at a reduced cost, and the original purchase still gave the original seller and producer value. Value has still been exchanged, assuming no literal theft was involved to make the whole thing criminal anyway. If you make a copy, you're pretty much creating (or, if you prefer, *re*-creating) value out of basically nothing using source material, but nothing of value goes back to the original creator of what was copied.
Except that there are plenty of legal and unquestionably ethical situations where things are copied without any transfer of value to the original creator. Nothing is created in a vacuum; musicians are inspired by other musicians, film makers by other film makers, authors by authors, etc. Nobody is so original that they can claim that their creative work did not borrow ideas from other creative work. Moreover, even copying a work in its entirety may fall under fair use; when was the last time you paid royalties for the use of the Happy Birthday song?
2) Who gets those profits, the artist, the label, or the RIAA? Are you stealing profits from the artist, or are you stealing them from somebodyelsewho was attemting to steal them from the artist?All of the above; while the companies' creative accounting is almost criminally bullshit, the artist *still* gets a cut and even a profit if they do well enough. As a nasty little bonus, any profit taken from those companies will never, ever be seen by the artist regardless. There is a 100% better chance of an artist receiving money via a record company getting paid for the artist's work than a record company *not* getting paid from the artist's work. It's gotta come from somewhere. So if you're screwing them and they're screwing the artist, you just wind up making them screw the artist that much harder.
This is not as clear-cut as one might think. Musicians make a lot of money doing live shows, and a live show is an experience that cannot be downloaded. Attendance at live shows is driven by the popularity of the musicians, which is increased by downloading as much as it is increased by radio broadcasting, if not more. One of the major criticisms of Metallica's lawsuit against Napster users was that in their early days, Metallica became popular because people would record them at their concerts and distribute the recordings. The way I see it, the way we cling to copyrights and try to protect industries that were built on the copyright system when we now have computers and computer networks is equivalent to hiring scribes and protecting their jobs in an age of printing presses. Copyrights were a great idea back when copying creative works required specialized industrial equipment. Since that is no longer the case, we should instead be investigating new systems for promoting art and science and building new industries around such systems. Copyrights are not going to die overnight, just like scribes continued to be employed for some time after the printing press spread, but eventually copyrights are going to die -- or else computers and global computer networks are going to have to die. I doubt that technology can be rolled back, but creating a new legal framework does not seem to be infeasible. - -- Ben - -- Benjamin R Kreuter UVA Computer Science brk7bx () virginia edu - -- "If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them." - George Orwell -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (GNU/Linux) iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJPJHGjAAoJEOV0+MnZK9ij8DgP/18O3od/dCCCntoh6ygS0P0O TRCOCp/0wcZzS+lJuWSLnpelOqXEiWaSVxQst0Wwab4DN5t2Iif1gjp6Ot54aTn4 Ub8mBYm/nn0QZI7t75A22zLJkSPdgpQt66YvLLaghqnfhDvbJ9UrdpYpDiXkJhFV 19yyZKtQnXN0SnbkzVq8WiQXcP/49dE2UjacV7cO9D9Z8jUUaw4K9Z5w2Lv0rzap NL0XANYJ9QWA2hdzaoaAF7c5p6gfQoQOLBsVSP1x14OEZCezk9zc9+ZgVtx1FEqq /JIiAVKzkklBBNUM2wLMVUSo7wT0wXYBqBmEtLfHohJVIoa7FKfqJi3qmcqZ4dON ik4H431vtk4wa8pZw2xX8YFDr1UlL9PZeJpvn0ZVnhf2N6m95d8aIaAOwIYOoSuK MiXbaOprlm02hU5sSwptZr5FQCHjHM6bEoejkbUzS4WeiwCVLs05Twd0aLlwSlTo PDBwe5FAvF5BJoODKPPVb1N8HreOx7Wj5wax7sWFKVAZWMaK1h4r04nZ8SeGdlSd n9/N3LFu/61f/qtWn+gKPQi8znK3KgI4Qviq9oJmf/fKLKiS5e4Qt7dxUrhK+DPK MFlQ66JpUttEtw9GJ0hYnv7jEy30FLwQcjjgrj7J4rpy/qGOxDM+RBsCX/s3VC8Q IBC9MXDne6rFhpGKaeMD =Zewi -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
Current thread:
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom, (continued)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Christian Sciberras (Jan 29)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Mike Hale (Jan 29)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Christian Sciberras (Jan 30)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Mike Hale (Jan 30)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Christian Sciberras (Jan 30)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Zach C. (Jan 30)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 30)
- This is when piracy/theft become expression of freedom Byron L. Sonne (Jan 29)
- Re: This is when piracy/theft become expression of freedom Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 29)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom coderman (Jan 29)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Benjamin Kreuter (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Laurelai (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Julius Kivimäki (Jan 30)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Laurelai (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Christian Sciberras (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Laurelai (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Julius Kivimäki (Jan 30)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Laurelai (Jan 27)