Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom
From: Benjamin Kreuter <ben.kreuter () gmail com>
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:41:09 -0500
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 On Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:16:45 +0000 "Thor (Hammer of God)" <thor () hammerofgod com> wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: full-disclosure-bounces () lists grok org uk [mailto:full-disclosure- bounces () lists grok org uk] On Behalf Of Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu Sent: Friday, January 27, 2012 4:06 PM To: Michael Schmidt Cc: full-disclosure () lists grok org uk Subject: Re: [Full-disclosure] when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom 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 taking the creator the rightful owners profits, which they are entitled to if it is a product they created to be sold.You might want to go read "Courtney Love Does The Math", and then ask yourself the following: 1) You can make a case that if you copy an album intead of buying it, you're depriving 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 sale principle")?These arguments do more harm than good. You can't base property law
This is not a discussion about property law, it is a discussion about copyrights. Copyrights, at least in my country, are very much different from property rights: 1. Property rights never expire; copyrights are required to expire by the constitution. 2. Property rights are not optional, but automatic; copyrights are an optional system according to the constitution, and if Congress wanted to they could do away with copyrights.
But if you were not going to pay full price, that doesn't give you any right to steal it. That is simply absurd.
This is not a discussion about stealing either. We do not charge people with theft/robbery/larceny/etc. when they download or share music, even when they do so on a felony scale.
But whether or not the behavior ends up benefiting the industry or not is irrelevant; I've still broken the law.
That is up to a judge; copyright cases must be heard by a judge, who decides whether or not a particular act of copying is fair use (or at least that was the original theory).
That's where is should end, but it doesn't. Sharing music not purchased is already illegal.
Not always; Wikipedia has a large selection of public domain music available for download, as do many other sources. There is music that is licensed under one of various creative commons licenses.
The companies already have legal remedies available.
Which are not appropriate for dealing with cases of home users downloading and sharing music/etc. Copyright law is designed to be heard in front of a judge, with expensive lawyers arguing the case; there is no way that such a system could possibly work to prevent individual people from downloading/sharing and everyone knows it. The RIAA sought such huge, headline grabbing damages in an attempt to scare people away from P2P, and even that failed -- they just damaged their reputation and drove people to use file sharing websites, which are shielded by the DMCA. This is not to say that the law should be strengthened or that the government should be hijacked to further the interests of copyright holders. This just means that copyright is out of date and needs to be completely overhauled. Unfortunately, the people who are supposed to benefit from the copyright system, the general public, have nothing close to the political and financial power that the copyright industry lobbyists have. The best compromise I can think of is to treat noncommercial copyright infringement like a parking violation: you get a ticket for some small but annoying amount of money. That is the only way to enforce a law that everyone is meant to follow and that anyone can easily break. It is absurd to think that our judicial system can handle the volume of cases that would be required to enforce copyrights, and the other option is to just let the old industries die (which is probably not a bad idea).
The fun begins when the record companies start sniping each other.
That is how it is supposed to be.
Remember when The Verve got their pants sued of by the Rolling Stones copyright holder for "Bittersweet Symphony"? It was a clean cut case of copyright infringement. What if SOPA or the next round of it does pass - will ABKCO Records legally be able to get Hut Records entire web site shut down?
The point of SOPA is to kill the Internet; that is what all these laws and government actions are building towards. The old media giants do not want to die, and they know that a network where anyone can share entertainment with anyone else will ultimately kill them. What they would prefer is something like the cable TV system: a network where the consumers are only able to consume. They love the cable TV system because they only have to deal with other corporations, who can be taken to court where copyright law can be reasonably applied. - -- 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) iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJPJHmJAAoJEOV0+MnZK9ij460P/3Kr918susMfUoQyWsX0PH7t 3L1RyRLyGKefmn7uyY2IUdcAHwfJXeeo6DMQPeMyPHy4AHBm2kxJGXkm0LSoww9t UYe2KWjTLzI95s4n0P7Bq7ulZOHn6mLrsX3fG8oY1PBv1rasya/NKsC/6VXHVyEz tVepLRrXxLirCyAJgeyTHJnvi1kKTnA23i6inZk6gXb1bvC7uP+fjvM2n4jcMADF 4SFaJ9VQZOwr1T4z5ER7pzBU0CTQf3ZYJdaIEYkCMvtf5ALxSnezxppP7RMrWwjv X80LROfrCl2OrBYC9cRB6xP0QWenj2c+nIpnh1t3lxGjD8fxBddvuKUwz4xNh+Qr Jq0p1LQpEHBAAcxxiV/gZ/UxKJ0ycMxFZMgrWhv5SE9PtXGyOTgp3TOL570AVY5m hgauP3qVv5kg6OKP/5d/ooBk+IRE2QZfhp0qnoilR6DyybYv37RCo9j6G8SPj7xM fJ+htRB3/ew3KjRd0AITir+J8xumx8FDYO67nYCn7BPs2lklp0sL7HRKkGFT0GRu 2x+rCrS5nUVfkB6woZP/6Mmb7PC04aPVmhQiW581dMZvhNDxKkJWSS+1LphQt3Cf PCSelOfyfHxZ3t+WRsryLprYfrpzh01N8RPd2KafD9qhcjshZq4FzRxlixQaK/zq BZ0FHmIUO3qnX70u/NY/ =DwYi -----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:
- when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Jerry dePriest (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Laurelai (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Robert Kim App and Facebook Marketing (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Laurelai (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Kai (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Michael Schmidt (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Laurelai (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Thor (Hammer of God) (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Benjamin Kreuter (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Alex Buie (Jan 30)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Robert Kim App and Facebook Marketing (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Zach C. (Jan 27)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Christian Sciberras (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Benjamin Kreuter (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Ferenc Kovacs (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Christian Sciberras (Jan 28)
- Re: when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom Valdis . Kletnieks (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 Laurelai (Jan 27)