Piracy

[Silverblade The Ench]

Originally Posted by Oldtimer

We all want more money.

Personally (and as a creator of written works) I subscribe fully to the scandinavian tradition of creator rights - attrbiution, the right to be honored as the creator of one's work. I do think the anglo-saxon invention of copyright is weird thing. They got joined at the hip with the Berne Convention in 1886, but in this day and age copyright has become the albatross around our society's collective neck.

The idea that a creator has some sort of "moral right" to get paid for every copy made, even when someone else does the work of copying it, is totally alien to me. Of course we all wish we had more money, but there is absolutely no reason to have separate laws for one particular group of people. Everyone else either does work-for-hire or produce some physical product or service that can be sold.

Exactly! Maybe cause I'm Scots the older traditions have more relevance with me, hehe!

look, if I said any more it would get political, but folk who support the current copyright lunacy: Greed is Evil. Current unfolding history proves that.
We're running out of time, fast. We need to think of new ways of working.

[JohnRTroy]

Originally Posted by Silverblade The Ench

look, if I said any more it would get political, but folk who support the current copyright lunacy: Greed is Evil. Current unfolding history proves that.
We're running out of time, fast. We need to think of new ways of working.

Greed, however, goes both ways. It's also greedy to download hundreds of songs, videos, and watch and enjoy them without paying for them if that was the intent. Basic economic realities are a fact of life, and artists should be compensated for their work. The reason we have free radio and TV is because of advertising. Just because the computer makes it easier to copy stuff doesn't mean it's already to do it.

[xechnao]

Originally Posted by JohnRTroy

Greed, however, goes both ways. It's also greedy to download hundreds of songs, videos, and watch and enjoy them without paying for them if that was the intent. Basic economic realities are a fact of life, and artists should be compensated for their work.

There is no such thing as greed for information if this is what you are implying. There may be greed for prestige with a class based society but I doubt that downloading stuff has anything to do or promotes a distinction to classes.

Originally Posted by JohnRTroy

The reason we have free radio and TV is because of advertising. Just because the computer makes it easier to copy stuff doesn't mean it's already to do it.

If it is right or not to do it depends on how productive it is-in this case how productive it is to copy stuff.
The whole discussion is about productivity. It seems there is no clear solution yet and this means that people will have to work on finding out this one.
But is this what the owners of the current commercial rights are doing? Instead of going against people to save their investment on the old infrastructure and its exploitation shouldn't they focus their efforts on how to evolve in the current levels of technological progress?
I dunno. I am not an insider, perhaps they have researched it and found out they would make more money by milking out the cow. Perhaps they have not been researching. In any case they are wrong.

[Mercutio01]

Originally Posted by xechnao

There is no such thing as greed for information if this is what you are implying.

Songs, books, and movies are PRODUCTS, not information. Your greed to obtain those products without fair compensation is flat-out wrong. Period. There's no question in that you are advocating the willful theft of personal property to which you do not have the legal right.

But is this what the owners of the current commercial rights are doing? Instead of going against people to save their investment on the old infrastructure and its exploitation shouldn't they focus their efforts on how to evolve in the current levels of technological progress?

So you expect every book, every song, every movie to have advertisements held within them?

I dunno. I am not an insider, perhaps they have researched it and found out they would make more money by milking out the cow. Perhaps they have not been researching. In any case they are wrong.

And what do you suggest?

In any event, artists have functioned in the same manner since man became civilized. In return for the art, the artist was paid either directly or through trade so that he could continue to make art. Artists that weren't paid went back to whatever they were doing before they thought they could live by their art.

You're advocating, effectively, for a socialistic approach to art (note, I'm not attempting to bring politics in, just referencing the idea) in that whatever one person, has everyone is entitled to as well. But that doesn't work in the real world where people need money to provide food, shelter, and safety for themselves and their loved ones. By advocating the free distribution of art (and art alone, since I assume YOU have a job and get paid and are unwilling to part with all of your stuff just to help me out), you want to force artists to find other means to survive.

The idea that people shouldn't be paid for their work is ludicrous.

[xechnao]

Originally Posted by Mercutio01

Songs, books, and movies are PRODUCTS, not information. Your greed to obtain those products without fair compensation is flat-out wrong. Period. There's no question in that you are advocating the willful theft of personal property to which you do not have the legal right.

So you expect every book, every song, every movie to have advertisements held within them?

And what do you suggest?

In any event, artists have functioned in the same manner since man became civilized. In return for the art, the artist was paid either directly or through trade so that he could continue to make art. Artists that weren't paid went back to whatever they were doing before they thought they could live by their art.

You're advocating, effectively, for a socialistic approach to art (note, I'm not attempting to bring politics in, just referencing the idea) in that whatever one person, has everyone is entitled to as well. But that doesn't work in the real world where people need money to provide food, shelter, and safety for themselves and their loved ones. By advocating the free distribution of art (and art alone, since I assume YOU have a job and get paid and are unwilling to part with all of your stuff just to help me out), you want to force artists to find other means to survive.

The idea that people shouldn't be paid for their work is ludicrous.

I am not sure I understand your points. I told you about a state controlled -through institutions for example as in ancient Greece- plan. Artists would exist in the same way as they do today - individuals educated in their society. And they would get paid -as anyone that can get paid in the various states where he can work in the public/state sector.

The problem brand owners see right now is that if they evolve towards a new model they would lose much of their relative status. The small little guys will become bigger(I guess you belong here) and they will become smaller -this regarding your relative positions right now. Why would this happen? Because technology flattens production difficulties and lowers the need of management.

Look at POD for example. Of course marketing remains a problem and here is where a central institution could be really helpful. Conventions and dedicated festivities to promote the art and artists themselves - to help promote the art and artists themselves. Things alike to gen con or museums.

You could be paid directly from the state -those you teach art in universities are paid by the state -if we are talking about a public university- . Competitions or popularity contests could be organized to grand bonuses to the winners too. And the 1st prize goes too...this is possible to do today with the technology we have. And I believe -unless you are somebody "recommended" you will make a better living out of it than struggling as a poet to get by in today's industry and market.

These are just ideas that pop out of my mind. I bet professionals could research and find good solutions, more productive solutions -for the common good- that the ridiculous fallacies of the entertainment industry and market that we have today -regarding the common good that is and not the deep pockets of a bunch of guys.

[grickherder]

As a matter of civil disobedience to effect change, I don't recognize the personhood of non-natural people (ie. corporations and similar legal fictions). Thus, I consider them to have no right to the protection afforded by copyright laws. I see such protection as only belonging to natural persons who retain ownership of the rights to their works and who don't engage in the formation of artificial legal constructs that somehow have greater rights than natural people and reduce liability and resonsibility in society.

Thoughts?

[Irda Ranger]

I really appreciate Old Timer's description of the Scandinavian Tradition of attribution as the only benefit of authorship. I hadn't seen that before.

But I come down with DaveMage: Copyright is good, but the current term is way too long.

Just to sum up where that comes from:
1. Ceteris paribus, society is better with more art than less art. I think we can all agree that (regardless of any other strengths and weaknesses) Venice and Rome are more pleasant to visually behold than Moscow or New York. We are all better off (happier) with Shakespeare the playwright than Shakespeare the accountant. Etc.

2. As a matter of general economic principles you get more of a good (any good) when you pay people to produce it.

2.a. If you want more art, artists need to get paid.

3. There are any number of ways we can pay artists (in order to get more art (in order to be happier)). And pretty much all of them have been (and continue to be) used to one degree or another. Artists work on commission, take salaried positions at universities and non-profits, get grants from public tax coffers, produce a physical work and sell or auction it at galleries, etc. etc.

3.a. Copyright is just one more way of getting artists paid. The public grants to the artist a temporary (but very narrow) monopoly on the otherwise perfectly legal activities of painting, writing, etc. to the extent that these activities are "copies" of his work. It's a public contract (sometimes called "law") between the art-appreciating public and the art-generating public; "We want art; you produce art; we'll voluntarily give up the right to paint and write these "copies" in order to provide an incentive to you to do original work."

There's nothing moral about it in my opinion. It's just a contract of convenience written in law. Each side gets what they want (art / a living). In the absence of this law each side would be free to do as they please (including producing art that's just a copy of someone else's art - after all, the copier may not be original, but how would you propose stopping the whole public from engaging in copying activities? Would you ban the ownership of paint or writing tools? That certainly would not leave society better off, for then we'd surely have Picasso the pencil-sketcher instead of Picasso the painter).

But because it's a contract between two public groups of people (the art appreciators and the art producers), each side can go back to the table and renegotiate the terms if they feel like they're paying too great an amount for the benefit received. Right now I think the art appreciators are paying far too much, given the length of copyright. Any many of them are demonstrating they agree with me by "opting out' of the legal arrangement and acquiring the copyrighted works by extra-legal means.

Further, recall that copyright is created in the first place to increase the public good (by encouraging the production of original art). But as it stands the great length of copyright term is harmful to the public good because art is "lock up" for a century and cannot be recycled back into the creative mix. Don't we all enjoy a good Ravenloft campaign? Do you think Ravenloft would have been written if Dracula had still be under copyright to someone? Probably not, as the licensing negotiations would have made what was supposed to be a one-off adventure module just not worth it. We (the gaming public) are better off with Ravenloft, the re-mix of gothic novels and D&D adventuring, than without. And copyright would probably have killed it.

So it's a balancing act of term-length, seeking the maximal point on the parabola of societal value. As a legal right, copyright is a gift to the artist from the public, and so the public has the right to name the terms of the gift. The artist has the right to not produce art if he feels the rewards are insufficient.

[Irda Ranger]

Originally Posted by grickherder

As a matter of civil disobedience to effect change, I don't recognize the personhood of non-natural people (ie. corporations and similar legal fictions). Thus, I consider them to have no right to the protection afforded by copyright laws. I see such protection as only belonging to natural persons who retain ownership of the rights to their works and who don't engage in the formation of artificial legal constructs that somehow have greater rights than natural people and reduce liability and resonsibility in society.

Thoughts?

The form of ownership should not effect moral choices, as corporations are ultimately owned by people. If an artist forms a corporation for tax purposes, and assigns all his work to the corporation, do you still feel no obligation to respect the copyright merely because of the legal ownership structure?

Corporations (and trusts, partnerships, etc.) are just a conduit for property rights, not a destination. They ultimately lead back to the people that own them. Actions that harm corporations harm their owners.

EDIT: I should note, to avoid confusion, that whether or not you consider IP theft to be harmful is a separate issue. All I'm saying is that if you respect IP when it's held by an individual (in order to avoid harming a person) you must also respect IP when it's held by a legal entity (in order to avoid harming its owners, who are after all people too).

[Mercutio01]

Originally Posted by xechnao

I am not sure I understand your points. I told you about a state controlled -through institutions for example as in ancient Greece- plan. Artists would exist in the same way as they do today - individuals educated in their society. And they would get paid -as anyone that can get paid in the various states where he can work in the public/state sector.

I think this is the essence of where we disagree. You do believe in a statist economical model whereby everyone is supported by a state and is paid accordingly, as opposed to a capitalist model where people are paid according to the free market based on how well they create, market, and sell their products.

You are, in essence, advocating for a patronage model of the arts, but rather than it being some rich dude paying, it's the state (which means subsidized art, effectively). I think that leads ultimately to the reduction in quality as it is the competition that drives people to reach new heights of performance. You manage to sort of get around that by proposing contests, but contest are judged by and at the whims of only a select few people. The free market allows for everyone everywhere (well, those within a selected market - for me, poetry readers in the metro-Boston area) to determine the value of my work and what they're willing to pay. If my work doesn't sell I can use that to shift styles or substance, or else just take my lumps and move on.

The single-payer model will result in stagnation, and not just in art.

But now we risk moving into politics, so I'll stop.

[xechnao]

Originally Posted by Mercutio01

I think this is the essence of where we disagree. You do believe in a statist economical model whereby everyone is supported by a state and is paid accordingly, as opposed to a capitalist model where people are paid according to the free market based on how well they create, market, and sell their products.

You are, in essence, advocating for a patronage model of the arts, but rather than it being some rich dude paying, it's the state (which means subsidized art, effectively). I think that leads ultimately to the reduction in quality as it is the competition that drives people to reach new heights of performance. You manage to sort of get around that by proposing contests, but contest are judged by and at the whims of only a select few people. The free market allows for everyone everywhere (well, those within a selected market - for me, poetry readers in the metro-Boston area) to determine the value of my work and what they're willing to pay. If my work doesn't sell I can use that to shift styles or substance, or else just take my lumps and move on.

The single-payer model will result in stagnation, and not just in art.

But now we risk moving into politics, so I'll stop.

It am not sure what you mean by statist. I am neither sure what you mean by subsidized art but I think that your further arguments could be seen as an insult to the classics and the historic geniuses of art that we have the joy to experience still today.
Show me a work of free market than has surpassed ancient greek tragedy. Show me how the free market surpasses the development, the artistic progress achieved by the renaissance masters.
You are worrying about exposition. Why? If you are good you can be exposed, especially today with the internet and whatever. If Boston for example assumes control, if you gathered enough support by your fellow bostonites (or bostonians?) through the internet you could be assumed to work for the Boston accademy of literature or even partecipate in a contest or festival that you would be paid either without winning -winners could get extra prizes or recognition -which is still equally important as it is in the free market -accademies work as a free market -only without the marketing.

[Mercutio01]

Originally Posted by xechnao

It am not sure what you mean by statist. I am neither sure what you mean by subsidized art but I think that your further arguments could be seen as an insult to the classics and the historic geniuses of art that we have the joy to experience still today.
Show me a work of free market than has surpassed ancient greek tragedy. Show me how the free market surpasses the development, the artistic progress achieved by the renaissance masters.

Hate to tell you, but Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci existed in a free market. They were commissioned by people to make art and then were paid for the completed object. They weren't paid by the government, they didn't receive salaries, etc. They were paid for each work.

In fact the very REASON Michelangelo even painted the Sistine Chapel was because of the free market. He was competing with Raphael and other contemporaries. He was trying to outdo them. They weren't "managed" by the state. Their works were bidded on and they competed in a free market. Indeed, that market was probably freer than the world market today.

[xechnao]

Originally Posted by Mercutio01

Hate to tell you, but Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci existed in a free market. They were commissioned by people to make art and then were paid for the completed object. They weren't paid by the government, they didn't receive salaries, etc. They were paid for each work.

In fact the very REASON Michelangelo even painted the Sistine Chapel was because of the free market. He was competing with Raphael and other contemporaries. He was trying to outdo them. They weren't "managed" by the state. Their works were bidded on and they competed in a free market. Indeed, that market was probably freer than the world market today.

If you consider the catholic church or the power of the de medici as a free market I could see everything as a free market. I am not sure what you have in mind when you say a free market and a non free market.

[Campbell]

Here's my issue with a state-based solution: it accounts for the producer of content, but not those who add value to the products that contain that content.

Fictional Example
Let's say a publisher likes Mercutio's poetry enough to want to publish a compilation of his work. Mercutio is a poet and doesn't know how to compose a compilation, so the publisher assigns an editor to compile some of Mercutio's work in a form that works for poetry books. To help transition from one poem to the next the publisher hires a freelancer to work with Mercutio to write some copy to help introduce the poems in the compilation. Now that the project is coming along nicely, an art director at the publisher works with Mercutio to create art orders that complement Mercutio's poems and help the reader gain a feel for each poem. At the same time, a graphic designer is brought on to create a look and feel that is consistent with the content. After some basic layout work is started, and artwork starts coming back the graphic designer(s), art director, and typesetter(s) work to bring the book's layout and typography together. Once the book is typeset it gets proofed, and the graphic designer(s) consult the color books for the printer they're using and do any color correction work that needs to be done. Finally, the book is sent in digital form to the printer who prints and binds the book after they get approval for their proofs.

The final book that people hold in their hands or look at on screen is the result of lots of people who worked very hard to add value to it and they all deserve to get compensated for the value they added. When you remove these people from the process you're often left with solid content that doesn't captivate an audience. Should the state also hire these people?

[resistor]

Originally Posted by Irda Ranger

Further, recall that copyright is created in the first place to increase the public good (by encouraging the production of original art). But as it stands the great length of copyright term is harmful to the public good because art is "lock up" for a century and cannot be recycled back into the creative mix. Don't we all enjoy a good Ravenloft campaign? Do you think Ravenloft would have been written if Dracula had still be under copyright to someone? Probably not, as the licensing negotiations would have made what was supposed to be a one-off adventure module just not worth it. We (the gaming public) are better off with Ravenloft, the re-mix of gothic novels and D&D adventuring, than without. And copyright would probably have killed it.

A very good post overall. I'd just like to throw in one example to reinforce this point:

My grandparents saw Snow White in theatres on one of their first dates. Because of the repeated extension of copyright since then, MY children (or grandchildren, if it gets extended again) will be dating before it becomes public property.

Something that has been part of my family for three generations isn't a product anymore. It's part of my cultural heritage, just like Shakespeare, and all the other classic authors.

[Majoru Oakheart]

Originally Posted by drothgery

Okay, your DVD player undoubtedly has a chip in it specifically designed to decode DVD movies. If you play a DVD on your computer, a program is likely accomplishing the exact same task. Why is the work of the electrical engineer who designed the chip worth more than the work of the software engineer who wrote the program?

I don't think that the WORK is less valuable, just the resulting product. The thing about hardware vs software is that if you pay a guy in a factory X dollars to build a piece of hardware, and Y dollars on the raw materials to build the item, then it costs Z(which is the total of X and Y) dollars to make a second item exactly the same.

On the other hand, that device had to be researched by someone, that research and design is certainly worthwhile. Without it, there would be no hardware. Someone had to write the software that makes the hardware work, that work is worthwhile and should be rewarded.

But what I'm saying is that the resulting hardware only has a value of Z, not Z plus whatever it cost to code the software that goes with it. Because the software can be duplicated infinite times for free. Nor do you add the hardware design costs to the resulting item either. You don't need to redesign it each time you produce one.

When you produce an item like this, you hope to make enough profit to recoup the costs of design and code and still make more profit. However, I disagree with the philosophy that says that the resulting object has a value equal to all the design costs and programming costs. It doesn't.

I agree with some other people here who say that the solution to the problem is to reduce the time dramatically that Copyright can be held. I'd support something akin to 5 or 10 years. Companies would be able to produce a product, make profit for a couple of years then make something new.

[Majoru Oakheart]

Originally Posted by JohnRTroy

One author who explained this really well was Steven Grant. On his regular column on Comic Book Resources, while being a critic of the RIAA and MPAA, he also points why creative people get royalties.

I'm gonna quote the relevant block, since I think people need to understand this as much as possible.

This is one I just need to reply to. I know the author isn't going to actually read this reply, but I think that the ideas behind it need to be replied to. So, here it goes:

I work in the IT industry. I am currently contracted to a large, multinational IT company. I don't even work for them, I work for an employment agency because the company doesn't want to have to pay everyone working for them health benefits, pension and the like. So, I get none of these. I keep working there because there is a chance that if I keep working for them, I will be hired on as a real employee and get those benefits. Even if I don't get hired on, I can use the experience I get here to find another job in the field.

So, I don't have a pension. I have no way to pay for my life after I retire yet. I'm 30, I still feel there is time to either start contributing to my own retirement fund or to find a job that does provide these benefits.

So, you are asking my WHY my job doesn't work like yours? Because none of them do. Or, I should correct that, VERY few of them do. I don't seem to have the same self-centered sense of entitlement you do over the situation, mind you. I work every day for the wage I receive. I don't consider whether something I do today is going to make the company millions of dollars. It might. Then again, I might not do anything valuable and be a drain on the companies funds. That's the way most people live their lives.

Even if I had profit sharing or such things, I only get paid the extra while I'm with the company. It doesn't pay me after I leave.

I am aware that it is common in your industry to be paid for your work forever. Let me get this off my chest now. That's just plain crap. No one gets paid for their work forever except for you. I know you are thinking, "But the companies we work for are going to be paid forever for my work, why aren't I?". And I agree with you, they should not be paid forever for your work either.

There is a system here that runs the booking system for a major airline. The programmers who designed the system do not currently get paid for their work. It is still in use and it makes the airline millions. They got paid for their work. They do, however, get paid to write new software for the company. As it should be. Your industry should work the same.

Your industry should either pay you for one time work in a big enough number to be worth the full value of the work or they should hire you on long term with all of the benefits that most companies offer.

And here's the kicker. Their rights to profit off of your work should only last 10 years at most. After that time, it should enter the public domain. This should encourage both you and them to come up with new ideas to profit off of rather than resting on the old ones.

If you want to be the one profiting off your own work, then you need to be the one who leads the project. Start making deals with the backers to fund you in exchange for 150% or 200% of the money back and the rest goes to you. Be the one in charge if you want to make the millions off your movie. If you don't want to be the one who takes care of all of that, hire someone else to be your employee who does. Otherwise, stop bitching and accept that you'll get a one time fee for your work. You've had it too good for too long. I understand that it is hard when someone takes away something in order to make you equal to everyone else. It'll be hard for a while. You'll survive. The rest of us do.

Originally Posted by JohnRTroy

One reason I'm critical of the anti-copyright movement is the arguments that it's only big companies that will be pulled down if we destroy it or turn back the clock. Wrong, I believe it's the little guys who will suffer the most. A lot of the guys arguing against copyright work for tech companies that can exploit the properties better if the laws were reduced, like YouTube and other sites, and a lot of the guys sharing music, videos, and games are just being selfish and self-centered.

And this is where you are wrong. The entire industry is in need of a large kick in the pants. Technology changes culture not the other way around. Right now the movie and music industry are attempting to change culture in a counter direction to the direction technology is pushing. They will lose. But they have a lot of money, so the fight will go on for some time.

The way technology works now encourages information to be free. I can easily post a movie to the internet, have it in thousands of people's hands within hours and have it decentralized so that not a single one of us is the "linchpin" to removing it from the internet. Information is too easy to get and too difficult to remove.

We can rail against this change all we want, but it's coming. The more people who know how to use it, the more prevalent it becomes. Right now, we deal with it by criminalizing the act and trying to punish each and every person who does it. The problem is, when that is 90% of the population, how do you justify it?

I don't view it as the people trading things on the internet as being selfish and self-centered. They just know how to use technology and feel that it is only useful when you use it to its logical conclusion. I actually feel it's the opposite. People who create art of any kind, be it music, movies, television, paintings, or whatever, should be looking to enrich the lives of the human race rather than becoming millionaires. That was the original purpose of art. When did it become about money?

I'm not saying the people who make these things don't deserve to eat and have a roof over their head. Of course they do. I'm saying that with the change in technology comes a change in the way you think about getting paid for your work. Musicians might need to make 100% of their money for live shows, television appearances, or other avenues. People who make movies might need to make 100% of their profit from the "experience" of seeing a movie in a theater or off of toys or games based on their movies.

I don't have all the answers. I don't know exactly how certain things will make profit. Someone smarter than me is going to have to come up with a completely different model for these sort of things. But to simply point at those sharing media on the internet and call them selfish and self-centered is being short sighted. People want to enrich themselves. They want to read a story, hear a song, or watch a movie as part of their personal growth. The same reason that the people wrote or filmed these things in the first place.

I think both the big companies AND the little guy will end up hurting in the crash to come. But I think those with more to lose will be hit harder.

Originally Posted by JohnRTroy

If we're not careful, we'll end up setting things back for creators 500 years, while the big corporations just get bigger and we all get paid less and lose labor rights we've tried to get for decades. Or we'll end up with a system where the Internet is locked down and there will be no expectation of privacy anywhere, you'll have a fully identifiable unit to access the Internet and the government can see all attempts to infringe.

I think things need to be set back for creators 500 years. That's about when they were treated like the rest of us. Well, scratch that, I think they need to be set FORWARD 50 years with real, forward thinking.

As I see the future, it will be a period where people make movies to gross 100 million in the box office, 50 million off of toys and other products due to the movie, and simply don't care what happens after that. People either go see the movie in theaters, buy games or other physical products based around the movie or they simply aren't a factor. Even if all of those people have seen the movie for free by downloading off the internet.

The movies that wouldn't have made enough money in theaters to break even would stop being made. There will be some sacrifices. These things will likely end up being direct to internet releases for free that will instead attempt to capitalize off of the semi-popularity of their work with advertising, toys, games, and the like. It's being done today in small amounts and I see it being done much more in the future. People will make things for free and use the popularity to make money rather than the product itself.

Originally Posted by JohnRTroy

As far as tangible vs. intangible, that's a cultural thing. Keep in mind primitive indigenous peoples like the Native Americans didn't have concepts of land, while some African tribes had no concept of time measurement like we did. The arguments over sematics about intellectual property just seem to me to be attempts to try to bring about change in the existing culture. And that's not always successful.

No, but the thing that almost always changes cultures is technology. It has nearly a 100% effectiveness rate in changing culture when it was adapted.

The other thing is necessity. Native Americans didn't have any concepts of property because there wasn't enough people to fight over it or any necessity to do so. When you have too many people, you get disputes, you need to come up with ways to resolve them. Thus, land titles and the like.

[JohnRTroy]

Originally Posted by Majoru Oakheart

So, you are asking my WHY my job doesn't work like yours? Because none of them do. Or, I should correct that, VERY few of them do. I don't seem to have the same self-centered sense of entitlement you do over the situation, mind you. I work every day for the wage I receive. I don't consider whether something I do today is going to make the company millions of dollars. It might. Then again, I might not do anything valuable and be a drain on the companies funds. That's the way most people live their lives.

Even if I had profit sharing or such things, I only get paid the extra while I'm with the company. It doesn't pay me after I leave.

I am aware that it is common in your industry to be paid for your work forever. Let me get this off my chest now. That's just plain crap. No one gets paid for their work forever except for you. I know you are thinking, "But the companies we work for are going to be paid forever for my work, why aren't I?". And I agree with you, they should not be paid forever for your work either.

You completely miss the quote he makes about sales people, lawyers, etc. And I don't think you have a lot of knowledge on the way Hollywood and other writing endeavors work. I'm sure as an IT person you get paid a solid wage for what you do. A lot of writing is fronted by whether or not its a hit.

And I think you seem to think writers are overpaid spoiled brats, they aren't. The people who make it rich screenwriting are very few.

And some software does get royalties--there are people using other people's libraries of code, etc.

There is a system here that runs the booking system for a major airline. The programmers who designed the system do not currently get paid for their work. It is still in use and it makes the airline millions. They got paid for their work. They do, however, get paid to write new software for the company. As it should be. Your industry should work the same.

This analogy is flawed because software is not like prose writing. Software usually needs maintenance over time. Plus, in the world of software, hardware changes, OS changes, etc. By rights, they need constant maintenance over time.

Your industry should either pay you for one time work in a big enough number to be worth the full value of the work or they should hire you on long term with all of the benefits that most companies offer.

And here's the kicker. Their rights to profit off of your work should only last 10 years at most. After that time, it should enter the public domain. This should encourage both you and them to come up with new ideas to profit off of rather than resting on the old ones.

It doesn't work like that because for every success there are 10 failures. Only with success does the money always come in, I thought he made that pretty clear.

You've had it too good for too long. I understand that it is hard when someone takes away something in order to make you equal to everyone else. It'll be hard for a while. You'll survive. The rest of us do.

You're being pretty ignorant here. First of all, Steven Grant is by no means a rich man. Secondly, you seem to be thinking all writers are rich, they are not. The whole royalty thing is a way of compensating for the fact that a lot of writers aren't paid much for their efforts, especially in Hollywood where they can be easilly exploited if they didn't have their own union. In fact, in some ways writers are suffering because the people with the money are starting to take the same attitudes you have and make it seem like the writers are the ones being greedy.

And this is where you are wrong. The entire industry is in need of a large kick in the pants. Technology changes culture not the other way around. Right now the movie and music industry are attempting to change culture in a counter direction to the direction technology is pushing. They will lose. But they have a lot of money, so the fight will go on for some time.

You don't really know that for a fact. I'm a little disturbed by the "techno-worship" I see, that technology changes everything. Yes, well laws do catch up with that. Modern society is filled will laws. We can drive twice the speed limit, for instance, but we don't.

The way technology works now encourages information to be free. I can easily post a movie to the internet, have it in thousands of people's hands within hours and have it decentralized so that not a single one of us is the "linchpin" to removing it from the internet. Information is too easy to get and too difficult to remove.

Yes, but you can also be tracked, your data recorded, etc, and there aren't that many ISPs out there you can use in a single geographical area. Encryption works both ways. I suspect there will be tools to help combat piracy--especially if criminal hackers, the kind who want to steal money from banks, make major successes. I find it interesting that the technophiles always say "there's no way to stop piracy", when people are working on the solution.

We can rail against this change all we want, but it's coming. The more people who know how to use it, the more prevalent it becomes. Right now, we deal with it by criminalizing the act and trying to punish each and every person who does it. The problem is, when that is 90% of the population, how do you justify it?

Well, you could say that about laws on the books.

What I personally thing should happen is that ISPs work with the government to punish infrignement by setting up something similar to speeding tickets. There's a cap on punishment unless you are a blantant violated. Say if they discover you illegally downloaded a book and were caught by the logs and CRC checks. You get charged a $100 to a $500 fine. It's added to your ISP bill--don't pay, get cut off. You can argue against this like a traffic ticket. But just like most traffic tickets, people would pay the tickets and avoid the behavior. If we did this, I think it would stop most piracy since the younger set would get in trouble with their parents, and it wouldn't be see by the masses the same way as a 250,000 suit against an individual world.

People who create art of any kind, be it music, movies, television, paintings, or whatever, should be looking to enrich the lives of the human race rather than becoming millionaires. That was the original purpose of art. When did it become about money?

Oh, c'mon. I am getting a bit sick of the "people should do it for the ART, not the MONEY" meme that keeps coming back. Art from ancient times only lasted because it was popular and respected enough to be preserved.

This seems to be a class warfare thing--it's like the people look at the richest ones, the ones that are the most successful, and think everybody is like that, and that they have it too good. Wrong. Only the top of the class gets that way. J.K. Rowling made her money the old fashioned way. I don't begrudge people who get rewarded for there skills.

Economic realities are a fact of life. If you cut out paying for artists, you just have people who will do it part-time, or do a quick burn then fadeout as they get less free time, or a few poor suckers who do it "for their art" and not getting anywhere in life. In fact, a lot of businessmen have conned many writers into working on stuff for free.

Musicians might need to make 100% of their money for live shows, television appearances, or other avenues. People who make movies might need to make 100% of their profit from the "experience" of seeing a movie in a theater or off of toys or games based on their movies.

That's the easy answer all the opponents to copyright say. Note that the people judging are not usually in the industry and don't usually know enough about it, just make judgments from the outside based on their own perspectives.

Personally I think this cartoon says it best.

AAEC - Political Cartoon by Ted Rall, Universal Press Syndicate - 03/24/2008

But to simply point at those sharing media on the internet and call them selfish and self-centered is being short sighted. People want to enrich themselves. They want to read a story, hear a song, or watch a movie as part of their personal growth. The same reason that the people wrote or filmed these things in the first place.

But then, assuming they feel that way, then there are free alternatives, aren't there? Entertainment on traditional channels is free, with advertisements being the price you'd pay.

Part of the problem is lack of empathy. I know what it's like to create, and I'm sympathetic to people who lost their jobs. I can understand questioning the benefits of copyright. But I think a lot of the people who are actually pirating music, movies, and games are young people without money, who pay a bit of lip service to the copyleft movement as well as think they are "screwing the rich", but they are motivated to get everything they can get without paying for it because they can. Then they use these arguments to justify their actions, without ever understanding the other side.

(And I'm not saying everybody feels this way, but I think the idealists out there are outnumbered by the self-justifiers. The complaints about SPORE on Amazon proved this to me. When people started the protests about the Spore DRM, I noticed that anybody with a contrary opinion on Amazon's message forums were "voted down", so you couldn't read the opposing posts, even if the person started a thread.).

When I mentioned "hundreds of years of precedent", I mentioned stealing, etc. Everything those moral laws taught me tells me it's wrong because it hurts the other person--the owner of the good, the shopkeeper, etc. Apply that to non-tangible goods and I can see taking a copy of something that's taken a lot of time to develop and where there's a lawfully setup way for that person to get compensated, whether it's the writer, artist, programmer (for games), and I can see that its not right to copy that. Saying "it's not theft" just doesn't seem right to me, and I don't think this semantic argument makes much sense.

I think both the big companies AND the little guy will end up hurting in the crash to come. But I think those with more to lose will be hit harder.

I believe your wrong. Let's say most content is commoditized. What I see ending up happening is there will only be a few places to get content, and those that hold the content. So, instead of companies like Sony, etc, getting rich, it might be Google. At the same time, since you've scrapped the system that pays the actual creative types, all of the lower-paid creative types suffer the most.

I think things need to be set back for creators 500 years. That's about when they were treated like the rest of us. Well, scratch that, I think they need to be set FORWARD 50 years with real, forward thinking.

Agreed, but Forward thinking also has to take into account all factors of the business and its economic impact. You need to see all sides, and not just say "out with the old, in with the new", "sucks to be part of old media", etc.

I am not advocating charity, in fact in some cases I think the media should change, and I think certain choices they made regarding technology, such as the newspaper industry, hurt them. (Too many big companies just put their content on-line for free in an effort to get eyeballs instead of profit, creating a free expectation).

But I think a lot of people need to study all sides--study why copyright was made, study economic models and theories, study how the payment systems work in the media, study past historical changes, understand why minority interest groups get power and why sometimes that's okay (somebody up-thread mentioned the US is a Republic--a Republic prevents a tyranny of the majority, which is why we have laws for instance protecting certain unions, laws for the handicapped, laws to protect certain business interests, etc ). Don't be attached to your own opinion without studying all sides, as well as history.

One of the problems is there's no compromise between the camps and something will have to give to make a better future for us.

[Silverblade The Ench]

Irda,
yeah that's my way fo thinking. Corporations = truly evil, because all they care about is *profit*, with absolutely no social responsibility and damn little to stop them. See current crisis as proof.

Now, as another bit to show why copyright etc is all lunatic now...
In a few years time, they'll have DVDs with a capacity of over 1000 gigabytes (seriously). Think about that...you could have 100 HD movies on ONE disc.

Now, why the hell should I have to pay for individual films at say $10 each, or as I@m sure the rat-pukes will try to do, 100 films on 1 disc for $500 or so...
we should be getting 100 films, Of OUR CHOICE, burned to disc, or entire catalogue sof 1 star or studio for $10.

Why? cause they are old, cause the tech means we'll one day be able to have entire collections of all works on one storage unit so why the blazes should we pay for every item except for a few cents (you wanna pay $10,000 for a bloody single DVD?!)...and we, as cosnumers need to stop being lead by the nose and robbed!

It'a a digitla age folks! wake up.
One day you'll be able to take a pciture of any object and a mahcine build it for you..so how the hell cna oyu own "copyrights"?

tell you a better method of artist's payment:

Here in UK, any venue that plays music has to by a license, this license money is paid to artists. Everyone profits.
Same with other art could be done.

You pay your subscription fee, that goes to the artists *Not* corporate ghouls. Bonus for every download so more poopular/good you are, more you earn.
This solves both models of support!

So, for WOTC, you pay them your DDI or whatever subscription fee and should get PDFs of *every* WOTC item. Not too long until books are largely replaced by electronic books, this saves WOTC printing and distribution costs.

We cannot stop priacy, it's impossible, except by draocnian,evil actions that are the antithesis of modern, democratic, decent governance (which is exaclty what the RIAA and their ilk are trying to screw with! Way to go fining grannies for $25,000! Searches without warrants, etc).

non-commericla piracy IS good civil disobedience. Make them all heed our will and give us digital art at prices we agree with.
Digital = not using up finite physical resources.

[Aus_Snow]

A work of art != 'information'.

Information should be free, and all that, yo? Good. Great, even. But see above.

[JohnRTroy]

Originally Posted by Aus_Snow

An artwork != 'information'.

Information should be free, and all that, yo? Good. Great, even. But see above.

Actually the quote about Information wants to be free is misquoted so often.

Information wants to be free? — Eat Sleep Publish

It was never meant by that author to suggest that all work would be done gratis. In fact, Stewart Brand stated that there would always be tensions between the two factors.