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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1557604" data-attributes="member: 10201">See my previous posts (and ongoing discussion with Dr. Harry, among others): i'm not convinced that is true. First, i've not yet seen convincing evidence that IP is inherently "property" or even a "good", as opposed to a legal construct as such. That doesn't mean it isn't wrong to take it [without recompense] if the creator is expecting to sell it, just that it might be a different kind of wrong.I have. My conclusion is that if everyone stole from, and otherwise made business impossible for, large corporations, while simultaneously being scrupulously honest in dealings with small, operator-owned or cooperative, businesses and government entities, the large corporations would cease to exist, and the world would be a better place. I can conceive of illegally downloading a couple of the latest American Idol's songs. [Well, that one's purely hypothetical, given the style of music they're going for, but we'll just go with it.] But i'd never even look for, much less download if i found it, a recording from someone on an independent, artist-friendly label--like, say, Ani DeFranco's label. You can't simply assume that those who behave in a way you find despicable haven't thought through the consequences. Sometimes they have, and they like, or at least accept, the very same consequences you consider apocalyptic.Excellent examples. Someone has clearly done something wrong. I'm not convinced, however, that they've done the same something wrong as theft. Take the first example: it's misrepresentation, not theft, that is the error. If the coworker submitted the completed report, properly attributed to you, and with no claim of authorship or contribution, no harm would have been done, despite the taking.Actually, if you look at the article i linked to a page or so ago, you'll see that sales of CDs are up. What is down is quantities shipped. IOW, the quantity by which record labels are misjudging their sales, and thus wastefully overproducing, has been reduced, in the same period when sales has gone up. IOW, if there is a causal connection, perhaps downloading has increased CD sales. (I know it has for me and every person i know personally in RL.) I don't have any response on the issue of regional sales.But copyright law is about the method of transmission, not the idea. Trying to apply it to stop idea transmission is, at best, ineffecient, and at worst misguided.Broadcast TV. Radio. Both are built around a use-now-pay-later-or-never paradigm. Public broadcasting is the original shareware: use it now, pay us what you feel it's worth later. Commercial TV and radio allow you free use, in return for the assumption you'll buy the products advertised, thus enabling the advertisers to afford advertising on the network, which actually pays for it.  In the realm of ideas, consumption-without-pay is a long-established tradition.As for looking at a copy in a store: what if you're using the downloaded copy *like* a copy in the store? IOW, you're engaging in the same level of browsing as you do (or would) with a store copy. The only difference becomes where you do it (at home, rather than the store). However, it's not as clear-cut as that. It is blackletter law that you are allowed to make an MP3 rip of a CD you've legitimately purchased. AFAIK, the law has never established that, should you lose the CD through mishap, you are required to delete the MP3s. So, if the person ripped a copy before losing the CD, they're in the clear, but if it never occurred to them to do so before hand, and they download the MP3s after they lose the CD, they've broken the law? Things start to look iffy to me any time identical results through different means produce different legal consequences. Not saying this situation is obviously flawed, or that all such situations are, just that i want to look closer at the rationales, to figure out whether the supposed distinctions have merit.All of this i agree with. But i take all those statements and come to, apparently, a very different conclusion. I conclude that the important element is recompense for ideas, not regulation of the flow of ideas or even necessarily of products. [It's important to regulate the flow of physical products for other reasons, however.] That recompense is not necessarily identical to paying the asking price for a commercial copy of the idea. Now, illegal downloaders aren't providing that recompense in any way, directly. They might be doing so in secondary ways: buying albums from groups they otherwise wouldn't have heard of, frex. But i think there is a third way, neither the RIAA's model, nor the "download everything and pay for nothing no matter how much i like it" model, which is better than both, and has significant elements of the latter. But i also think the current distribution model for music does a lousy job of that recompense: in large part, the record company, not the artist, gets the recompense. I don't think the RIAA has the clear moral high ground at all on this. So i buy from small, creator-owned imprints, or at least directly from the artist.Agreed. This is not a legitimate moral or legal defense. It is, at best, an explanation of causes.I wouldn't want all game books to look like that. But i'd love it if more of them offered both versions--like the Stingy Gamers Editions of some of the GoO books.Agreed. We cannot eliminate all protections for IP. That's not the same as saying that IP is substantively identicaly to physical property when determining what those protections should be, however.</blockquote>

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