Pirating RPGs. (And were not talking "arggg" pirate stuff here.)

[Falkus]

You don't need to give up free speech to benefit from others' creativity. You do not need an industry for artistic creation. The idea that we won't have the next Motzart or Copernicus if we don't copyright is a fallacy. For most of human history, we have not had copyright, and art has still been generated, and powerfully so.

And for the most of human history we haven't had what I like to call the internet. Times change.

 

[Desdichado]

The idea that we won't have the next Motzart or Copernicus if we don't copyright is a fallacy. For most of human history, we have not had copyright, and art has still been generated, and powerfully so.

You conveniently forget to point out that for most of human history we also didn't have the Internet or p2p filesharing clients.

 

[The Sigil]

If I'm giving the other side of the argument as I know it correctly...

You don't need to give up free speech to benefit from others' creativity. You do not need an industry for artistic creation. The idea that we won't have the next Motzart or Copernicus if we don't copyright is a fallacy. For most of human history, we have not had copyright, and art has still been generated, and powerfully so.

Personally, I'm not nessecarily against copyright, because I certainly believe some form of copyright could certainly help foster this natural tendancy of humanity. But to posit it as an essential component of generating creative works is wrong. It isn't. It's a side-product of the fact that we as human beings produce art.

"For most of human history, we have not had copyright, and art has still been generated, and powerfully so."

And the "counter-counter-argument" to this goes, "that's because they had patrons." And thus art is monopolized by the rich and only generated through their largesse; there is no way for the common folk to access high-quality art except as beggars who take the table scraps of the rich. Certainly there is no mechanism for an independent artist to live and produce whatever he wants, as he will be beholden to the rich.

I can argue either side with equal verve... which I think is essential to true understanding of an issue... if you can argue both sides equally well, you understand it; which side you agree with will depend on which set of "first principles" you accept.

--The Sigil

 

[nothing to see here]

1. This assumes that "stuff you want" depends on the industry being "sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing". This is obviously untrue. We could have instead a forthright, ethical, fair industry making our entertainment media. Anyone out there not think that would be an improvement?

2. I don't buy things from these people. For the most part, they make crappy products. I usually buy my entertainment from smaller companies, quite often direct from the producer over the internet (Don Hertzfeldt!). I also don't like to support sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing industries, and my sentiment is shared by a lot of people. I believe that if these sleazy, unethical, moneygrubbing industries disappeared overnight, by the next morning there would be a whole host of new small businesses opening up to fill the yawning gap left by the megaproducers, and that they would produce better stuff. Why? Because I also believe that 90% of everything is crap. So if you have two or three production companies with particular business strategies concerning what they'll put money behind, there's a pretty good chance that they're all crap. But if you have a thousand, there will probably be about a hundred that aren't crap. And that will be more stuff than I'll ever be able to buy anyway.

I wonder, in your hypothetical scenario what would happen if the big boys dissapeared. The most agressive (ruthless) small businesses would start eating up the more 'honourable' small businesses, and the cycle would repeat anew. On the plus side, success brings resources, and while resources cannot guarantee quality on a case by case basis, it does tend to provide progress, however glacially.

One person's "slezy, unethical, moneygrubbing" behaviour is another person's "competitive" behaviour. High stakes and intense competition does not have a common byproduct of improving ethical standards. It sucks, but, it's life...and I've yet to hear a better market model than the competitive one.

 

[Voadam]

Except that the owner's property is not the physical object. The owner's property is "the exclusive right to make copies of a particular work". By making a copy, you've taken that away from me.

So you are saying partially taking away the right to control making copies is the same as taking away a physical object so the use of the term theft is appropriate. I'm saying it is a bad analogy, the differences between taking away a right to control an aspect of a thing and a thing itself are significant.

 

[Desdichado]

I should just quite posting and let Falkus do my talking for me; he's saying exactly what I would, and now we literally post at nearly the same time nearly the exact same post.

 

[I'm A Banana]

And for the most of human history we haven't had what I like to call the internet. Times change.

Is your position that we need Copyright now more than we did before the Internet?

We need a system that was designed a hundred years ago to help enable creativity now more than ever because a system has been introduced that has changed the way that creativity reaches the public?

Times change. Copyright as it is today is quickly becoming obsolete. It's lack of justice is becoming quite evident. The "suits" are trying to guard against that, protect their own business model, and stagnate the world, manipulating the people to stay within their pre-defined and profitable boundaries.

Copyright obviously was a useful tool for its time. But its time has quite evidently passed. Creativity is being produced on a collossally mass scale above and beyond the bounds of copyright. Copyright is now more of a hinderence to creativity than a boon to it.

 

[Desdichado]

IAuthors should sell a book, not a text, not a story.

Musicians should sell CDs and live performances, not songs.

Well, isn't that the problem? People aren't buying the CDs, they're just downloading the songs from someone else who did.

I mean, it's all well and good to point to some principle and say, "yeah, that's what I agree with" but when you ignore the obvious problem with it, you fail to say anything meaningful about it.

 

[Desdichado]

Copyright obviously was a useful tool for its time. But its time has quite evidently passed.

Problem is, I have yet to see anyone of your general belief system propose an alternative that really made any sense. You can't just get rid of a system like copyright law and not replace it with something else.

 

[Joshua Randall]

What I love about these threads is how they bring the moral relativists and nihilists out of the woodwork.

"Theft is only considered wrong because society has a law against it!"
"Piracy is perfectly moral -- it's copyrighting things that is immoral!"
"Creating things for profit is immoral!"
"All constructs of what is moral/immoral are meaningless!"

And so on, and so forth.

I feel like I am back in college in a freshman philosophy class where none of the students has read the assignment and all are just spewing forth their alcohol and marijuana fueled opinions.