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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 2721697" data-attributes="member: 2013">I found the original article interesting, but there was one thing that rankled me.It's nice to get up on your high horse, but this psychological issue was addressed over 150 years ago... (emphasis below mine)As I said, I'm not condoning piracy, but I understand that once the "big wigs" poison the copyright water with ever-longer terms and ever-more-draconian rules, the little guys' stuff is poisoned too.  It's a nice emotional appeal, I guess, to talk about small press vs. large press, but for most pirates, it's a black and white issue - either all copyright is good or none is, regardless of small or large press - and it's pretty clear where their position is.Quoted for additional emphasis.  It's a wonderful whipping boy because you can blame any amount of lost sales you want on it and nobody can disprove your claims... well, usually, not, anyway. I seem to recall someone doing the math on Slashdot years ago when the original Napster was at its peak and the record industry was howling that every download represented a lost sale and "look how much money we're gushing!"  When they did the math, it turned out that if everyone paid "full price" for every track that was swapped, the amount of music changing hands daily was worth more than the WORLD'S yearly GNP (i.e., the music industry was claiming that it was losing more money every day than the entire world economy makes in a year).  Based on that, the Slashbots quickly shouted down any claims of one download == one lost sale due to sheer physical impossibility - you can't spend more money than you make.I'll avoid the typical arguments this topic engenders, except to point out that both the "pirates" and the "publishers" are great at making strawmen and slow to address the real issue at hand, which is the morality of copyright in general and the morality of its present incarnation in particular.  I happen to believe that copyright in general can be a moral thing when implemented fairly as a balance between the interests of the public and publisher.  However, I am not so sure that the current incarnation (at least in the US) is implemented fairly, but I rarely see "pirates" offering workable suggestions for alternatives... or publishers admitting that maybe they are getting WAY too sweet a cut of the benefits of copyright (at least in terms of length).  Both sides are way to extreme towards getting what they want - publishers are trying to use DRM as a "rights land grab" to take many (all?) rights from the public that the public currently enjoys with no restitution (like, say, shorter copyright duration), and pirates are trying to use the internet itself as a "rights land grab" to take all rights away from the publishers.  Until both sides can call a truce and stop trying to take away everything from the other (and make no mistake, both sides are guilty of this), there's going to be no progress.--The Sigil</blockquote>

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