Re: Re: Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
Just for the hell of it, I'll respond to your question from out of the blue (no pun intended).
How do they provide a streaming service that doesn't quickly become a really cheap downloading service? Well, the first thing they need to do is figure out what business they are really in. Here's a hint: They aren't in the content business. They're actually providing a service of convenience. They offer to the customer the ability to stream content to their home without the need to fill their hard drive with movies and TV shows that would require an entire server farm to manage. Netflix is selling people bandwidth. Nobody is going to bother with Netflix as a download service when they can much more effectively get the video file they desire by using P2P networks. Netflix doesn't need DRM, they are trying to put up a gate when there isn't even a fence to support it. The whole world can just walk around the gate (i.e. bitorrent).
The purpose the DRM serves is to placate the copyright holders and their corporate shareholders. It gives the false sense that Netflix is preventing people from getting free content because the copyright holders can't stand the idea that someone might get access to content that doesn't put money in their pockets. Content without DRM is viewed as a huge risk and if corporations are anything, they are risk adverse. DRM is a false sense of security.
Re: Re: Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
No, that wasn't the question. The question was, "what's the problem?" and I explained why. You never asked how to provide a steaming service that doesn't get exploited by its customers.
'I don't particularly see a problem with this - and it could actually be a path to more content being available on the interweb. If it's done right, what's the problem? Netflix and iTunes both use it and work fine for watching movies.
To say that everything should use open tech and that you should be able to right click on any streaming content and "save as..." isn't really realistic imo.'
This is an exact quotation of the comment I replied to. I don't see a question of "how?", do you?
Re: Re: Re: Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
Yeah, once I got my internet connection back, I re-entered my log-in. That fixed it. I also discovered that if you don't close Steam before you shut down, it can corrupt your .blob file, which is what happened to me. Moral of the story: Steam is just as horrible as any other DRM system and completely unnecessary.
Re: Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
You'll have a problem with Steam DRM if you lose your internet connection (or go mobile) and offline mode breaks. I had this happen to me. I lost my internet access due to a domestic dispute and the .blob file that contained my credentials was corrupted. Without those credentials, Steam assumes you don't have permission to pay those games. It even prevents you from even opening the interface. Valve is no better than the rest of them. They claim to be indifferent to infringement, but they use the same dirty tactics to prevent it.
The problem is that they are trying to own our culture. They already do own our culture from 1923 and on. They also exploit the public domain to create works so they can sell it back to us and then drop the hammer on anyone that dares attempt to exploit them the way they exploited the public domain. It's a huge double standard. When the corporate media companies copy, they justify it. When we copy, they vilify it.
The whole system is set up to turn highly abundant resources (our culture) into discreet units of property because capitalism lives and dies on owning things others do not. The content industry fights violently to hold on to what they believe is their property. Even in the face of violating the civil liberties of others. Property is profitable and profit it King. If property is the path to profit, taking away that path to profit by taking away copyright protections threatens profit.
"Discussions of Intellectual Freedom and Intellectual Property dance around this cherished American right: property. (That said, the term "Intellectual Property" came into use only recently; the term was not used at all when the US Constitution was written.) Property is sacred. Ideas about property change slowly, violently, and fundamentally. Today we find slavery so morally abhorrent, it's hard to believe that human property was a common, socially accepted institution less than 200 years ago. Property rights — even in human beings — were sacrosanct. People will fight to the death over not just property, but ideas about what property means.
Anything that challenges definitions of property can provoke heated, emotional responses — even from people with no direct stake in the property in question."
EME would turn the internet from one single, gigantic room of free speech, into billions of locked rooms. If you dare try to spill the content of one room into others, woe be to you. You'll be branded a hacker, a thief, and a terrorist. "If you compete with my monopoly, I don't have it anymore!" - http://mimiandeunice.com/2010/08/15/rivalrous-vs-non-rivalrous/
You'd be surprised to know that the people that are upset are so because they know where the food comes from and the way it used to be done.
Cows used to eat grass for feed. Now they eat corn, GMO corn. Do you know what that does? Their manure ends up with high concentrations of e. coli and with crowded feedlot conditions, the meat is often tainted. What do they do? Anti-biotics, hormones, washing the meat in ammonia and chloride to prevent infection when all they had to do is give the cows more space and feed them grass. It's the grass that allows their digestive system to keep e. coli down in the first place.
They use viruses to inject genetic code into plant cells. I'm sure that's not asking for trouble. What if they mutate? What if the genes have unforeseen consequences further down the food chain? What if the gene mods cause a crop to make a pest super resistant to any sort of pesticides and they devastate entire yields of crops? Hurray for monoculture! We put all our eggs in one basket and now that crop has an unbeatable pest that wipes out our food supply overnight.
There has already been studies that show hormone usage in live stock has an effect on the people that eat them, just like BPA and phthalates act like estrogen on the body when you keep your foods in BPA containers. Yeah, the GMO opponents don't have any reason to be upset. Consuming hormone and anti-biotic meat does affect your body.
If you don't understand why they're upset, maybe you should find out? Ignorance is not a license to tell others they are wrong. Know the fact before you shoot off your mouth. It sickens me when people that can't be bothered to research what the other side's point of view is just dismisses arguments out of hand. You're not a geneticist, so don't act like you know more than the people you're bitching about.
There's a lot to be upset about with GMO's. Although, I don't think this is one of them. It sounds like artificial selection finding ways to express different parts of existing code.
I do not condone GMO's of other kinds (e.g. genetic transfer). Most of GMO technologies isn't for the benefit of the people that eat the food, it's modified to be more profitable (insert genes and the crops start sprouting cash lol). They're modifying organisms to produce more monoculture which would diminish resilience to catastrophic events. One super crop, hit with calamity they didn't plan for and whole crops are lost. We lose entire food supplies. But they don't care as long as it drives up profit.
The whole reason these things keep coming up about copyright is because they try to sell the service after the content has been made available. It's like a landscaping service coming to your home, mowing your lawn without being asked to, and then knocking on your door to demand that you pay them. The point is, if they wanted to be paid, they shouldn't have done the valuable work for free. They gave away all the value in the content when they created it without being hired to do so.
So the proper solution to this is, make contact with the prospective client(s), settle on a price, do the work, collect payment. It's a solid basic framework to build on.
"No. I am not saying those are examples where copyright is necessary. I am saying those are examples of where copyright may be the best workable solution, at least in the short term."
And I suggested a solution that has no reliance on copyright at all, demonstrating that copyright wasn't really a workable solution, only a marginal effort.
"Copyright is huge and far-reaching. Abolition would cause chaos. Would that chaos eventually shake itself out into something better than we have now? Yes, probably. But in the mean time it would do all sorts of damage, some we might perceive as "deserved" and a lot we might not, and none of it ideal compared to a more thoughtful transition."
Sometimes, when the kids can't stop fighting over a toy, it's best to just take the toy away. They might throw a tantrum over it, but they'll get over it eventually.
"I think it's arrogant to claim that, because there are some fundamental problems with the principles copyright, abolition is the only solution worth considering, regardless of what the immediate practical implications are, and regardless of the fact that abolition is not a realistic near-term goal."
“You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress..."
The same goes for copyright. It's not progress if copyright is still being used to censoring people.
"From your point of view, wouldn't the vast majority of people who participated in the SOPA protests be wrong, too? Many of them were not in favour of abolition -- merely opposed to expansion. Was successfully protesting SOPA a waste of time that should have been spent fruitlessly campaigning for abolition?"
No, opposing greater censorship is always a good strategy. I'm not saying that doing nothing other abolition is wrong, I'm saying it's wrong to pretend the mere reduction is not part of the solution. We should definitely oppose expansion, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that there's any form of copyright that's a "solution." As long as copyright is allowing censorship through exclusive rights to speech, it's a problem.
Think about it. All content it speech. So when you apply copyright to that, you're saying "I have the right to speak on this subject, but you don't." You silence people from expressing themselves in certain ways. That's a huge problem and it's the core function of copyright. I don't want to live in a society where some people can say things that I can't. On the other hand, if nobody utilizes that right, it's just as good, but the potential for censorship is still present.
"Your only objection seems to be that I will talk about things other than just abolishing copyright. Well yeah, I do find that annoying."
You know what? I don't really care if copyright gets abolished so long as people realize it's not helping and just establish business models that are independent from copyright. That's what I'm really on about. Abolition would just be a kick in the pants for the content industry to get busy on finding a better model instead of relying on it as a crutch.
"Again, disagree. Yes, part of it is about finding a real long-term solution -- another part of it is about compromising and working within the system that we're stuck with to reduce the damage being done every day. Again, if you disagree, fine -- but I still say that is refusing to live in reality."
Again, I think we can flat out ignore copyright as a way to change things, if people just refuse to rely on it. Real solutions don't care if copyright exists or not.
"I am trying to discuss alternative solutions. You are only interested in discussing one alternative solution -- abolishing copyright. I'm not saying you don't belong -- I'm saying I'm genuinely baffled by your response. It's not as if this is the first, or the tenth, or even the hundredth time that Techdirt has opposed copyright abolition -- and very, very few of our posts pitch abolition as an immediate solution. And yet on this thread, you are acting like I'm a deluded idiot for considering anything other than abolition. Why? Doesn't make any sense to me."
You're trying to discuss alternatives, as long as they aren't about copyright abolition. I'm saying copyright isn't part of the solution, but only so long as people actually use it. If they don't use it, then it has no negative effect on culture, but it's application does. That's what I'm against. I'd like it if nobody could have a monopoly on speech for any amount of time. Abolition would be the fastest path to that, but voluntary refusal to use copyright would be just fine too.
Alright, I have copyright reform for you to consider. "To promote the progress of the arts and sciences, congress shall make no law that shall abridge the people's right to share and distribute culture and knowledge freely." That's my copyright reform.
I have listened to what you've said and I pointed out the flaw in your reasoning, even offering alternative solutions to problems you thought to be wholly dependent on copyright.
Now you're getting annoyed that we haven't agreed with you and you're playing the "expert" card, accusing us of being ignorant and dogmatic. You have the audacity to tell us we don't know as much as you in order to dismiss our arguments. Bad form.
You're right, there's nothing to talk about in regards to reducing copyright terms when there are solutions that are workable in complete independence of copyright. We can, however, still talk about business models that would function without the existence of copyright. We can apply adaptive business models right now, independent of copyright.
Why are we still here? Because not agreeing with your point of view doesn't negate the value in coming here and discussing these issues. Your viewpoint isn't sacrosanct. This site isn't about compromising on, or preserving, copyright. It's about finding a real solution, even if that means abolition. I personally think it's adaptive business models and abolition because I have good reason to think so. Others think differently. But I am willing to defend my viewpoint and if I find fault in yours, I will point it out, as you should mine. If you can't discuss alternative solutions, I think it's you that may be wasting your time here and it's rather petty of you that you imply that we don't belong here because our viewpoints don't align with yours.
The only statement I've made is that copyright is incapable of being a benefit and is completely unnecessary in light of other alternatives. Copyright is a method of censorship through property control of speech. No matter how much you limit it, it will still be an imposition on free speech and it won't provide any benefits that can't be had through adaptive business models. So, in light of that, why do you keep clinging to this notion that we shouldn't rule it out? Copyright has no redeeming value aside from a granting power to a privileged minority.
You keep citing examples where copyright is still necessary and I keep pointing out how they can be solved without copyright, so whom is really being absolutist and stubborn? You're trying to defend an indefensible position.
My ideas don't need a custom built society, it can happen right now, today, in spite of copyright. All that's needed are people to change their attitudes (and their business models) and realize what this industry really is. Adapting business models away from copyright reliance is what you need to make the abolition of copyright the logical next step. The solution to this all starts with a voluntary decision to change and organizations like Kickstarter are the mechanism for that change. They are an opportunity to succeed without reliance on copyright. It's your novelty to your audience that makes you a success. Monopolies won't help you whether you're great or completely unremarkable.
I think we've already established that the problem is the business model (at least I have) and copyright only exists to enable that one particular faulty business model. So, it's pragmatic to say that the solution to the problem is to adapt the business model to reality. When you're no longer using a business model that requires copyright to function, you no longer need copyright.
"Say an author, one who gives all his work away for free and allows others to redistribute his work, has lots of his fans asking to buy collectors editions of his books as gifts -- so he calls up some printers, or plans to start a Kickstarter. What is stopping the printers from all simply refusing to work with him, taking his work, printing exactly what he wanted themselves, and selling it at a lower price than he could ever manage?"
There it is, you're going right back into thinking of art as a product. You have to let go of that if you're ever to find your way past the conflict between your business model and infringement.
The answer to your hypothetical question is that you don't do that. The value has already been given away in the initial creation of the works by giving them out to the public domain. What the artist should have done is start a Kickstarter to fund that work and offer a hand-signed printed copy as a tier reward and release the work in a digital format. That would be the smarter avenue and I just came up with that off the top of my head.
"What if a band that plans to release a new album freely to everyone under a PD license only wants to sell one thing: the true scarcity of first release. Some blog will get to be the first to post the album, after which anyone can repost it anywhere. That's a valuable thing. But how could they shop it out to blogs if any of those blogs could just say screw 'em and go ahead and post it?"
That's not a true scarcity. The true scarcity is the time and labor it took to create it. This is another example of misapplication of business models.
"Obviously such a hypotheticals do not warrant the system of total control that we have today -- in fact, many of these situations could probably be handled using contracts and unfair competition laws. However, it is such hypotheticals that lead me to say there may be a role for some form of copyright in a functioning system -- not as a means of total control, but as a means of giving creators some marketplace footing in a world that is currently dominated by large, moneyed publishers."
If you plan your business model around providing the service of creating content instead of around the idea that you're providing a product, you'll have no need for such laws. Nobody can make you work without pay and no one can take from you the work that you haven't done. So it remains to be seen why copyright would enter into this in the slightest degree.
"As I noted before, if we were talking about building a society from the ground up, I wouldn't necessarily make this same argument. But in the world as it is, I feel that not only is improving copyright more realistic than abolishing it, it's actually a necessary step along the way."
If you have to build a society from the ground up to make your ideas work, then your ideas are either flawed or you haven't thoroughly examined the alternatives. The problem lies in that you haven't realized what business you are actually in. It's not a product industry, it's a service industry. You have to leverage your ability and willingness to create content, not the control of access to it. And that's the folly of the content industry, as I have said before. Controlling access to something that is easily accessible through current technical means is doomed to failure as it has been demonstrated many times. If you build a business model around a failed concept like that, you'll find yourself spending most of your time trying to plug leaks in a ship with more holes than Swiss cheese. I'd put better odds on the Titanic than I would copyright.
"It may still be the best way to protect creators from genuine unfair harm"
There, that's the flaw in your reasoning, you think that creators must be protected from harm. What harm? The only harm I see is self inflicted by using business models that are incompatible with reality. That's the gross error of the content industry, they think they can sell content like a product. They try to get people to believe it's a discreet unit of property that is exclusive to the author, utterly unique and disconnected from other expressions. It's not. Content, of all kinds, is speech. Every image, text, sound recording, game, or moving picture is communication of an idea from the author's mind to the audience. But like every idea, it must be transmitted to another mind in order to continue to live and grow.
The people that truly deserve to be rewarded are those that execute ideas into expressions that transmit those ideas to the rest of us. It's the action of building an expression that is what is valuable. An idea without execution is worthless, ideas are myriad. The labor people put into generating ideas into expressions that touch minds and change them is what we must value, what we must reward. The ideas belong to everyone, they are not a piece of property to be owned. They came from the multitudes of generations before us, they are our common heritage and they belong to no single person. Thus, it is beyond illogical to reward those that put in the work to create with the exclusive ownership, temporary or not, of that which is our common wealth. It is wrong to take what belongs to the many and grant it to the few all in the daft misconception that it will be of a net benefit to the culture they are robbing.
The whole idea of giving any exclusivity to speech is wrong on its face because it ignores reality. First off, you can't stop people from violating that exclusivity. Secondly, there are plenty of other viable methods to make money creating content. Lastly, it doesn't help artists prosper. They succeed only when they produce compelling content. No amount of monopoly is going to make it happen. Copyright only blocks competitors. Blocking competition isn't the way to a healthy market.
Your analogy is flawed. The war on drugs is nothing like war on infringement. Drugs do clear measurable harm and need at least some control to prevent it from doing more. Infringement, on the other hand, does not cause anyone harm and there are ways around the issue. In the absence of copyright, companies will just change their business model to leverage something scarce, rather than forcing artificial scarcity. The idea that copyright will proliferate the creation of new content is also flawed. Content begets more content. It's greater access to content that is going to proliferate more new content. You can't be creative in a vacuum; a culturally diverse mind is a highly creative mind.
But copyright is a form of property. It grants people exclusive power to control access to works they create. So long as copyright stands for the ability to prevent others from copying, copyright imposes the concept of property on speech. Unless you can form a copyright law that doesn't prohibit copying of any kind, I can't see how it doesn't force us to accept the idea that speech can be property. Either you impose on us the idea that some uses of speech are exclusive to their originator or nobody has any exclusive right to any speech. If you choose the former, you're saying that speech can be property.
On the post: The Fight Over DRM In HTML5 Should Represent The Last Stand For DRM
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
http://i.imgur.com/WZYpy.png
This means, no internet and no log-in info = no offline mode. You can't access the Steam software, your games, anything.
On the post: The Fight Over DRM In HTML5 Should Represent The Last Stand For DRM
Re: Re: Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
How do they provide a streaming service that doesn't quickly become a really cheap downloading service? Well, the first thing they need to do is figure out what business they are really in. Here's a hint: They aren't in the content business. They're actually providing a service of convenience. They offer to the customer the ability to stream content to their home without the need to fill their hard drive with movies and TV shows that would require an entire server farm to manage. Netflix is selling people bandwidth. Nobody is going to bother with Netflix as a download service when they can much more effectively get the video file they desire by using P2P networks. Netflix doesn't need DRM, they are trying to put up a gate when there isn't even a fence to support it. The whole world can just walk around the gate (i.e. bitorrent).
The purpose the DRM serves is to placate the copyright holders and their corporate shareholders. It gives the false sense that Netflix is preventing people from getting free content because the copyright holders can't stand the idea that someone might get access to content that doesn't put money in their pockets. Content without DRM is viewed as a huge risk and if corporations are anything, they are risk adverse. DRM is a false sense of security.
On the post: The Fight Over DRM In HTML5 Should Represent The Last Stand For DRM
Re: Re: Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
'I don't particularly see a problem with this - and it could actually be a path to more content being available on the interweb. If it's done right, what's the problem? Netflix and iTunes both use it and work fine for watching movies.
To say that everything should use open tech and that you should be able to right click on any streaming content and "save as..." isn't really realistic imo.'
This is an exact quotation of the comment I replied to. I don't see a question of "how?", do you?
On the post: The Fight Over DRM In HTML5 Should Represent The Last Stand For DRM
Re: Re: Re: Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
On the post: The Fight Over DRM In HTML5 Should Represent The Last Stand For DRM
Re: Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
On the post: The Fight Over DRM In HTML5 Should Represent The Last Stand For DRM
Re: I know it's not a popular view here, but...
The whole system is set up to turn highly abundant resources (our culture) into discreet units of property because capitalism lives and dies on owning things others do not. The content industry fights violently to hold on to what they believe is their property. Even in the face of violating the civil liberties of others. Property is profitable and profit it King. If property is the path to profit, taking away that path to profit by taking away copyright protections threatens profit.
"Discussions of Intellectual Freedom and Intellectual Property dance around this cherished American right: property. (That said, the term "Intellectual Property" came into use only recently; the term was not used at all when the US Constitution was written.) Property is sacred. Ideas about property change slowly, violently, and fundamentally. Today we find slavery so morally abhorrent, it's hard to believe that human property was a common, socially accepted institution less than 200 years ago. Property rights — even in human beings — were sacrosanct. People will fight to the death over not just property, but ideas about what property means.
Anything that challenges definitions of property can provoke heated, emotional responses — even from people with no direct stake in the property in question."
http://questioncopyright.org/redefining_property
On the post: The Fight Over DRM In HTML5 Should Represent The Last Stand For DRM
EME is censorship.
On the post: Frankencows: A Complete Misunderstanding Of Science
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Cows used to eat grass for feed. Now they eat corn, GMO corn. Do you know what that does? Their manure ends up with high concentrations of e. coli and with crowded feedlot conditions, the meat is often tainted. What do they do? Anti-biotics, hormones, washing the meat in ammonia and chloride to prevent infection when all they had to do is give the cows more space and feed them grass. It's the grass that allows their digestive system to keep e. coli down in the first place.
They use viruses to inject genetic code into plant cells. I'm sure that's not asking for trouble. What if they mutate? What if the genes have unforeseen consequences further down the food chain? What if the gene mods cause a crop to make a pest super resistant to any sort of pesticides and they devastate entire yields of crops? Hurray for monoculture! We put all our eggs in one basket and now that crop has an unbeatable pest that wipes out our food supply overnight.
There has already been studies that show hormone usage in live stock has an effect on the people that eat them, just like BPA and phthalates act like estrogen on the body when you keep your foods in BPA containers. Yeah, the GMO opponents don't have any reason to be upset. Consuming hormone and anti-biotic meat does affect your body.
On the post: Frankencows: A Complete Misunderstanding Of Science
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On the post: Frankencows: A Complete Misunderstanding Of Science
Insert subject here.
I do not condone GMO's of other kinds (e.g. genetic transfer). Most of GMO technologies isn't for the benefit of the people that eat the food, it's modified to be more profitable (insert genes and the crops start sprouting cash lol). They're modifying organisms to produce more monoculture which would diminish resilience to catastrophic events. One super crop, hit with calamity they didn't plan for and whole crops are lost. We lose entire food supplies. But they don't care as long as it drives up profit.
On the post: Attempt To Trigger Six Strikes Comes Up Empty
The copyright business model
So the proper solution to this is, make contact with the prospective client(s), settle on a price, do the work, collect payment. It's a solid basic framework to build on.
On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid
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And I suggested a solution that has no reliance on copyright at all, demonstrating that copyright wasn't really a workable solution, only a marginal effort.
"Copyright is huge and far-reaching. Abolition would cause chaos. Would that chaos eventually shake itself out into something better than we have now? Yes, probably. But in the mean time it would do all sorts of damage, some we might perceive as "deserved" and a lot we might not, and none of it ideal compared to a more thoughtful transition."
Sometimes, when the kids can't stop fighting over a toy, it's best to just take the toy away. They might throw a tantrum over it, but they'll get over it eventually.
"I think it's arrogant to claim that, because there are some fundamental problems with the principles copyright, abolition is the only solution worth considering, regardless of what the immediate practical implications are, and regardless of the fact that abolition is not a realistic near-term goal."
“You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you're making progress..."
The same goes for copyright. It's not progress if copyright is still being used to censoring people.
"From your point of view, wouldn't the vast majority of people who participated in the SOPA protests be wrong, too? Many of them were not in favour of abolition -- merely opposed to expansion. Was successfully protesting SOPA a waste of time that should have been spent fruitlessly campaigning for abolition?"
No, opposing greater censorship is always a good strategy. I'm not saying that doing nothing other abolition is wrong, I'm saying it's wrong to pretend the mere reduction is not part of the solution. We should definitely oppose expansion, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that there's any form of copyright that's a "solution." As long as copyright is allowing censorship through exclusive rights to speech, it's a problem.
Think about it. All content it speech. So when you apply copyright to that, you're saying "I have the right to speak on this subject, but you don't." You silence people from expressing themselves in certain ways. That's a huge problem and it's the core function of copyright. I don't want to live in a society where some people can say things that I can't. On the other hand, if nobody utilizes that right, it's just as good, but the potential for censorship is still present.
On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid
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You know what? I don't really care if copyright gets abolished so long as people realize it's not helping and just establish business models that are independent from copyright. That's what I'm really on about. Abolition would just be a kick in the pants for the content industry to get busy on finding a better model instead of relying on it as a crutch.
"Again, disagree. Yes, part of it is about finding a real long-term solution -- another part of it is about compromising and working within the system that we're stuck with to reduce the damage being done every day. Again, if you disagree, fine -- but I still say that is refusing to live in reality."
Again, I think we can flat out ignore copyright as a way to change things, if people just refuse to rely on it. Real solutions don't care if copyright exists or not.
"I am trying to discuss alternative solutions. You are only interested in discussing one alternative solution -- abolishing copyright. I'm not saying you don't belong -- I'm saying I'm genuinely baffled by your response. It's not as if this is the first, or the tenth, or even the hundredth time that Techdirt has opposed copyright abolition -- and very, very few of our posts pitch abolition as an immediate solution. And yet on this thread, you are acting like I'm a deluded idiot for considering anything other than abolition. Why? Doesn't make any sense to me."
You're trying to discuss alternatives, as long as they aren't about copyright abolition. I'm saying copyright isn't part of the solution, but only so long as people actually use it. If they don't use it, then it has no negative effect on culture, but it's application does. That's what I'm against. I'd like it if nobody could have a monopoly on speech for any amount of time. Abolition would be the fastest path to that, but voluntary refusal to use copyright would be just fine too.
Alright, I have copyright reform for you to consider. "To promote the progress of the arts and sciences, congress shall make no law that shall abridge the people's right to share and distribute culture and knowledge freely." That's my copyright reform.
On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid
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On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid
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Now you're getting annoyed that we haven't agreed with you and you're playing the "expert" card, accusing us of being ignorant and dogmatic. You have the audacity to tell us we don't know as much as you in order to dismiss our arguments. Bad form.
You're right, there's nothing to talk about in regards to reducing copyright terms when there are solutions that are workable in complete independence of copyright. We can, however, still talk about business models that would function without the existence of copyright. We can apply adaptive business models right now, independent of copyright.
Why are we still here? Because not agreeing with your point of view doesn't negate the value in coming here and discussing these issues. Your viewpoint isn't sacrosanct. This site isn't about compromising on, or preserving, copyright. It's about finding a real solution, even if that means abolition. I personally think it's adaptive business models and abolition because I have good reason to think so. Others think differently. But I am willing to defend my viewpoint and if I find fault in yours, I will point it out, as you should mine. If you can't discuss alternative solutions, I think it's you that may be wasting your time here and it's rather petty of you that you imply that we don't belong here because our viewpoints don't align with yours.
On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid
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You keep citing examples where copyright is still necessary and I keep pointing out how they can be solved without copyright, so whom is really being absolutist and stubborn? You're trying to defend an indefensible position.
My ideas don't need a custom built society, it can happen right now, today, in spite of copyright. All that's needed are people to change their attitudes (and their business models) and realize what this industry really is. Adapting business models away from copyright reliance is what you need to make the abolition of copyright the logical next step. The solution to this all starts with a voluntary decision to change and organizations like Kickstarter are the mechanism for that change. They are an opportunity to succeed without reliance on copyright. It's your novelty to your audience that makes you a success. Monopolies won't help you whether you're great or completely unremarkable.
I think we've already established that the problem is the business model (at least I have) and copyright only exists to enable that one particular faulty business model. So, it's pragmatic to say that the solution to the problem is to adapt the business model to reality. When you're no longer using a business model that requires copyright to function, you no longer need copyright.
On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid
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There it is, you're going right back into thinking of art as a product. You have to let go of that if you're ever to find your way past the conflict between your business model and infringement.
The answer to your hypothetical question is that you don't do that. The value has already been given away in the initial creation of the works by giving them out to the public domain. What the artist should have done is start a Kickstarter to fund that work and offer a hand-signed printed copy as a tier reward and release the work in a digital format. That would be the smarter avenue and I just came up with that off the top of my head.
"What if a band that plans to release a new album freely to everyone under a PD license only wants to sell one thing: the true scarcity of first release. Some blog will get to be the first to post the album, after which anyone can repost it anywhere. That's a valuable thing. But how could they shop it out to blogs if any of those blogs could just say screw 'em and go ahead and post it?"
That's not a true scarcity. The true scarcity is the time and labor it took to create it. This is another example of misapplication of business models.
"Obviously such a hypotheticals do not warrant the system of total control that we have today -- in fact, many of these situations could probably be handled using contracts and unfair competition laws. However, it is such hypotheticals that lead me to say there may be a role for some form of copyright in a functioning system -- not as a means of total control, but as a means of giving creators some marketplace footing in a world that is currently dominated by large, moneyed publishers."
If you plan your business model around providing the service of creating content instead of around the idea that you're providing a product, you'll have no need for such laws. Nobody can make you work without pay and no one can take from you the work that you haven't done. So it remains to be seen why copyright would enter into this in the slightest degree.
"As I noted before, if we were talking about building a society from the ground up, I wouldn't necessarily make this same argument. But in the world as it is, I feel that not only is improving copyright more realistic than abolishing it, it's actually a necessary step along the way."
If you have to build a society from the ground up to make your ideas work, then your ideas are either flawed or you haven't thoroughly examined the alternatives. The problem lies in that you haven't realized what business you are actually in. It's not a product industry, it's a service industry. You have to leverage your ability and willingness to create content, not the control of access to it. And that's the folly of the content industry, as I have said before. Controlling access to something that is easily accessible through current technical means is doomed to failure as it has been demonstrated many times. If you build a business model around a failed concept like that, you'll find yourself spending most of your time trying to plug leaks in a ship with more holes than Swiss cheese. I'd put better odds on the Titanic than I would copyright.
On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid
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There, that's the flaw in your reasoning, you think that creators must be protected from harm. What harm? The only harm I see is self inflicted by using business models that are incompatible with reality. That's the gross error of the content industry, they think they can sell content like a product. They try to get people to believe it's a discreet unit of property that is exclusive to the author, utterly unique and disconnected from other expressions. It's not. Content, of all kinds, is speech. Every image, text, sound recording, game, or moving picture is communication of an idea from the author's mind to the audience. But like every idea, it must be transmitted to another mind in order to continue to live and grow.
The people that truly deserve to be rewarded are those that execute ideas into expressions that transmit those ideas to the rest of us. It's the action of building an expression that is what is valuable. An idea without execution is worthless, ideas are myriad. The labor people put into generating ideas into expressions that touch minds and change them is what we must value, what we must reward. The ideas belong to everyone, they are not a piece of property to be owned. They came from the multitudes of generations before us, they are our common heritage and they belong to no single person. Thus, it is beyond illogical to reward those that put in the work to create with the exclusive ownership, temporary or not, of that which is our common wealth. It is wrong to take what belongs to the many and grant it to the few all in the daft misconception that it will be of a net benefit to the culture they are robbing.
On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid
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Your analogy is flawed. The war on drugs is nothing like war on infringement. Drugs do clear measurable harm and need at least some control to prevent it from doing more. Infringement, on the other hand, does not cause anyone harm and there are ways around the issue. In the absence of copyright, companies will just change their business model to leverage something scarce, rather than forcing artificial scarcity. The idea that copyright will proliferate the creation of new content is also flawed. Content begets more content. It's greater access to content that is going to proliferate more new content. You can't be creative in a vacuum; a culturally diverse mind is a highly creative mind.
On the post: The Copyright Lobotomy: How Intellectual Property Makes Us Pretend To Be Stupid
Re: Re: Copyright should not exist.
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