Re: Re: Re: Just imagine the fun when gov't zeroes out your accounts!
I said this in another post a while ago: the country with the lowest levels of piracy in the world right now is North Korea.
Really shuts up those who say "Communistic China has the highest levels of piracy in the world!", doesn't it?
For the record, China blocks free trade aggressively in the ways of iTunes for example, and most of Google plus free speech etc... sounds an awful lot like copyright industries, doesn't it? I'm not going to have it from copyright that it is somehow anti-Communist. All that free trade blocking causes that piracy since people have nowhere else to turn, and forever have to hide from the eyes of the government. And copyright by definition blocks trade.
Copyright has been an obstacle to every technological advancement. Next up is the 3D printer (a misleading name for what it is, to be honest: I'd prefer to call it the "Plastic Cloning Machine"). And you know what? I cannot wait for the mountains of evidence that will come from the 3D printer falsifying copyright even further. It will join the internet, the VCR, tapes, etc.
It's no coincidence that copyright and technology are at odds with one another. Copying is just not allowed to be so easy... for the good of humanity, apparently.
I used to think that copyright was justified simply because I had grown up to assume it unquestionably. Even in the pirate-prone world, I thought it was just to reward creators for their works. I was half right. Creators do deserve reward, but we deserve liberty more. However, with virtual ticket models like Kickstarter we can get the best of both worlds, and copyright has absolutely no place in the world of common sense anymore. Its philosophy of treating services as goods has inherent contradictions. We no longer have to put up with it.
All it took to change my mind was somebody asking me "just why exactly should the whole world give up so much liberty simply because of the assumption, based on no evidence whatsoever, that copyright is the only way to solve the free rider problem for funding artists?". I did not have a clever answer to this, and it caused me to reconsider a lot of things indeed. I had read 1984 recently and I knew that the consequences of what copyright was really asking for were to be innately distrusted. Indeed, the country that ironically no doubt has the lowest levels of piracy in the world right now is North Korea. You can use that as a powerful comeback towards anyone who tries to passive-aggressively slander copyright abolitionists with the claim that China's "Communistic" ideology, as opposed to North Korea's Communistic ideology, causes 80% of the world's piracy (the reason for this rate - assuming that the rate is not so high simply because of China's high population - is because China blocks free trade especially when it comes to iTunes and other services, forcing people to pirate and hide under the country's strict trade and free speech laws... sounds like a certain industry that tries to make content as unavailable as possible, doesn't it?) It is no different to the "Hitler was an atheist!" slander I get in religious debates.
And speaking of 1984 and the piracy in China caused by trade blockades, I have heard of some stories about the Soviet Union's underground opposition. People would pass around pirated copies of 1984 (and Animal Farm, too) to read and copy for one another. They had to be pirated because the Soviet Union, just like China, would not tolerate any trade from the West, which meant very few printing presses. The proles would keep any notice of 1984 copies being passed around off the record, and would give them an instinctive knowledge that would help them ease the difficult fall of the Soviet Union. So my question to any copyright maximalist/apologist is this: should the publishers of 1984 or George Orwell himself (I can guess HIS answer to this question) have been in a position to forbid the proles from obtaining such important literature for their resistance simply because they were not in a position, let alone any kind of liberty at all, to reward the author for his works? The implications are important - copyright economics at their very core have more Communistic potential than non-copyright economics. They must do, because copyright by its definition restricts trade.
I must say, reading the sign by Lester Chambers made me angry. It sums up everything about what is so horrible about copyright: eventually the buck of power gets passed to an unwelcome party who can overrule an artist's rights on his own works, even although that party took no part whatsoever in the creative process. I have similar rage over what I heard about EMI preventing the Beatles from letting Carl Sagan use "Here Comes The Sun" for his Voyager Golden Record project.
This is tyranny by the way. There is no other way to describe it. A gross accumulation of power that reveals the worst possible aspects of unchallenged corporatism. These labels do not just have "a" monopoly - they have numerous monopolies consisting of every artist who ever signed with them. The concept of self-publishing or even self-management will never truly have a fair shot against this. These labels will always have unjust power as long as copyright exists, and have the ability to crush random innocent people in a "Go Postal!", draconian fashion by bankrupting anyone who does the equivalent of letting their friends borrow DVDs over the internet.
People who laugh at this common sense... people who insist that this transparent stupidity is the best thing possible for both creators and audiences, and that anyone who even asks gentle questions about it are on par with car thieves and terrorists are just flippant. I cannot tell you how finished I am with people who talk like that. How fucking sick and tired I am of their absolute refusal to accept responsibility for the dangers that copyright poses to modern communication technology and, indeed, creativity as a whole.
Anything done in the name of copyright is okay, apparently. I hear that attempting to restore French Colonialism in Vietnam was justified in the name of fighting Communism, too.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
The only victims as a result of drugs are those who get imprisoned for something that was nobody's business but their own, especially the young and poor who then have to go through the rest of their lives with criminal records.
And I really do not care if you read the rest of my post or not. I never needed your agreement nor regard for your opinion.
Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
I hear this sort of thing coming from those who advocate the war on drugs. They often concede that the drug flow is impossible to stamp out and then say "but, just because we cannot catch every offender does not mean that we must give up on finding those committing crimes where we can". You even get people who deny that there is a war against drugs going on whatsoever. They do not stop to think that it is their actions of locking people up for victimless crimes that is causing the problems associated with drugs, such as the killings in Mexico, the very existence of Al-Capone-like drug cartels, the ease of children to get the drugs without having to give I.D., and so much more. We are going to look back on this stupid war in the same way we now look back in shame at the laws that imprisoned those who attempted suicide.
It is really interesting... just as ending the war on drugs would end drug cartels who walk away with untaxed profits, ending copyright law would end the existence of pirates who walk away with untaxed profits. In an internet ticket admission society where you pay a $20 refundable ticket for the broadcasting of creative works instead of for a disposable copy of the works, there wouldn't be any such thing as a pirate who could compete with it. I promise you that Kickstarter and IndieGoGo will continue to grow for this reason.
Ever since the introduction of copyright law that was "limited" to begin with as it says in the U.S. Constitution, it has descended down the slippery slope to absolution, assisted by those wishing to extend their own monopolies just a little bit at a time until there are no limits left. It is this slippery slope that proves that copyright is something to be severely distrusted. Unless of course you think it is within Disney's right to subvert the course of democracy and have them lobby to extend the copyright laws whenever copyright protection was about to be lifted for Mickey Mouse. They have no concept whatsoever of "the right to tell a story better than someone else", and when they do it is when THEY take copyright expired stories to derive for themselves - they say that "we will take everything creative for ourselves and give you nothing in return". It is fucking insufferable.
And it is not just Disney: everybody has a tendency to favour their own monopolies at the expense of everyone else's right to not just creative derivative works of originals, but BUY the derivative works which most people forget. Fan fiction and fan art that come from websites like deviantArt will forever be at the front line for the rights of creators AND AUDIENCES to experience derived works.
And what does this slippery slope lead to? A resistance against emerging new technologies that could be of great benefit to humanity: recordable devices, the internet, and now we are going to see it with 3D printing. Every god damned time, copyright has been the obstacle to technological progress. We also have Hollywood corporations that openly boast about the loss of millions of people's data over MegaUpload. Because for them it wasn't enough to catch the people actually guilty of the copyright crimes. For them there must be a grand opera of war against anything that can challenge them. And their reluctance to condemn the U.S. government for practically stealing the files from innocent uploaders ranging from your common user to large businesses, and their reluctance to condemn the illegal process of gathering the evidence, says everything you need to know about what this is. They can just sit back and laugh whenever they steal files from you, but any slippery slope is justified in the name of copyright, isn't it? After all, if I use MegaUpload even legitimately, I must be the one who is REALLY contributing to the great process of mass stealing, right? Not to mention terrorism.
What else? Bankrupting fines against those who have done nothing more than the equivalent of borrowing DVDs from a friend, lobbying the silencing of politicians who even QUESTION the possibility that copyright could be even a tiny bit weaker, a culture of fear where you never quite know which copyright you could be infringing upon next, the complete and utter destruction of many possible markets all in the name of... ha... get this... "preventing intellectual communism"... that is a doublethink if I ever saw one, the list goes on and on. But all of this isn't even enough. We must also need legislation such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA? It never fucking stops. Nothing is ever enough to satisfy this apparently ethical economic model.
The morality of the situation is clear. Why is it that only the copyright holders are vigilant against infringers while the vast majority of everyone else is not? Why is it you never hear of those who complain that infringement is stealing actually reporting the infringers to any kind of authority? It is easy for them to find through IP tracking and word of mouth. So why not? It is for the same reason you would not report someone for doing drugs: casting years of jail-time on another person for a law that is so transparently stupid is a lot to consider.
So no, you need to drop that tone of voice that suggests that I am the one who somehow has explaining to do. "But the system works", even if that were true, would still be no excuse to trample over numerous rights and liberties in the process. The burden to get creative incentives in spite of the ease of copying is on YOU, not the government.
And I do not believe that I gave examples of how the copyright system works. On the contrary, I gave examples of how creative works can flourish without copyright. There is no excuse for copyright anymore, now that we have virtual ticket clients like Kickstarter. Throw in the potential for advertising revenue, and you have a solid, copyright-free incentive generator.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
You answered your own question. People cannot do so if they lack skills and abilities. And education is a big factor in all of this. Therefore the free market needs to give way to those who are unfortunate enough to be in an unfortunate position, especially how it has been shown that those who prosper most from the free market usually do not commit this act of altruism.
Here in the U.K. we still have one of the greatest moral achievements that resulted from Socialism: the National Health Service. We were very lucky in that we stumbled upon a recognised human right to health care that does not discriminate based on wealth. If people still want to go to private health care even after paying their fair share to the NHS you cannot stop them. But you absolutely must acknowledge the fact that there are those who cannot help themselves ("you may only live once, but you are not the only one alive") in the same way that we cannot leave third world countries to fall to ruin since they do not have the luxury of environments that can grow crops and drill oil.
This is just one of the many moral issues that the free market cannot solve.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
The nature of property is unfortunately a regrettable necessity. If we did not have this concept, everyone would be free to steal from each other. And we would have a world where fascism and totalitarianism would plague our species just about everywhere.
I mean, the economic fight between the Left and Right will always go on as long as politics exists. The Left will claim that you cannot have a disregard for the poor and the Right will claim that no one is good enough to be chosen to redistribute. It is the right of property vs the right to a fair share of property. This is never going to be resolved as both sides are too slippery.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
Oh, do not get me wrong. I am on the Left economically, and you are quite right that there is such a thing as being too rich. You are also right in saying that whoever has the unfortunate burden of being the latest born will end up worse off, as they could not have possibly had a fair shot at getting a fair share of the entire property in the world.
I often give this thought experiment to those who are too economically Right-wing for my liking. Imagine that another planet is discovered that is habitable for humans. However, for the time being we can only send something like 2,000 people to that planet. So we do so, and they travel to that planet by space shuttle. Now the question is, how would you decide for the 2,000 people on the planet who gets what properties lying there? Those on the Right will only ever be able to say something like "finders keepers". So it really would be down to whoever can run fastest, as they would be able to claim property before anyone else. This is not taking into account anyone else wanting to come from Earth to live there. This is obviously morally false, and supports the need for at least some degree of redistribution.
But in your first paragraph you are still essentially talking about the trading of goods and services: labour for wages, wages for goods (and the managing of those goods, everyone tends to forget), etc. So it's only natural that those who were lucky enough to have both the right property to begin with and the knowledge to discover the business models that give them maximum profit are the ones who will be the most powerful - the wealth would have to naturally accumulate towards those of a managerial position. We ultimately need people to call the shots and make decisions, so we reward those who can do so most effectively. It is here that redistribution can be tricky, as there is a danger of unjustly messing with these default rights. You must remember that those who are rich often still have to work for it by actually managing their businesses, which is in itself also a means of production in the form of a service - the exceptions would be those who have inherited so much wealth that they never have to work a day in their lives, and end up doing just that: not working. Maybe it is this group of people who deserve to be responsible for most of the redistribution. Just as everyone is entitled to a fair share of property, it could also be fair to say that there is a moral duty for everyone to contribute their fair share to society. Sitting on tons of money and not using it not only makes all other money a little more worthless, but slows the flow of trading entirely.
Like I said, it is perfectly possible for those who are too rich to give away their earnings for absolutely nothing in return, and it would still fall under the heading of Capitalism. It is the fact that they are NOT capable of doing this that a degree of redistribution is called for to help the poor. Humanity is not perfect and never will be, especially when you realise that evolution is not a ladder and we will always be afraid to die.
There are unfair inequalities that do not make the "free market" as free as Right-wingers think it is: the two big ones being intellectual imbalances (education and market research data being withheld from smaller businesses) and the accident of birth which I have mentioned already. And I suppose I could also mention the dangers of global warming. I find Socialism an admirable position as it was one of the greatest attempts to shift the balance of power, as well as that whole international solidarity thing that cannot be understated.
But having said all of this, in order to get an accurate reflection of what can best suit the public, you must be willing to step back where it is called for and see how the greedy race for profit can actually motivate humans to innovate for humanity's gain. We must not be so quick to dismiss the potentials of Capitalism and its innovation even as Leftists.
It is a great irony that the classification of some innovation as another form of capitalistic "property" (confusing goods with services) has actually hampered the progress of markets. Anybody who truly takes Libertarian values to heart must see this contradiction.
Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
What are you trying to say? That because big businesses are always going to be big, therefore nothing should change? And because copyright works for big companies, that is evidence that there is nothing better than copyright?
I do not happen to think that abolishing copyright will get rid of big, corporate publishers... or even the Justin Biebers of this world. I know Capitalism a lot better than most people: it is simply the trading of goods and services with one another. Indeed, I think that greediness is a symptom of human genetics, not Capitalism. If people were not greedy and gave away money to those who needed it while asking for nothing in return, Capitalism would turn out to be a great system in many people's eyes, and quite rightly. But because the genes of greed do exist, corporations will too. In no way did I suggest that abolishing copyright would solve this problem.
The point I am trying to make is that if copyright stopped affecting the free market, artists would be able to find methods to get incentives by themselves and companies likewise, because business models would be selected based on whatever ones were the most successful. That is what it means for the models to naturally evolve, and is a Libertarian impulse (well, some of the time it is, but not as often as it should be). Copyright makes the assumption that the free market cannot evolve to something that solves the free rider problem on its own, but as I have just said there is a system of ticket admission that disproves this assertion.
Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
Even discussing the possibility that copyright is wrong is a good idea, since there is still a big misconception that it is the only way to solve the free-rider problem for artists. That in itself is a bold claim, and it needs bold evidence. You will never hear of cinemas talking about the free-rider problem, or gig venues, or theatres, or Kickstarter. They all use tickets, therefore everyone pays.
Anyone who cannot see how filesharing is a shortcut for buying a DVD on Ebay and selling it again, or for borrowing a DVD from a friend, or for swapping hard drives/USBs with data on them, is not worth talking to. And indeed, they'll turn around and say that it's the pre-owned DVDs that are the problem! And that THEY need to be stopped! You just need to look at the bullying towards ReDigi to see this attitude first hand. The only reason they'll go after ReDigi is because they don't have the guts to go after pawn shops or Ebay. Also, you can see it more passively in cases where Steam does not allow users to swap games between them. Even more passively, Sony and Microsoft's attempts to make their next consoles digital only... so the days of swapping games becomes history.
This is why it is so important to stress that copyright does much more damage than it is worth. If only 10% of people bought straight from the publishers and lent their copies to ten people each, you could reduce the publisher's profit down to 10%. Yet, unless you want to interfere with the most basic free trade morals, they have every right to do this. So it makes sense for publishers to tend towards dangerous systems where all data is under a higher power's control. This should make anybody concerned.
But instead, when people pay tickets to see a high quality YouTube video (each computer is a "seat" in the theatre), the publisher gets the profits that nobody else can get. And funnily enough, you ironically put the pirates out of business like this since nobody will buy from them when they can just go on YouTube. Indeed, noone will try to "sell" the copyright free art where it can be obtained like this, while the publisher walks away with the ticket incentives. If not enough tickets are sold i.e. only 2 people pay for seeing a music gig at a stadium, or if for some reason the gig cannot go ahead, everyone gets their money back - this is the all-or-nothing crowdfunding mentality. And it must be expected that those who did not contribute to the publisher and see it on YouTube afterwards probably would not have done so anyway... as they would have borrowed it from someone else.
This is just a start. See what happens when you get out of the copyright mentality?
This is from an article by Nick Cohen which I thought would be of interest:
"In case you think I am BBC-baiting, I should add that at least the BBC allows challenges to its hierarchy. After the Savile scandal broke, George Entwistle had to go on the Today programme, whose presenters are never happier than when they can tear their managers apart on live radio. When Entwistle implied that the editor of Newsnight had no need to worry about his bosses circling over him like glassy-eyed crows, Evan Davis did what any sensible person would have done and burst out laughing.
Consider how rarely such laughter is heard. One of the least explored aspects of free speech in Western societies is the power of employers to enforce silence. Citizens can go on television — on Newsnight, if you wish — and denounce their politicians. The secret police do not come for them. Yet if they criticise their employers they can expect their managers to demote or fire them. After the great crash of 2007-08, we ought to understand the importance of plain talking in the workplace. Insiders at NatWest knew that Fred Goodwin was leading his bank to ruin. HBOS fired its own risk manager for saying that its habit of giving mortgages to anyone with a pulse was insanely risky. But it is still taken as a given that employees who speak out against public or private bureaucracies have no one to blame but themselves if their career suffers. Confusion persists between the interests of managers — who want to protect their status by silencing criticism — and the interests of organisations, and the shareholders or taxpayers who fund them, which need the freedom to scrutinise rent-seeking or incompetent managers."
(http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/4705/full)
Just imagine how many people inside the MPAA want to voice their concerns about the industry's aggressive copyright attacks, but cannot... in case they lose their jobs. And not just those jobs in particular, but possibly any future job in that field of work due to black-balling. These people HAVE to exist, because it CANNOT be the case that 100% of MPAA workers are insane - some must surely see the virtues in tapping into the internet revolution, but are compelled into silence.
Why not go after Dropbox next? Or better yet, any Instant Messaging service that allows file sharing?
I mean, it's not like anyone uses these sites for any legitimate purpose, right? I'm sure all those users who had their private data lost on MegaUpload were just part of the conspiracy!
You heard it here first. If you participate in ANY data storage website, even if it's for your own selfish legitimate storage purposes, you are just another supporter of stealing. Same goes for you people who buy second hand DVDs from ebay and sell them again - that's ALSO no different from stealing! Because we deserve money every time you lay your fingers on OUR property!
You do not on one hand allow friends to swap DVDs, games and TV shows with one another and on the other hand bankrupt them forever financially for doing the exact same thing on the internet.
You know something is up when you have people saying that a lack of copyright would lead to communism on an arts/science level. When, by definition, it is copyright law that is closer to communistic ideology, because it deliberately forbids multiple markets for the monopolistic gain of a Soviet-like government that may as well be the MPAA, since the government is implicitly subsidising them.
And all under the excuse that it is the only way to solve the free-rider imbalance between the ease of copying and the difficulty of labour to produce arts and sciences (it's not true - you can solve this problem with simultaneous payment from all consumers in the form of tickets for music gigs, or Kickstarter; and in the case of sciences, higher taxation on any business that uses new scientific discoveries that goes straight to the inventors... not patents).
I ask again: what evidence would the advocators of copyright need in order to falsify the idea that copyright is the only way to gather incentives for artists? If they cannot answer this question, then they are basically saying that copyright is an unfalsifiable idea - in the fields of scientific and skeptical thinking, this means it is a weak claim. But with the mountains of evidence in the form of providing a creative service through admission (tickets for gigs, theatres, cinemas, Kickstarter, IndieGoGo), I would say my claim to falsification and Occam's Razor is much more likely to be correct.
Here's what I do not understand about some Libertarians... they hate any kind of government regulation on the free market - benefits, health care, subsidies, military budgets, substance regulations, basically an extreme dislike towards the government poking its nose into where it doesn't belong especially when it comes to free trade..... UNLESS IT'S COPYRIGHT LAW. All of the a sudden, a huge chunk of communistic monopolisation at the destruction of competing markets is tolerable? And in some cases with these same Libertarians, maximised?
This is insane. At least Jefferson knew he was being contradictory when he couldn't think of another solution to the free-rider problem. Unfortunately he didn't have enough historical pretext to see the massive slippery slope hiding behind copyright protection.
There are two kinds of materials in the free market: goods and services. The problem in regards to intellectual property of arts and sciences in the free market is that it treats the service (of creating arts and discovering sciences) as goods. This is bound to cause all kinds of abnormal fluctuations because the economic value of what should really be a service will never be accurately reflected in economics until IP laws are thrown out.
"But the free-rider problem cannot be solved any other way!" ... Yeah, I'd like to see some hard scientific evidence on this. And I doubt the IP advocates will have it, especially considering how the first copyright laws were knee-jerk reactions to the invention of printing presses, giving next to no time at all to test for other solutions. Hint hint - for the sake of repeating myself, tickets or crowdfunding (same thing).
Copyright has so many rationalisations covering the fact that it cannot possibly work, and you've just listed a few of them.
All these copyright exceptions... and rationalisations... and obscurities... and ridiculous concepts that a child could see through.
Am I the only one here sane enough to call upon Occam's Razor, and say that the simplest explanation is probably the best one: get rid of copyright law, and see how the Darwinian evolution of business models finds ways to give creators incentives without government subsidised monopolies?
On the post: Disruptive Innovation: Bad For Some Old Businesses, Good For Everyone Else
Re: Re: Re: Just imagine the fun when gov't zeroes out your accounts!
Really shuts up those who say "Communistic China has the highest levels of piracy in the world!", doesn't it?
For the record, China blocks free trade aggressively in the ways of iTunes for example, and most of Google plus free speech etc... sounds an awful lot like copyright industries, doesn't it? I'm not going to have it from copyright that it is somehow anti-Communist. All that free trade blocking causes that piracy since people have nowhere else to turn, and forever have to hide from the eyes of the government. And copyright by definition blocks trade.
On the post: Disruptive Innovation: Bad For Some Old Businesses, Good For Everyone Else
Re: Just imagine the fun when gov't zeroes out your accounts!
On the post: Disruptive Innovation: Bad For Some Old Businesses, Good For Everyone Else
It's no coincidence that copyright and technology are at odds with one another. Copying is just not allowed to be so easy... for the good of humanity, apparently.
On the post: Lester Chambers, Screwed Over For Decades By The Recording Industry, Goes Direct Via Kickstarter
All it took to change my mind was somebody asking me "just why exactly should the whole world give up so much liberty simply because of the assumption, based on no evidence whatsoever, that copyright is the only way to solve the free rider problem for funding artists?". I did not have a clever answer to this, and it caused me to reconsider a lot of things indeed. I had read 1984 recently and I knew that the consequences of what copyright was really asking for were to be innately distrusted. Indeed, the country that ironically no doubt has the lowest levels of piracy in the world right now is North Korea. You can use that as a powerful comeback towards anyone who tries to passive-aggressively slander copyright abolitionists with the claim that China's "Communistic" ideology, as opposed to North Korea's Communistic ideology, causes 80% of the world's piracy (the reason for this rate - assuming that the rate is not so high simply because of China's high population - is because China blocks free trade especially when it comes to iTunes and other services, forcing people to pirate and hide under the country's strict trade and free speech laws... sounds like a certain industry that tries to make content as unavailable as possible, doesn't it?) It is no different to the "Hitler was an atheist!" slander I get in religious debates.
And speaking of 1984 and the piracy in China caused by trade blockades, I have heard of some stories about the Soviet Union's underground opposition. People would pass around pirated copies of 1984 (and Animal Farm, too) to read and copy for one another. They had to be pirated because the Soviet Union, just like China, would not tolerate any trade from the West, which meant very few printing presses. The proles would keep any notice of 1984 copies being passed around off the record, and would give them an instinctive knowledge that would help them ease the difficult fall of the Soviet Union. So my question to any copyright maximalist/apologist is this: should the publishers of 1984 or George Orwell himself (I can guess HIS answer to this question) have been in a position to forbid the proles from obtaining such important literature for their resistance simply because they were not in a position, let alone any kind of liberty at all, to reward the author for his works? The implications are important - copyright economics at their very core have more Communistic potential than non-copyright economics. They must do, because copyright by its definition restricts trade.
I must say, reading the sign by Lester Chambers made me angry. It sums up everything about what is so horrible about copyright: eventually the buck of power gets passed to an unwelcome party who can overrule an artist's rights on his own works, even although that party took no part whatsoever in the creative process. I have similar rage over what I heard about EMI preventing the Beatles from letting Carl Sagan use "Here Comes The Sun" for his Voyager Golden Record project.
This is tyranny by the way. There is no other way to describe it. A gross accumulation of power that reveals the worst possible aspects of unchallenged corporatism. These labels do not just have "a" monopoly - they have numerous monopolies consisting of every artist who ever signed with them. The concept of self-publishing or even self-management will never truly have a fair shot against this. These labels will always have unjust power as long as copyright exists, and have the ability to crush random innocent people in a "Go Postal!", draconian fashion by bankrupting anyone who does the equivalent of letting their friends borrow DVDs over the internet.
People who laugh at this common sense... people who insist that this transparent stupidity is the best thing possible for both creators and audiences, and that anyone who even asks gentle questions about it are on par with car thieves and terrorists are just flippant. I cannot tell you how finished I am with people who talk like that. How fucking sick and tired I am of their absolute refusal to accept responsibility for the dangers that copyright poses to modern communication technology and, indeed, creativity as a whole.
Anything done in the name of copyright is okay, apparently. I hear that attempting to restore French Colonialism in Vietnam was justified in the name of fighting Communism, too.
On the post: Patent Trolls Now Make Up More Than Half Of All Patent Lawsuits
On the post: More DMCA Abuse: Company Issues DMCA Takedown On Comment Spam, Claiming 'URL Copyright'
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On the post: Why Discussing New Business Models That Work Is A Good Idea
Re: Re: Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
And I really do not care if you read the rest of my post or not. I never needed your agreement nor regard for your opinion.
On the post: Why Discussing New Business Models That Work Is A Good Idea
Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
It is really interesting... just as ending the war on drugs would end drug cartels who walk away with untaxed profits, ending copyright law would end the existence of pirates who walk away with untaxed profits. In an internet ticket admission society where you pay a $20 refundable ticket for the broadcasting of creative works instead of for a disposable copy of the works, there wouldn't be any such thing as a pirate who could compete with it. I promise you that Kickstarter and IndieGoGo will continue to grow for this reason.
Ever since the introduction of copyright law that was "limited" to begin with as it says in the U.S. Constitution, it has descended down the slippery slope to absolution, assisted by those wishing to extend their own monopolies just a little bit at a time until there are no limits left. It is this slippery slope that proves that copyright is something to be severely distrusted. Unless of course you think it is within Disney's right to subvert the course of democracy and have them lobby to extend the copyright laws whenever copyright protection was about to be lifted for Mickey Mouse. They have no concept whatsoever of "the right to tell a story better than someone else", and when they do it is when THEY take copyright expired stories to derive for themselves - they say that "we will take everything creative for ourselves and give you nothing in return". It is fucking insufferable.
And it is not just Disney: everybody has a tendency to favour their own monopolies at the expense of everyone else's right to not just creative derivative works of originals, but BUY the derivative works which most people forget. Fan fiction and fan art that come from websites like deviantArt will forever be at the front line for the rights of creators AND AUDIENCES to experience derived works.
And what does this slippery slope lead to? A resistance against emerging new technologies that could be of great benefit to humanity: recordable devices, the internet, and now we are going to see it with 3D printing. Every god damned time, copyright has been the obstacle to technological progress. We also have Hollywood corporations that openly boast about the loss of millions of people's data over MegaUpload. Because for them it wasn't enough to catch the people actually guilty of the copyright crimes. For them there must be a grand opera of war against anything that can challenge them. And their reluctance to condemn the U.S. government for practically stealing the files from innocent uploaders ranging from your common user to large businesses, and their reluctance to condemn the illegal process of gathering the evidence, says everything you need to know about what this is. They can just sit back and laugh whenever they steal files from you, but any slippery slope is justified in the name of copyright, isn't it? After all, if I use MegaUpload even legitimately, I must be the one who is REALLY contributing to the great process of mass stealing, right? Not to mention terrorism.
What else? Bankrupting fines against those who have done nothing more than the equivalent of borrowing DVDs from a friend, lobbying the silencing of politicians who even QUESTION the possibility that copyright could be even a tiny bit weaker, a culture of fear where you never quite know which copyright you could be infringing upon next, the complete and utter destruction of many possible markets all in the name of... ha... get this... "preventing intellectual communism"... that is a doublethink if I ever saw one, the list goes on and on. But all of this isn't even enough. We must also need legislation such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA? It never fucking stops. Nothing is ever enough to satisfy this apparently ethical economic model.
The morality of the situation is clear. Why is it that only the copyright holders are vigilant against infringers while the vast majority of everyone else is not? Why is it you never hear of those who complain that infringement is stealing actually reporting the infringers to any kind of authority? It is easy for them to find through IP tracking and word of mouth. So why not? It is for the same reason you would not report someone for doing drugs: casting years of jail-time on another person for a law that is so transparently stupid is a lot to consider.
So no, you need to drop that tone of voice that suggests that I am the one who somehow has explaining to do. "But the system works", even if that were true, would still be no excuse to trample over numerous rights and liberties in the process. The burden to get creative incentives in spite of the ease of copying is on YOU, not the government.
And I do not believe that I gave examples of how the copyright system works. On the contrary, I gave examples of how creative works can flourish without copyright. There is no excuse for copyright anymore, now that we have virtual ticket clients like Kickstarter. Throw in the potential for advertising revenue, and you have a solid, copyright-free incentive generator.
On the post: Why Discussing New Business Models That Work Is A Good Idea
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
Here in the U.K. we still have one of the greatest moral achievements that resulted from Socialism: the National Health Service. We were very lucky in that we stumbled upon a recognised human right to health care that does not discriminate based on wealth. If people still want to go to private health care even after paying their fair share to the NHS you cannot stop them. But you absolutely must acknowledge the fact that there are those who cannot help themselves ("you may only live once, but you are not the only one alive") in the same way that we cannot leave third world countries to fall to ruin since they do not have the luxury of environments that can grow crops and drill oil.
This is just one of the many moral issues that the free market cannot solve.
On the post: Why Discussing New Business Models That Work Is A Good Idea
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
I mean, the economic fight between the Left and Right will always go on as long as politics exists. The Left will claim that you cannot have a disregard for the poor and the Right will claim that no one is good enough to be chosen to redistribute. It is the right of property vs the right to a fair share of property. This is never going to be resolved as both sides are too slippery.
On the post: Why Discussing New Business Models That Work Is A Good Idea
Re: Re: Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
I often give this thought experiment to those who are too economically Right-wing for my liking. Imagine that another planet is discovered that is habitable for humans. However, for the time being we can only send something like 2,000 people to that planet. So we do so, and they travel to that planet by space shuttle. Now the question is, how would you decide for the 2,000 people on the planet who gets what properties lying there? Those on the Right will only ever be able to say something like "finders keepers". So it really would be down to whoever can run fastest, as they would be able to claim property before anyone else. This is not taking into account anyone else wanting to come from Earth to live there. This is obviously morally false, and supports the need for at least some degree of redistribution.
But in your first paragraph you are still essentially talking about the trading of goods and services: labour for wages, wages for goods (and the managing of those goods, everyone tends to forget), etc. So it's only natural that those who were lucky enough to have both the right property to begin with and the knowledge to discover the business models that give them maximum profit are the ones who will be the most powerful - the wealth would have to naturally accumulate towards those of a managerial position. We ultimately need people to call the shots and make decisions, so we reward those who can do so most effectively. It is here that redistribution can be tricky, as there is a danger of unjustly messing with these default rights. You must remember that those who are rich often still have to work for it by actually managing their businesses, which is in itself also a means of production in the form of a service - the exceptions would be those who have inherited so much wealth that they never have to work a day in their lives, and end up doing just that: not working. Maybe it is this group of people who deserve to be responsible for most of the redistribution. Just as everyone is entitled to a fair share of property, it could also be fair to say that there is a moral duty for everyone to contribute their fair share to society. Sitting on tons of money and not using it not only makes all other money a little more worthless, but slows the flow of trading entirely.
Like I said, it is perfectly possible for those who are too rich to give away their earnings for absolutely nothing in return, and it would still fall under the heading of Capitalism. It is the fact that they are NOT capable of doing this that a degree of redistribution is called for to help the poor. Humanity is not perfect and never will be, especially when you realise that evolution is not a ladder and we will always be afraid to die.
There are unfair inequalities that do not make the "free market" as free as Right-wingers think it is: the two big ones being intellectual imbalances (education and market research data being withheld from smaller businesses) and the accident of birth which I have mentioned already. And I suppose I could also mention the dangers of global warming. I find Socialism an admirable position as it was one of the greatest attempts to shift the balance of power, as well as that whole international solidarity thing that cannot be understated.
But having said all of this, in order to get an accurate reflection of what can best suit the public, you must be willing to step back where it is called for and see how the greedy race for profit can actually motivate humans to innovate for humanity's gain. We must not be so quick to dismiss the potentials of Capitalism and its innovation even as Leftists.
It is a great irony that the classification of some innovation as another form of capitalistic "property" (confusing goods with services) has actually hampered the progress of markets. Anybody who truly takes Libertarian values to heart must see this contradiction.
On the post: Why Discussing New Business Models That Work Is A Good Idea
Re: Re: Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
I do not happen to think that abolishing copyright will get rid of big, corporate publishers... or even the Justin Biebers of this world. I know Capitalism a lot better than most people: it is simply the trading of goods and services with one another. Indeed, I think that greediness is a symptom of human genetics, not Capitalism. If people were not greedy and gave away money to those who needed it while asking for nothing in return, Capitalism would turn out to be a great system in many people's eyes, and quite rightly. But because the genes of greed do exist, corporations will too. In no way did I suggest that abolishing copyright would solve this problem.
The point I am trying to make is that if copyright stopped affecting the free market, artists would be able to find methods to get incentives by themselves and companies likewise, because business models would be selected based on whatever ones were the most successful. That is what it means for the models to naturally evolve, and is a Libertarian impulse (well, some of the time it is, but not as often as it should be). Copyright makes the assumption that the free market cannot evolve to something that solves the free rider problem on its own, but as I have just said there is a system of ticket admission that disproves this assertion.
On the post: Why Discussing New Business Models That Work Is A Good Idea
Darwinian evolution of markets can be trusted more than copyright.
Anyone who cannot see how filesharing is a shortcut for buying a DVD on Ebay and selling it again, or for borrowing a DVD from a friend, or for swapping hard drives/USBs with data on them, is not worth talking to. And indeed, they'll turn around and say that it's the pre-owned DVDs that are the problem! And that THEY need to be stopped! You just need to look at the bullying towards ReDigi to see this attitude first hand. The only reason they'll go after ReDigi is because they don't have the guts to go after pawn shops or Ebay. Also, you can see it more passively in cases where Steam does not allow users to swap games between them. Even more passively, Sony and Microsoft's attempts to make their next consoles digital only... so the days of swapping games becomes history.
This is why it is so important to stress that copyright does much more damage than it is worth. If only 10% of people bought straight from the publishers and lent their copies to ten people each, you could reduce the publisher's profit down to 10%. Yet, unless you want to interfere with the most basic free trade morals, they have every right to do this. So it makes sense for publishers to tend towards dangerous systems where all data is under a higher power's control. This should make anybody concerned.
But instead, when people pay tickets to see a high quality YouTube video (each computer is a "seat" in the theatre), the publisher gets the profits that nobody else can get. And funnily enough, you ironically put the pirates out of business like this since nobody will buy from them when they can just go on YouTube. Indeed, noone will try to "sell" the copyright free art where it can be obtained like this, while the publisher walks away with the ticket incentives. If not enough tickets are sold i.e. only 2 people pay for seeing a music gig at a stadium, or if for some reason the gig cannot go ahead, everyone gets their money back - this is the all-or-nothing crowdfunding mentality. And it must be expected that those who did not contribute to the publisher and see it on YouTube afterwards probably would not have done so anyway... as they would have borrowed it from someone else.
This is just a start. See what happens when you get out of the copyright mentality?
On the post: Republican Study Committee Dumps Derek Khanna, Author Of Copyright Reform Brief, After Members Complain
"Free speech stops at the office door."
"In case you think I am BBC-baiting, I should add that at least the BBC allows challenges to its hierarchy. After the Savile scandal broke, George Entwistle had to go on the Today programme, whose presenters are never happier than when they can tear their managers apart on live radio. When Entwistle implied that the editor of Newsnight had no need to worry about his bosses circling over him like glassy-eyed crows, Evan Davis did what any sensible person would have done and burst out laughing.
Consider how rarely such laughter is heard. One of the least explored aspects of free speech in Western societies is the power of employers to enforce silence. Citizens can go on television — on Newsnight, if you wish — and denounce their politicians. The secret police do not come for them. Yet if they criticise their employers they can expect their managers to demote or fire them. After the great crash of 2007-08, we ought to understand the importance of plain talking in the workplace. Insiders at NatWest knew that Fred Goodwin was leading his bank to ruin. HBOS fired its own risk manager for saying that its habit of giving mortgages to anyone with a pulse was insanely risky. But it is still taken as a given that employees who speak out against public or private bureaucracies have no one to blame but themselves if their career suffers. Confusion persists between the interests of managers — who want to protect their status by silencing criticism — and the interests of organisations, and the shareholders or taxpayers who fund them, which need the freedom to scrutinise rent-seeking or incompetent managers."
(http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/4705/full)
Just imagine how many people inside the MPAA want to voice their concerns about the industry's aggressive copyright attacks, but cannot... in case they lose their jobs. And not just those jobs in particular, but possibly any future job in that field of work due to black-balling. These people HAVE to exist, because it CANNOT be the case that 100% of MPAA workers are insane - some must surely see the virtues in tapping into the internet revolution, but are compelled into silence.
On the post: MPAA To USTR: More Shutdowns Like Megaupload, Please
I mean, it's not like anyone uses these sites for any legitimate purpose, right? I'm sure all those users who had their private data lost on MegaUpload were just part of the conspiracy!
You heard it here first. If you participate in ANY data storage website, even if it's for your own selfish legitimate storage purposes, you are just another supporter of stealing. Same goes for you people who buy second hand DVDs from ebay and sell them again - that's ALSO no different from stealing! Because we deserve money every time you lay your fingers on OUR property!
On the post: Remember When You Couldn't Patent Math? Good Times
IP maximalists are just groveling apologists.
On the post: Fixing Copyright: Is Copyright A Part Of Free Market Capitalism?
Re: Re: "Intellectual Communism"
On the post: Canadian Copyright Law Caps Statutory Damages At $5,000 Just As File Sharing Lawsuits Make Their Unwelcome Return
No.
I repeat. You do not.
A child could see through this. Honestly...
On the post: Fixing Copyright: Is Copyright A Part Of Free Market Capitalism?
"Intellectual Communism"
And all under the excuse that it is the only way to solve the free-rider imbalance between the ease of copying and the difficulty of labour to produce arts and sciences (it's not true - you can solve this problem with simultaneous payment from all consumers in the form of tickets for music gigs, or Kickstarter; and in the case of sciences, higher taxation on any business that uses new scientific discoveries that goes straight to the inventors... not patents).
I ask again: what evidence would the advocators of copyright need in order to falsify the idea that copyright is the only way to gather incentives for artists? If they cannot answer this question, then they are basically saying that copyright is an unfalsifiable idea - in the fields of scientific and skeptical thinking, this means it is a weak claim. But with the mountains of evidence in the form of providing a creative service through admission (tickets for gigs, theatres, cinemas, Kickstarter, IndieGoGo), I would say my claim to falsification and Occam's Razor is much more likely to be correct.
Here's what I do not understand about some Libertarians... they hate any kind of government regulation on the free market - benefits, health care, subsidies, military budgets, substance regulations, basically an extreme dislike towards the government poking its nose into where it doesn't belong especially when it comes to free trade..... UNLESS IT'S COPYRIGHT LAW. All of the a sudden, a huge chunk of communistic monopolisation at the destruction of competing markets is tolerable? And in some cases with these same Libertarians, maximised?
This is insane. At least Jefferson knew he was being contradictory when he couldn't think of another solution to the free-rider problem. Unfortunately he didn't have enough historical pretext to see the massive slippery slope hiding behind copyright protection.
There are two kinds of materials in the free market: goods and services. The problem in regards to intellectual property of arts and sciences in the free market is that it treats the service (of creating arts and discovering sciences) as goods. This is bound to cause all kinds of abnormal fluctuations because the economic value of what should really be a service will never be accurately reflected in economics until IP laws are thrown out.
"But the free-rider problem cannot be solved any other way!" ... Yeah, I'd like to see some hard scientific evidence on this. And I doubt the IP advocates will have it, especially considering how the first copyright laws were knee-jerk reactions to the invention of printing presses, giving next to no time at all to test for other solutions. Hint hint - for the sake of repeating myself, tickets or crowdfunding (same thing).
On the post: Judges Realize Aereo's Setup Is Insane Technologically... But May Get The Wrong Message Out Of It
Re: Since when is copyright supposed to be sane?
All these copyright exceptions... and rationalisations... and obscurities... and ridiculous concepts that a child could see through.
Am I the only one here sane enough to call upon Occam's Razor, and say that the simplest explanation is probably the best one: get rid of copyright law, and see how the Darwinian evolution of business models finds ways to give creators incentives without government subsidised monopolies?
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