Warner may well want to create an association between 'rebels who condone the stealing of music' and 'anarchists who condone the redistribution of property', i.e. morons the both of them. This then says to kids "Ok, be a rebel, but when you get a job you'll soon recognise how foolish you were and how right we have always been".
The use of RIAA's language of 'stealing' already smells fishy. To sanction theft indicates he either doesn't understand the difference or is attempting to indicate there is no difference (on RIAA's behalf).
Quite. Cinemas can already show Big Buck Bunny and charge people money to see it - even though people can already download it for free.
The idea is, that cinemas will eventually go "Hang on a mo! This is really rather good. We need more films like this that let us show them whenever we want and charge what we want. Who do we pay to produce more?"
Moreover, it's not just the cinemas that will want more, the fans of the films will also patronise the film makers to produce more great movies.
There are cases when fans of TV series have petitioned the producers to produce more episodes.
All you need are the mechanisms that enable audiences to pay artists. The mechanisms that enabled publishers to charge audiences (and give a tad back to the artist) no longer work.
There are very few differences between intellectual property and material property. Especially given matter and information are largely interchangeable when we get down to fundamentals. The primary differences we observe concern the facility with which we are able to apprehend or manipulate them. Tangibility, communicability, reproducibility, are three. Perhaps I've missed some?
However, the differences in facility, have very little impact in terms of natural rights. Intellectual property rights and material property rights have only subtle differences.
The thing that renders them chalk and cheese is not a difference in facility, but a privilege introduced 300 years ago - aka copyright.
But for that unethical artifice we'd all be happy bunnies enjoying our natural rights unabrogated.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Market Doesn't Care About the Public Good
Copyright has been defended in the past on the basis that it is a remedial extension of the natural IP rights that self-evidently apply to unpublished works, i.e. that if you have a natural right to prevent anyone copying a private work, why should this right dissipate upon the moment of publication?
It's a semantic confusion.
If you keep your work exclusively to yourself then plainly you retain a natural monopoly to it, whereas if you give a copy to another, then, plainly it is no longer exclusive.
You'll have to refer to the legislation in your jurisdiction to find out how you protect your unpublished works against unauthorised copying, i.e. what legal remedies are available. It's a bit of a murky area, given 99% of everyone's attention is on preventing the copying of published works (which as we know is not only unethical, but impossible).
In the US, copyright applies from the moment a creative work is fixed in a medium (not from the moment of publication), and will be the primary means of redress in the event of IP theft, so I doubt that there's much mileage in making any appeal to the protection of a more fundamental natural IP right. Which is obviously back to front. There should be no penalty for ripping a published CD to an iPod, but huge penalties for burgling a musician's recording studio and ripping the digital master to their as yet unpublished single.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Market Doesn't Care About the Public Good
The US Constitution does not actually require copyright or patent.
I argue in Constitutional Sanction that there are clear ways to protect an author's natural exclusive rights to their writings, or of an inventor to their designs, without abridging anyone's right to free speech.
As to what's associated with the press, I'd say it was ancient, anachronistic traditions and royal privileges that are completely out of place in the instantaneous diffusion of our global digital domain we call the Internet.
Ye shalle not copy a worde that the printer of it hast not given thee leave.
You may recall Richard Stallman saying: '"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer."'.
So, of course, I most assuredly do believe people should be purchasing intellectual property, and should indeed be prosecuted if they steal it.
As for voluntary payment as opposed to compulsory payment, you should bear in mind that all bargains are supposed to be voluntary. This is the whole point of a free market; that people come together to offer each other what they have with a view to obtaining that which they don't have in voluntary exchange.
One of those things that prevents markets from being free and fair are enforced unnatural monopolies, especially state enforced monopolies such as copyright or patent.
Check out Against Intellectual Monopoly for a more in depth explanation as to why whilst copyright may have been highly appealing to printers and the state 300 years ago, it was not actually ethical, warranted or necessary - merely expeditious. It is no longer even expeditious today (unless you are a totalitarian/police state).
So, without copyright, people purchase IP because they don't have it, want it, and are willing to exchange money in exchange. Once they have it, it's their IP and they can do what they want with it. It works just like material property. It's just a lot easier and cheaper to reproduce and distribute. Naturally, some artists are going to require a large number of their audience to commit to a collective purchase for their more valuable works. Conversely, many artists may already be sufficiently patronised by large audiences (given their goodwill) that they don't need any prior commitment.
You start off with a natural right to do what the heck you want with the intellectual property you purchase.
Part of that right (copying, performing, etc.) is then suspended by the state in order to grant a transferable commercial privilege for the benefit of publishers (initially attached to the original work).
This privilege is then moderated such that should someone be prosecuted for infringement they may claim a defense of 'fair use' for de minimis, insignificant, harmless, or 'more socially beneficial' infringements. 'Fair use' is not a right or privilege, but a matter of judicial arbitration.
Truly fair use (in the literal sense) would be the restoration of your natural intellectual property rights to do what you want with the IP you've created or purchased as long as that didn't unfairly impact on someone else's natural rights. There would certainly be no mercantile privilege of copyright or patent that unfairly suspended your rights.
Competing with lobbyists and compensating authors for the delivery of their work into the public domain (without needing copyright) can be achieved with the same mechanism.
Such a mechanism would enable a large number of people to put their money on the table, to be paid to certain persons only should certain publicly visible things occur, e.g. the passing of certain legislation or the publication of a particular creative work (a piece of GPL software say).
We might imagine that such a mechanism, that enabled a market in such contingencies, would operate as a web service, perhaps at http://contingencymarket.com ?
That's my suggestion - if you're looking for less stringency.
Yup, the solutions are easy to spot. Their adoption and implementations are tricky.
Whilst copyright abolition is the obvious solution, it won't happen unless there's any money in it - even if you did achieve an apparent enabling solution of campaign finance reform.
Therefore, the only viable solution in the near term is enabling people to make more money out of copyleft works than copyrighted ones.
When copyright is discovered to be commercially counter-productive it'll be dropped as if it were a badge that said "Made by slave labour".
Nevertheless, the ultimate solution remains the abolition of copyright.
Given these things happen every day, you will no doubt find it a cinch to cite an instance of someone signing away their right to speak about something.
A few years ago folk in North America had a wee squabble about slavery - among other things. I gather there was a little more reasoning behind the abolition of slavery than whether it was legal or not.
Your rights are not determined by the law, but protected by it. As to what your rights are, these are supposed to be self-evident.
Corporations can subdue you with the threat of litigation (even if it would be for chewing gum), but despite the fact they can easily cause you considerable costs and hassle, that doesn't mean they actually have legal sanction to do to you what they'd like you to believe they can do to you.
You may be forgiven for opting for an easy life rather than asserting your rights, but for pity's sake don't start believing in the tales of bogey men that your employer uses to frighten you, or that you can sign your soul (or inalienable rights) away to them.
I am dismayed at the iniquitous bargains people would willingly enter into to, surrendering their natural rights if they could, simply in order to satisfy their curiosity.
I'm sure many people believe that NDAs are valid contracts, and to a large extent such a prevalent delusion gives them weight, but they cannot alienate individuals from their rights, nor expose them to financial penalties (solely the preserve of law - not corporations).
People are human beings, not corporations, and corporations are anything but human.
Not that I find it entirely agreeable, do see the recent AppleRuling.pdf.
But the Legislature’s general recognition of a
property-like right in such information cannot blind courts to the more fundamental
judgment, embodied in the state and federal guarantees of expressional freedom, that free
62
and open disclosure of ideas and information serves the public good. When two public
interests collide, it is no answer to simply point to one and ignore the other. This case
involves not a purely private theft of secrets for venal advantage, but a journalistic
disclosure to, in the trial court’s words, “an interested public.” In such a setting,
whatever is given to trade secrets law is taken away from the freedom of speech. In the
abstract, at least, it seems plain that where both cannot be accommodated, it is the
statutory quasi-property right that must give way, not the deeply rooted constitutional
right to share and acquire information.
On the post: Warner Tells Kid Rock To Denounce File Sharing; He Denounces Warner Instead
On the post: Warner Tells Kid Rock To Denounce File Sharing; He Denounces Warner Instead
Possibly deliberate
The use of RIAA's language of 'stealing' already smells fishy. To sanction theft indicates he either doesn't understand the difference or is attempting to indicate there is no difference (on RIAA's behalf).
A potential cryptoRIAAn.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: Movie Tickets
The idea is, that cinemas will eventually go "Hang on a mo! This is really rather good. We need more films like this that let us show them whenever we want and charge what we want. Who do we pay to produce more?"
Moreover, it's not just the cinemas that will want more, the fans of the films will also patronise the film makers to produce more great movies.
There are cases when fans of TV series have petitioned the producers to produce more episodes.
All you need are the mechanisms that enable audiences to pay artists. The mechanisms that enabled publishers to charge audiences (and give a tad back to the artist) no longer work.
On the post: The Other Future Of Copyright: The Draconian Suffocating One
Re: Re:
However, the differences in facility, have very little impact in terms of natural rights. Intellectual property rights and material property rights have only subtle differences.
The thing that renders them chalk and cheese is not a difference in facility, but a privilege introduced 300 years ago - aka copyright.
But for that unethical artifice we'd all be happy bunnies enjoying our natural rights unabrogated.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Market Doesn't Care About the Public Good
It's a semantic confusion.
If you keep your work exclusively to yourself then plainly you retain a natural monopoly to it, whereas if you give a copy to another, then, plainly it is no longer exclusive.
You'll have to refer to the legislation in your jurisdiction to find out how you protect your unpublished works against unauthorised copying, i.e. what legal remedies are available. It's a bit of a murky area, given 99% of everyone's attention is on preventing the copying of published works (which as we know is not only unethical, but impossible).
In the US, copyright applies from the moment a creative work is fixed in a medium (not from the moment of publication), and will be the primary means of redress in the event of IP theft, so I doubt that there's much mileage in making any appeal to the protection of a more fundamental natural IP right. Which is obviously back to front. There should be no penalty for ripping a published CD to an iPod, but huge penalties for burgling a musician's recording studio and ripping the digital master to their as yet unpublished single.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Market Doesn't Care About the Public Good
I argue in Constitutional Sanction that there are clear ways to protect an author's natural exclusive rights to their writings, or of an inventor to their designs, without abridging anyone's right to free speech.
Professor Lawrence Lessig once attempted to show that copyright conflicted with the right to free speech.
See http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2002/10/55612
and http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/01-618.htm
I'd argue that copyright was in complete conflict with the constitution the very moment it applies to a published work.
On the post: AP Exaggerates The 'Conversation' It's Having With Bloggers; Caught Copying Text From Bloggers As Well
Press?
Ah, yes, one of those antique thingummies from 1436 or so.
As to what's associated with the press, I'd say it was ancient, anachronistic traditions and royal privileges that are completely out of place in the instantaneous diffusion of our global digital domain we call the Internet.
Ye shalle not copy a worde that the printer of it hast not given thee leave.
How quaint...
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
So, of course, I most assuredly do believe people should be purchasing intellectual property, and should indeed be prosecuted if they steal it.
As for voluntary payment as opposed to compulsory payment, you should bear in mind that all bargains are supposed to be voluntary. This is the whole point of a free market; that people come together to offer each other what they have with a view to obtaining that which they don't have in voluntary exchange.
One of those things that prevents markets from being free and fair are enforced unnatural monopolies, especially state enforced monopolies such as copyright or patent.
Check out Against Intellectual Monopoly for a more in depth explanation as to why whilst copyright may have been highly appealing to printers and the state 300 years ago, it was not actually ethical, warranted or necessary - merely expeditious. It is no longer even expeditious today (unless you are a totalitarian/police state).
So, without copyright, people purchase IP because they don't have it, want it, and are willing to exchange money in exchange. Once they have it, it's their IP and they can do what they want with it. It works just like material property. It's just a lot easier and cheaper to reproduce and distribute. Naturally, some artists are going to require a large number of their audience to commit to a collective purchase for their more valuable works. Conversely, many artists may already be sufficiently patronised by large audiences (given their goodwill) that they don't need any prior commitment.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Part of that right (copying, performing, etc.) is then suspended by the state in order to grant a transferable commercial privilege for the benefit of publishers (initially attached to the original work).
This privilege is then moderated such that should someone be prosecuted for infringement they may claim a defense of 'fair use' for de minimis, insignificant, harmless, or 'more socially beneficial' infringements. 'Fair use' is not a right or privilege, but a matter of judicial arbitration.
Truly fair use (in the literal sense) would be the restoration of your natural intellectual property rights to do what you want with the IP you've created or purchased as long as that didn't unfairly impact on someone else's natural rights. There would certainly be no mercantile privilege of copyright or patent that unfairly suspended your rights.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: Movie Industry without Copyright
Producers who have film, want money.
Audience who have money, want film.
Art for money, money for art.
How can you doubt that an equitable exchange is possible?
That doubt is the sound of your imagination failing.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
Re: Back and Forth, Back and Forth
Such a mechanism would enable a large number of people to put their money on the table, to be paid to certain persons only should certain publicly visible things occur, e.g. the passing of certain legislation or the publication of a particular creative work (a piece of GPL software say).
We might imagine that such a mechanism, that enabled a market in such contingencies, would operate as a web service, perhaps at http://contingencymarket.com ?
That's my suggestion - if you're looking for less stringency.
On the post: Is That The Best Cato Can Do In Defense Of Copyright?
A failure of imagination
I'm not saying it's easy to imagine a world without copyright, but it is possible:
http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=130
The question isn't so much "Should we or shouldn't we have copyright?", but "Oh dear, copyright is broken. How shall we survive without it?"
Of course another solution is to pretend it's eternally 1984 - when the Internet wasn't so much of a problem and CD burners weren't quite so common.
On the post: New Anti-Spyware Bill Won't Stop Spyware; But Will Bring Back Questionable Anti-Piracy Measures
Re: Re: Copyright Abridges Privacy Anyway
Whilst copyright abolition is the obvious solution, it won't happen unless there's any money in it - even if you did achieve an apparent enabling solution of campaign finance reform.
Therefore, the only viable solution in the near term is enabling people to make more money out of copyleft works than copyrighted ones.
When copyright is discovered to be commercially counter-productive it'll be dropped as if it were a badge that said "Made by slave labour".
Nevertheless, the ultimate solution remains the abolition of copyright.
On the post: DJ Arrested For Selling Pre-Release Promo CDs On eBay
And Copyright is good precisely why?
They'll have pirate radio stations next.
On the post: New Anti-Spyware Bill Won't Stop Spyware; But Will Bring Back Questionable Anti-Piracy Measures
Copyright Abridges Privacy Anyway
On the post: Google Admits It Still Hasn't Figured Out How To Make Money From YouTube
The Artist
What Google can sell is the artist's production of art to their audience.
Blindingly obvious. Consequently, everyone's blind to it.
On the post: Metallica Still Doesn't Get It: Forces Early Reviews Of Latest Album Offline
Re: Re: Re: Re:
A few years ago folk in North America had a wee squabble about slavery - among other things. I gather there was a little more reasoning behind the abolition of slavery than whether it was legal or not.
Your rights are not determined by the law, but protected by it. As to what your rights are, these are supposed to be self-evident.
On the post: Metallica Still Doesn't Get It: Forces Early Reviews Of Latest Album Offline
Re: Re:
You may be forgiven for opting for an easy life rather than asserting your rights, but for pity's sake don't start believing in the tales of bogey men that your employer uses to frighten you, or that you can sign your soul (or inalienable rights) away to them.
On the post: Metallica Still Doesn't Get It: Forces Early Reviews Of Latest Album Offline
Re: Re:
I am dismayed at the iniquitous bargains people would willingly enter into to, surrendering their natural rights if they could, simply in order to satisfy their curiosity.
I'm sure many people believe that NDAs are valid contracts, and to a large extent such a prevalent delusion gives them weight, but they cannot alienate individuals from their rights, nor expose them to financial penalties (solely the preserve of law - not corporations).
People are human beings, not corporations, and corporations are anything but human.
Not that I find it entirely agreeable, do see the recent AppleRuling.pdf.
On the post: Copyright Has Stretched So Far That It Has Broken
Abolish Copyright
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