Piracy. Is copyright a thing of the past?

[ApeTheDog]

From the time when CD burners started becoming affordable onwards, piracy has become increasingly more commonplace. The fact that it is so openly being talked about in the media illustrates the powerlessness anyone has to control it. Young people all know their way around torrents very well. If in this generation there are still some who don't have the technical know-how to steal they will be the last of their kind. Safe from ensuring the information can never leave the medium it comes on there is nothing anyone can do about software and music being passed on. It is impossible to distinguish pirated ones and zeroes from legitimately bought ones.

It's clear that this situation is not sustainable and that something is going to happen. I don't know if any historic situations exist that we could draw parallels from, so I put it to you: where will we go from here?

[Hustler]

What do you mean about it being clear that this situation is unsustainable? I think attempts to block piracy are unsustainable, but I don't think piracy itself is unsustainable.

[ApeTheDog]

There are two things I believe will change. The way selling your intellectual property works, and the way the internet works.

The market for intellectual property can't continue to function in the same way because it relies on the distribution of illegal goods being detectable. You can't sell pirated software in a store because those are monitored by the state. And before widespread broadband internet those stores were the only platform people had to buy CD's and books and movies. But now people can easily get them delivered, for free, through the internet - without any regulatory bodies being any wiser.

Which, sadly, is another thing I suspect is going to change. The internet won't stay unpoliced forever, I suspect. It is human nature to want to control the flow of capital, and the internet is big business.

[Hustler]

The market for intellectual property can't continue to function in the same way because it relies on the distribution of illegal goods being detectable. You can't sell pirated software in a store because those are monitored by the state. And before widespread broadband internet those stores were the only platform people had to buy CD's and books and movies. But now people can easily get them delivered, for free, through the internet - without any regulatory bodies being any wiser.

Which, sadly, is another thing I suspect is going to change. The internet won't stay unpoliced forever, I suspect. It is human nature to want to control the flow of capital, and the internet is big business.

I think we're seeing an end to high premiums being paid for intellectual property. Consider things like the open source movement. Consider, too, sites like this. As of this post there are 1,274,237 posts on this forum, and not one of us has generated any income from it. We have willingly spent our time and given our intellectual property to the site. A lot of what I have posted could probably have been use to generate income for myself if I had gone through different channels, but I didn't, so it doesn't. I think the bottom line is that intellectual property doesn't require any financial incentive for people to continue producing it. Millions of people are out there creating art, music, or literature, or contributing to the development of the body of human knowledge without asking for financial remuneration. There are still plenty of ways to parlay this work into financial reward, but, in my opinion, they don't require archaic notions of intellectual property.

[ApeTheDog]

True. Intellectual property doesn't require a financial incentive to be produced. But good work does. Take for example journalism. You're not going to be checking your facts rigorously if you're not getting paid for it. And even if you are really good about that and do do your homework, your readers can't trust that you do because they know that your paycheque isn't riding on it.

J.R.R. Tolkien came up with The Lord of the Rings as a story he told his son, and because of his love for mythology - but he only wrote it all down and did all the hard work when a publisher agreed to pay him for it.

Let's not forget that piracy is unethical. It is not correct to give away another persons work.

[Hustler]

True. Intellectual property doesn't require a financial incentive to be produced. But good work does. Take for example journalism. You're not going to be checking your facts rigorously if you're not getting paid for it. And even if you are really good about that and do do your homework, your readers can't trust that you do because they know that your paycheque isn't riding on it.

Journalism is obviously going to have to change with the times. Everyone and his brother is a journalist online nowadays and, you're right, most of these news blogs and the like are terrible. Some legitimate online news sites will persist, though, and presumably will generate money through ad revenue or other new types of income streams. If these sites are able to maintain a high standard of journalism and a good reputation, there's no reason to think that people wouldn't visit them for their news, or that major aggregators wouldn't continue linking to them. Journalists who get hired for sites like this will still earn a steady paycheck, and can even parlay their intellectual labor into book deals or speaking engagements or other sorts of special projects.


J.R.R. Tolkien came up with The Lord of the Rings as a story he told his son, and because of his love for mythology - but he only wrote it all down and did all the hard work when a publisher agreed to pay him for it.

Just because intellectual property can be digitized and instantaneously disseminated everywhere at once doesn't mean that it can't generate revenue. For instance, why can't people still get paid to write a book? It could again come down to advertising revenue. A digital book can come with digital ads, or an online download repository can have marketing throughout its many pages.

That said, I don't think that the payment side of the equation is as big for everyone as it was for J.R.R Tolkien. What's more, if there hadn't been a culture of book publishing present when he was around, maybe he wouldn't have held out for money. Maybe he'd have just written it up and distributed it for people to read. I think you have to be careful when looking back on examples like that to remember that his life was lived in the context of the world he was in, and that was a world where authors got paid to write their books.


Let's not forget that piracy is unethical. It is not correct to give away another persons work.

I'm not sure I agree with this.

[!diom]

I agree with Hustler. There will always be ways for people to get paid for producing high-quality intellectual property that's digitized, even if it's highly pirated or even given away for free. Advertisement is the best option, of course, but there are more ways to do it than I can think of here.

People will just need to change and adapt what they do and how they think as technology advances. Sure, some old jobs and niches may be made obsolete, but new opportunities will crop up in their absence.

[ApeTheDog]

Journalism is obviously going to have to change with the times. Everyone and his brother is a journalist online nowadays and, you're right, most of these news blogs and the like are terrible. Some legitimate online news sites will persist, though, and presumably will generate money through ad revenue or other new types of income streams. If these sites are able to maintain a high standard of journalism and a good reputation, there's no reason to think that people wouldn't visit them for their news, or that major aggregators wouldn't continue linking to them. Journalists who get hired for sites like this will still earn a steady paycheck, and can even parlay their intellectual labor into book deals or speaking engagements or other sorts of special projects.

I also think there will still be a subset of journalists who get paid for their work, but the market for their skills will decrease when the amount of paying customers does - which it will. A lot of people will be satisfied with what is available for free. A number of people will be satisfied with pirated magazines and articles available in electronic form for download.

A shrinking market leads to less suppliers. Instead of having a market that can support two hundred different news outlets, we may be left with one that can support only five big ones. The quality of the work will suffer from this.


Just because intellectual property can be digitized and instantaneously disseminated everywhere at once doesn't mean that it can't generate revenue. For instance, why can't people still get paid to write a book? It could again come down to advertising revenue. A digital book can come with digital ads, or an online download repository can have marketing throughout its many pages.

All of which, again, decreases the quality of the work delivered.

This doesn't hold true for everything. Open source software, as the exception, doesn't suffer from this because people who write it use their own product. A writer doesn't enjoy reading his own finished work, nor does a movie maker enjoy seeing their own film.


That said, I don't think that the payment side of the equation is as big for everyone as it was for J.R.R Tolkien. What's more, if there hadn't been a culture of book publishing present when he was around, maybe he wouldn't have held out for money. Maybe he'd have just written it up and distributed it for people to read. I think you have to be careful when looking back on examples like that to remember that his life was lived in the context of the world he was in, and that was a world where authors got paid to write their books.

That's right. I don't think it's inconceivable that someone would write books of such a scope out of love and give them away for free, or for the price people want to pay for them. Or perhaps release them in an episodic way, chapter by chapter.

I don't know how feasible it would be to make Lord Of The Rings movie in the same way and make money off of it in a society where people aren't denied of a choice on whether or not they want to pay for the privilege of seeing it.


I'm not sure I agree with this.

I am making the distinction between something you do as a hobby and what you work to create. It is the difference between someone who draws some cartoons for fun and displays them on his website - and someone who spent six months of their life painting the ceiling of your chapel in Rome. One is hobby, the other is work.

It is not correct go give away another persons work, just as it is not correct to give away someones potatoes they worked half a year growing and fertilizing and then harvesting. Even if they are basically a "free" resource.

[Hustler]

I also think there will still be a subset of journalists who get paid for their work, but the market for their skills will decrease when the amount of paying customers does - which it will. A lot of people will be satisfied with what is available for free. A number of people will be satisfied with pirated magazines and articles available in electronic form for download.

A shrinking market leads to less suppliers. Instead of having a market that can support two hundred different news outlets, we may be left with one that can support only five big ones. The quality of the work will suffer from this.

Actually, I think this is incorrect. There are currently thousands of news outlets out there now, and the overwhelming majority of them are awful. I think that Jon Stewart has aptly criticized the news culture that such an overabundance of news has created when he has taken the likes of CNN to task and lampooned their 24 hour news coverage. I think a smaller number of suppliers wouldn't be such a bad thing. I say that a leander, more competitive news production industry will actually produce better work. You won't get the endless rehashing of the same stories or the overabundance of errors and fluff. You'll get the straight dope from people who are paid to deliver it, who are fearful of being replaced.


All of which, again, decreases the quality of the work delivered.

This doesn't hold true for everything. Open source software, as the exception, doesn't suffer from this because people who write it use their own product. A writer doesn't enjoy reading his own finished work, nor does a movie maker enjoy seeing their own film.

I don't think it decreases the quality of work. It's just a paradigm that we're so used to seeing: money as incentive. But, it doesn't have to be that way. Fame is an incentive. Influence is an incentive. Spreading joy or knowledge is an incentive. In fact, sharing is such a strong impulse and incentivized so heavily among humans that we presently see our culture of piracy growing beyond the ability of anyone to enforce it. There is no financial gain to being a host or seeder, yet millions of people do it. There are so many other ways people are rewarded for their efforts. What's more, the monetary rewards will still be present; the revenue streams just won't be the same. Take the 21st century musician, for instance. His studio work will now just be an advertisement for his live music. Consider that U2 grossed $123 million in ticket sales in its 20 day North American tour last year. That's still a lot of incentive to become a great in the music industry IMO. One could argue that's still too much money for celebrities to be getting.


That's right. I don't think it's inconceivable that someone would write books of such a scope out of love and give them away for free, or for the price people want to pay for them. Or perhaps release them in an episodic way, chapter by chapter.

I don't know how feasible it would be to make Lord Of The Rings movie in the same way and make money off of it in a society where people aren't denied of a choice on whether or not they want to pay for the privilege of seeing it.

Much as people pay for the live music experience, they will always pay for the movie theater experience. Piracy was alive and well online when the Lord of the Rings movies were released; that didn't stop them from grossing $2.9 billion at box offices worldwide. Avatar, too, is readily downloadable but, in the month since its arrival in theaters, has grossed $1.36 billion at box offices worldwide. I think this ability of movies to remain resilient in the face of piracy, to still put up record numbers at the box office despite piracy and a bad economy, is a testament to the value of experience. Try as you may, you can't yet pirate the full experience of a live show or a movie. Nor can you pirate the experience of so many other things. Old ways of packaging a product will need to be reinvented so as to capitalize on this experience factor.

In this way, I think piracy is actually going to push people to make better products. If a movie is going to see a profit, it has to be great. It really has to be worth going to see in a theater, so it will need to take full advantage of the size and scope of the visual and audio capabilities and psychological energy of the crowd of the movie theater. Musicians will actually have to be competent in a live setting. They will have to tour and actually deliver a good show to their fans.


I am making the distinction between something you do as a hobby and what you work to create. It is the difference between someone who draws some cartoons for fun and displays them on his website - and someone who spent six months of their life painting the ceiling of your chapel in Rome. One is hobby, the other is work.

I think a person could easily spend six months of his life making cartoons on his website. Many have, in fact. Some of those even make a living off of it, even in the face of ubiquitous piracy.


It is not correct go give away another persons work, just as it is not correct to give away someones potatoes they worked half a year growing and fertilizing and then harvesting. Even if they are basically a "free" resource.

I think we just have different philosophies when it comes to ownership rights. I don't believe you own ideas or creative work. I think they are a product of a system greater than the self. Furthermore, when these ideas or creative efforts are made real, they return to the very same system that transcends the individual. I don't think that people should be entitled to financial gain for such, nor do I believe they should be held liable. I will say, too, that I have lived by this philosophy. I have produced a lot of creative work over the years, and shared many ideas. I even wrote a regular column for a magazine for a couple of years and was offered payment, but declined it. I must have other incentives that keep me going and, while we're not all the same and don't all have the same incentives driving us, I don't see monetary incentives as being necessary for high quality creative work. If anything, they just get in the way.

But, like I said, this is just a personal belief. Where you see ownership of ideas and entitlements to the owner based on that, I do not. This philosophical difference no doubt colors our beliefs about piracy: I see it as productive and progressive and you see it as destructive and limiting.

[Polemarch]

Avatar, too, is readily downloadable but, in the month since its arrival in theaters, has grossed $1.36 billion at box offices worldwide. I think this ability of movies to remain resilient in the face of piracy, to still put up record numbers at the box office despite piracy and a bad economy, is a testament to the value of experience. Try as you may, you can't yet pirate the full experience of a live show or a movie. Nor can you pirate the experience of so many other things. Old ways of packaging a product will need to be reinvented so as to capitalize on this experience factor.

To your point, consider the fact that Avatar is generating a high proportion of its massive revenue from showings on 3D-enabled screens. That kind of cinematic experience is not available in the home. Not only is there a value-add generated by the experience of seeing and hearing a movie in a theatre, but there are constant enhancements taking place in the technology, which further add to the value prop of the finished product.

The beautiful thing about the free market is that people generally get what they pay for. The film industry has undergone tremendous shifts throughout its history, both in terms of content (silent, talkies, color, digital, 3D, animation, ILM), as well as structure (Edison/Lumiere, studio era, independent cinema, blockbusters, art house). At each stage, the quality of the product varied, as did the aggregate demand. Ultimately, what gets produced is equivalent to what the market can bear.

Truly great music can be produced on a relatively low budget - a quality microphone, adequate instruments, and reasonable skill with Pro Tools will do it. Producing a sharp-looking film is far more expensive. As a result, the delivery mechanism required to ensure the integrity of the product is far more capital-driven. Movie-theatres are built and equipped with the appropriate technology to show 16 different movies a day every day. While a casual movie-goer can show up at a theatre willy-nilly (I want to see a movie tonight at the gigaplex - don't care which one), a casual concert-goer is more likely to be driven by the specific act (I want to see Pixies - I don't care which venue).

I believe that financial incentives exist to ensure that the experience of seeing a film in a theatre is preserved - which is of course a very different product than watching a DVD at home on a 5.1 - which can also be significantly different than watching a torrent on a 17 inch LCD monitor.

[2hype]

I think we just have different philosophies when it comes to ownership rights. I don't believe you own ideas or creative work. I think they are a product of a system greater than the self. Furthermore, when these ideas or creative efforts are made real, they return to the very same system that transcends the individual. I don't think that people should be entitled to financial gain for such, nor do I believe they should be held liable. I will say, too, that I have lived by this philosophy. I have produced a lot of creative work over the years, and shared many ideas. I even wrote a regular column for a magazine for a couple of years and was offered payment, but declined it. I must have other incentives that keep me going and, while we're not all the same and don't all have the same incentives driving us, I don't see monetary incentives as being necessary for high quality creative work. If anything, they just get in the way.

But, like I said, this is just a personal belief. Where you see ownership of ideas and entitlements to the owner based on that, I do not. This philosophical difference no doubt colors our beliefs about piracy: I see it as productive and progressive and you see it as destructive and limiting.

I strongly disagree that monetary incentives hinder the production of high quality creative work. I think if copyright goes away, then the amount of high-quality artwork produced will decrease dramatically. Sure, there will still be some people who will happily create art for free, but I think that will be the exception and not the rule.

It takes most people many, many hours to acquire the skills and knowledge to be a good artist. It also can cost a lot of money. So even though they are building on the work of artists who came before and the culture they live in, there is still a considerable personal investment that they make. Financial incentives can give people the time and freedom to create art.

Many visual artists are self-employed. If they no longer own the creative work they do, I think it will be even harder for them to make a living on their own and many will be forced to become corporate employees and their independent point of views won't be developed and voiced.

Another problem is if copyright goes away, corporations will be free to use any art and music they like to sell their products.

Also, I don't think ideas are copyrighted anyway. It's the expression of ideas that can be copyrighted. Once something is published, the idea is free for anyone to use or build on in their own way. Copyright provides incentive for creativity. I think if people are free to copy what has come before, there will be more derivative art created and less original art.

[Hustler]

I strongly disagree that monetary incentives hinder the production of high quality creative work. I think if copyright goes away, then the amount of high-quality artwork produced will decrease dramatically. Sure, there will still be some people who will happily create art for free, but I think that will be the exception and not the rule.

I will just say that art predates money. I will also say that an artist's ability to make money from his art does not rely on copyright.


It takes most people many, many hours to acquire the skills and knowledge to be a good artist. It also can cost a lot of money. So even though they are building on the work of artists who came before and the culture they live in, there is still a considerable personal investment that they make. Financial incentives can give people the time and freedom to create art.

Many visual artists are self-employed. If they no longer own the creative work they do, I think it will be even harder for them to make a living on their own and many will be forced to become corporate employees and their independent point of views won't be developed and voiced.

Original Picassos still sell for millions of dollars. Original paintings by good visual artists have and will continue to command a higher price than copies. I don't know why anyone believes that an end to copyright will change that. And, as I've pointed out, musicians can still put on live shows and filmmakers can still rely on the theater experience to draw crowds to pay for tickets.

In short, if you believe that good art relies on a financial incentive (you're welcome to believe that; I do not, but it's a matter of speculation on either of our parts), then copyright doesn't even enter the picture, because financial incentives can and do exist for artists of all varieties even in the absence of copyright.


Another problem is if copyright goes away, corporations will be free to use any art and music they like to sell their products.

This would actually improve the ratio of good music to bad music. Ad jingles are among the worst form of "art" in existence. I don't mind if "ba-da-ba-ba-ba... I'm lovin' it" is replaced by Weird Al's "Just Eat It," for instance. Unfortunately, I doubt we will ever be so lucky, regardless of what happens to copyright law in the future. Corporations are so wealthy and powerful that they already could choose from 99.9% of existing music to sell their products, but they choose to produce jingles instead, at considerable expense - more than it would cost for them to choose from most existing music.

[manza]

I think a person could easily spend six months of his life making cartoons on his website. Many have, in fact. Some of those even make a living off of it, even in the face of ubiquitous piracy.

Webcomics can be lucrative if you're good enough at it. I know/know of quite a few people whose sole source of income is drawing webcomics & selling merchandise. Likewise, I do some web design on the side and make some money for it, but largely do it for enjoyment. Point being, the line between hobby and work is thin.

[2hype]

I will just say that art predates money. I will also say that an artist's ability to make money from his art does not rely on copyright.
Freelance illustrators today very much rely on copyright to make money. People who sell digital prints of their work also rely on copyright.



Original Picassos still sell for millions of dollars. Original paintings by good visual artists have and will continue to command a higher price than copies. I don't know why anyone believes that an end to copyright will change that. And, as I've pointed out, musicians can still put on live shows and filmmakers can still rely on the theater experience to draw crowds to pay for tickets.

In short, if you believe that good art relies on a financial incentive (you're welcome to believe that; I do not, but it's a matter of speculation on either of our parts), then copyright doesn't even enter the picture, because financial incentives can and do exist for artists of all varieties even in the absence of copyright.

I don't know why anyone would believe that ending copyright will decrease the price of a Picasso, or other original paintings either. But some artists today don't have original pieces of art to sell. Their final product is digital, and I think the end of copyright would harm their ability to make a living working for themselves. Basically, I am all for people being paid for their work, and for increased opportunities for people to make a living by working for themselves. The more opportunities for individuals to make a living without being an employee, the better. I think it's better if a musician can make money from selling recordings AND performing live.




This would actually improve the ratio of good music to bad music. Ad jingles are among the worst form of "art" in existence. I don't mind if "ba-da-ba-ba-ba... I'm lovin' it" is replaced by Weird Al's "Just Eat It," for instance. Unfortunately, I doubt we will ever be so lucky, regardless of what happens to copyright law in the future. Corporations are so wealthy and powerful that they already could choose from 99.9% of existing music to sell their products, but they choose to produce jingles instead, at considerable expense - more than it would cost for them to choose from most existing music.
Are you sure jingles are (edit)more expensive(/edit) to produce than licensing music? And even if you are right about that, I think it's repugnant that musicians wouldn't have any say in what their music is used for. Maybe Weird Al thinks McDonalds is making poor people fat and sick and doesn't want McDonalds to use his music to sell their crappy food.

(edit) Also Weird Al might be a strange example to use anyway, since he kind of ripped off Michael Jackson.

[s0978]

In short, if you believe that good art relies on a financial incentive (you're welcome to believe that; I do not, but it's a matter of speculation on either of our parts),

Actually, studies have shown that good art, or any work requiring creativity or cognitive skill, is not at all motivated by financial rewards. The conditions/ incentives people respond to are autonomy, mastery, and transcendent purpose. This (http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2010/5/13/visualizing-drive-an-illustrated-presentation-by-dan-pink.html) is a very cool 10 min. vid illustrating a talk at the RSA, which is apparently the British version of TED.

[Hustler]

Freelance illustrators today very much rely on copyright to make money. People who sell digital prints of their work also rely on copyright.

Why? If some client wanted certain illustrations done, couldn't he go find a freelance illustrator to produce them for him? Wouldn't that be a way a freelance illustrator could get paid?


Basically, I am all for people being paid for their work, and for increased opportunities for people to make a living by working for themselves. The more opportunities for individuals to make a living without being an employee, the better. I think it's better if a musician can make money from selling recordings AND performing live.

Musicians do not have a right to make money from selling recordings. It just happens to be the way things have been in recent decades. Musicians can and do make a fine wage from performing live, and asking the legal system to protect their right to sell recordings as they were sold twenty years ago is unreasonable. The justice system cannot possibly crack down on music piracy, and trying to do so would amount to a tremendous waste of public resources, all to protect the musicians' ability to sell records. This is especially revolting when you look at bands whose members are worth tens of millions of dollars trying to protect the racket they had going on last century.

All other forms of artistic piracy are the same, in my opinion. It is unreasonable to ask for unenforceable and antiquated laws to be carried out by the modern justice system when the cost of doing so is so large, and the importance is so much less than so many other problems. The times change, and I think artists need to change with them, and figure out new (or old) ways to monetize their efforts that don't rely on copyright law.


Are you sure jingles are (edit)more expensive(/edit) to produce than licensing music? And even if you are right about that, I think it's repugnant that musicians wouldn't have any say in what their music is used for. Maybe Weird Al thinks McDonalds is making poor people fat and sick and doesn't want McDonalds to use his music to sell their crappy food.

I think jingles are more expensive to produce than some songs would be to license. Perhaps it would cost more to license a Madonna song than it would be to create a jingle, but there are a million and one less well-known musicians who wouldn't mind making an extra buck for an inexpensive music licensing deal (consider the line of Volkswagen ads that featured not-so-well-known artists like Tom McRae and J. Ralph, or the M&M's ad with an Iron & Wine cover of a Postal Service song). Besides which, when you're talking about $10,000 or $100,000 or even $1,000,000 to a multinational corporate giant, its irrelevant. Their advertising budget can absorb the cost. In truth, it's actually great advertising for the artist as well. A hot commercial or commercial series can create overnight celebrities. This may end up being a better deal for musicians, as they'll become more well-known and more readily able to book live gigs.

In short, very little changes on the larger scale of things.


(edit) Also Weird Al might be a strange example to use anyway, since he kind of ripped off Michael Jackson.

Parody is it's own form of art.

Real world practicalities aside, none of this addresses the philosophical question of whether memes, of which art of all stripes are a variety, are the domain of the public or whether they can be privately controlled. I think they are and should be public property, and attempts to prevent that from happening are rooted in archaic ideas of wealth hoarding. I think it's inherently conservative to restrict art by way of copyright. Suppose musician A composes a song. Now musician B comes along and makes it better. But, musician A won't let him make it public. Now everyone in the world except musician A loses.

http://i.imgur.com/YZp1z.jpg

Not me. Couple this with the link that s0978 provided* about how monetary incentives actually make art worse, and I just can't get behind copyright as a necessary law in the future. It serves to restrict the exposure of everyday people to art, it serves to put limits on the growth of art, and it serves to make the art that is actually available to people worse.

* That link obviously deserves its own discussion thread.

[Polemarch]

I think it's inherently conservative to restrict art by way of copyright. Suppose musician A composes a song. Now musician B comes along and makes it better. But, musician A won't let him make it public. Now everyone in the world except musician A loses.

The basic point being addressed here is whether or not ideas constitute property. And if so - how can you quantify the value add when ideas are borrowed and adapted, such that the previous owner is compensated fairly for their work. This philosophical argument is very complex - because most works of art are influenced by previous creations. Do the Black Keys owe money to the White Stripes? Does Muse owe money to Radiohead? Does Britney owe money to Madonna?

The test of this in a court of law is ultimately very subjective - and people have a lot of legal leeway to borrow the ideas of others without being penalized - so long as the new idea is different enough from the old idea that it constitutes a meaningful creative effort.

Piracy is of course a far more fundamental form of theft - a 100% identical digital copy of an authorized artistic creation. However, by digitizing the work (or documenting it in any form), the creator risks piracy from the start.

Hustler - to your point regarding maximizing social welfare, I disagree with the notion that party A does not have the right to restrict access to his work, just because it prevents party B (and everyone else) from benefitting. This, as I have discussed in another thread, is the definition of an economic externality, resulting in a market failure. The way to solve an externality is not to blatantly steal - but to find a way to impose the cost of the resource on the folks who use it, which restores the sanctity of the market.

For more on this - please read:

http://forums.intpcentral.com/showpost.php?p=1370586&postcount=38

[Hustler]

Hustler - to your point regarding maximizing social welfare, I disagree with the notion that party A does not have the right to restrict access to his work, just because it prevents party B (and everyone else) from benefitting. This, as I have discussed in another thread, is the definition of an economic externality, resulting in a market failure. The way to solve an externality is not to blatantly steal - but to find a way to impose the cost of the resource on the folks who use it, which restores the sanctity of the market.

"Finding a way to impose the cost of the resource on the folks who use it" is yet another cost being imposed on third parties that ends up protecting the person who is depriving the rest of the world from better art. Finding and implementing new measures takes time and money, which are public resources. Musicians demanding that their music be protected from being tweaked by other musicians creates externalities. In fact, this whole notion is rooted in a fundamental contradiction in free market economics, which is that it can't really exist, because externalities resulting from the assumption that people have a right to private property always lead to corporatism and coercion.


For more on this - please read:

http://forums.intpcentral.com/showpost.php?p=1370586&postcount=38

OK, but that post is full of false premises. First, you assume that piracy necessitates that less money ends up flowing to musicians, and then you assume that may result in lower quality, less original, corporate driven pop. Musicians can use different approaches to monetize their music (and did so for thousands of years prior to the invention of recording technologies) and, as for the second assumption, all scientific evidence that I've seen points toward the contrary. Money does not serve as an incentive for superior creative work. In fact, it makes such work worse. Given that, all of these problems you keep trying to bring up are moot, and piracy should just be legal. Legalized piracy solves them all, at no cost to the public. And, as a bonus, in a system of legalized music piracy, we get better music, and more of it.

[Polemarch]

(DIGRESS) I don't want to turn this into a debate about free-market economics. If you don't believe that the existence of private property leads to greater social outcomes, I won't be able to convince you within the context of a thread about piracy. But yes - I am proceeding under that assumption, because I believe that private ownership, protected by the law, allows for a more efficient allocation of resources than the alternatives. Whether or not intellectual property falls in that bucket is like all things debatable. I do not accept the assertion that private property, in its very existence, always leads to corporatism and coercion - nor that these results would in any way invalidate the net social good of that system over other systems.......(/DIGRESS)

As for your other points - namely that money is a disincentive for superior creative work, I'd like to hear more about this, because I don't agree but I am persuadable and open minded to this.

[Hustler]

(DIGRESS) I don't want to turn this into a debate about free-market economics. If you don't believe that the existence of private property leads to greater social outcomes, I won't be able to convince you within the context of a thread about piracy. But yes - I am proceeding under that assumption, because I believe that private ownership, protected by the law, allows for a more efficient allocation of resources than the alternatives. Whether or not intellectual property falls in that bucket is like all things debatable. I do not accept the assertion that private property, in its very existence, always leads to corporatism and coercion - nor that these results would in any way invalidate the net social good of that system over other systems.......(/DIGRESS)

Whether or not private property leads to greater social outcomes is an entirely different matter than whether or not free-market economics are viable, or whether free-market economics itself is rooted in fundamental contradictions (it is). It is also rooted in misconceptions of individuality. Humans, their ideas, and their actions are inextricably linked, and an act as small as being mean to your neighbors can diminish the productivity of an entire village. Private property can coexist with public property and, in fact, does so the world around. Furthermore, the extent to which private ownership grants control can be adjusted and, in fact, is the world around. This is precisely because of the externalities you mentioned. This is why there are restrictions on things like pollution, or why private companies cannot develop and hold arsenals of nuclear weapons under international law.

While the case of music is certainly less dire than that of nuclear arsenals, the same principles apply. The main principle being that it is illogical for the rest of us to bear the burden of protecting the private interests of one person when his actions are exclusionary and possibly deleterious to the rest of us.


As for your other points - namely that money is a disincentive for superior creative work, I'd like to hear more about this, because I don't agree but I am persuadable and open minded to this.

You could start by watching the video in that link that s0978 posted. You could then do some Google searches on the video's presenter and some of the concepts discussed in the video to get a deeper understanding. You could also look at this thread (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=38033) and the links to the videos by Barry Schwartz that I posted. The necessity of economically (financially) incentivizing innovation is one of the assumptions that free market proponents continually fall back on. They say that if we don't protect the ability of innovators to make money from their innovations, then we will lose innovations. This is an assumption, but science has shown it again and again to be a false assumption. I am in favor of science over unscientific assumptions about how things work, therefore I am not prepared to accept arguments against piracy based on false premises, even if those false premises are so deeply ingrained in the "common sense" perceptions of reality that they are shared by 100% of free-market libertarians the world around and most other people as well.

Of course, the greatest irony in all of this is that the one place where economic incentives do lead to better outcomes is the one place where people are most reluctant to give them: non-cognitive tasks involving only mechanical skill. Tasks such as manual labor, like working in a factory or on a farm. As soon as even a modicum of cognitive skill enters the picture, which includes anything that requires creativity (such as art), larger economic incentives lead to worse outcomes. Thus, if we want to improve life for everyone, all the money being accumulated by people from their copyrights being protected (at considerable expense to the public) should be diverted to factory workers and used as performance incentives.

[Polemarch]

Interesting - I will look into that and let you know what I think.

[Hustler]

Fuel for the fire. (http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html)